Soon the Water Will Come

Summary

The Lord of Spirits: "Soon the Water Will Come"
Episode Date: September 16, 2025
Hosts: Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick & Fr. Stephen De Young

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Episode Overview

This fifth anniversary episode of The Lord of Spirits explores flood stories from the ancient world, with a special focus on the relationship between the Genesis Flood narrative and its ancient Near Eastern (ANE) parallels. The discussion ranges from Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian flood epics to the Platonic myth of Atlantis and even the Norse Edda. The conversation highlights how Orthodox Christian tradition understands these stories, how biblical narratives interact with and invert their pagan counterparts, and why the historicity of the Flood is less significant for Christian faith than the spiritual realities these stories express.

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Major Themes & Purposes

• Biblical Flood & Ancient Myths: Examining flood narratives from Mesopotamia, Greece, and beyond, and how the Genesis Flood both participates in and subverts these traditions.
• Orthodox Interpretation & Tradition: Understanding how the tradition preserves the original context and meaning of biblical stories.
• What Matters in Interpretation: The importance of faithfulness and spiritual transformation over literal historicity or scientific details.

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Detailed Discussion & Key Insights

1. Anniversary Banter & Listener Engagement

[04:24-06:13]

• The show opens with playful, self-referential humor, marking the fifth anniversary and lampooning their own notoriety.
• "This episode on Ancient Flood Stories is our special gift to you." (Fr. Andrew, 04:24)
• Requests for anniversary gifts—mostly "cash" (Fr. Stephen), setting a relaxed and joking tone.

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2. Introducing the Flood Topic

[08:28-10:29]

• The hosts note they've never dedicated an episode to the Flood, despite frequent references.
• "We've talked about stuff that happened right before the flood, leading up to the flood, after the flood… but now we're going to stop talking around the issue and address it directly." (Fr. Stephen, 09:10)

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3. Sumerian Flood Story

[10:29-16:35]

• Earliest written flood story extant; tablet at University of Pennsylvania, dated to 1600 BC, found at Nippur.
• Details the difference between "Sumer" (culture, language, region) and "Akkad."
• Ziusudra ("he of long life") is the Sumerian Flood survivor, a priest-king, whose survival impresses the gods.
• "According to the Sumerian Kings list, Ubar Tutu was the king of Shurupak for 18,900 years... his reign was cut off by the flood." (Fr. Stephen, 22:51)
• Emphasis on mythic numerology and legendary pre-flood ages.

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4. Atrahasis Epic & The Purpose of Humanity

[27:45-41:13]

• Most commonly attested ancient Mesopotamian flood story.
• Gods create humans as a slave race to do work they don't want to do—a theme in stark contrast to Genesis.
• Flawed and destructive gods—especially Enlil, whose annoyance at human noise prompts the Flood.
• Various failed attempts to exterminate humanity before the Flood (plague, famine) subverted by the wisdom of the god Ea (Akkadian Enki).
• "One of the folks in the YouTube chat says, so gods can create humans but not earplugs? Apparently." (Fr. Andrew, 40:29)

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5. Epic of Gilgamesh

[52:00-56:49]

• Utnapishtim, the flood hero, is a wise king, not a mere survivor; the flood saga is secondary to his status as an immortal.
• "Utnapishtim, who is the flood survivor in the Epic of Gilgamesh in Akkadian, basically means the same thing as Ziusudra in Sumerian." (Fr. Stephen, 54:01)
• Scenes with sending out birds, immortality denied to the epic's main hero Gilgamesh.

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6. Berossus & Transmission of the Flood Myth

[56:49-67:10]

• Berossus (3rd century BC) records a Babylonian flood story for the Greek-speaking world.
• "Berossus says part of the boat still exists in Armenia and you can go see it... people go and scrape the pitch off and use it in spell casting." (Fr. Stephen, 66:24)
• The adaptation and evolution of flood stories into new cultural and religious contexts.

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7. Q&A on Sources and Interpretation

[72:29-82:52]

• Questions on the Documentary Hypothesis (JEDP): Fr. Stephen rejects its utility for Orthodox Christians, noting its reliance on circular, modernist reasoning.
• Importance of approaching scripture for spiritual, not merely source-critical, purposes.

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8. Atlantis, Plato, and the Flood’s Cultural Afterlife

[86:19-117:39]

• The only primary sources for Atlantis are Plato’s Timaeus and Critias.
• "This half of the show... things are going to get weird." (Fr. Stephen, 86:30)
• Plato’s Atlantis as a mythic precursor to later speculative histories; its supposed destruction linked by later writers to flood myths.
• The influence of Atlantis on early Christian thinkers, renaissance speculation, and eventually pseudo-scientific/racial theories (Madame Blavatsky, the Thule Society, Edgar Cayce).
• The transformation of Atlantis into an occult, mystical, and often racist myth—distinct from its original context.

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9. Q&A on Noah, Tradition, and Application

[123:56-129:13]

• Discussion of Noah as a figure with a substantial extra-biblical lore; some of this is taken up in scripture (e.g., “preacher of righteousness”), but much is for spiritual edification, not historical curiosity.

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10. The Genesis Flood in Orthodox Perspective

[129:21-151:07]

• Genesis is not concerned with historicism for its own sake.

  • The biblical flood is a theological polemic: God is not like the pagan gods who are capricious or anti-human.
  • The “sons of God”/Nephilim in Genesis directly invert the reverence for mythic kings and giants in local pagan cultures.
  • "The original readers would have understood: Oh, you're talking about these demigods, these heroes... And you're saying they're not heroes ... In fact, they were evil, they were tyrants, they were thugs. And they were so evil and so destructive on the earth that God had to send a flood to wipe them out." (Fr. Stephen, 136:45)
  • God’s command to Noah and his family—“be fruitful and multiply”—is the opposite of the actions of Babylonian gods, who restrict human life after the flood.

• Uncreation and Recreation.

  • Genesis doesn’t describe a “global” or “local” scientific event but an uncreation and recreation of the cosmos: the reversal of the creation order and then a new creation upon subsiding waters. (See 146:56-148:13)

• Why Historicity Isn’t the Point

  • Genesis (and other biblical narratives) are not attempting to prove events happened, but to interpret and orient their meaning in light of faith.
  • "Saints Matthew, Mark, and Luke are not trying to convince you that Jesus rose from the dead by getting all of these details right and consistent. They're trying to communicate things to you about the resurrection." (Fr. Stephen, 162:10)
  • Orthodox tradition preserves the ancient context for interpretation, ensuring the spiritual meaning is not lost even when the pagan stories fade from cultural memory.

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11. Norse Flood Tradition (Special Segment)

[165:37-176:10]

• In the Prose Edda, the survivor of the flood is not a human, but a giant (Bergelmir).
• Notable as a point of contrast: in Norse myth, it is the monstrous who survive and repopulate; in Genesis, it is the righteous human uniquely saved and tasked with refounding humanity.
• "Noah is not just saved by God. Noah becomes a new father of the human race. He becomes, in a sense, another Adam, right? ... Noah is a forerunner of Christ in that sense." (Fr. Andrew, 172:37)
• All the world's traditions find their fulfillment, inversion, or correction in Christ.

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12. Final Reflections: Faithfulness vs. Belief and What Matters

[176:19-end]

• Doctrinal or scientific “beliefs” about the flood are not the core of Christian faithfulness; what matters is how those stories inform and shape the way one lives, one’s faithfulness and orientation towards God.
• "You don't find out what someone believes by what they say. You find out what someone believes by what they do. What someone does, what they're faithful to, the ideas that they use in their life and put into action that they play out. That's what they believe." (Fr. Stephen, 181:11)
• The ancient stories’ value (and the value of the Genesis account) is in inviting us to live as those who know God is the loving Creator, not a capricious tyrant.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Ancient Mesopotamian Religion:
  "The gods create humanity as this slave race, and then when they get to be too many, decide to wipe them out. But does that remind you of anyone else you might have read about in the Hebrew Bible?" (Fr. Stephen, 45:53)
• On Tradition and Interpretation:
  "What those Second Temple Jewish texts are doing is they're preserving that original context for us. That's what tradition does. Tradition preserves the original context in which a text was understood." (Fr. Stephen, 136:04)
• On the Point of Genesis:
  "Genesis does not describe a global flood. It does not describe a local flood. It describes God uncreating the world and then recreating it at the end." (Fr. Stephen, 145:12)
• On the Importance of Faithfulness:
  "If you don't assent to that, if you don't say, yes, this is true, then somehow you're not. You're not really Orthodox, you're not really a Christian. Here's the thing. That's not what believing something means." (Fr. Stephen, 180:39)
• On the True Message of the Flood:
  "God didn't create me to be his slave...God instead loves me, that he wants me to flourish, that he wants me to grow, that he wants me to have life. That's something I need to know." (Fr. Stephen, 185:03)

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Key Timestamps

• Sumerian flood story overview: 10:29–16:35
• Atrahasis and the anti-human pagan gods: 27:45–41:13
• Epic of Gilgamesh and Utnapishtim: 52:00–56:49
• Berossus and cultural transmission: 56:49–67:10
• Atlantis myth and its strange afterlife: 86:19–117:39
• Q&A: Documentary Hypothesis, Noah's legacy: 72:29–129:13
• Genesis flood narrative in context: 129:21–151:07
• Norse flood myth & Christ as the true Noah: 165:37–176:10
• Final reflection—faithfulness over belief; what's really important: 176:19–189:55

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Conclusion: The Flood, the Seen and Unseen, and the Invitation

Fr. Stephen and Fr. Andrew urge listeners not to get lost in modernist debates about historicity or science but to see how the Genesis Flood story is a deliberate, spiritual answer to humanity’s deep questions about suffering, evil, and the possibility of new beginnings—in a way that contrasts with the prevailing pagan cultures. The true takeaway is the Christian call to faithfulness, to see oneself as invited to God’s new creation in Christ, who is the ultimate Ark and second Adam.

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Want to hear more? Tune in to the Lord of Spirits every 2nd and 4th Thursday, and don’t miss their live Q&A and continued exploration of the seen and unseen world!

Transcript

[A]

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, 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 Father 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.

[B]

Hey. Good evening ufologists, paranormal investigators and psychic psychotics. You are listening to coast to Coast AFM and it's episode 123. My co host, Father Stephen DeYoung, renowned KJV onlyest and uncredited subject of the Brie Sharp Signal. David Duchovny is with me straight from the swamp in Lafayette, Louisiana. And I'm Father Andrew Stephen Damick in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, broadcasting live from the Ark of the Covenant experience where no one's going to catch us with our eyes closed. And we are once once again.

[C]

I don't know why they keep putting us on after that guy. I know, like I've said this before, I don't want to be associated with him. He doesn't know what he's talking about. Probably a heretic. And you know the end of the show, they give out that email address. He never answers those emails. I don't think he even reads them.

[B]

True facts. True facts. Well, if you good listeners are listening to us live, you can call us at 855-237-2346.

[C]

And someone will answer the phone.

[B]

Someone will answer the phone. And who will it be? In starting in the second half of the show, it will be Mike. Don't tell Ken Ham Degan who'll be taking those calls. But first, a word from our sponsor. This episode of the Lord of Spirits is sponsored by the upcoming feature film El Tonto por Cristo. A Texas coastline, a brotherhood of monks inching their way towards sainthood. El Tanto por Cristo is the first orthodox full length feature film made in America. A cinematic pilgrimage with one Night only events in theaters across the country. The National Roadshow begins on October 6th in Dallas, Texas, at the Historic Texas Theater. From there, the film travels city by city, one night at a time. Executive producer Jonathan Pageau calls it dangerous in the best way. David Lowry says it looks like Tarkovsky by way of Texas. And Frederica Matthews Green calls it phenomenal. Truly a work of art from. From award winning filmmaker Josh, David Jordan and Emmy nominated composer Michael Paraskevas. This tour is underway with new dates being added. For tickets and showtimes, visit eltantoporcristo.com and if you'd like to bring the film to your own city, click the Host tab to learn more. That's El TantoPurquisto.com Are you going to.

[C]

Address the elephant in the room there?

[B]

What is. What is the elephant in the room?

[C]

The. The divergence of movie tastes between yourself and Jonathan Peugeot.

[B]

We have gotten a lot of contact about that, that's for sure. Because he's not the one that said that this particular film looks like Tarkovsky by way of Texas. So.

[C]

No, he said it was dangerous in the best way.

[B]

That's right. Just rubbing salt in the wound there, Father. Thank you very much.

[C]

I felt like someone had to say something.

[B]

Someone has said something.

[C]

You're the only one for the last week who hasn't.

[B]

Until now, right?

[C]

But you know, our listeners at home, they were yelling at their devices of various kinds, not their videos. Because, you know, there have been memes made. No one listens to it on a radio.

[B]

There have been memes made. Tonight, kids, this is our fifth anniversary episode. And this episode on Ancient Flood Stories is our special gift to you. So, Father Steven, do you have some kind of nostalgic feelings stretching back to 2020 you'd like to share with the kids at home?

[C]

The only really good thing about 2020 was that you could. You could be a recluse and not be looked down upon for it. You kind of get away with it. You had cover to just never leave the house and do anything.

[B]

There was a brief while where everyone was as you are.

[C]

Yes, everyone just left me alone in my hole. But also, I do want to say this episode is our anniversary gift to you. If you would like to give an anniversary gift to us, I will accept cash.

[B]

Wow. Never thought you'd be so brazen.

[C]

I'm not saying they should send cash.

[B]

I'm just saying you would accept it.

[C]

I would accept it.

[D]

Right.

[C]

I'll cash the check. That's all I'm saying. No one needs to send Me one. But if someone does, I'll cash it. That's all I'm saying. Just say it's.

[B]

Oh, man. Well, 20. 20.

[C]

Because I don't think that goes without saying.

[B]

I never. I never thought we'd both see this. This moment.

[C]

What, the fifth anniversary of this.

[B]

The fifth anniversary. Our 50th anniversary of being born. All that kind of stuff all at once.

[C]

I mean, I thought I'd make it to 50.

[B]

This is a good moment to end the show. What do you think?

[C]

What were you up to that you thought you wouldn't make it to 50?

[B]

I don't know. It just seems like an impossibly large number for human beings to ever achieve.

[C]

And now this is a good moment in the show. Remember, we're going to. We're going to. The last episode is going to be the one we do live at the conference. We're just not telling anybody.

[B]

Oh, that's right. That's right. That's going to be the big, special secret surprise as we're telling everybody the show's over.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

All right, all right, well, make sure you don't say that after we start recording, though. So.

[C]

Yeah, no, yeah, once the show goes live.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

[C]

We'll keep that secret safe.

[B]

So, I mean, if we're going to talk about the flood. Which flood where in what language?

[C]

The flood. The definite article, as it were.

[B]

Yes. See, this is another moment to trigger Jonathan Pageau. As we've actually discovered, almost every person who works for the symbolic world at some point has their house flooded. So it's true.

[C]

Did you know that I know someone who I don't believe has had their house flooded.

[B]

Oh. Yet.

[C]

But they may now be jinxed because they live in southern Louisiana.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And it's hurricane season, so, I mean.

[B]

Y' all exactly don't have a low water table there.

[C]

And that's what I'm saying. You may Right. Put the jinx on. I mean, there's a whole family.

[B]

Do they do mazel Children like they do in New Orleans?

[C]

Mostly, yeah.

[B]

Nice. Very, very picturesque. And creepy in all the. All the best kinds of ways.

[C]

Yeah, well, I am. I do live across the street from a cemetery with large, beautiful bay windows looking out upon it, so. But see, the ghosts aren't at the cemetery. The ghosts are wherever the people died.

[B]

Oh, is that how it works?

[C]

Yeah. That's why I don't understand why people are spooked out at cemeteries. Like, the bodies are there, the ghosts are back.

[B]

You know, ancient Sumerian ghosts.

[C]

I mean, probably not maybe some dead nephilim floating around here and there. I think they're more towards the voodoo shops in New Orleans.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Here.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

So should we talk about the topic of the episode?

[B]

How about that?

[C]

Okay. I could tell in the background your mind was reeling, working on a segue to try to get from. I said Sumerian ghost thing was kind of a lame attempt. You were working on something better.

[B]

That's what I had.

[C]

What can I. Yeah. Flood related. Flood related. You just, you know, a few too many steps to make it a smooth segue. Good. Would have been, you know, like. Well, and I imagine that like a hospice center would have a flood of ghosts. Right.

[B]

Nice. I mean, also lame, but. But pretty good.

[C]

Yeah. But pithy. Anyway. Yes. So there's a story in Genesis chapter six through nine about a flood.

[B]

Which weirdly, we have never done a flood episode until now.

[C]

We have never actually done an episode. We've done it.

[B]

It's like we've never done an Enoch episode. Even though apparently all of our Apple reviews.

[C]

That's all we talk about.

[B]

This show is nothing except about Enoch.

[C]

Every episode is a Book of Enoch episode, especially the ones where we don't even mention it. Yeah. So we've never. We've never actually. We've talked about stuff that happened right before the flood, leading up to the flood, after the flood.

[B]

Yep, yep.

[C]

Around the flood. But now we're going to stop talking around the issue and address it directly. I keep claiming, even though we haven't yet. And how long has this episode been going on already?

[B]

10 minutes.

[C]

10 minutes. Okay. So Genesis 6 through 9 is not the only place where the story of the flood, the definite article, as it were, is told. And so we're going to start out tonight by talking about some of the other places, specifically the other places in Mesopotamia, the land between the rivers. Now, if you're watching a horrible Bible documentary, I was about to say on cable television, but for you kids, that's like streaming, except you can't control it.

