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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and its Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time to go into the Old Vault, and this time

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Speaker 1: I'm being lashed by tongues of flame. That's right. This

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Speaker 1: is going to be the first episode of our two

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Speaker 1: part look at the Ark of the Covenant. Uh. This

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Speaker 1: was a fun pair of episodes. I remember we were

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Speaker 1: exploring some very strange historical hypotheses, trying to to explain

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Speaker 1: the myth of the Great Arc that would strike people

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Speaker 1: dead with blasts of fire or lightning. Uh. This was

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Speaker 1: a lot of fun, so we hope you enjoyed it.

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Speaker 1: And it originally aired in December of And the Philistines

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Speaker 1: took the Ark of God and brought it from Ebenezer

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Speaker 1: unto ash DoD. When the Philistines took the Ark of God,

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Speaker 1: they brought it into the house of Dagon and set

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Speaker 1: it by Daygon. And when they of ash DoD arose

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Speaker 1: early on the morrow, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his

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Speaker 1: face to the earth before the Ark of the Lord.

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Speaker 1: And they took Dagon and set him in his place again.

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Speaker 1: And when they arose early on the morrow, morning. Behold,

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Speaker 1: Dagon was fallen upon his face to the ground before

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Speaker 1: the ark of the Lord and the head of Dagon,

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Speaker 1: and both the palms of his hands were cut off

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Speaker 1: upon the threshold. Only the stump of Dagon was left

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Speaker 1: to him. Therefore, neither the priests of Dagon, nor any

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Speaker 1: that come into Dagon's house tread on the threshold of

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Speaker 1: Dagon and Ashdad unto this day. But the hand of

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Speaker 1: the Lord was heavy upon them of Ashdod, and he

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Speaker 1: destroyed them and smote them with immrods, even Ashdod and

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Speaker 1: the coast thereof. And when the men of Ashdod saw

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Speaker 1: that it was so, they said, the ark of the

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Speaker 1: God of Israel shall not abide with us, for his

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Speaker 1: hand is sore upon us, and upon Dagon our God.

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Speaker 1: They sent therefore and gathered all the lords of the

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Speaker 1: Philistines unto them, and said, what shall we do with

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Speaker 1: the ark of the God of Israel. And they answered

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Speaker 1: a letter, the Ark of the God of Israel be

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Speaker 1: carried about unto God. And they carried the Ark of

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Speaker 1: the God of Israel about thither. And it was so

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Speaker 1: that after they had carried it about, the hand of

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Speaker 1: the Lord was against the city with a very great destruction,

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Speaker 1: and he smote the men of the city, both small

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Speaker 1: and great. And they had immerrods in their secret parts,

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Speaker 1: Immerrods in their secret parts, Immads in their secret parts,

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Speaker 1: emmerrods in their secret parts, Emmerads and their secret parts.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Scuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert lamp and I'm Joe McCormick.

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Speaker 1: And if you couldn't guess by that opening, obviously we're

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Speaker 1: gonna be talking about the Ark of the Cove today. Robert.

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Speaker 1: I think it was when I came back from Thanksgiving

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Speaker 1: break that you were like, we're doing the Ark of

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Speaker 1: the Covenant on the show, and I was like, what

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Speaker 1: the heck are you talking about? Now? You know, I'm

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Speaker 1: always up for an exploration of some kind of weird

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Speaker 1: ancient artifactor or something like that. So so we're we're

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Speaker 1: good to go. But why did you want to talk

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Speaker 1: about the arc on this show, Robert, Well, it's like

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Speaker 1: nothing we've gone after before. Jeah. I was like, um no,

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Speaker 1: that the arc is. I guess it basically comes down

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Speaker 1: to the arc has along fascinated me. I grew up

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Speaker 1: watching Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Indiana Jones movie.