[B]

Still exists, by the way. Did you know that people TV still exists?

[C]

Yeah. If you're watching one of those documentaries, they will say something dumb. Usually like the book of Genesis plagiarizes the story of the flood.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

As if it was like a school assignment, you know? And the author of Genesis GPT back in those days turned in a bunch of stuff he stole from. From Atrahasis. Right. Which is just absurd right on the face. We're going to get it. Most. Most of what we're going to be talking about tonight has to do with the relationship between these stories and how these stories function. But the idea that it is quote, unquote, plagiarism is, of course, stupid. The idea that the Bible is an original work of fiction bears certain presuppositions behind it that we do not accept. So we're going to start with. Even though it's not the oldest one we have by a little bit, we're going to start with the. What's called the Sumerian Flood story. It's called the Sumerian flood story because it is on tablets that are written in the Sumerian language. And because it seems to be part of a larger story, we're just missing the part before and potentially the part after the flood story itself. And so we don't have a name. We don't know, or we don't know the name of whatever the larger work would have been. We just know this is a tablet with a flood story in Sumerian. Now, you could actually go see this tablet I have right here in the United States of America.

[B]

Yes, it's.

[C]

It's in Philadelphia, in Pennsylvania. Yes.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, at Philadelphia version 2.0, as it were, at the University of Pennsylvania, you know, Upennial Museum, which, if you're in the Philly area, everybody, it is really actually a very good museum worth seeing with lots of super ancient and less ancient stuff. So.

[C]

And you can at least see the Sumerian flood story tablet.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[C]

Just something all by itself.

[B]

Also recommend the Philadelphia Museum of Art as well. You can go see the big Rocky statue out on the front steps. That's what people do there. Selfies with the Rocky statue slightly more recent. Yep, yep.

[C]

The movie Rocky. So we know when this tablet was made. Right. We know when Reid was set to clay, as it were, and that is in 1600 BC and we know where it was in the city of Nippur, which is in the region of Sumeria.

[B]

Was there a Sumeria as such in the old days?

[C]

So, yeah, we have to disambiguate Sumer and Sumeria a little bit. So when we hear Sumerian, we probably first think of ancient Sumer, like the culture, as sort of the earliest, one of the earliest layers of written human culture, going back to at least 3,000 before that bc that's a particular civilization and culture. There is a Sumerian language that comes from that civilization. The Sumerian language is a language isolate, meaning it is not related to any other languages. It is not a Semitic language. It is not a Indo European language. It is its own thing. And Sumer is also the name of that region, which is basically southern Mesopotamia. So today in modern times, basically southern Iraq, a little bit of southern Iran, but that region was Sumer. And then the northern region of Mesopotamia was Akkad. And Akkad is where the Akkadian language comes from. And the Akkadian language is sort of the Ur Semitic language, not of the city of Ur.

[B]

I'm just saying. Sorry, sorry.

[C]

Yes. But sort of the way that Sanskrit. Yeah, Sanskrit is a root language for Indo European languages. Akkadian is sort of a root language for Semitic languages. And so Even though in 1600 B.C. in Nippur. Right. 1600 B.C. we're talking about during the Babylonian empire.

[B]

The original one, Babylon had conquered that whole region.

[C]

Yeah. Second millennium B.C. right. Cities in Akkad and cities in Sumer at various points in ancient history dominated each other. Like we talked about earlier, around 2000 BC in the UR3 period when we were talking about Abraham, that was the Sumerian Renaissance. And that was where Sumer and Ur in particular re rose to prominence and sort of dominated the northern area of Akkad. And so it went back and forth between northern and southern regions. But so even though this is a period of time where Akkad is more dominant and most of the things we have being written during that time are being written in Akkadian, this is written in Sumerian. That said, because of the time likely that it's written, the Sumerian that it's written in is sort of heavily influenced grammatically, especially in the verbs by Akkadian, by Babylonian, Acadian.

[B]

Yeah. So this is like when you read, you know, Semiticisms or even occasionally maybe Hellenisms in the Bible with phrases like and it came to pass, you know, which is clearly a translation of something. We're so used to it now, we don't tend to think of it that way, but it. But it is. Or like, like. Or the word walk being used to refer to the way that you live your life, you know?

[C]

Yeah, we don't go too nerdy on it, but yeah, IDU is a Greek translation of hine in Hebrew. Right. Lo or behold, or whatever.

[B]

Or.

[C]

Which tells us a couple of things. One of those is that people highly suspect, and we'll see more about this as we go on tonight, that even though this is being written in Sumerian, that there is a Babylonian version of this story in view for the person who's writing it. He may not be directly translating from Akkadian to Sumerian. He could be, for example, making a copy of an earlier Sumerian translation. He could be just sort of putting this version of the story together himself. And just he personally knew both languages. And so his Sumerian was kind of accented by his Akkadian because Akkadian was his first language. That happens. Right. But there is, there is likely some Babylonian version of the story that was familiar that lies sort of behind this Sumerian tablet. And so basically what we get in this tablet, in this story is that there are two groups of gods. There's the great gods and the lesser gods. This is a constant through all these stories. But this is also a constant through ancient Near Eastern paganism, even into Greek and Roman paganism and even I think into Norse paganism. That there are sort of these two tiers, right? You've got, in Greek paganism, you've got sort of gods proper and then you've got sort of nymphs and spirits and things that are sort of lower ranked. So you have the same thing. You have greater and lesser gods. In ancient Near Eastern view, the greater gods are obviously like the most high God and then usually gods associated with elements of the cosmos. Right? Sun, moon, things like that. And then the lesser gods are usually gods who in general, this is a generalization, so there are exceptions, but generally gods associated with various human activities like craftsmen and things like that. Or maybe like associated with that kind of thing.

[B]

Or the lesser local territorial gods.

[C]

Yeah, those are usually the lower ranked ones. And you could see how that would happen. Right? Obviously. Right. The sun is in one category and finding water in your field is in a different category of things.

[B]

Or that oak tree.

[C]

Yeah. So in the Sumerian flood story, the great gods decide they're going to destroy the world. And it begins kind of abruptly. This is why we're pretty sure there was some kind of story preceding it. Probably some kind of creation story, because the other versions of this story, including the one in Genesis, obviously the story of the flood is sort of preceded by a story of the creation of humanity. We're just sort of informed as the tablet starts that you know, by the setting and everything that this is after the establishment of cities, the establishment of kingship. Right. So there's already some human history that's happened that isn't narrated on this tablet. So we assume, okay, there was, there was a previous tablet or previous tablets telling those stories. But so they decided to destroy the world. And there it begins with this. There's kind of a conflict between the God, 9th Ur, who is the God of creation. This is another reason why we Think there was a creation story in a tablet before this, because the God who created people doesn't want to see them all get wiped out, but kind of gets overruled by everybody else. And so the main character, the sort of hero character of the Sumerian flood story is Ziusudra, sometimes referred to just by the abbreviated sudra in the text. And Ziusudra is Sumerian for he of long life, the long lived guy, essentially.

[B]

It's kind of a chicken egg issue here. Yeah.

[C]

Well, I mean, I suppose you could name a child that as sort of a blessing or a desire or a wish for aspirational name. Yeah. And he was both. He's a king. We'll see why in a second. And he's also a priest of the Sumerian God Enki. So he is a priest king himself. He is a king because he is the son of Ubar Tutu.

[B]

It's a great name. Although I.

[C]

No relation to Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

[B]

I was gonna say, I don't suggest naming your kids this, but who has Ubar Tutu? Father Stephen?

[C]

Ubar Tutu was the king of Shura.

[B]

Pack, as everyone knows, which is kind.

[C]

Of an awesome city name.

[B]

Yes, it is. Yeah.

[C]

I mean, Shura Pack.

[B]

I mean, this is one of the. This is one of the cities that you can build in in the Civilization games if you're playing Sumeria.

[C]

Well, there you go.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And if you go. This is a different text. Right. But if you go and consult the Sumerian Kings list, which we've talked about before on the show a few times, the Sumerian Kings list lists all the Sumerian kings before the flood and then after the flood. And Ubar Tutu is on the Sumerian Kings list. He is listed as the last king of Shurapak before the flood. So the Sumerian flood story tablet is working with a guy who is otherwise known from Sumerian text. And the Sumerian Kings list is actually much older. So this is kind of a known thing. Also for the record, I know I've mentioned this before, but this is an example. I mentioned this before on the show when we were talking about the genealogy of Cain and the genealogy of Seth. We've got all the long lives of people, you know, and your local atheist is like, well, that's dumb. He lived 969 years. That. That's got nothing on the Sumerian Kings list.

[B]

Yeah. Aren't they like hundreds of thousands?

[C]

According to the Sumerian Kings list, Ubar Tutu was the king of Shurupak for 18,900 years.

[B]

I mean that's some continuity of government right there.

[C]

And that his reign was cut off by the flood. So he would have kept going.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

If not for this whole flood thing. But so that gives you an idea we've also talked about. And you may have noticed 18,900 is evenly divisible by 60, that the numbers are based on basic 60 Babylonian math. So Ziusudra, this priest king, rather than waiting around however many more thousand years it would have taken to assume his father's throne, gathers his wives and a bunch of animals onto a boat and together they survive the flood. What we have of the text, and there may have been more tablets, more texts that explained more. Does it sort of tell us how he knew a flood was coming? I mean it might be implied, I mean with him being a priest of Enki, that maybe Enki tipped him off or that Ninter since or got a rule might have tipped him off or.

[B]

Just got a boat at hand and noticed. Wow, it sure has been raining.

[C]

Yeah, a lot. Rain doesn't seem to be stopping. Let me get my boat. Yeah, load on the animals and my wives. But it's kind of the implication of what we have is that the focus is on like he sort of survives through his own ingenuity.

[B]

Yeah, he's a really smart guy. He knows what he's doing.

[C]

And we say that because after the flood then the gods are sort of impressed by the fact that he managed to survive.

[B]

Like, wow, we were trying to kill.

[C]

Everybody but this guy, this guy. Pretty sneaky, sis. So they settle him in the land of Dilmun, where the sun rises. We don't know exactly where that is. And in fact it may not be an actual place like it may be talking about literally where the sun rises because we'll see some of these sort of hero figures get divinized after the flood. But so that's all we've got. You know, we don't have the whole frame story and everything of the Sumerian flood story now probably, probably the most well known version of the flood story in the ancient near east, as far as we can tell. And the reason I'm saying as far as we can tell is important and this is important in a broad range of topics far beyond the flood story in terms of our knowledge of the ancient world. Our knowledge of the ancient world is based on what has come down and survived to us, which is a tiny, tiny, tiny bit. Tiny fraction.

[B]

It's so sad.

[C]

Tiny fraction even of the like well known stuff. Even of the well known stuff, I'm not just talking about, like, who knows how many flood stories there were in ancient Mesopotamia. Which, True. Who knows how many variations there were over the centuries. Right. Of the flood story. But things like, and much later things like, we don't have most of Plato's writings. We, we know from ancient catalogs that Plato not only wrote a bunch of dialogues that we don't have anymore, but he wrote treatises like Aristotle, and we don't have any of them. Likewise, Aristotle, according to these ancient lists, wrote dialogues in addition to his treatises. We don't have any of Aristotle's dialogues. And those are, I mean, Plato and Aristotle, that's like as famous as you get in terms of preserving ancient literature. Right. And we have a tiny fraction of that now. When we've talked about this before with like the church fathers, of course, we believe that the Holy Spirit is guiding the church. Okay. But when we're not talking about the church fathers, we're talking about like the speeches of Cicero. Right. I'm not denying that there's divine providence involved, but yes, in God's providence, we have the things God wants us to have. And we'll rediscover things if he wants us to rediscover them. But the point I'm making is about us making claims about the past. Us saying this was the most common or this was the most popular, or there were no fill in the blank in a particular time.

[B]

Yeah. We need to state these things positively. Like, okay, this piece of evidence says this.

[C]

Right. But even, even pieces of evidence obviously are capable of multiple interpretations or could.

[B]

Be a minority report that we don't even know about.

[C]

Right.

[B]

But most was going on.

[C]

And so your red flag should go up. This is one of the problems with those Bible documentaries.

[B]

Which you love to watch.

[C]

No, which I am impelled to watch.

[B]

Okay. Okay.

[C]

It's like the show Dexter. I have an abusive relationship with it. I am disappointed in almost every season, but the next one comes on and I watch it nonetheless. And I start to think halfway through, oh, this one's actually pretty good. And then I'm crushed once again. Same with Bible documentaries. It's twisted, masochistic compulsion. But yeah, the Bible documentaries, they always say things very confidently. They always just say like, you know, this, you know, da, da, da. Oh, we found a copy of the Gospel of Judas. Now, don't mind that the church fathers had already talked about this. We already knew this was a thing that existed. We kind of knew what it was about. But hey, we finally found a copy. This is going to shake Christianity to its core.

[B]

Yeah, this has been suppressed for all of these many centuries by the church.

[C]

All nonsense. Right. Like, you don't find that in like to make tiny, modest claims, actual scholars write like whole journal articles, like 12 page journal article with like 137 footnotes to try and argue that, yeah, there actually should be a definite article in front of this word in this text. That's the kind of things you get in scholarship, like real scholarship. And in that journal article they'll, they'll like acknowledge that here are the other possibilities if my thesis isn't correct. But that's not what you get from a lot of people. You get people making just very confident assertions. So we think Atrahasis, the Atrahasis epic, is the most popular version. And we think that because we've got the text in multiple languages in multiple copies across a period of several centuries now, it may be there was some way more popular version and we just haven't found it. Or it may be that the Sumerian flood myth, or the one we're going to talk about after Atrahasis, were actually way more popular. It's just for whatever reason we found fewer copies. There's literally no way to know for sure, barring a time machine. Right. And even then you'd have to do a lot of time traveling to different places in different centuries and interview lots of people to find out which was the most popular. But our best guess, Atrahasis epic. This particular story, which is a longer story that includes within it a flood story. This basic story endured over a period of centuries. It was translated into different languages. We've found copies of at least parts of it in several different geographical locations dating to those different centuries. And so generally that would suggest that this is a very popular. And given the paucity of finds, like we don't even know what the full text of the Sumerian flood myth was. We believe based on that, that Atrahasis, this was sort of the main version of the story for most people of Babylonian and even later Assyrian culture. The Atrahasis epic proper was written in Akkadian. The primary tablets of the text that we have date to the 17th century BC. So that's the 1600s BC which again is the Babylonian empire, the original one. So it being an Akkadian, not surprising. We have the beginning of the text as part of this. And so we actually have the scribe's name, which was Ipik Aya. Another not to be Confused with Ipanema or the Girl from There.

[B]

This is possibly the most popular elevator music in cinematic history.

[C]

In film, yes.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Not necessarily in real life, but in film.

[B]

Yes. Yeah. I don't think I've ever heard the Girl from Ipanema in an elevator, except in movies.

[C]

No. And I am now of the age where, sadly, I'm, like, at the supermarket, I'm like, wow, they're playing really good music. And so. And we found this copy made by Ipichaya, also not be confused with epicac.

[B]

Or Yippee Ki Yay.

[C]

Yes. Don't finish that sentence.

[B]

Yeah, I won't. I won't.

[C]

At the. It was found as part of the library at Sippar, which is another Babylonian city. Now, that said, there's an important chunk of the flood story that was missing from what we found at the library of Sippar that was rediscovered recently. And by recently, I mean this millennium, this century, the 21st century, like 20 years ago. By Irving Finkel.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And when I say ol. Irving Finkel discovered it, I don't mean he was in Iraq digging in the dirt and turned it up. He was going through a big rack of Acadian clay cuneiform tablets at the British Museum, most of which were, like, grocery lists and trade documents and stuff. And lo and behold, he found a tablet from the Atrahasis epic.

[B]

Yeah. And I have to say, by the way, if you guys have never, like, looked up Irving Finkel, I mean, he's still living. He's still living. He's still kicking and doing his thing. There's lots of videos of him on YouTube, and he is incredibly entertaining and interesting to listen to.

[C]

He's interesting. He has a very mellow British accent.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. And there's a. There's a video of him teaching someone how to play the Royal Game of Ur, which everyone's gonna need to watch that if you're gonna participate in our Royal Game of Ur tournament. At the.

[C]

He is a big. He is a big proponent of people learning to read cuneiform, which is an odd cause to soldier for, but it is his because he loves. He loves his literature. He loves making finds like this that he wants more people to carry on that work, because there are these racks and racks and racks of clay tablets, most of which are not super important, but a few of which may be very important, like this. And not enough people to go through and read them and find out what they are. But so we have a much more full picture just in the last decade and a half or so. Based on the work of Irving Finkel about this, we also have, as I mentioned, we have pieces of the Atrahasis epic. So this one is the one in the 17th century by Ipigaia is the Old Babylonian text. That's how it's referred to. There is also. We have an ugaritic tablet from Ugarit. We've talked about Ugarit before on the show. That's from a few centuries later that is translated into Ugaritic. We have a Middle Babylonian version from later in the Babylonian empire before its collapse. And then we have two different Assyrian copies, like the Assyrians in the Bible, like 8th century B.C. so that's 900 years after Ipichiah.

[B]

Right.

[C]

We have two copies from the library at Nineveh. So that's what I meant by this seems to have been around a while. It seems to have kind of endured as a version of the story. Now, as we said, the Atrahasis epic is this big epic story with Atrahasis as the main character. Sort of like the Epic of Gilgamesh that we're going to talk about next. But it includes within it a flood story. And in the flood story, you may see some familiar themes to what we already saw in the Sumerian flood story. So once again, we have greater gods and lesser gods. But of course, we have the beginning of this story, which means we have the story of the creation of humanity that leads into the flood. So we have sort of a better scope here. And in it. So there's no humans, there's just the greater gods of the lesser gods. And so the greater gods make the lesser gods do all the work.

[B]

Typical.

[C]

Yeah, just push them around, bully him, Big brother, little brother, make them do all the work. The lesser gods get tired of doing all the work, and so they decide to create humanity as a slave race to do all of their work. Okay. That's the inspiring story of the creation of humanity.

[B]

I know. It's amazing. If you read the actual story of how humanity is created in a lot of these pagan myths, it's not great. It's not great.

[C]

It is a stark contrast with humanity being made in the image of God as the crown of creation in Genesis.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, my favorite one, and this just might be a little bit of ethnocentrism on my part, but my favorite one is the Baltic human creation myth, which is where the most high God is kind of walking along and he sort of spitting, and he didn't notice that his spit hit the ground and sank in and Turned into humans. And that was literally. He was just hawking a loogie. And there's humanity.

[C]

Yeah, well, yeah, in later Babylonian, you've got Marduk killing his mom, and her blood falls on the ground and turns into not great. But in the Atrahasis epic, right, these lesser gods who don't want to do all the work, they pick one of their number, Weilu, who's one of the lesser gods, and they just kill him.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And they make humanity out of his carcass. Like, we need a slave race. Where are we going to get one? I know. Let's kill Weilu.

[B]

Hey, guys, can we talk about this for a second?

[C]

Yeah. He drew the short straw, apparently. And so then our hero, of course, as you might expect from the name of the epic, is Atrahasis. Atrahasis in Akkadian means the most wise one, the wise guy. He is a priest of the God Ea. Ea is the Akkadian equivalent of the God Enki.

[B]

Oh, so this is like our Sudra friend from the story.

[C]

Yeah. Who we just saw in the flood story. And so Enlil, who at this point is the most high God for the Babylonians, he and the other great gods decide to destroy the world, much like we saw in the Sumerian flood story. But we get a little more detail as to why. And the reason we're told why in the Atarhasis epic is that the humans have gotten too noisy and so the gods can't sleep. There's this horrible racket coming from Earth all the time.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And what this is aimed at, as we'll see as the story kind of unfolds, is the idea is that there's too many humans. We made these humans to do our slave work. Right. Do our slave labor, but now there's too many of them, and they're becoming a nuisance. It's like nutria in southern Louisiana. If you know, you know. And so they decide, yeah, we're just going to wipe them out. And interestingly, sort of inserted into the text here are a series of spells to get your baby to be quiet, because it says that crying babies in particular irritate the gods.

[B]

Wow.

[C]

By not letting them sleep.

[B]

Wow.

[C]

So the next time people in your church complain about babies making noise, you could tell them they're acting like pagan demons.

[B]

There you go.

[C]

That'll win them over. But that's sort of inserted here, Right. It's just like, hey, by the way. Right, here's some spells to get your baby to be quiet. I do not recommend engaging in sorcery to quiet your baby down. Just so that doesn't get, you know, you never know what's going to end up as a YouTube short on the show. And it's true. Yeah. So that's. But so actually one of the, say.

[B]

One of the folks in the, in the YouTube chat says, so gods can create humans but not earplugs? Apparently.

[C]

Apparently, yes. The earplugs had not yet been invented. I think it's Odysseus who figures that out.

[B]

That's right. That's right.

[C]

Who's another clever guy. So they actually make several attempts at wiping out humanity. And Aya, a slash inky, right. Sort of keeps interfering with their plans.

[B]

Curses.

[C]

So first they decide they're going to wipe out all the humans with a plague. So they said a plague. But then Aya goes and teaches the humans, like medicine how to cure the plague. And then they say, well, okay, we're not going to send any rain. So there'll be a famine and they'll all die of hunger. Like, these are really cool gods, huh? Like, these are the.

[B]

For Christianity, everything was like, cool and yeah, Earth loving.

[C]

They especially loved women. Yeah.

[B]

So colonialism, I tell you.

[C]

So they do that. But then A comes and like teaches them, you know, farming techniques and things and stuff and gets around the famine. And so the other great gods are.

[B]

Like, dang it, curse, foil.

[C]

But so you could see in there this element of there being spirits, in this case a this God who's like giving this technology and stuff to man, like to help them. Allah, Prometheus, Allah, the watchers, Allah, et cetera, that kind of idea here. And so finally, after those two things get foiled, attempt number three, they're like, okay, well, we're just going to send a flood. We're just going to wipe everything out with a flood.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

What are you going to do? Get around that. And so EA goes to Atrahasis and tells him how to build a boat.

[B]

Yeah. So he's kind of like a Prometheus figure sort of, you know, giving this wisdom.

[C]

Right. And so that's how he tries to get around it. Now, obviously that's not going to save everybody, but at least potentially can save Atrahasis and his family and a bunch of animals. It's worth noting also that Enlil, not just because of his behavior here, is kind of the devil.

[B]

Yeah, there's something in. Was it Isaiah?

[C]

Yeah. So Enlil was the most high God at this point in the original Babylonian empire. Like The Bronze Age Babylonian Empire, he was no longer the most high God after the Bronze Age collapse. And of course, you have the ascendancy once the Neo Babylonian Empire starts, you have the ascendance of Marduk. So as we've talked about before on the show, when the fortunes of different cities and different empires and different political regimes, et cetera, on earth would rise and fall, they saw everything on Earth is like a mirror for everything that's going on in the heavens. So that meant corresponding things were going on with the gods. Yeah, Right. And of course, all of them had within their history, built in the idea that whoever was the most high God at that point wasn't always and might not be at some point in the future.

[B]

Yeah, the succession myth.

[C]

Yeah, the succession myth that God had overthrown some other God to become the most high God and some other God could come along, overthrow him. This is what's going on in Isaiah. Since we're talking about Isaiah, when God says that he's Yahweh and before him there was no one, and after him there will be no other. That's pointing at the idea of no succession method. He is always and will always be capital G, God, God of gods, Most high God eternally. Right. So Enlil has this fall right within their understanding. And so when Isaiah decides to talk about the fall of the devil, the Hebrew there is, hello, Ben Shakar. Shakar is the name of the Morning Star, aka Venus. This is the name that St. Jerome translated into Latin as how art thou fallen Lucifer, son of the morning. Yeah, but the hell, there is a Hebrew version. There's good reason to believe. There's some good journal articles about this of Enlil.

[B]

So kind of a Hebraization, Right?

[C]

This comes within a series of oracles against Assyria and Babylon.

[B]

Well, there you go.

[C]

And so in talking about the devil, it is both saying that they're devil worshipers and also talking about the devil in terms of this fallen. Yeah, you used to be something, now you're nothing. So Enlil is kind of literally the devil in Isaiah. And you could see why that connection would be made by his behavior here. He creates humanity as this slave race, and then when they get to be too many, decides to wipe them out. But does that remind you of anyone else you might have read about in the Hebrew Bible?

[B]

I don't know, something in Exodus maybe?

[C]

Yeah, like Pharaoh. Yeah, Exodus, Chapter one.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, the whole complaint is they're multiplying there.

[C]

There's too many slaves. There's getting to Be too many of them. And what's his ultimate solution? If you see a male Hebrew baby, you drown it in the river.

[B]

Drowning in the river. Yep.

[C]

Flood. So that dynamic, that paradigm, it's not just, again, some sort of Hebrew chauvinism. Our God's better than your God, you know, your God's hateful and anti human flourishing. No, like the Babylonians themselves thought their God was kind of hateful and anti human flourishing. That's not a twist being put on their beliefs. That's their own story, is that their most high God, at least at this point, kind of hates humans. He is not a God who loves mankind like the God of the Bible.

[B]

Yeah. Which, I mean, we take that as so much as a given as Christians, like, you know, smile, God loves you. But that is a crazy, revolutionary thing to say within the context of ancient paganism.

[C]

Yes. No one was singing what a friend we have in Zeus. You did not want Zeus to love you.

[B]

No.

[C]

Bad things happen to you if Zeus came to love you.

[B]

That's right. Zeus goose, for instance.

[C]

Yes, Zeus goose on the loose. So that's sort of the setup for the flood. And then we get to the tablet that Irving Finkel found. The Finkel find, as it were, found as if by the fickle finger of fate, I'm sure. And that actually that tablet is incredibly interested in boat production. Pretty much the whole tablet is just about the details of the construction of this boat. And probably the most interesting thing about the way this boat is described in this tablet is that every other version of this, including the one in Genesis, the boat, the ark, is rectangular, broadly rectangular. It is longer than it is wide and square, whereas in this version the boat is round. So it is a kind of coracle boat that the Babylonians at the time used, albeit much larger, that was sort of like a big concave disk that would float on the water. And so in this tablet, Atrahasis needs raw materials to build his boat. So he tears down his house and repurposes the wood and stuff. And it goes into great detail about how he created ribs. The way you would reinforce the structure of the boat was there would be sort of wooden ribs that ran the diameter of the circle going down into the concave portion at even angles, like about every 10 degrees for 360 degrees. And so those would reinforce sort of the whole structure. And then there were those bands would hold it together. And so Atrahasis then gets his family and a bunch of animals on this giant circular disc. And so when the Flood happens. They're floating on this disk. You know, there's. There's debate about the significance of the disc. There are some people who take sort of the minimalist position, right, that basically just. He's talking. That's the kind of boats Babylonians used. So when he talks about building a boat, it's just a giant version of the boats they were familiar with, especially the level of detail. Right. They're like, whoever. Whoever did this version of the story, like, must have known a lot about boat construction. Like, probably lived their conjecture about what city he lived in based on where boats were made. Right. That kind of thing. That's kind of the minimalist position. Sort of the maximalist position would be that the disk represents their view of the dry land that makes up the world. Right. Which is sort of sitting on top of the waters. So that the boat then is like a microcosm.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[C]

And the people who argue for that aren't just arguing based on that. It's a disk. But that is a clear theme in Genesis. The idea of the ark is sort of a microcosm of the creation. And so they say maybe that's an element shared with this story and that's related to the circular boat as a way of conveying that. So then after the flood, right, the flood subsides, and Atrahasis and his family are made immortal after the flood. But even though they're made immortal, the gods decide, hey, we can't let this happen again with there being too many people. And so Enlil and the other gods afflict humanity with early death, infant mortality, barrenness, to reduce the number of people going into the future, which again, is.

[B]

What, a contrast with the Bible, you know, where God is always curing infertility. I shouldn't say always. There are prominent stories of God making infertile women have babies. And, you know, Sarah had Adam and Eve, you know, be fruitful and multiply. Right, yeah.

[C]

And so, yeah, so this is another area of complete contrast between the God of the Bible and the Babylonian gods.

[B]

God Mold.

[C]

The oldest God is cool with babies.

[B]

Super cool with babies.

[C]

Yes. He gives life. Right. He brings life out of death. Right. He doesn't try to restrict life, minimize life. So then the thing you may have been thinking we were going to mainly talk about here in this first half, but we're only getting to now the Epic of Gilgamesh.

[B]

Yeah. This is the one where if people have the idea of, you know, that there are multiple ancient flood stories and they're able to Mention a second one beyond Genesis. This is the one that they've heard of.

[C]

They probably mentioned the Epic of Gilgamesh. Yeah.

[B]

Which is features significantly in the the Children of Tama episode of Star Trek Next Generation.

[C]

Yes, yes, indeed. Jalad at Tanagra. If you enjoyed that episode, you really need to watch Lower Decks.

[B]

Really? I did love that.

[C]

That's one of my favorite episodes because there's a guy, there's a guy from that race who's a security officer on the ship.

[B]

So they actually made him.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

Wow. I, I will have to check that out.

[C]

So. But yeah, so the, the, the Epic of Gilgamesh, like the Epic of Atrahasis, obviously, is not primarily about the flood. In fact, even less so in that Gilgamesh is not the guy who survives the flood. Right. It's not even the main character. The guy who went through the flood is a supporting character and part of the Epic of Gilgamesh. So it is an epic that contains a flood story. It is not itself a flood story per se. And honestly, what is there of the flood story is almost identical to the Sumerian flood story to the point that Utnapishtim, who is the flood survivor in the Epic of Gilgamesh in Akkadian, basically means the same thing as Ziusudra in Sumerian.

[B]

Oh. This is what in technical terms you would call a calque, C, A, L.

[C]

Q, U, E. The long lived one, the one with a long life. And that is the primary role. We're told about how he survived the flood. The flood thing is narrated, sort of his backstory for who this guy is. His importance in the Epic of Gilgamesh isn't about him surviving the flood, really. That's sort of secondary. It's that as the flood survivor, he's immortal. Like Atrahasis was made immortal. And so he has the secret, the antediluvian secrets. Right. Including the secret of immortality and Gilgamesh after the death of Enkidu. The rest of the Epic of Gilgamesh is all about him trying to avoid death. And so he goes and he searches out Utnapishtim and, and Utnapishtim puts him through these trials to see if he's worthy of immortality. And the trials are essentially to see whether or not Gilgamesh is subject to human weaknesses. Remember, he's 2/3 God and one third human. He's a giant. So it's, you know, can you go without sleeping, can you go without eating or drinking for these long periods of time? And of course he fails those trials and he tries to grab the flower that holds the secret of immortality. Flowers which of course turn into fruit.

[B]

How about that?

[C]

But it is snatched away by a serpent.

[B]

How about that? Yes.

[C]

And so, yeah, this, because, I mean.

[B]

This is why you can see, like, this is the one of the ones that some people say, oh, the Bible's just plagiarizing Gilgamesh.

[C]

Or, you know, slight elements of the biblical version of the story are found in Gilgamesh also.

[B]

Oh, oh, oh, could go the other way.

[C]

But here again, like in the Sumerian flood story, Utnapishtim is basically this guy who's really clever and knows these secret things, and that's how he survived the flood and that's how he became immortal. Right. But that cleverness and stuff is connected again to his relationship with Ea, with Enki. Right. With the same God. So it really, the flood story part of really falls in with what we've already been talking about. So then finally, our last, sort of the last witness to ancient Near Eastern Mesopotamian paganism is a fellow by the name of Berossus. And I know we've brought him up a couple of times, at least in brief, on the show before Berossus is his actual name. Berossus is the Greek version of his name, which was actually Belarusu.

[B]

Also a difficult one to name your child.

[C]

Yes. Well, I would not recommend naming your child that because it means BAAL is his shepherd.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, that doesn't go over well.

[C]

Yeah. And so what happened is by the time you get to the Greek period, he's right, he's living in the third century B.C. okay, so the 200s B.C. so he's living under the Greeks, he's living under the Seleucids. And so with the rise of the Greeks and everything, what has happened is in that they have survived at all and not been sort of absorbed into Greek religious traditions. The Mesopotamian traditions have all kind of assimilated to each other. So in the Neo Babylonian Empire, Marduk has the role of most high God. So we're talking about there Neo Babylonian empire, we're talking about like the 6th century BC. And then over time, as you get into the Persian period and this assimilation starts happening, Marduk gets assimilated with BAAL first. BAAL comes into Babylonian religion as Bell. So think about the story, the additional piece of Daniel that's found in the Greek version, Bel and the dragon, he's in Babylon and then gets assimilated to Marduk. So by the time you're in the Third century bc. Our friend Berossus is a priest at the temple of Bel Marduk. Like, they just hyphenate it, like, yeah, BAAL Marduk, basically the same guy. So they've taken this sort of Syrian Semitic pagan traditions and the Babylonian Mesopotamian pagan religious traditions. It just kind of put it all together insofar as it has survived it all into the Greek era. But. So that makes Berossus sort of the repository of all of this tradition. And he then writes in Greek and he writes about these traditions to Greeks in Greek as a way of both preserving these traditions and showing points of continuity and interest as it relates to Greek pagan religion. And the main text he wrote, which does not still exist, by the way, we don't actually have the. His text. We just have lengthy quotes from it and we have quotes from it from all kinds of people.

[B]

Yeah, which I was gonna say. I mean, there is a whole. I don't know, there must be a technical term for this. There's a whole category of literature from the ancient world that we only know through quotes from authors.

[C]

Yeah. Through citations.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[C]

And because of that, you always have to be. Again, you always have to be a little careful because when we only know them from quotes, number one, we don't have any context for those quotes. So you're just kind of assuming that the person quoting them is doing it accurately to the context and doesn't have an agenda of their own. You want to assume that this is the biggest place where this is a problem when you're reading theological stuff, especially if you're reading early Patristics, is you will see people referring to Papias all the time. Well, Papias said xyz, Papias taught Papias in his work, thus, and so said, yeah, we don't have any of Papias's works. They didn't survive. We only have Papias in quotes. And some of those quotes are for people like Eusebius of Caesarea, who sometimes have somewhat suspect motives. You notice Eusebius of Caesarea is not Saint Eusebius of Caesarea.

[B]

No, because he was an Arian, a church uncle.

[C]

So you have to be a little careful. Right. When you see somebody just quoting Papias. Right. Really, you should always quote it at Papias as quoted by this person said. And Eusebius isn't the only person who quotes him. But by saying, as quoted by, you at least know where to look to see this quote. You can at least see the context. You at least see what the Author was doing with the quote, you could assess some things, right?