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Speaker 1: I had it on VHS and I would sit there

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Speaker 1: and watch segments of it in slow motion. Pretty Much

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Speaker 1: every special effect in the film I would watch in

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Speaker 1: slow motion, from the melting of Nazis to just uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, more practical stuff as well. Uh. And you

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Speaker 1: like sit your parents down and your grandparents into a

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Speaker 1: frame by frame face melting analysis, that sort of thing. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it just it always fascinated me. And then if you're

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Speaker 1: setting in church, and I grew up attending church, you

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Speaker 1: you pick up the Bible and you flip around, you

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Speaker 1: look at you read the interesting passages, and certainly the

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Speaker 1: passages about the Ark of the Covenant are some of

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Speaker 1: the more fascinating. Uh. This just there's just they just

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Speaker 1: resonate with mystery and like what is this about? And

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Speaker 1: so I feel like throughout my life I have come

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Speaker 1: back to it, and uh, in each time I've I've

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Speaker 1: looked at it with new eyes. And more recently I've

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Speaker 1: been thinking, uh, you know what, what are some scientific,

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Speaker 1: possible scientific explanations, even if they're a bit fringey in

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Speaker 1: places regarding the arc surely they exist, and lo and

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Speaker 1: behold they do well. The way that the ARC connects

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Speaker 1: to a lot of scientific topics is very interesting. Generally,

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Speaker 1: it tends to connect to them and kind of uh yeah,

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Speaker 1: like you say, fringy often kind of like uh pseudo

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Speaker 1: pseudo scientific kind of ways, but gives you a good,

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Speaker 1: mysterious jumping off point to talk about real science. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: we want to talk about the myth to we want

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Speaker 1: to talk about some weird fringe and pseudoscience believes people

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Speaker 1: have had about the arc and how that connects to

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Speaker 1: weird ideas about ancient technology, to talk about real science

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Speaker 1: and technology potential in the ancient world. And uh, I

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Speaker 1: think it's gonna be a lot of fun. Now, I

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Speaker 1: have to admit it. As much as I love the

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Speaker 1: discussion module our Facebook group, it is associated with stuff

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Speaker 1: to build your Mind. I actually checked in with the

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Speaker 1: Movie Crushers this is the group associated with Chuck Bryant's

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Speaker 1: Movie Crush podcast, because I was curious what is what

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Speaker 1: it was, what it is like a to have never

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Speaker 1: seen Raiders of the Level Lost Arc, and also what

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Speaker 1: it is like to have seen Raiders of the Lost

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Speaker 1: Arc but with some sort of underlying understanding, pre existing

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Speaker 1: understanding of the Ark of the Covenant, because I can

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Speaker 1: relate to to neither of those, like the Ark of

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Speaker 1: the Covenant as it's revealed, and Raiders of the Lost

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Speaker 1: Arc has pretty much always been there in my life. Essentially,

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Speaker 1: Raiders is a book of the Bible in a way. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: really Like I saw that, and then later on I

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Speaker 1: learned how to read and came back into and learned

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Speaker 1: what the Bible had to say about it. But you know,

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Speaker 1: in Sunday School, we just never got the m Rod's.

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Speaker 1: I don't know why they left the mrods out. I

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Speaker 1: would have loved that when I was seven. Well we'll

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Speaker 1: get we'll get to this. But I think one of

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Speaker 1: the issues, of course his translation. In some translations they're

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Speaker 1: referred to as tumors. I think that's where I encountered

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Speaker 1: the first time, and I was like, whoa, back up,

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Speaker 1: The Ark of the Covenant is giving the enemies of

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Speaker 1: God tumors, uh, And that's what that's one of This

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Speaker 1: was post Raiders, but then I was but then I

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Speaker 1: was like, oh, I'm really hooked now, Like this is

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Speaker 1: this is even more uh, you know, Eldric Harror heaped

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Speaker 1: upon the mystery of the arc. It makes you want

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Speaker 1: to imagine an alternate universe in which Raiders of the

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Speaker 1: Lost Ark was not made by Spielberg and Lucas, but

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Speaker 1: was made by David Cronenberg. And so when they opened

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Speaker 1: the arc, it's kind of like the tumor gun from Videodrome. Yeah, exactly.