[B]

Yeah. He's got this text called the. I'm not even sure how to pronounce well in Greek. Would it be something like Vaviloniaka or something like that? Right?

[C]

Yeah, something like that. Which is Greek for Babylonian things.

[B]

Yeah, it's kind of like.

[C]

I mean, it's just Babylonian things.

[B]

Yeah, just Babylonian things. It's like similar to our word Americana.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Although we mean something particular by that. But yeah, Babylonian stuff.

[C]

But so we don't have it. We have quotes. And he gets quoted by all at length, by all kinds of people. He gets quoted by Greek and Roman pagans. He gets quoted in some Jewish sources. He gets quoted by church fathers and Christian sources. Right. When they're talking about like the pagan religions of Mesopotamia, he's sort of their go to. Because he wrote in Greek so they can read it. Right. Most of those people did not know any Semitic languages, let alone any kind of Babylonian. Right. That's of any age. And so he sort of compiles all of these Mesopotamian traditions as they had survived to that point in Greek. And that includes, we have quoted in two different places at some length by Greek pagan authors, his version of the flood story. And so his version, the hero is in Greek Zisuthros, or Zisuthros, which you could kind of see Ziusudra in there, which is the Sumerian name. And he is the son of Otirtes, Remember Ubar Tutu? So those seem to have been preserved. He just kind of hellenizes them because he's writing in Greek and you gotta Hellenize names. And in his retelling, Zisudra has this dream and it's Kronos who comes to warn him about the Flood. So Ea here, or Enki, has been, for at least for Berossus's purposes, to the audience he's talking to is seen as being equivalent with Kronos, which kind of fits because this would be an older tier of gods, not the current tier of gods with Marduk and stuff. Right.

[B]

The previous administration, as it were.

[C]

Yeah. So Ziyasudra, then, in this version of the story, builds a boat for himself and. And his close personal friends and a bunch of animals. Hey, so this is the only Babylonian Flood hero who actually cares about his friends. He's the only one who's a good friend. The other ones, like immediate family, cool. Everybody else, forget it.

[B]

Not good for genetic diversity, you guys.

[C]

Yes. But he brings his friends. He brings his friends with him. An interesting Detail that gets added here that isn't in the others is is Berossus says that before the flood happens, Zuthros goes and goes to Nippur. Interestingly, Nippur being the city where.

[B]

The.

[C]

Tablet we have of the Sumerian flood story came from. And he buries sort of all of the wisdom, all of the anti diluvian pre flood wisdom and history buries all the tablets there at Nippur.

[B]

And that's why the Babylonians have antediluvian with them.

[C]

And so this is, remember we've talked about before the original Babylonian empire, they claimed Hammurabi et al, the Amuru, the Amorites claimed to have the wisdom from before the flood. This version of the story, Berossus explains how that worked. Right, they buried it on tablets, right? And clay tablets would survive a flood, especially if you buried them underground. Some other details here, Berossus has, at the end of the flood, Zeuthros starts releasing birds to go look for dry land. These birds are unidentified as two species, but just birds. And when they finally don't come back, he says, oh, they found dry land also immediately when they disembark. And by the way, the, the boat in this one, again, like we said, only the atrahasis one is round. This one is also right, a big rectangle. But the boat, when it lands, the floodwaters subside. They immediately come out and offer sacrifices to the gods. And then Zutheros is told that as a reward for being so wise and so clever in surviving the flood, he gets to become a God.

[B]

Hey.

[C]

And so he sort of gives his parting address to his friends and family, since he's going off to become a God and live with the gods, and tells them, hey, by the way guys, here's where I buried the tablets, here's the treasure map. Go find those so you'll have all of the wisdom and knowledge. And interestingly so this to me is the most interesting part. Berosses, after telling this story, which is we've seen scene, is very much in keeping. He's preserved all the way down to the third century bc the basic structure of these traditions going back more than a thousand years, right in these stories. But Barossa says part of the boat still exists in Armenia and you can go see it.

[B]

Wow.

[C]

And he says not only can you go see it, this part of the boat, but the pitch, right, that they used to seal the boat, seal the wooden boat, people go and scrape the pitch off and use it in spell casting. Wow, it is magic tar.

[B]

Amazing Babylonian relics as it were.

[C]

And you could go on a pilgrimage to this chunk of boat in Armenia and get the magic tar. According to Berossus. I don't know how. I mean, who knows? We'll never know how true that was. If that was just a legend or if there was some enterprising young fellow with a big chunk of old wood who was selling magic tar. I mean, you know, may very well.

[B]

Have been all right with all those ancient tales told. You've wasted another perfectly good hour and 16 minutes of your life listening to this first half of Lord Spirits podcast. We're gonna take a short break and we'll be right back.

[A]

Father Andrew, Stephen Damick and father Stephen DeYoung will be back in a moment to take your calls on the next part of of the Lord of Spirits. Give them a call at 855-237-2346. That's 8555-AF.RA.

[C]

For centuries, Byzantine music has sustained Orthodox worship around the world. Now the St. John Cucuzelis Institute of Liturgical Arts offers online classes in notation, theory and practice, and free classes in liturgics with a faculty led by John Michael Boyer, author of the acclaimed book Byzantine the Received Tradition. Registration is open now for classes in [e-mail] that's K O U K O U Z e L I S.net we're.

[A]

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 8-55-AF-RADIO.

[B]

Hey, welcome back, everybody. Apparently, this show is now so popular, I have to read a second ad. Can you believe it? Father Stephen?

[C]

Capitalism just taking over the program.

[B]

That's right.

[C]

Instead of a merch shop. Too bald.

[B]

It's true.

[C]

I'm expecting you to just show up at the conference and there's going to be, like, patches with like, Pepsi logos and stuff all over your cassock.

[B]

You're not doing that.

[C]

You're going to look like a NASCAR driver.

[B]

So, yes, this episode is also sponsored by the Orthodox Studies Institute at St Constantine College. By popular demand, OSI is partnering with the Symbolic World to offer a course on Jubilees in the Nephilim taught by you, Father Stephen DeYoung.

[C]

Who, me?

[B]

Yes, you. In this course, Father Stephen will guide students through the Book of Jubilees, expansion of biblical history, unveiling the significance of the fall of the angels, the rise of the Nephilim, and the heavenly origins of the feasts of the old and new Testaments. Along the way, he'll explore how Jubilees reinterprets creation, demonology, and the prophetic structure of time, and why these themes matter not only to Second Temple Judaism, but to later Christian understandings in the unseen world. Live classes are held on Tuesdays, 7 to 9pm Central Time through September 23rd. So you can register now to catch up on the first four sessions and join the remaining two sessions live. Go to www.thesymbolicworld.com courses to sign up.

[C]

Actually, actually, technically, next Tuesday is actually the last class proper.

[B]

Oh, what's that?

[C]

We're going to be finishing up the Book of Jubilees the week after that, on September 23rd. If you are registered, you get to sit in on a conversation between me and Peugeot. What about all the stuff I've been saying?

[B]

I mean, you've already replaced me with.

[C]

A dog throughout the class up to that point. And here's the cool part. I've been baiting him all along the way. Oh, man. Like in what episode or in what episode? In one. In one lesson. Right. One of the class periods. I said, I'm not worried about AI and explained why, like, I am. I am laying the groundwork and setting traps.

[B]

I was gonna say. I bet you triggered him big time with that one.

[C]

So September 23rd, it's gonna all go down.

[B]

Nice.

[C]

Live on Zoom and you could be there.

[B]

Wow.

[C]

It's not actually on Zoom. It's on the symbolic world platform. But you could be there live on a Zoom app. You could ask questions, you could stir the pot.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Further beyond what I've already stirred it.

[B]

Speaking of pot stirring, we're going to take a couple questions. You okay with that, Father?

[C]

I think so.

[B]

We have someone who has been waiting a very long time now. Actually, we have James calling from Denver. James, welcome to Laura Spirits Podcast.

[D]

Good evening, fathers. How are you both doing today?

[B]

Thank God. How are you?

[C]

Take this slowly. I know the air is thin.

[D]

It really is. I grew up with asthma and it's challenging living out here.

[B]

Oh, man. Maybe you should move, James. Just throwing that out there.

[D]

Well, God has a wonderful creation out here and I wouldn't be able to move.

[B]

All right, all right.

[C]

We come down here to southern Louisiana. It's so humid. The air is actually thick.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

You actually have to see exact opposite.

[D]

Almost so you can chew on it.

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

So what is up there from the Mile High City?

[D]

So I had a specific question. According to modern Old Testament scholarship, there is the narrative that there is the J source, which is the Yahweh source. And. And the P source, the priestly source.

[B]

Oh man.

[D]

That they were essentially woven together to form one cohesive story. For example, if we look at Genesis 6 and 7, we find the distinction of how the animals are to be numbered and brought to the ark. We looked at Genesis 7 and 8, we find different durations of the flood, things of that nature. Is there any merit to this theory or do we as orthodox Christians reject this theory?

[B]

All right, come on, let's hear the rant, Father.

[C]

No and yes.

[B]

All right, good night.

[C]

Yeah, I haven't said that in a while, so. Yeah, I mean, you even left some of the sources out. That theory. People know of it as jedp. It's actually called the documentary hypothesis. Goes back to. Well, it goes way back, but the sort of classical form of it is in Klaus Wellhausen, German name you might note. And so you've got J, that's the Yahwist source. You've got E, which is the Elohist source, D, which is just the book of Deuteronomy, and P, which is the post exilic priestly source. And this went through phases, right? So it started out, it was just sort of a J and E thing because people noticed, hey, in some of these passages, particularly in Genesis, but also in the rest of the Torah, there's some places where God is called Yahweh, there's some places where he's called Elohim. And so originally, originally, if you go all the way back, the first guy to have this theory in the 18th century was actually trying to defend Mosaic authorship by identifying the sources that Moses used. So his idea was that Moses used pre existing sources and Moses is the one who brought them together. And what God was called was part of the basis for making that division. And then various theories, I could go on and on, but that's various theories about Deuteronomy being different. And you could. Textually, Deuteronomy is stylistically, it's stuff a little different than the other four books. So it's not based on nothing. It's a question of whether that basis is enough to support the theory that they then built. And then the whole idea of P, of there being this post exilic priestly source is based on the presupposition that Israelite religion had to evolve, that it had to start in one place, basically polytheistic, de rigueur paganism. And then it became some kind of vaguely monotheistic thing that resembled the religion of the Bible only after the exile. And so anything that sounds like that kind of religion can't possibly have existed in the time of Moses or even before the exile. And therefore all of that stuff had to be added by priests who edited the text after the exile. And it is a beautiful piece of circular reasoning because it's. Well, all of this and that, right? Like the distinction between. We're talking about the flood story tonight. The distinction between clean and unclean animals. That doesn't make any sense in Genesis. That's before Leviticus. So that must have been added by the priests after the exile. And you say, well, how do you know it was added by priests after the exile? And the answer is, well, because that's stuff that priests would add after the exile that didn't exist before the exile. Well, how do you know it didn't exist before the exile? Because it only gets added by the priests after the exile. So it's just this kind of circular thing. And the whole distinction between J and E sort of assumes that one author couldn't refer to God by multiple names. And part of the. Part of the problem with that is there are actually other names used for God, like El Elyon and El Shaddai in the Torah. They don't hypothesize those as being separate sources for some reason, like they acknowledge. I mean, you look at any. Let's just talk about pagan religions, the ancient near east, they all had piles of different titles for their gods. Any given God has a pile of titles. Why couldn't ancient Israel have had the same thing? So there's just. There's not actually evidence to support it. You have to approach it with presuppositions. So it reached a point where it went crazy. You could pick up stuff from the early 20th century where you have people writing, again, with total confidence, total confidence, talking about this half of this verse comes from J2 because they'd have, like, J1, 2, 3, and 4 as separate sources. Wow. And E, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, P1 and 2. Right. They just write with total. This half of the. I mean, two words out of a verse would come from one source and the other two words would come from another source. And you're like, what? Right. And as you point out, right. So you point out some duplications. This is. This is another problem with this theory. So we're to assume that the final editor was both brilliant at bringing all of these texts together and a complete idiot because he didn't notice all the places where he left seams like that. Like, why would he leave a reduplication why wouldn't he have corrected that? If there was one guy who was putting this all together, the final editor. It sort of doesn't make sense. But that a lot of that theory, that sort of super elaborate form of that theory. They even did a. They did a critical edition of J at one point too.

[B]

Wow.

[C]

Of a non existent text. But that theory has largely fallen out of favor now, at least in the super elaborate form. The J and the E part is mostly out of favor still. Your average secular Old Testament scholar thinks. Thinks Deuteronomy is by a completely different author and from a late date. There are reasons that I won't go into. Right. There's a long argument why I don't think that's the case. A good part of that argument is in Meredith Klein's Treaty of the Great King.

[B]

So.

[C]

But that's most people think and most people think that sort of the final layer of editing on the Torah as a whole. Right. And, and we've talked before on the show about there's definitely editing between what Moses wrote and what we now have in terms of updating the language, updating place names, all that kind of stuff. Most certainly the last stage of that editing was probably done by priests because they were the ones who were literate and who had possession of the texts sometime in the time of Ezra. There's good reason to believe that the different Second Temple traditions and stuff. So you know, everybody kind of believes that in various forms of it, you know, but mostly now people have a more. It's less based on like discrete words and parts of verses and sentences come from different texts that existed. And more of this is a body of texts that developed over time. And different scholars will chart that development in different ways. They'll have. It's more now that different parts of it are older or newer rather than like Deuteronomy, the whole thing being newer and that kind of thing, rather than chopping everything up into tiny pieces because you kind of get a big house of cards and then it all falls down with that approach. Yeah, there's. There's no. To me, the biggest thing though in terms of the second part of your question of whether orthodox people should pay any attention to it is it's not actually at all helpful. Right. I mean, if you're trying to publish a journal article arguing for the existence of J7. Okay. Gives you something to write a journal article about. But I mean in terms of what the text of Genesis means, what it's saying to you, how it's been interpreted and applied by the church over the centuries. All that theorizing and stuff is irrelevant. I mean, if you're a nerd and you want to get into it, go do a PhD in Old Testament. Cool. More power to you. But in terms of regular orthodox Christians, it's really kind of useless. And Wellhausen basically said that at the end of his life.

[B]

All righty, well, thanks very much for calling, James. All right, well, we're going to take one more call before we roll on with our stories of great inundations. We have Caleb calling from Monterey in California. So, Caleb, welcome Lord of Spirits podcast.

[D]

Hey, thank you so much. Can you hear me?

[B]

Yeah, we hear you.

[C]

What up, dog?

[D]

All right, well, this show has changed my life, so thank you both for your work. Before my real question, I have to ask this. After five years, I don't think I have to imagine somebody else has thawed this. So just does this show have three halves as a reference to the Nephilim ritual? And if so, does this make the show two thirds divine?

[B]

Wow. Who's the other third?

[C]

I ask you, is it Mike, don't.

[B]

Tell Ken Hamd again, or seems to trade out every so often? Yeah, I don't know if we should reveal the origin of the three halves. People who know know.

[C]

Yeah, that's one of those if you know, you know things.

[B]

If you know, you know. Yeah, I'm just going to put that out there.

[C]

You don't have to be from the state of Massachusetts, but it helps.

[B]

True, true.

[D]

Well, my real question is a little more on topic, but I'm going to read this so I get it right. In Matthew 24, Jesus says that at the time of his second coming, the world will be like the days of Noah marrying and giving in marriage. Could that be a reference to the Nephilim ritual returning in the end times? And connect with some ideas about the capital A Antichrist being a fully demonized human and speculating wildly. A lot of messianic sounding transhumanists and UFO cultists hope for a literal biological merger with either super AI or quote unquote aliens, which could lead to the very rituals that we're talking about happening in modern times.

[B]

Wow. Well, I guess I did start out by making coast to coast AM references at the beginning. I mean, yes, obviously I will pass most of this, you, Father Stephen, just because I want to hear what you have to say. But I mean, they'll be marrying and giving in marriage as in the days of Noah. That doesn't like the Nephilim ritual wasn't what most of marriage in the days of Noah was about, that was, you know, certain God, kings doing that kind of stuff, whatever. But I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, but my sense of that is that it's really about, like, people are just not even going to see it coming. You know, they're just going to be going about life as they normally would, making plans for the future, getting married, having kids, et cetera, et cetera. So I take it in a much more kind of humdrum, mundane way. I don't know, what do you think, Father? Is that a reference to that or.

[C]

I hate to poop on your party.

[B]

Oh, go for it on mine.

[C]

Stick in your proverbial mud. No, our caller.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

So what the text actually says in Matthew 24:38 is for, as in those days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage until the day when Noah entered the ark. And if you look at the broader context, this is talking about nobody knowing when the return of or the glorious appearing of Christ is going to happen. The idea being it's not like the. The everybody other than Noah, of course, who had been tipped off saw the flood coming. Right? Meaning they were just going about their business, eating and drinking, getting married, starting businesses. Right. Doing all these things as if they had a future that was going to go on forever, and then suddenly, boom, that's it, it's over. Right. That's kind of what the Matthew text is aimed at.

[B]

Yeah, sorry. It's not that weird.

[C]

Although the stuff you were talking about is way cooler. So that's why I'm sorry I had to put my stick in your mud.