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Speaker 1: I think that. Again, that's one of the things about

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Speaker 1: about The Ark of the Covenant is is it's just

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Speaker 1: so weird, and we're going to keep touching in on

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Speaker 1: that weirdness, and we're also going to keep referring to

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Speaker 1: Raid is the Lost Arc throughout this episode because this

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Speaker 1: episode more than anything that we've covered before, because it's

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Speaker 1: just free license to talk about that movie ad nausea. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's a lot of fascinating stuff just in the original

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Speaker 1: arc mythology, but the the Indiana Jones treatment of the

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Speaker 1: story partially merges it with something kind of like Pandora's Box,

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Speaker 1: Like it becomes just a container of unknown and unutterable mystery,

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Speaker 1: where there isn't quite so much that feeling in the

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Speaker 1: Bible stories, though it is a strange and sacred object

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Speaker 1: of profound power. Now, two of the big questions that

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Speaker 1: are generally mold over concerning the Arc. Uh, first of all,

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Speaker 1: what was it? And then secondly where is it now? Now,

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Speaker 1: we're mostly going to ruminate over the first question, because

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Speaker 1: the second is one of those questions that tends to

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Speaker 1: lead to one of two places. Either the fact that

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Speaker 1: it's simply lost to history, likely destroyed in some prior age,

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Speaker 1: or or hidden away and lost, assuming that there was

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Speaker 1: such an object, and that's the other possibility is that

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Speaker 1: it simply did not exist um or it leads one

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Speaker 1: to various speculative or even downright conspiracy theories involving you know,

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Speaker 1: the Knights Templars perhaps, Or there's the notion that it's

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Speaker 1: it's currently hidden out of sight in the chapel of

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Speaker 1: the Tablet in northern Epethiopia, which is possible, but there's

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Speaker 1: no no proof or that it was taken to Heaven,

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Speaker 1: an answer that requires more of a speculative lead than

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Speaker 1: the notion that the Arc, like so many treasures of history,

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Speaker 1: simply failed to survive history. Now, one of the main

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Speaker 1: things that we're going to be exploring in this look

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Speaker 1: at the Arc is that the Ark of the Covenant

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Speaker 1: is yet another one of these ancient stories, these objects

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Speaker 1: of ancient myth, which there have been great efforts by

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Speaker 1: modern writers to ground the myth and what we now

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Speaker 1: know about science and technology, reimagining what the ancients believe

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Speaker 1: to be magic as some kind of lost powerful science

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Speaker 1: or technology. And we've discussed before some of the risks

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Speaker 1: of technologizing the myth. Uh, it's not necessarily always wrong,

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Speaker 1: but it's an impulse, that's not all. It's also not

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Speaker 1: always justified. There's a sort of naive way of reading

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Speaker 1: ancient texts that says, Okay, let's take what they say

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Speaker 1: happened basically at face value, but posit a different explanation

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Speaker 1: for it than they would have. And while this can

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Speaker 1: be a fun exercise, I love doing it, I personally

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Speaker 1: enjoy we shall always remember not to start feeling like

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Speaker 1: this is a necessary and especially not like it's a

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Speaker 1: parsimonious exercise, when in reality, ancient histories of all kinds,

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Speaker 1: religious texts, myths, and so forth are likely to be

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Speaker 1: full of narratives that are the result of creative imagination

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Speaker 1: and things like exaggeration across time and retellings. In other words,

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Speaker 1: there's no event that you necessarily have to explain because

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Speaker 1: the events described in these ancient stories often just didn't

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Speaker 1: take place. Right, We can't treat a description of the

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Speaker 1: arc in uh in the whole Testament as being the

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Speaker 1: same as say, you know, fossil evidence or a or

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Speaker 1: a crater, right right, We we just don't know. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it might be based on something that actually happened, but

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Speaker 1: we don't know. But if we take the route of saying, well, okay,

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Speaker 1: if these stories are based on something people saw, are

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Speaker 1: based on something that actually happened. When we look at

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Speaker 1: history that way, ancient history with a bit of science

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Speaker 1: under the belt, there is this insatiable itch the retro

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Speaker 1: sci fi hermonutic, which I've been looking for a concise

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Speaker 1: name for, and I think I just realized the perfect

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Speaker 1: one for for this era of that which I'm gonna

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna start calling bronze punk. Yeah, so you've got yeah,

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Speaker 1: you've got steampunk for the Victorian era, You've got adam

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Speaker 1: punk for the atomic age. And I think we should

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Speaker 1: have bronze punk as the name for this retroactive technologizing

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Speaker 1: of the time period of classical civilizations in the ancient

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Speaker 1: Near East, including the Hebrew Bible and its contemporary civilizations

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Speaker 1: and texts. So with those important caveats, I think we

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Speaker 1: should begin a bronze punk adventure into the Ark. Bronze

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Speaker 1: Bronze Punk does have a lot of of of opportunity here.

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Speaker 1: It gives us a chance to bring back uh Talus,

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Speaker 1: the Bronze automaton. Oh, that's a classic example we would

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Speaker 1: tell us. I think they'd be bronze Punk. I don't

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Speaker 1: want to be too rigid about the time period that

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Speaker 1: applies to either, because a lot of the stuff we're

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Speaker 1: talking about here I think would technically be bridging Bronze

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Speaker 1: Age and Iron Age and the regions that are affected.

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Speaker 1: But all that aside, yeah, anything, it doesn't need to

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Speaker 1: stand in the way of tall Us battling the Ark

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Speaker 1: of the Covenant. I would say, well, before we get

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Speaker 1: into all these supposed Bronze punk explanations of what the

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Speaker 1: arc might have been if it existed, and if some

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Speaker 1: of the stories about it are based on things people saw,

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Speaker 1: we should just explore the myth, like what is the

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Speaker 1: story of the arc and what do the text say

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Speaker 1: about it? All? Right? Yeah, well we're talking here about

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Speaker 1: the airon Hobart, the Arc of God, the Arc of testimony,

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Speaker 1: the Arc of the Covenant, just a few names that

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Speaker 1: we used to describe it. Here a gold plated wooden

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Speaker 1: chest used by the ancient Hebrews to house the two

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Speaker 1: stone tablets of law given to Moses by God, and

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Speaker 1: it was also said to contain a couple of other

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Speaker 1: holy relics, such as Aaron's rod, a magical item used

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Speaker 1: by Moses brother, as well as a pot of man,

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Speaker 1: the supernatural food stuff that fell from the heavens to

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Speaker 1: feed the Israelites in the desert. Now, in addition to

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Speaker 1: being made of gold, to the other decorative element that

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Speaker 1: is a signature of the art are the two cherubim

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Speaker 1: that are depicted atop it. Now I'm not quite sure

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Speaker 1: why this has happened, but in modern English usage cherubs

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Speaker 1: or cherubim that has come to mean naked baby angels

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Speaker 1: like you would see on those cards or the creepy

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Speaker 1: little statues people put on their dressers. But cherubim are

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Speaker 1: not naked cute baby angels, right right, even though, like

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Speaker 1: if we describe something as bearing cherubic today, we're we're

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Speaker 1: describing so it's got like a baby with fat cheeks,

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Speaker 1: or maybe an adult with a fat with fat cheeks

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Speaker 1: and kind of a baby's face. But really it should

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Speaker 1: be a horrifying adjective to to heap on something. It

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Speaker 1: should mean that it is an object or personification of

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Speaker 1: just holy wrath. Right. Classical example would be angels stationed

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Speaker 1: outside the Garden of Eden with a flaming sword to

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Speaker 1: keep people out. That's right. I mean that that is

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Speaker 1: a chair of the true chair of forget the Renaissance

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Speaker 1: art here that they're kind of like God's supernatural heavies.