[B]

Well, I mean, he is from California, so you know his land of fruits and nuts. So they kind of.

[C]

Well, and mudslides.

[B]

Yeah, mudslides. Yeah, exactly. Oh, God bless him. Yeah. Thanks for calling, Caleb. All right, well, we're going to see.

[C]

Caleb means dog in Hebrew.

[B]

Oh, wow.

[C]

You see what I did there?

[B]

Wow. See, I didn't know that. Actually, I feel like I should have, but I am a man of little Greek, less Latin and even less Hebrew, to paraphrase Ben Johnson.

[C]

As is your want.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what about the big flood story? The other big flood story everybody's heard of, you know, not the Gilgamesh one.

[C]

But the other one, everyone's favorite Hotel and casino. Atlantis. Yes, yes.

[B]

How many times have you been there?

[C]

Zero oh, zero.

[B]

Okay. You just know about it?

[C]

Everybody knows about it. Come on, man. Yes, and this is. This is. We're talking about Our world, Atlantis, not cool. Atlantis is with Namor or Aquaman or something. Cool comic book Atlantis. And this, by the way, by the way, just to tip people off, this half of the show is part of our gift to you. We're going to start out with Plato. Things are going to get weird. We're going to talk about some cool folks and stuff that even Father Andrew didn't know about. And I'm kind of surprised.

[B]

That's true. That's true.

[C]

You do not listen to enough coast to coast clearly.

[B]

Or any of it.

[C]

Art, Bell, George, Nori, they all have things to teach you, my friend.

[B]

But yeah, I mean the thing, it was funny to me. I mean, I think most people, if they think about Plato now we've referenced. And actually in one of our maybe first or second episode, I think we referenced some of this stuff.

[C]

But when a lot of most people.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. When most people think about Plato, they think about philosophical dialogues and so forth and they probably do not realize, I feel like this is a meme or something. You know, that guy who's dancing alone in the corner in the party or something. Like, you know, they don't know that Plato is actually his source of our Atlantis stories.

[C]

Yes. Pretty much our only source.

[B]

Yeah. Like it's, it's funny.

[C]

Exit source. Everybody else who talks about it is talking about it by way of Plato.

[B]

I mean, Atlantis is such. It's such a kind of a cultural meme. Like for a long time, a long, long, long, long time, that the origin point of that story, of that version of the flood story, I think is almost completely lost for most people. If you were to ask them, like, where did we get the Atlantis story from? Most people would definitely not mention Plato.

[C]

Yeah, no. As the source. No, it's got to be one. There is some Greek and. Or Roman myth.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Like, you know, if they know, if they could name some sources of Greek and or Roman myth, they might say, was it in Hesiod or something? You know? You know.

[C]

Although as I, as I pointed out for Father Andrew, the greatest source for knowledge of the story of the sinking of Atlantis is the incredible animatronic fountain display at Caesar's palace in Las Vegas. You could find this on the youtubes, kids.

[B]

Rivaled only by the Akalabeth in the summer.

[C]

And. And it is animatronic, vaguely creepy characters. Yes. That rise up out of a fountain. There are fire effects. I have seen it in person. But video is the next best thing.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

So anything with animated animatronics, underutilized I feel, except at Disneyland they're perhaps over utilized. So, yes, Plato talks about Atlantis in two of his dialogues, the Timaeus and the Critias. And if you don't know a lot about Plato, Plato's dialogues are named after the main interlocutor, the person who Socrates is talking to in the dialogue.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

So the Timaeus is mainly. There are some other people, but the main people talking in it are Socrates and Timaeus and then the Critias. The main people talking are Socrates and Critias. And so this is our oldest source, like we mentioned. Everybody else who talks about it in the ancient world, including like church fathers and stuff who refer to Atlantis are all referring to Plato. Yeah, when they refer to it, that said, Plato claims he's getting it from somewhere else.

[B]

Right.

[C]

We just don't have any citations of that other person except for Plato's. Everybody else is citing Plato. So Plato's Timaeus is essentially Plato's version of the creation story, which I became intimately familiar with when I translated it in a Greek independent study I did in my undergrad. And you know, when I figured out that was a bad idea, I figured out that was a bad idea when I spent three days working on this chunk of it and then finally sort of gave up and went and found a translation. And in the translation it said this section is hopelessly corrupt. And I was like, cool, don't even. But the Tobaeus is sort of his creation story. That's where he talks about the demiurge, which is sort of like Aristotle's world soul. Although distinct in several ways, the demiurge crafts everything according to the interplay of chance and necessity, et cetera, et cetera. Right. Interestingly, interestingly, in the Nag Hammadi Library, the big find of ancient Gnostic texts, there was a copy of Plato's Timaeus in there with things like the Gospel of Mary Magdalene and all of these things. Gospel of wisdom. So it seems to have held on to been the Gnostic part of the Gnostic creation myth too, at least at some level. But so Atlantis has talked about there briefly in terms of the creation story. The main place where Plato talks about the Atlantis story and Atlantis as such is the Critias. And in the Critias it's really talking about the history of the world, especially the history of the world vis a vis politics. So while it's unclear in the Critias. So the Critias talks about where Atlantis was in relationship to the pillars of Hercules, which are the ancient name for what we call the Strait of Gibraltar, which is sort of the gateway from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic Ocean, by the way, takes its name from Atlantis.

[B]

What?

[C]

It's the ocean where Atlantis was. That's where it gets its name. And so based on that, you might conjecture that. Well, and this is true, pretty much every later interpreter understands Atlantis to have been outside the Mediterranean on the other side of the Straits of Gibraltar, but in the Critias itself. That's not totally clear whether it was a big island in the Mediterranean or whether it was on the other side. But everyone later on, it's the other side. And not only was there this big island, this gigantic island where the Atlantean civilization proper was, but they had gone out from there and conquered most of the Mediterranean basin. So they had conquered Europe basically over toward Greece, and they had conquered Northern Africa right up to the border of Egypt again, according to Critias. In the Critias, now, supposedly Plato says of the Cretes, he is getting this information about Atlantis from Egyptian historical records, which he claims were translated by Solon. Solon famously took a trip from Athens to Egypt at the beginning of the sixth century. So we're talking about 590 BC. So Plato's in the fourth century. So we're about 250 years before Plato. Right? 200. 250 years before Plato. Plato says Solon was. He went there and he translated the Egyptian historical records. He found all this stuff about Atlantis and their records. Again, we have no other record of this Solon stuff about Atlantis. And this is kind of a stereotyped way. Whenever you read a Greek author, a classical Greek author who claims they have some esoteric knowledge of ancient things, they always claim they got it by way of Egypt.

[B]

Yeah, that's where all the old stuff comes from.

[C]

Yes, Egypt is all the old stuff. It was the oldest civilization they knew of. They kind of thought it was the first civilization on earth. They traced everything back there. So they're, they're the old civilization. They must know all this old stuff and whatever they do is the old way of doing it. Right. So his appeal to Solon visiting Egypt is kind of stereotypical. Right. But so what we are told is that when, and we've talked about this before, Plato talks about this in the Critias and other places. But in the Critias, this about Atlantis comes after the part that we've quoted several times on this show where Plato talks about during the age of Kronos, Kronos having divvied up the sort of land and nations of the world among the gods.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And this big island of Atlantis was given to Poseidon as his allotment. And Poseidon fell in love with a human woman. Go figure. What Greek God ever did that? Named Cleito.

[B]

Say which one didn't?

[C]

And Poseidon went to this human woman. Is this sounding familiar at all? And made 10 babies.

[B]

Yeah. Although, you know, two at a time.

[C]

Yeah. Five sets of twins, all dudes, all men. And Atlas, who was the eldest, was the first king of Atlantis and sort of the founder. Right. Of Atlantean civilization. Atlantis getting. It's getting its name from him. He's Atlas, and it was Atlantis. So he would sort of be the founder figure. So what this is setting up for the Greek pagan mind is that Poseidon would have been the God that they worshiped. And there would be a big temple to Poseidon in the Acropolis, the main city of Atlantis. And then there would be the grave of Atlas. Right. Attached to it as the shrine, as we've talked about before in the way Greek temples were set up, as the hero. Right. As the great man of old, the Nephilim, as it were.

[B]

What's the for Nephilim? Is it Nephil? No, just hear people say one of the Nephilim.

[C]

Yeah, technically it would be. It would be Nephil, but it's one of those things that never kind of occur in the singular. Yeah, they were used in the singular. They'd say one of the.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[C]

One of the group. Yeah.

[B]

I mean, if it's Greek, you've got gigas. That's much easier.

[C]

Yeah. So Atlantis then is structured the way the island, like, structured, like the buildings and everything is in a series of concentric circles and that starts with a series of moats, like defensive moats around the island, and then works its way in inward up to, you know, the peak, the Acropolis. Right. Where the palace is and the temple of Poseidon and everything. Right. And so according to Plato and the critias, 9,000 years ago, from their perspective, so 90, 93 AD BC, right. Give or take. The Athenians, go figure, decided to stand up to these evil slaver Atlanteans and drive them back. And in the ensuing war, in the ensuing war, the Atlantean armies get wiped out by a flood and Atlantis sinks into the sea. But some of the members of the Atlantean royal family, who have some of that royal blood descended from Poseidon, didn't get killed in the sinking and they survived in various parts around the Mediterranean basin. And they then became sort of the kings, Right. And the ruling class of all of the early civilizations in the Mediterranean basin.

[B]

Yeah. They go on to, you know, found Gondor and Arnor and, you know, that kind of stuff.

[C]

Now, if you want to talk plagiarism, Tolkien.

[B]

It'S the.

[C]

I know Plato was in the public domain. I know he was in the public domain.

[B]

The Culkin of story.

[C]

A witch's brew, my friend.

[B]

You know, I think my favorite part.

[C]

About Tolkien's been about the culture of.

[B]

Story, which is in on Fairy stories, is where he talks about how Arthur, who is probably some historical figure, like, stewed in there for centuries and then emerged as the Arthur of legend. You know, it's sort of weird anyway, just kind of a funny image to me, the witch's brood.

[C]

So this kind of raises the question, though, and this isn't just a modern question. Interestingly, this is going to sound like a modern question, but it's actually not the question, is Plato really reporting anything that he thinks is historical? Like, is he being legit when he says he got this via Solon from Egyptian records. Right. Is he being legit when he talks about he thinks this is a civilization that actually existed, or is this just Atlantis, just this civilization that he's come up with rhetorically?

[B]

Yeah. Some kind of figure that he's.

[C]

As a rhetorical device. Because what. What he does in the Critias is he sort of compares and contrasts Atlantis with Athens to make Athens sort of the ideal civilization by using the Atlanteans as this bad example to contrast it.

[B]

Who could have seen that one coming there?

[C]

He's a good Athenian patriot, right? So, I mean, Socrates chose to die rather than leave Athens. Right?

[B]

Like, yeah, right.

[C]

So kind of. Kind of. Which is it? Right. And you may say, well, that's a really modern question. It's really not, because ancient people weighed in on it. And when I say ancient people weighed in on it, I mean, the first person to say that it was just an allegory and not actual history that Plato was talking about was Aristotle, like, his immediate student. And you say, oh, well, Aristotle would have known, Right? So it must just be an allegory. Right? But here's the thing. There's this other fella, Krantor, who was the student of another one of Plato's students. So sort of a philosophical grandson of Plato who said, no, it was absolutely real. And Plato, like, meant this to be history. So that disagreement goes back almost to Plato's lifetime as to what he meant, whether he thought it was real or not. My answer to this question is as one might expect for our anniversary episode. Pork no los dos.

[B]

Here we go. Fan service everywhere in this episode that.

[C]

Plato did think there was an actual Atlantis in ancient times that was destroyed. The broad strokes. But that a lot of the details and a lot of the way he's telling the story and portraying Atlantis is designed within the critias to represent this contrast with Athens and make certain points about Athenian. The Athenian way of life. Right. Both could be true. He could be using something that they considered to be. They thought was basically historical, but then elaborating it in a way to make a philosophical point. So then Atlantis then gets picked up of interest to people listening to this show by Philo of Alexandria.

[B]

Yeah. I'm telling you, it's fan service left and right in this episode.

[C]

And a whole bunch of early Christian sources and church fathers.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

So Christian source would be like Tertullian.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Church father would be like Clement. Saint Clement.

[B]

There you go. Tertullian is another church uncle. Yeah.

[C]

Who talk about Atlantis.

[B]

Yeah. They. And they all kind of treat it like this is totally real.

[C]

Real thing. It was in the Atlantic Ocean, right?

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And they even. They even say that's why you can't navigate the Atlantic Ocean.

[B]

Yeah. Because Atlantis is down there cursing the place.

[C]

If you try and head west, Right. You got sunk in Atlantis down there, and there's eddies and currents and stuff, and your boat will get wrecked and never come back.

[B]

And what does that say about America, I ask you?

[C]

Oh, we'll get there soon. I know we'll get there soon.

[B]

This is the hat where it gets really weird.

[C]

We're about to get weird.

[B]

So this is going to be so good, you guys.

[C]

You're going to love it. But before that, or as a segue to that, maybe the. The other thing you get interestingly, especially in some of the early Christian sources, is they will assert that Plato's story of Atlantis is borrowed from Moses.

[B]

Yeah. Because Moses has to be the oldest possible source of everything. So.

[C]

Right. And specifically the flood story. So making a connection with the flood story.

[B]

Amazing.

[C]

And you may think, oh, well, okay. Ancient civilization destroyed, sinking flood. Right.

[B]

Giants, sons of gods.

[C]

That's not the sort of connection they draw, though. Are you ready for the number one piece of evidence they use to say, hey, this is plagiarized from Moses?

[B]

I am ready.

[C]

Poseidon had 10 sons, right?

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

10. 10 sons who are kings.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

How many generations Are there From Adam to the flood. Ooh, 10.

[B]

See, that proves it right there.

[C]

Right? Obvious.

[B]

But, but I mean, of course, I mean, so obvious. It seems a little crazy to us, but that just sort of underlines the way, the way that, like, numbers functioned as story elements.

[C]

The way they were reading those genealogies.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

They weren't reading them as like literal numbers and literal generation. They write. They saw all these numbers as being significant. Beyond that.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, right.

[C]

As saying these other things. So then the rest of this half, we're going to be answering the question, how did Atlantis get weird? Because you notice I didn't say anything about crystals or New Age or occultism or weird racial science in talking about Plato.

[B]

I mean, there's definitely some wackadoodle stuff in Plato, but.

[C]

But yet all of that stuff is associated with lattice. We're about to tell you how that happened.

[B]

Yes. Buckle up, folks.

[C]

How Atlantis got out of hand. It all starts when Europeans discovered, quote, unquote, the New World.

[B]

Because think about it, think about it for a second here. Try to put yourself for a second into the frame of mind of an Old World European or whatever. And you think of Atlantis as being out there in that unnavigable Atlantic Ocean.

[C]

And somebody manages to cross it and lands.

[B]

Finally, something. Yeah.

[C]

It said word back.

[B]

So you have one hook in your brain for land mass out in the Atlantic Ocean.

[C]

Right, right. Well, not just that, but once they get there, they tell you, because remember, Mayan civilization has already ceased to exist.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[C]

By the time Europeans get there, they find all these ancient ruins, advanced empire with stuff like pyramids.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And all this stuff. And they're like, well, who are these people? Where do these people come from?

[B]

You guys?

[C]

Where did these ruins come from? Who built them? Clearly there used to be a continent in the middle of that ocean. And so when it sank, the survivors went in both directions. So the Mayans, the Aztecs and stuff, these are all descended from Atlantean civilization, just like all the folks in the Mediterranean Basin. That's why they all got pyramids and stuff. It's not just that, you know, stacking rocks in a pyramid shape, they tend to stand up longer than if you stack them in other ways. No, this is all connected to one root culture, the Atlantean culture. Atlantis proven by the existence of people in north and South America.

[B]

Yeah. Amazing.

[C]

And this influences. You could find it in Thomas Moore's Utopia. You can find some of the influence of this, of the idea of Atlantis being out there.

[B]

I have to Say, as someone who did his undergrad doing Renaissance English literature, Utopia is one of those texts that a lot of people have heard the name of and have some idea of. Probably don't know that it's a text in most cases. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And really read it. You guys. You should totally read it. It's a really wild, crazy, satirical piece of writing.

[C]

If you've read Thomas More.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

It's one of those texts that if you've read it and you hear someone talking about it, you can instantly tell whether they've actually read it or not.

[B]

Yes. This is one of the original.

[C]

Like, you know.

[B]

You know.

[C]

Yes. Like Nietzsche. Like, if you've actually read Nietzsche and you're so talking about Nietzsche, you can instantly tell whether they've actually read it or not. So, yeah, it's one of those things, but. So that's influence. Right. And that's this vague idea of the origin of the minds and stuff. Who is it who pulls this all together into a comprehensive theory? A man named Ignatius Donnelly, which.

[B]

That's a great name.

[C]

Yes. Who is. Go figure. An American and a congressman.

[B]

Right. Wasn't he a congressman?

[C]

Yes, from Minnesota.

[B]

Oh. Oh, with an Irish name. He wasn't one of your people from Minnesota.

[C]

There aren't a lot of Dutch in Minnesota.

[B]

Other Germanic peoples. Yeah, yeah.

[C]

Oh, we're getting there.

[B]

But.

[C]

He wrote a book. He had, shall we say, diverse interests.