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Speaker 1: But as with any sort of mythological creature, you do

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Speaker 1: see a lot of variety in the way they're depicted,

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Speaker 1: ranging indeed, from the bestial to the more humanoid. Depictions

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Speaker 1: of the art tend to favor of a version of

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Speaker 1: winged humanoids. But we could, and perhaps we should, do

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Speaker 1: an entire episode on angels and religious traditions in the future,

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Speaker 1: because there's so much the fascinating material there. So we're

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Speaker 1: talking about creatures that would have been first or second

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Speaker 1: circle in the hierarchy of angels, and their descriptions include

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Speaker 1: or tend to include the form of a lion, the

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Speaker 1: form of a man, the form of an eagle, or

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Speaker 1: any hybrid of these forms I've actually seen it described

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Speaker 1: that they sometimes are representative as having four faces, yes,

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Speaker 1: and the four the four faces would flude the lion

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Speaker 1: to represent the beasts of the wild, the man to

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Speaker 1: represent the world of humans. I think, an oxen face

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Speaker 1: to represent the world of domesticated animals, and then an

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Speaker 1: eagle face to represent the world of birds, which I

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Speaker 1: guess are somehow different than wild animals. Yeah, these depictions

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Speaker 1: of of the chairbs often look kind of like emblems, right,

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Speaker 1: with like folds of multiple wings and haloed heads of

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Speaker 1: these creatures and a human poking out. Now. According to

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Speaker 1: Carol rose Um Folklore's who I frequently side on the

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Speaker 1: show in her book Spirits, Fairies, lepre Cons and Goblins

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Speaker 1: and Encyclopedia, Hebrew religious writings state that images of cherubim

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Speaker 1: guarded the ark of the Covenant as well as Solomon's

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Speaker 1: temple and their divine messengers attending spirits and disseminators of knowledge.

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Speaker 1: Now it's possible. Rose points out the cherubim or derived

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Speaker 1: from the Assyrian Lamassu or sea dow, and these were

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Speaker 1: the female and male, respectively, benevolent demons in ancient Assyria

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Speaker 1: and Babylon. They would have protected palaces and temples, and

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Speaker 1: they were there often depicted as winged bulls or lions

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Speaker 1: with human heads, and they mostly remained invisible, and we

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Speaker 1: were assigned in the manner of guardian angels to protect

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Speaker 1: an individual human from the evil uh two ku. There

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Speaker 1: are some amazing carvings of these in the met in

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Speaker 1: the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I believe from the palace

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Speaker 1: of the Assyrian king Ashurbanapoul the second, or maybe not

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Speaker 1: the palace, but I think commissioned by that king, and

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Speaker 1: that they are fearsome and wonderful to behold, Yes they are,

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Speaker 1: and to come back to Raiders of the Lost Arc.

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Speaker 1: These are of course, presumably the the the entities we

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Speaker 1: see flying around after the Nazis opened the Ark of

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Speaker 1: the Covenant at the end of the film. The Cherubim yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: because they first thought of like like women, uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: sort of beautiful ghost women. And then of course the

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Speaker 1: face changes and it becomes this kind of snarling, skeletal

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Speaker 1: lion type face, and then of course, uh, it's death

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Speaker 1: for all who view the Ark. Now for a for

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Speaker 1: an artifact that has come to be imbued with so

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Speaker 1: much mystery. Retrospectively, the Bible actually does just straightforwardly explain

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Speaker 1: how to build the arc. It's like minute specifications on

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Speaker 1: what you're supposed to do to make one. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: also it almost makes you wonder, like, what's the big

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Speaker 1: deal about losing it, because clearly you have you have

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Speaker 1: a strict set of instructions on how to build another one. Well,

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Speaker 1: I mean I think they were just like magical beliefs

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Speaker 1: about the sacredness of what it contains. Oh yes, certainly,

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Speaker 1: but but that ultimately is the thing, right. The art

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Speaker 1: is a container, a fancy container, perhaps even a holy container,

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Speaker 1: and if you're approaching with that worldview, but just a

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Speaker 1: container for other otherwise holy relics. That is one thing

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Speaker 1: that I think makes it very fascinating and kind of unique.

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Speaker 1: And there are probably some other great artifacts like this,

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Speaker 1: but fascinating in that it is, uh, this artifact with

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Speaker 1: all this significance, but it is essentially just a vessel

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Speaker 1: for other things. It's a container, it's not a statue. Well,

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Speaker 1: should we read the instructions from Exodus in case anyone

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Speaker 1: wants to build along as we as we do the podcast,

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Speaker 1: Let's build it all right, get your your cubit ruler ready,

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Speaker 1: and they shall make an arc of ship him. Would

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Speaker 1: two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof,

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Speaker 1: and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof, and

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Speaker 1: a cubit and a half the height thereof. And thou

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Speaker 1: shalt overlay it with pure gold within and without shalt

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Speaker 1: thou overlay it, and shalt make upon it a crown

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Speaker 1: of gold around about, And thou shalt cast four rings

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Speaker 1: of gold for it, and put them in the four

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Speaker 1: corners thereof, And two rings shall be in the one

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Speaker 1: side of it, and two rings in the other side

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Speaker 1: of it. And thou shalt make staves of ship him

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Speaker 1: wood and overlay them with gold. And thou shalt put

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Speaker 1: the staves into the rings by the sides of the arc,

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Speaker 1: that the arc may be born with them. The staves

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Speaker 1: shall be in the rings of the arc. They shall

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Speaker 1: not be taken from it. Now I want to jump

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Speaker 1: in here and say they say that this is exactly

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Speaker 1: the kind of description of the arc that is disappointing.

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Speaker 1: When you're a child, you've seen raiders and then you

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Speaker 1: want to read about in the Bible, and you just

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Speaker 1: find this this kind of boring description of how to

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Speaker 1: build one. Oh, there are better stories. We got them rods.

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Speaker 1: We're gonna get to some more later. Well, this this

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Speaker 1: description is about to get a lot more interesting, and

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Speaker 1: certainly we'll tie into some stuff we're gonna discuss later.

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Speaker 1: And thou shalt put into the arc the testimony which

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Speaker 1: I shall give thee. And thou shalt make a mercy

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Speaker 1: seat of pure gold. Two cubits and a half shall

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Speaker 1: be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half

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Speaker 1: the breadth thereof. And thou shalt make two cherubims of

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Speaker 1: gold of beaten work. Shalt thou make them in the

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Speaker 1: two ends of the mercy seat, and make one cherub

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Speaker 1: on the one end, and the other cherub on the

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Speaker 1: other end. Even of the mercy seat, shall he make

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Speaker 1: the cherubims on the two ends thereof? So otherways, make

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Speaker 1: the two cherubs face each other on the ends of

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Speaker 1: the mercy seat. Believe a space, because that space is important.

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Speaker 1: Anyway continues, And the cheruban shall stretch forth their wings

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Speaker 1: on high, covering the mercy seat with their wings, and

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Speaker 1: their faces shall look one to another toward the mercy seat.

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Speaker 1: Shall the faces of the cherubims be, and thou shalt

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Speaker 1: put the mercy seat above upon the arc, and in

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Speaker 1: the arc, thou shalt put the testimony that I shall

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Speaker 1: give THEE, and there I will meet with THEE, and

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Speaker 1: I will commune with THEE from above the mercy seat

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Speaker 1: from between the two chaerubims, which are upon the ark

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Speaker 1: of the testimony of all things which I will give

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Speaker 1: THEE in commandment unto the children of Israel. Okay, so

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Speaker 1: this thing is a container, as we've been saying, but

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Speaker 1: it's also a chair, and it's a chair for God himself. Right.