[B]

Did you know his middle name was Loyola? His name was literally Ignatius Loyola.

[C]

Ignatius Loyola Donnelly. He might have been Roman Catholic.

[B]

Might possibly. Yeah, yeah.

[C]

In his youth, at least, he was a man of diverse interests.

[B]

Not exactly an orthodox Roman Catholic, and.

[C]

I think he was lapsed, but Second.

[B]

Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota, Man.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

He's pretty high political office.

[C]

He wrote a book. One of many things he wrote, but he wrote a book called Atlantis, the Antediluvian World.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

He decides to just go all the way and pull this all together into one theory. So he believed that Genesis. Really? Genesis 1:6. Everything in Genesis before the flood was set in Atlantis.

[B]

Okay, so Adam and Eve were Atlanteans.

[C]

Yes. Eden. That's why you can't find the Garden of Eden no more.

[B]

That's right. It's underneath the Atlantic Ocean.

[C]

Yes. It sank into the Atlantic Ocean. So all that was set in Atlantis. All that happened in Atlantis, and then, you know, the ark ends up over in, you know, the near east, and things go from there. He argues that the sinking of Atlantis is the origin of all the flood stories. He argues. What we were just talking about with The Mayans and stuff. That's where all the Native Americans came from. And so the Atlantean culture after the flood through flood survivors gets scattered across the whole world. If any of you are familiar with Graham Hancock, this is where he got his stuff.

[B]

He's just a plagiarizer.

[C]

No, he's the modern Ignatius Donnelly, I was gonna say. Right, he's the modern Ignatius Donnelly. He's making a lot of the same arguments. So then things take a dark turn. Get ready for that.

[B]

You know, I have to say, by the way, if you ever look up a photo of Ignatius Donnelly, he looks like Biff from the Back to the Future movies.

[C]

He kind of does.

[B]

He kind of.

[C]

I'm looking up people out of the chats.

[B]

Look him up. Does he not look like Biff from the Back to the Future movies? Think.

[C]

But so that. I mean, that's a little weird. It's kind of weird theorizing. Not a lot of support for it. A little bit out there. But mostly harmless. Right? Mostly harmless. Then things go really awry because the person who then really sets in on these theories and Atlantis in particular is Madame Blavatsky.

[B]

Oh, man.

[C]

Everyone's favorite occultist and spiritualist. Yeah. Get ready. So she. She has this theory that in the history of the world, there was a succession of great races, sort of master races.

[B]

Oh, I feel like I've heard that phrase somewhere before.

[C]

Who led the world in like culture, the arts and everything. And the Atlanteans were the previous one. Guess who the current one is. That's right, the Aryans.

[B]

What?

[C]

Yes. We're going into dark territory, folks. And the Aryans, according to her, were descended from the Atlanteans. They were descended from the Atlantean survivors, the Aryan race.

[D]

They were.

[C]

And therefore they had the antediluvian wisdom, Babylon coming right back around again. Now, she, being somewhat less restrained than say in Ignatius Donnelly says that Atlantis sunk 1 million years ago.

[B]

Man, we're way past Plato now.

[C]

Yeah. Not 9,000. One million years ago. Well, that's.

[B]

That's convenient because that's much harder to grab, archaeologically speaking.

[C]

Well, yeah, harder to prove or disprove.

[B]

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

[C]

She's also the one who has the Atlanteans having psychic powers.

[B]

Dark psychic force.

[C]

And super advanced technology involving crystals and stuff.

[B]

Oh, man.

[C]

And of course, part of her thing is since the Aryan race still has this knowledge, you could get those psychic powers for yourself. You can learn to manifest those if you're an Aryan. According to her.

[B]

Buy her Book. Subscribe to her YouTube channel, you know.

[C]

Well, yeah, she didn't have any of that. You could buy her books.

[B]

I'd say she totally would have if she were alive.

[C]

Join her theosophic society, which has repudiated all the racial elements we were just talking about, by the way. Oh. By now. Not that there's a lot of Theosophists still running around, but.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Ask your local Rosicrucians.

[B]

I mean, people hardly even join the Freemasons anymore.

[C]

Yeah. Let alone. Yeah, yeah. So then you might imagine the sort of folk, say, in Central Europe in the early part of the 20th century, who might find these ideas attractive.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And guess what? They did. They did find them attractive. And they pulled these Atlantis traditions, these occult Atlantis traditions, together with this other weird set of traditions about Hyperborea. Hyperborea would be the upper north, the extreme north.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Where they believe there was sort of this Nordic Aryan race of giants in this lost ancient land of Hyperborea that gets smushed together with the Atlantis stuff by a group called the Thule Society.

[B]

So Thule, or, you know, Thuli, I think it is in Greek. Right. Was this mythical northern island in classical myth, but is also the name of a town in Greenland. So. How about that? Right?

[C]

There you go.

[B]

Right.

[C]

And so they have. Thule Society has the Atlanteans being sort of Northern European, uber mention. Of course, they are kind of descended from giants. And of course, they are the origin of the Caucasian race.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

According to the Thule Society in Germany, which.

[B]

What about the Caucasus? Does that have anything to do with Caucasians? No, no, no.

[C]

And yes, the Thule Society of this stuff is the origin of Nazi paganism, the National Socialists, their particular version of occult paganism that they practiced. Guess what? They weren't Christians. I know you're shocked. Stop.

[B]

Shocked.

[C]

I tell you, that comes from this, by way of the Thule Society, the belief that they were the descendants of ancient Atlanteans who had access to these occult powers and powers of the mind, did this sort of thing.

[B]

It's still not the weirdest thing.

[C]

Well, yeah, yeah.

[B]

I mean, it's the.

[C]

Probably the darkest. This is the darkest part. Probably.

[B]

It's definitely the worst part of this half.

[C]

Yes. So then the last weirder, the last cool Atlantis figure we have to talk about, I could believe Father Andrew didn't know who Edgar Cayce was.

[B]

I had heard the name, but that was kind of it.

[C]

So Edgar Cayce, AKA the Sleeping Prophet, another American, was a fellow who claimed throughout his life that he was a good Christian. He came out of the, like, Stone Campbell restoration movement. That's what he grew up in, like Christian church. Disciples of Christ. Church of Christ, Right, yeah, one of one of those groups. But it was at a very early stage of that because he died in 1945. So we're talking about early 20th century. But here's the thing about Edgar Cayce. He was called the sleeping prophet because he would have psychic visions while he was asleep, like in dreams. And when I say psychic visions, I mean, like, he would go to sleep and people would like bring sick people in and he would diagnose their diseases and prescribe cures in his sleep while he was napping.

[B]

Did you know that he was the founder of a non profit organization called the association for Research and Enlightenment?

[C]

There you go.

[B]

I love that. He also taught Sunday school Sunday.

[C]

So, yes, it's a weird thing for like an American Protestant to be doing.

[B]

I know, I know.

[C]

Sleep, visions and psychic stuff. But he also claimed that still have, by the way, clairvoyance exists to have clairvoyance that he could exercise while asleep. That allowed him to, like, mentally travel in time and space and see things both like remote viewing type stuff and time travel. And so he used that to construct this history of the world. Now, unfortunately, and I apologize already for the people this will offend, which is all Zoomers and some millennials. Part of his history of the world was that there are five races of humans that he described based on color. That being white, black, brown, red, yellow. The reason that doesn't horrify boomers and Gen X people is that we all learned the song Jesus Loves the Little children as kids.

[B]

That's right.

[C]

Which partakes of that well, of racism.

[B]

It didn't mention brown people, just red and yellow. Black and white.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. So I guess brow people God didn't love, according.

[B]

I don't know.

[C]

But the worst part about Edgar Cayce's version is he thought they were all created separately.

[B]

Oh, that is racist.

[C]

And we're not related to each other.

[B]

That's super racist.

[C]

And yes, little bit problematic. Sorry, Zoomers, who may have had to tune out for that because you couldn't handle it. Yeah, you're a little more safe now.

[B]

But didn't he. Didn't he predict that Atlantis would come back?

[C]

He not only gave the location of Atlantis. Yes, where it was because he could time travel back to it, but he said that in the 1960s. Now, remember, he died in 1945. He said in the 1960s it would rise up out of the sea. And so there were a bunch of New agers in the 1960s, like the age of Aquarius, folks who, like, really thought it was gonna happen that were like Edgar Cayce devotees who'd go out there on boats and stuff. He also claimed that all of his claims about human history could be verified. We're going right back to Plato here, folks. If people would just dig under the Sphinx.

[B]

I knew it.

[C]

In Egypt, there was a secret library down there that had texts confirming everything he said.

[B]

And they still haven't gone there yet, have they?

[C]

See, but now that proves it, right? And you're all assuming, well, like, yeah, it didn't rise out of the sea in the 1960s, as far as we know. But last little bit for this half. Are you ready?

[B]

I'm ready.

[C]

What they did find near where he said Atlantis was was the Bimini Road. And if you don't know what the Biminy Road is, it's Father Anderson. People are like shocking me with that. What?

[B]

What is that?

[C]

It is an underwater rock formation that.

[B]

Suspiciously looks man made.

[C]

That suspiciously looks like a man made paved road.

[B]

That's right.

[C]

Clearly built by Atlantean, which the devotees say is an Atlantean trade road.

[B]

That's right.

[C]

So you can look up photos of.

[B]

It sunken beneath on the Google machine. All right, well, on that stunning bombshell, we're going to take our second and final break for this diluvian episode of the Lord of Spirits podcast. We'll be right back.

[A]

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.

[C]

The centuries after the Protestant Reformation brought about a radical reinterpretation of the Epistles of St. Paul. Disconnected from any historical reality. But Paul operated during his entire life as a faithful Pharisee within the Roman Jewish world. In St. Paul the Pharisee, Jewish apostle to all nations, Father Stephen DeYoung surveys Paul's life and writings, interpreting them within the holy tradition of the Orthodox Church. This survey is followed by de Young's interpretive translation of St. Paul's epistles, which deliberately avoids overly familiar terminology. By using words and ideas grounded in 1st century Judaism, DeYoung hopes to unsettle commonly held notions and help the reader reassess St. Paul in his historical context. Available now at store.ancientfaith.com Again, that is store.ancient faith.com.

[A]

We'Re 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.

[B]

Hey, we're back. I hope y' all are having as much fun as I am on this, this anniversary episode of the Lord of Spirits podcast. Father Steven, we actually have a caller waiting for us, and you're never going to believe what his name is. You want to just throw out a guess?

[C]

Atlas.

[B]

It is not Atlas. That would have been pretty cool. No, Casey, no, no, it's.

[C]

It's Noah.

[B]

Can you believe it?

[C]

There you go.

[B]

Yeah, we have a Noah. So, Noah, welcome, Lord Spirits podcast.

[C]

Maybe we should ask him.

[D]

Thank you, Father. I'm sorry to disappoint that my name is not Atlantis.

[B]

But Noah. I mean, that's about as good as a name as you could get for calling into this episode.

[D]

Yes, and I have a question about Noah. So it works out perfectly.

[B]

All right, lay it on us.

[D]

I thought this question was going to be a little obscure, but then I listened to the second half and I'm at peace. So my question is based on 17th century book by William Winston, and he postulates that Noah probably lived in China before and then subsequently after the flood and afterwards fathered the Chinese people through other sons born after the flood. As far as. That isn't necessarily the bulk of my question. But more relevantly, it seems like Noah has a lot of Lord behind him. A similar mythos really to Enoch in a lot of second temple Jewish literature and a lot in later Jewish, Christian and Islamic literature. You talk a lot about Enoch and Plato and Atlantis and stuff. So I was curious to know if any of these traditions had weight, I guess, in the faith because obviously we can pull things from the book of Enoch and say there's something to be gained here, but people don't really talk about, for example, Noah inventing healing medicines in the book of Jubilees or having messianic visions in the Genesis Apocrypha. So curious to know if, if there's something about Noah post Diluvian that, that we can take away from historic.

[B]

Yeah, I don't know. I feel like I, I'm just going to throw this out there. Father Stephen. I think that we should do an episode, you know, about Noah in particular. I don't know, just throwing that out.

[C]

I'm just trying to get at answering his question.

[B]

No, no.

[C]

Oh, we'll do an episode someday. Don't worry about it.

[B]

Yeah, of course. Someday.

[C]

See, there you go.

[B]

Everyone who thought that the podcast was going to end there. We'll just keep saying someday, which could.

[C]

Someday could be the next episode that is next month.

[B]

Whatever. Yeah. I had never heard of William Whiston, but I see his book is called A New Theory of the Earth, which. So I'm gonna have to check this out. I mean, there is. There are all these kinds of interesting traditions about Noah having, obviously having antediluvian wisdom, because he literally is the. The main figure from before the flood within the Christian tradition. And even, like, if you read Jubilees, I don't remember if this is in. In first Enoch, Father, but I remember in. In Jubilees, the angels come to Noah and his sons and they teach them all of the medicine and stuff that. That all this knowledge that was lost before, you know, because of the flood, in a sense. Like, this is the redeemed version of all of that kind of stuff you get. You get in the pagan literature where, you know, demons are whispering in God King's ears. So, yeah, I don't know. I've. I've never heard of the China stuff, though. That's completely new to me. Have you heard of this before, Father Stephen?

[C]

I've heard variations of it, yeah.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

But, yeah, so I think with. With Noah traditions, there's. There's a couple of things. So, like, some of those get referred to in the New Testament, Right. Like Noah being called the preacher of righteousness, right? Well, yeah, he's not doing that in Genesis. Right. But that comes out of, like, Jubilees and other traditions. So it kind of depends on what you mean by bare weight in the sense that this is a good segue into what we're going to be talking about here in the third half. If by bare weight you mean something, like, are historically accurate in the modern sense, then no. If by bare weight you mean do those traditions surrounding Noah contain spiritual truths, things that are applicable to the Christian life, things that are valuable, valuable ideas, concepts to be applied to the Christian life, then the answer is yes. But you've got to do a little work in each case to do that, because it's not always obvious, because most of those traditions come out of narrative sources, meaning it's not like a treatise where it just says, like, you know, Noah did XYZ go and do likewise? Like, it's just describing things happening, Noah doing things, things happening to Noah, things being revealed to Noah, Noah saying things. And there's some steps between reading that narrative and Then interpreting it, and then what's the core here? And then how do you apply that? Right. There's sort of several steps you have to work through to get from those traditions to the sort of relevance, the weight. Right. That you're. That you're looking for.

[B]

Does that clarify things a little bit for you, Noah?

[D]

Yes, thank you. I appreciate it.

[C]

We'll be expanding on that. The idea of what I just said, this half.

[D]

Thank you, Father.

[B]

You're welcome. Good segue. Good segue. All right. Well, I mean, don't you think maybe we should talk about the Bible, Father Stephen?

[C]

Yeah, because as always, third half is what we talk about, the actual topic.

[B]

There you go.

[C]

Almost two and a half hours in, and now the topic of the episode. Yeah, so, but, so the point was, the reason we structured this episode the way we did is that. Okay, now with this background of other flood stories, of the Mesopotamian flood traditions that we talked about in the first half of Atlantis and the way that plays out. Right. That we talked about the second half, those ideas with those in mind, now let's look at the story in Genesis, which on pretty much any accounting postdates the Mesopotamian flood stories, the quote, unquote. And no, I won't argue or discuss this, but the early date of the Exodus has it in the 15th century BC. The tablets we were talking about in the first half are from the 16th 17th century B.C. so talking 100 years, at least, at least minimally, 100 years before Moses, those actual tablets were written, not that the story was come up with, but that those actual tablets that we physically have predate Moses, the oldest date for Moses. And then potentially that then if you date Moses later, there's even a bigger gap. Right. Meaning that Genesis 6. 9 is written and read and heard in a world that already has those other stories in it or those other versions of the story in it, a world that is already. That is practicing a religion, practicing a culture, practicing a way of life that is informed by those stories in various ways, such that the story in Genesis 6 through 9 is directly interacting with those stories and with the ways in which those stories have colored and influence the view of God or the gods, humanity, etc. Etc. That come from those stories.

[B]

I was going to say, I think that's such an important point, which we've made a bunch of times on this, on this podcast, but I think it's worth reiterating at this point, which is that if you take the Bible as a kind of isolated text that you're supposed to be Getting everything from that's not referring to anything else, then you're not reading it. At the. At the very least, you're not reading it or hearing it the way that the peoples who originally did hear it and read it would have received it. You know, they received these texts within the context of a culture that they were already part of.

[C]

Right.

[B]

You know?

[C]

Right. And Genesis starts with the creation of the world, but it wasn't written down at the creation of the world.

[B]

Right, Right.

[C]

Again, early date. Early date of Moses, earliest date of Moses. And if you want to say Moses wrote every word exactly as it is in the Torah. So. And. And then you want to take a really extreme young earth creationist position. Okay. Say you go in for that whole package.

[B]

Right.

[C]

You go in for that whole package. There's still about 3,000 years of history before Moses.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[C]

Which is almost as much history as there is after Moses.

[B]

Hmm.

[C]

So that's a lot of history. That's a lot of time elapsed. That's a lot of things that happened, cultures that were formed, things that were written, stories that were told before the beginnings of the Bible. The Torah enters into the world. Right. You want to take the view, the Jewish view that the Torah is eternal. Great. It doesn't enter into our world.

[B]

Right.

[C]

Where people could read it and hear it until Moses. Right. At the absolute earliest. So any way you slice it, Genesis comes into a world that already exists and is already fully formed and is working within and against that backdrop. So, first major point of comparison. Right. And you may have been kind of doing this in your head as we were talking about the other stories. Cause of the flood. Why is this flood coming? Well, Genesis has a very different answer.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Genesis says that the flood comes because of the wickedness of humanity, because humanity is wicked. Humanity is evil. Right. But there's more than that we've talked about before on the show. We see in Genesis, in the chapters leading up to the flood, specifically chapters four and five, that there's this downward spiral, starting with Cain, that spirals down to the flood of wickedness. And then when we get to Genesis 6, verses 1 through 4, and it talks about the Nephilim, it talks about the great men of old, the men of renown. And based on the stories we just read. Right. Who is that? Based on the stories we just talked about giants, God, kings, sons of Poseidon. Right.

[B]

Yep.

[C]

It's pretty clear. It's pretty clear who that's referring to.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, in a lot of ways, this is kind of one of the original, as some of the kids out there would call it, universal history stories.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, Genesis is doing universal history.

[C]

Yeah. It's Jerubim or whatever his name is. Yeah. But I want to hammer on this a little bit. Right. That understanding of what Genesis 6, verses 1 through 4 is saying is not at all based on anything in First Enoch, anything in Jubilees, anything in the Book of the Giants, anything in any of those apocryphal texts that come later. That reading of Genesis is not based on those. That reading of Genesis is based on the earlier versions of the same story that were already around when the Genesis story is first being. Version of the story is first being told.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

I mean, that's what they would have understood it to be talking about.

[B]

Those Second Temple Jewish texts are not retconning.

[C]

Yes. What those Second Temple Jewish texts are doing is they're preserving that original context for us. That's what tradition does. Tradition preserves the original context in which a text was understood because times and places and things change, cities fall, languages change. And so the average person walking around the United States today who picks up the Gideon Bible in the drawer at their hotel and reads Genesis 6:1:4 isn't going to have any idea what it's talking about.

[B]

Yeah. It just comes out of nowhere.

[C]

And there's not a copy of the Atrahasis Epic or Plato's Critias in the drawer rooms. Right. And the same thing was true in the third century bc. That's why you write something like the Book of Enoch, to preserve that original context of interpretation after. Because again, in the third century bc, guess what? Jewish people didn't have a copy of the Atrahasis Epic, but the original hearers did. And so that context is preserved to preserve the correct interpretation over time. But our basis for understanding it that way, it very clearly means that if you're familiar with these other stories, there's no way you can think that the original readers heard that and thought about the sons of Seth. It's just not even plausible that that's what the original readers would have thought they would have understood. Oh, you're talking about these demigods, these heroes, these God kings who the pagans worship and have shrines to next to the shrines of their pagan gods who are supposed to be their children. That's who you're talking about. And you're saying they're not heroes, they're not these great founding figures, they shouldn't be worshiped. In fact, they were evil, they were tyrants, they were thugs. And they were so evil and so destructive on the earth that God had to send a flood to wipe them out. So it's a complete inversion of the pagan story before the flood. It was not a golden age with advanced knowledge and technology. It was a corrupt and wicked age ruled over by tyrants. And this is why, if you actually start reading the story in Genesis 5 in the genealogy of Seth, when you get to the birth of Noah, the prophecy at Noah's birth is that God is going to save the world, save the creation through Noah. So what is he saving the creation from? God in Genesis is saving the creation from humanity. Humanity is created as the crown of creation, bridging the material and spiritual worlds. Right. In order that the whole created order might be saved through humanity. Christ becomes incarnate as a human, and then through humanity, the whole created order is saved. But what had happened before the flood is the inverse.

[B]

Yeah. Because of our relationship with creation, if we go off, then that messes up the creation.

[C]

Right. Humanity had corrupted the whole of creation. And so creation had to be saved from humanity. And that could only be saved through a human who wasn't corrupt. And so, since this is the anniversary episode where we're doing the greatest hits. Sorry, Calvinists. Okay. Genesis 6 does not say all of humanity's thoughts were always evil all the time, including Noah. But God chose to freely impute the righteousness of Christ to Noah and ignore the fact that he was just as sinful as everyone else.

[B]

Yeah. No, no.

[C]

By his own good pleasure. To save the world through Noah. That's not what the text says.

[B]

It says he was a righteous dude.

[C]

He was alone righteous in his generation. He was the only righteous man on earth. He was fundamentally different in his way of life than all the other people living at the time. I'm not saying that's not through God's grace. Of course it's through God's grace. Of course it's through his cooperation with God's grace. But nevertheless, he is fundamentally different. He is fundamentally different. That's basic to the story. Story doesn't work without that.

[D]

Now.

[C]

Unfortunately, before we could go on, we have to talk about another major detour. When people talk about the flood.

[B]

Yes. Was it global? Was it local?

[C]

Yes. The extent of the flood?

[B]

Yes. Yes.

[C]

Much ink has been spilled in the evangelical world about this. Oh, indeed, lengthy podcast. Anybody who talks about the flood, this is the primary thing they talk about. Just like when they talk about the Exodus, they tend to spend way more time on the early date versus the late Date and which they hold and why than they do on what it.

[B]

Means, what is the story and what.

[C]

It represents and why it's important.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

But let's talk about it as if what's important about it is that it really happened. Number one, that it really historically happened, and number two, what the date was and who was the pharaoh. We're going to get into this, but those are the two least important things about the story of the Exodus.

[B]

Yeah. It's like, actually, one of the things, I can't remember where I heard this. Now, someone once said the least interesting thing about God is that he exists.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And yet that's the thing that most people argue about the most.

[C]

Yes. Right. Like, and I'm not saying the Exodus didn't historically happen.

[B]

Right.

[C]

I'm not saying, I mean, somebody was pharaoh at the time it happened. I'm just saying which one it was. Least interesting and important thing.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

That we can talk about in terms of the Exodus. But yes. So the flood gets detoured into this whole extent of the flood, and they'll say, well, look, look, it says in the text that it covered the highest mountain. So that means Mount Everest. The water was over the top of Mount Everest. Now, unless you're. Unless you're Mark Booth. Mark Booth is a nutter. He said that it didn't quite cover Mount Everest and that Nepalese civilization is the pre flood civilization. Wow. While we're talking about cockeyed New Age theories. But anyway, so that's Mount Everest.

[B]

Right.

[C]

Like, that's got to be it. So we know exactly how much water because we can take the height of Mount Everest plus a few feet. Yeah. And so that's exhibit A of why this whole discussion, this whole discussion, both sides, is just pure modernism. No one, not Moses, not any of the people who originally heard or read the story of Genesis had ever heard of Mount Everest or knew there was a Mount Everest or had been there anywhere near there.

[B]

Right.

[C]

Okay. And one of the big proofs of that is if you look at the things they call mountains, like in the Torah, that are like barely hills by our standards today. Like, yeah, they had never seen Mount Everest. Okay. So they aren't referring to Mount Everest.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

Okay. That's modernism. Modernism. You're looking at, oh, the highest mountain. Well, we all know that the highest mountain. This is the kind of people who give you the argument, like Jesus says that the mustard seed is the smallest of all the seeds, but technically it isn't. So see, the Bible's a lie. Checkmate Christians. Right. But the people who are doing the Mount Everest thing are all like. They're the conservative Christians, but they're doing the same thing.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[C]

They're doing the same goofy science thing. Modern science thing.

[B]

See our episode called how and how not to Read the Bible for a Few hours on this.

[C]

If you ask, does Genesis 600 I present the flood as global or local? Okay. The answer is neither.

[B]

Yeah, because.

[C]

Okay. It can't present it as global because no one involved thought the Earth was a globe.

[B]

Yeah. There's no globe.

[C]

They had no concept that the Earth was a globe. So they can't possibly have been talking about a global flood because that's not how they saw the world. Okay, so was it local? No, because they say everything is wiped out. It's neither global nor local. So what is positively. What does the text describe? Well, if you read the flood story in Genesis and you read it in the context of Genesis, remember how when we were talking about the Mesopotamian flood myths, pretty much all of them either did or seem to have been preceded by a creation story that this is all sort of part of. And we're sort of dependent on that creation story. Right. Same's true in Genesis. Genesis 6 through 9 is dependent on you having read 1 through 5. In fact, as we just said, Noah's born and there's a prophecy about the flood and stuff in five, so we got to at least include five. Well, four. You know, Cain. Cain's line goes right up to the flood with Lamech. Okay, so we've got to include four. Well, you're not going to understand what's going on in the beginning story of Cain and Abel if you don't read chapter three and the expulsion from. Right. You got to. It's a unit. Okay. It happens in the context of the rest of Genesis. Okay. Genesis one, God creates the heavens and the earth. Day one, he starts with the heavens. Right. Light and dark, days two and three, he's putting the earth in order. And what does he do? He separates the waters above from the waters below.

[B]

Yep.

[C]

And then he separates the dry land from the water. And then days four, five, and six, he populates the places he created. So the fourth day, we're back in the heavens. You got the sun, moon, and stars. Right. And then days five and six, you got the air, sea, and land animals that finally culminates in humanity. Okay, so the flood doesn't affect the heavens. The flood is about the earth. Right. You don't read in the flood story that the sun and moon and stars Fell out of the sky or anything. Right. It's just affecting the Earth. So days one and four off the table. Right. Humans and animals are being preserved in the ark. Right. So days five and six off the table. Okay, days two and three. How is the flood described? The waters above come down, the waters below come up. The dry land is covered with water. So what Genesis describes is God uncreating the world. That's what Genesis has happened. Because what are you left with? You're left with where we started at the beginning of the book of Genesis. The waters.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Including the waters covering the Earth. And instead of the Holy Spirit hovering over the waters, you have the ark, this microcosm of creation Right within the ark, floating on the waters. So Genesis does not describe a global flood. It does not describe a local flood. It describes God uncreating the world and then recreating it at the end. And that's why when the ark lands and people disembark, God gives Noah the same command he gave Adam and Eve. Fill the earth and subdue it. Right. So you may have noticed, Right. That there were some details from some of those flood stories that also show up. Like the whole releasing birds thing.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Right. Or offering sacrifices. In the case of Genesis, obviously their sacrifices offered to Yahweh, not to the gods. Right, but. Right, but sacrifices being offered right after the boat lands. Right. There's all these details. That's proof it's plagiarized. They took that from the other stories. Well, no. Right. So if your purpose in retelling a story and telling it in a different way is to make certain points of contrast with the original story, you also have to make it clear that you're telling the same story.

[B]

Yeah. If it's all contrasts, then it's a different story.

[C]

Right. So you have to keep some of the details. You have to keep some of the details and some of the basic structure of the story the same so that the hearer knows you're telling the same story so that they can compare it to the way they've heard the story before and notice the differences. Which differences in your telling are what you're trying to communicate. Right. That's the vehicle for what you're trying to teach and communicate. That's why we get some of these same details. And notice, again, we already commented on this a little bit, but this command, be fruitful and multiply. Right. This is the exact opposite of what happens in Atrahasis.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Where Enlil and the other gods try to limit the fecundity of humanity.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, so much about this story is telling us who God is in contrast to who the pagan gods are.

[C]

Yes. And it's the exact opposite. It's an inversion. Right? Now God wants to encourage reproduction. And not only is he encouraging reproduction of the animals and humans, Right. But within that, he what, prohibits murder? Killing. We don't want people killing each other. We don't want life to end prematurely. Right. That's. God is pushing in the other exact opposite direction. God is pro life of the pagan gods in atrahasis. And this even goes to the animals, Right. Because we get this stuff about eating blood here. And I know this is a misunderstood thing, right? Because we tend to get it opposite. We tend to read this in the exact opposite logical order from what's actually going on in the text. So the logical order we read this in is okay. God says it's okay to eat animals. Why? Well, not totally sure. I mean, I guess, you know, they haven't had time to plant crops yet, so maybe they needed the protein or something, I don't know. But for some reason, God finally gives them permission to eat animals and says it's okay, which makes it okay. And then he says, but don't eat the blood, though. Oh, okay. Don't eat the blood though. Right. And so people kind of puzzle over it. Right? That's because that's a reverse logical order. Here's the actual logical order of what's going on in Genesis. And this is drawn out in all the ancient commentaries on it. It's the exact opposite order. Okay, what was the problem that caused the flood? The problem that caused the flood was human sin. Specifically, human sin is it corrupted and twisted and destroyed creation. So we have to do something about that so that we don't get a situation like before the flood. Again, we need to manage that sin and the corruption of creation. How do we do that? We do that through atonement. That's what atonement is. It's the purification of the created order from human sin and its effects. How do we do that? Well, to do that, we need blood, Right? You do that with blood. Blood is life stuff. Gets rid of the death stuff. Okay, so we need animal blood. Well, how are we gonna gonna get animal blood? Right. How do we get animal blood to do that with sort of pure animal blood? Well, you would get that from a sacrifice. Okay. That means we're gonna have to sacrifice animals to get the blood to do the atonement to stop the flood. Okay. So we've Got to sacrifice animals. So if we're going to sacrifice animals, then people need to be able to eat the animals so they can participate in the sacrifices. So humans are allowed to eat animals in Genesis because they need to sacrifice animals and they need to sacrifice animals so they can get blood. And they need to get the blood so they can make atonement for sin, to keep the situation from before the flood from happening again. That's the logic of what's going on in Genesis about killing the animals, right? And so if you kill an animal and don't sacrifice it and offer some to God, or you kill an animal and sacrifice it, but eat the. But consume the blood, right? Out of those cases, you can't use the blood for atonement. And so you've taken that blood for no reason. You've taken the life of that animal for no reason. What justifies the taking the life of the animal is using the blood for atonement. That's the logic of Genesis. That's the logic of Genesis. Why then, you might ask, are we still not allowed to eat blood as Christians, which, if you've read Acts 15, you should know. Yeah, right. That's right. Because we're not using animal blood for atonement anymore, because Christ's blood kind of took care of the need for that, right? We still don't eat blood because that blood is still reserved for that purpose, even though we're not using it for that purpose. So since we're not using it for that purpose, we use it for no purpose. You drain it into the ground is what you're supposed to do with it, right? You return it to the earth for which the animals came, because you're not using it for atonement anymore, because you don't need to. But you don't eat it, right? You don't eat it. And so finally, finally, and this is kind of the core question that we were getting at a few minutes ago in this half, is the Genesis story of the Flood historical?

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Right. That's really putting a fine point on the question, right? Beyond even asking its extent, is it historical? And we have to say a couple things about that.

[B]

Okay?

[C]

That. So first of all, the text of Genesis does not have a historical purpose. What do we mean by this? I mean, a text with a historical purpose would be like, if I went and did a bunch of research and I found out that something happened in my hometown 50 years ago that nobody knows about, okay? And I wrote a book about it, that book would have a historical purpose. My goal in writing the book is I want people to know about this thing that happened, that they don't know that it happened.

[B]

Okay?

[C]

That's what I mean by a historical purpose. If I go and I write a book on the Civil War right now, right. The American Civil War, it's not going to be with the purpose of telling people that America had a Civil war in the 1860s.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Everybody kind of knows that. Right. And if I wrote the book from the perspective of, hey, none of you know this, but there was this guy McClellan. Right. Like, people would look at the book and be like, what is this garbage? I've read 57 books on the American Civil War, right. What is with this guy? Right. This is like baby's first Civil War book. Right. If I wrote a book on the Civil War now, which there's lots of other retellings of the story of the Civil War out there, then I would have some other point beyond just telling you that it happened or telling you this is what happened. Right. I would be focusing on something, some element of it maybe, that I thought wasn't emphasized, or I would be telling some particular stories within it with some aim. Right. Or to say, suggest, like, I think X was actually the cause of the war rather than Y, or I think X was the deciding factor in why the north one, sorry, locals, rather than why. Right. I would be saying something about the American Civil War. I would not just be arguing that it happened because no one would be arguing back that it didn't.

[B]

Yeah. And it's because the context is everybody knows the story or something about it.

[C]

Right. And so when I say the Genesis story isn't trying to tell you that a flood happened and wiped out everyone except a. A family and some animals in a boat. Right.

[B]

That.

[C]

That's not its purpose. I mean, that's not its purpose because all of the original readers and hearers already knew that story. They'd already heard that story. That was, for them, common knowledge. They just considered that to have be a thing that happened in the past. So when Genesis tells that story, it's not for the purpose of trying to convince people that this really happened and happened in a certain way. Right. It's about saying something about those events.

[B]

Yeah. Because there's. That hasn't been said a good amount of evidence with a lot of these details in the exact same regional neighborhood that, you know, the Israelites are living in. So.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

What are the chances?

[C]

And this is fundamentally how ancient theology was done.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Right. This is how you did ancient theology. It was done in narrative form. You told a story that was not a brand new story you made up. You told a story. The more familiar, the better.

[B]

But.

[C]

But you told it in a different way, with a different emphasis, focusing on different figures. Right? And by the way, you told it, you reoriented how people saw themselves, God or the gods, the world, the past, right? Where that was leading into the future. Right? You reoriented that by retelling the story in a new way. Right? So it's not about arguing about the details. If you got, you know, I was about to say Ipanema, it's back. But if you. If you got our friend Ipikaya, right, And you sat him down with Moses and they both told their version of the story, right. They would see how they would disagree if they had a conversation about it. The conversation would not be like, wait, what kind of bird did you say it was? What shape did you say the bull was? That's not what they would. They would be quibbling over the details. Right? Only one of these can be true. Right. They would be talking about bigger issues, right? They were saying, so you're saying that the most high God loves humanity and wants to see it flourish, whereas I have always believed that humans are slaves to the gods. Right? That's a big difference. That's the core of what the stories are aimed at. Those would be the things they would be discussing, right? Not the details. And which is true. Right. And this is important. Not. I mean, the flood story here is an example we're using. But this applies to the whole way we interpret any narrative in the Bible up to and including the Gospels. Okay? When the, when the dumb, dumb atheist comes to you and says, well, which is it? Were there two angels outside the tomb or one inside the tomb? It can't be both. The whole Bible's a lie. It contradicts itself. Right. Aside from laughing at him. Right. Don't scoff or mock, though. Those are bad in the Bible. Right? You need to point out, like you don't get it, man. That's not how this works. Okay? Like saints, Matthew, Mark and Luke are not trying to convince you that Jesus rose from the dead by getting all of these details right and consistent. They're trying to communicate things to you about the resurrection of Jesus and what it means and why it is of preeminent importance. And the details that they use or leave out or put in. Right. Are all in service of the point they're trying to make about what they're describing. They're not just trying to give some objective narrative accounting of. Here are the events that happened in order. Right? And I hate to tell you, but it's almost impossible to do that. I hate to David Hume at you, right, but there's a deep cut reference, but you can't see cause and effect. So as soon as you say X caused Y in a narrative, you've entered into the realm of interpretation and subjectivity. To be quote, unquote objective, it would have to be this happened, then this happened, and then this happened. But even that narrative, you're talking from a perspective, you haven't narrated every single thing that happened, just some of them. There's subjectivity. Again, you're saying something about it. You're not just communicating that it happened and that it happened in a particular way. So in the same way, if you got Matthew, Saints Matthew, Mark and Luke, you got them together in a room, they wouldn't sit there arguing about how many angels there were at the tomb and where they were positioned. They'd be sharing the emphases of the things that they wanted, thought were important, most important to say about the resurrection of Christ or about his death or about his teaching. Right. None of them are trying to argue this is exactly what happened in this order, in exactly this way. Well, over to you.

[B]

We've reached the end of our. Our episode on the flood. And I imagine probably a lot of you are thinking, well, what about, you know, all these other flood stories that exist, stuff in North America, stuff in other parts of the world and so forth. And I mean, we could do that endlessly. But I wanted to talk about one that I think, weirdly, maybe a lot of people don't know too much about. So I want to talk about the flood story as it is told in the Prose Edda by Snorri Sturlson, that Icelandic writer who is the scribe of much of what we know about Norse mythology. Snorri was a Christian and, you know, he lived probably 200 years after the baptism of the last Norse pagan. He never met a Norse pagan in his life. There weren't any Norse pagans around. So anyway, if you read the beginning of the the Prose Edda, you'll get the. The flood story as it exists in Norse mythology. So I'm going to just kind of retell it to you briefly in case you don't know it. There is a sort of primeval giant named Ymir and Odin and his two brothers, Vili and Vay, the sons of Bor. They decide to kill Ymir. And so when they kill him there's so much blood that flows out of his wounds that it drowns all of the race of the frost giants. So it kills giants. So you. You can see already there's a. A big continuity here between the biblical story and the other stories we talked about. You know, giant, a big flood killing lots of giants. And then the story goes on where that Odin and Vilian vey, they take the body of Emir, this. This primeval giant out into what is called Ginnigungap, which is kind of this big void. And they take parts of his body and the world is created from it. Right? So his body, basically his main part of his body, becomes the earth. His blood becomes the sea, the lakes, the flesh and the rocks of his bones become the mountains and the hills and the. The land. You know, his teeth and become the stones and. And sort of this stuff. And then like his skull is used to make the sky. His brains are thrown up to make the clouds. It kind of goes on and on like this. And so there's this massive dismemberment of this giant that becomes the world. But there's an interesting detail in here that I skipped over on purpose because I wanted to cover it last. And that is there is a survivor. There is a survivor of the flood, right? And so here's what the text actually says. It says Boar's sons killed the giant Emir. And when he fell, so much blood flowed from his wounds that with it they drowned all the race of frost giants except that one escaped with his household. Giants call him Bergelmir. He went up onto his ark with his wife and was preserved there. And from them are descended the families of frost giants, as it says here. And now it's quoting what's called the Poetic Edda, or a text related to it. Countless winters before the earth was created, then was Bergelmir born. And that is the first I remember when that wise giant was laid on a box. And there's more that goes on about the creation of the world from the body of Ymir, But I wanted to focus on Burgomir a second here. So Bergalmir is essentially the Noah figure in the Norse telling of the Flood. But you see, he's not. He's not a human. He's not one of the gods either. He's a giant. Now, what is relationship between giants and the gods? If you, if you go by what it's written in the Eddas, either the prose or the Poetic Edda, the. The line between the two is pretty fuzzy, and there's a whole lot of intermarriage between the giants and the gods, which is kind of what you'd expect if you know anything, for instance, about what we said about giants in our seventh episode now, almost five years ago, that there's this kind of intermingling going on, although in this case, there's no humans involved. And I think that's really notable is that the one who is saved in this flood is. Is not Noah, a human, a righteous human, but rather Burgle mere this giant. And then it says that from him is descended the families of frost giants. So all the frost giants get killed by this big bloody flood, except this one guy, who then repopulates the world with frost giants. And as far as I recall, Burglemir never shows up again in Norse Smith. There might. I don't know, he might get mentioned in a saga somewhere or something like this. I'd have to go look. So he's actually a pretty bit character in all of this. But it's notable that he's the father of, you know, all the frost giants that exist post flood slash creation of the world. Because it's kind of the same thing in the Norse Smith. Why point this out? Well, in Norse myth, the difference between the gods and the giants is kind of the gods are the good guys and the giants are the bad guys. That's sort of how it sort of shakes out in these stories and in the end of the world, Ragnarok, you know, which means, you know, the twilight of the gods, there'll be a big battle between the gods and the giants, and the monsters come out, and they're, of course, on the side of the giants. And what's the difference between a monster and a giant? Eh, hard to tell. And the gods all get killed and many of the giants and monsters die as well, and the world kind of resets. This is a very different story than the one that's told in the scriptures. And I want to especially note that the one who's saved in the scriptures by God, this righteous man, is precisely a human being. Right? We've underlined a number of times in this episode the difference between the way that Yahweh, the God of Israel, comes across in the biblical flood story versus the way that the various gods of the nations come across in their own stories right now, like the Epic of Gilgamesh, the, you know, the. All of these stories that we've mentioned. This is not propaganda by Christians or Israelites about pagans. These are the pagans telling their own stories. Okay. So that they're telling you who their gods are, by the way that the gods behave in their stories that they themselves wrote. So, you know, we've seen this contrast. One of the things we haven't really underlined, though, is that Noah and I do hope that we do a Noah episode, but that Noah contrasts also significantly with the person, or in many cases, God or God king or future immortal future God that is the one that's on the big boat in these various stories. And of course, we just mentioned in the Norse myth, it's a giant, it's quite literally a monstrous figure who is the one who kind of rides out the flood in his big boat along with his wife. Noah is not just saved by God. Noah becomes a new father of the human race. He becomes, in a sense, another Adam, right? And he is this preacher of righteousness. He's helping to reset humanity to begin things well again, if possible. Now, we know, of course, that things go badly again after this, But Noah is this figure of salvation. He's the one through whom God is saving the human race. Ultimately, this points us to Jesus, who is not just a man who rises up as the righteous one in the midst of a very dark and faithless world and dark and faithless generation, right? But is also God. So Christ is the one to whom all of these stories are actually pointing, the one that's really doing it. Right? And even though he's not riding out a literal flood, there is nonetheless, the world is full of darkness and sin and is dominated by demons. That's the world into which Jesus is born. And he is the one who's. Who is regenerating the human race in and of himself. He is the true second and new Adam. Noah is a forerunner of Christ in that sense. And so I think that to understand the flood correctly is also to understand something about who Jesus is. And that's why it's absolutely the case that all of human history, not just Israelite history, all of human history, including the pagan histories, all find their fulfillment, their end, their purpose in Christ. And so, as we like to occasionally say in this podcast, you know, this isn't just about crazy, weird giant lore or flood lore or whatever, even though, of course, we enjoy the nerdy tour through, you know, clay tablets one can find stuck on a shelf in the British Museum or in the, you know, UPenn Museum in Philadelphia. It really is about Christ. And that's where we should arrive. And I think that this is one of the stories that shows us how the awesome arc of human history finds its rest Its purpose, its fulfillment in the Lord Jesus. Father Stephen.

[C]

Sorry, I started snoring when I heard.

[B]

Snorri Snorlson thank you very much.

[C]

So one of the things that if you listen to much of my stuff or read books I've written and stuff, one of the things I hammer on all the time is the importance of understanding what often gets translated as faith. And far worse than that, belief in the New Testament and the Bible in general. Understanding that is actually being about faithfulness. That may not seem related to what we were talking about tonight at first, but it's deeply related because part of the watering down of faithfulness into just belief, just thinking something is true, mentally assenting to the truth of something has been the wrecking of our modern ability to read and understand the Scriptures. What's happened is that sort of affirming the historicity and particular details of the historicity of different things found in the Bible have become this whole series of shibboleths that mark out who is the real Christian and who is not. I was at a Protestant ordination exam once where this was the oral exam. They're trying to decide are we going to ordain this guy as a minister or not? They only asked him one question and that was, do you believe that Jonah was really swallowed by a fish? That was it. And if he said yes, I mentally assent to the idea that in roughly the early 8th century BC a man named Jonah, who was a prophet of God was swallowed by a fish. Oh, you sir, are fit to be a minister to lead people to salvation. But if you say no, that you don't take that totally literally the way we'd like you to, then you are unfit to do that. We question whether you are a Christian at all. Let me tell you that is preposterous. And let me also. Right. This isn't just me bashing certain types of evangelical Protestant. Okay. This happens in the Orthodox Church too, maybe especially in America, but I don't know that for sure. Maybe more ubiquitous than that. Where certain things right back in the day. I'm glad this isn't the case. They were rather, do you believe, literal toll houses. That's what marked a real orthodox person from. Do you mentally assent to this idea.

[B]

That this is true?

[C]

But some of the bugbears that are true across the board are things directly related to the kind of stuff we were talking about tonight. Was it a global flood? It literally happened exactly this way. Are those the literal dimensions of the ark? How old is the earth? Who was the pharaoh at the time of The Exodus, when did it happen? Right? And it's all in this mental ascent. If you don't mentally assent to the idea that. See, in Orthodox circles, it's interesting because the Orthodox circles, it's, oh, the earth is 7,500 years old. Because, like, the weird Internet hive mind has decided that's what all the fathers say, which isn't what all the fathers say, but that's what all the fathers say. Even though 7,500 is not the number, you come up with the Bible, it's not what Protestant young earth creationists think. They think it's about a thousand years younger than that. If you don't assent to that, if you don't say, yes, this is true, then somehow you're not. You're not really Orthodox, you're not really a Christian. Here's the thing. That's not what believing something means. Because again, it's not belief, it's faithfulness. So it has to do with how you live your life. So if someone comes to me and tells me they believe in evolution, they believe in human evolution, okay, the question I have for them is essentially, what do you mean by that? Because if what they mean by that is, I learned about this in school, seems plausible to me, seems to be what reasonable people think, I mentally assent to the idea that, yeah, millions of years ago that happened. I don't care. It's irrelevant. Believe whatever you want, right? Believe there are witches in the woods, right? Believe that there's a pink unicorn in your backyard. It's irrelevant. It's relevant. Now, if what I say, what you say to me, when I say, what do you mean by you believe in evolution is I believe that this world, in this world is survival of the fittest. I believe that the strong survive. The strong should take from the weak. The weak should know their place, right? I look down on people who are poor. I look down on people who are weaker than me. I look down on people from other races. I look down on people from other cultures. I look down on people who in general aren't like me. And I think I have the right being a better person, a smarter person, to take from them. Right now I'm concerned. Why? Because living your life that way, you're not going to find salvation. You're going to find quite the opposite. Now I'm concerned. Now I'm worried. That's a person who believes in evolution, and guess what? A person who says they think The Earth is 6,000 years old, but who acts like that, believes in evolution. You don't find out what someone believes by what they say. You find out what someone believes by what they do. What someone does, what they're faithful to the ideas that they use in their life and put into action that they play out. That's what they believe. And this is basic, right? If someone comes to me, right, and they tell me, you know, oh, hey, I've got this plan and that plan, and next year I'm going to do this, I already bought the plane tickets, I'm doing this and that. And then they say to me, oh, yeah, and my doctor told me, I'm good, I've got two months to live. I'm going to be like, clearly you don't believe your doctor.

[B]

Right?

[C]

Because you would be making all these plans for next year, these long term plans, if you really thought you were going to die in two months, right? If you actually believe it, it will affect how you live and what you do. Because belief is about faithfulness, not just assenting to an idea. It's about what you act out in your life, okay? And some of these things that I don't care about at all, like the date of the Exodus, it's because it makes no difference. It makes no difference in the Christian life of actual people, real people, which is all of you, all of you listening are actual people. You are not AIs. You are actual people who every day have to make decisions and have to struggle with things, struggle with temptations, struggle with desires that you need to not act upon, right? Struggle to do what is right, struggle to love people who aren't necessarily completely lovable to you all the time, struggle to work out your salvation. All of us, myself included, need a lot of help with that every day, moment to moment. And knowing who was Pharaoh during the Exodus does nothing to help with that and nothing to harm it either. It's irrelevant. It's not important. But understanding, for example, in the Exodus that God led his people out of slavery and led them from death to life, and that your life, right, that is a microcosm of your life of God leading you out of slavery to sin, breaking the chains of sin, setting you free, leading you through death into new life, right? That's something I need to hear. That's something that's going to help me with those struggles. Understanding, right, that God right on point with what we talked about tonight, understanding that God didn't create me to be his slave, that God doesn't find me annoying, that God isn't irritated and angered by me and as likely to destroy me as to leave me alone, knowing that that's not God, but that God instead loves me, that he wants me to flourish, that he wants me to grow, that he wants me to have life. That's something I need to know. Not exactly when and exactly where and exactly what the extent of the flood was. That doesn't help me. That doesn't help me at all. Right? So that's what I'm getting at when I say there are some things that I just don't care about and that we're not going to discuss on this show. And you're not going to hear me discussing my Bible study very much. Right. There have been a few times where I taught some of this stuff in academic settings and I had to talk about those things a little bit because it was an academic setting. But for the most part, I don't care. It's not relevant to real people in their real lives. And even though I've got a PhD, and even though there's all kinds of stuff I love to talk about, I talk about even more wide range of stuff on my Twitch stream. I'll talk to you about comic books and movies and TV shows and video games and all kinds of stuff, right? But that's not. Those are the things I consider really important. At core, I am a priest. I'm a person who God has given the solemn responsibility of trying to help other people find salvation. And here's the thing with being a priest, right? Pretty much any other job where you're trying to lead people towards something, it's something you've already achieved for yourself, Right? Like if you signed up for an exercise course and you were paying money and I came out to be your instructor, you'd leave and demand a refund because you'd be like, this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. Exercise. What? Right. Fortunately, my parishioners don't have that reaction when I serve liturgy, right. Because I've tried to lead them towards salvation and I'm still working on mine. Some of them are ahead of me. That makes it really hard when you're a priest, when you've got people who are your spiritual children who are more pious and further along the road to God than you, more godly than you. Right. But, but that's, that's my job. And so while some of this other stuff is fun to talk about and cool and nerdy, like talking about, it's not what's important, it's not what's really important. And so for this show, for my Bible study, and stuff, right. Aside from some jokes, some asides, some presentation. Right? So I'm stuff to try to hook people in some rhetorical stuff, right. Our real focus is on the stuff that's important and the stuff that counts. That's why we're not going to talk about the age of the earth. That's why we're not going to talk about the dating of the Exodus. That's that why. That's why we're not going to talk more than I already did today about jedp, right. Or any of that stuff. Or trying to reconcile the details of the gospel accounts because this is just not important. So focus on what's important. And when you focus on what's important, then the scriptures, the liturgy, the hymns, the writings of the Fathers, that'll all open up to you because you'll be asking the right questions, you'll be trying to get the right things. You won't get distracted. That's what I got to say.

[B]

Amen. Well, that is our fifth anniversary show. Thank you everyone very much for listening. If you didn't happen to get through to us live, we'd still like to hear from you. You can email us at LordOfSpiritsand AncientFaith.com you can message us at our Facebook page, or you can leave us a [e-mail] LordOfSpirits and if you have basic questions about Orthodox Christianity or you need help to find that parish out here in the 3D world, head over to orthodoxintro.org join us for a live broadcast.

[C]

On the 2nd and 4th Thursdays of the month at 7pm Eastern, 4pm Pacific. Why is the world in love again? Why are we marching hand in hand?

[B]

If you're on Facebook, you can follow our page, you can join our discussion group, leave reviews and ratings in all the appropriate places and don't forget to share this show with a friend.

[C]

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. Why are the Ocean Levels Rising up? It's a brand new record for 1990.

[B]

Thank you, good night and God bless you.

[A]

You've been listening to the Lord of Spirits with Orthodox Christian priests, Father Andrew, Stephen Damick and Father Stephen DeYoung, a listener support 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 10,000 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 blessings. Revelation, chapter 5, verses 11 through 12.