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Speaker 1: The ideas that that mercy seat is where God is

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Speaker 1: going to manifest. It sounds from the instructions like there

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Speaker 1: is going to be a presence of the Lord there

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Speaker 1: and Uh and Moses, Um and perhaps you know some

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Speaker 1: other priests. H whoever is is in charge, whoever is

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Speaker 1: authorized to do so, will actually commune with God. It is,

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Speaker 1: in the words of Belloc, a radio for speaking to God,

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Speaker 1: a transmitter. But it's really more like a video phone

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Speaker 1: than than just a transmitter. Right, Yeah, it's like FaceTime,

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Speaker 1: you know. On that note, let's take a quick break

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Speaker 1: and when we come back, we'll discuss the story of

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Speaker 1: the Arc, because that too will be important as we

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Speaker 1: get into some of these scientific ideas regarding the arc.

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Speaker 1: Than all right, we're back, all right, So if the

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Speaker 1: Arc was actually built, about when do we think that

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Speaker 1: would have happened. It would have been about three thousand

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Speaker 1: years ago. Now we've seen the instructions in the Bible

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Speaker 1: where they believed God had sent his people. Uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: the detailed plans on how to make the arc. But

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Speaker 1: what do they do with it once they've got it? Well,

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00:20:49,280 --> 00:20:51,520
Speaker 1: after they've they've built it, they carried around with them

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Speaker 1: and they use it as a central part of their

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Speaker 1: religious observations. I mean, it's essentially a mobile alter piece, right,

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's a it's a temple that you

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Speaker 1: can pick up in move. So think back again to

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Speaker 1: that part about the mercy seat. This is the point

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Speaker 1: from which God speaks to the children of Israel, and

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Speaker 1: if Raiders is any indication, it's also from Wendcey sends

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Speaker 1: out his smiting laser beams of Holy Nazi frying death.

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Speaker 1: Now the wording here is interesting because it is the

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Speaker 1: and I'm possibly a butchering this of course, but the

401
00:21:21,560 --> 00:21:26,119
Speaker 1: hawk Copperette well, and kaufer that's k k pH a

402
00:21:26,400 --> 00:21:30,000
Speaker 1: r means to cover, but kapareth means a thing of

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00:21:30,000 --> 00:21:33,280
Speaker 1: wiping out or cleansing. So they carried a bit before

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00:21:33,359 --> 00:21:36,320
Speaker 1: them when during the Exodus, and it was said to

405
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Speaker 1: clear impediments and poisonous animals in their path, and it

406
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Speaker 1: was even said to stop the flow of the river

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Speaker 1: Jordan's so that they could cross into the Promised Land.

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Speaker 1: But it was also conceived of as a kind of

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Speaker 1: a magical weapon of war. Right, yeah, they marched with

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Speaker 1: it at the Siege of Jericho. Of course, you know,

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Speaker 1: they were blowing those trumpets, but still the arc was there,

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Speaker 1: and as they're blowing those trumpets, eventually the walls come

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00:22:00,760 --> 00:22:06,119
Speaker 1: tumbling down. But then in five and five BC, the

414
00:22:06,160 --> 00:22:10,600
Speaker 1: Babylonian Empire conquered the Israelites, and the arc was supposedly

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Speaker 1: taken from the temple in Jerusalem and from their advantishes

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Speaker 1: from history. So if it did indeed exist, as as

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Speaker 1: to some degree as the stories are told, this is

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Speaker 1: where it stops. We don't know what happens after this, right,

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Speaker 1: this is this is where it becomes the Lost Arc. Now,

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Speaker 1: as with any Bible artifact of any significance. I would

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Speaker 1: bet that there are some people out there who claim

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Speaker 1: to have found it. Yes, and but but before we

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Speaker 1: touch on those, I do want to point out just

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Speaker 1: a wonderful fragment of a quote here came to It

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Speaker 1: came to us from a National Geographic Society fellow, Fred Hybert.

426
00:22:44,280 --> 00:22:48,000
Speaker 1: He told the website National Geographic that it's not really

427
00:22:48,040 --> 00:22:50,280
Speaker 1: something that you can go after. You can't really search

428
00:22:50,359 --> 00:22:53,040
Speaker 1: for the arc because the arc exists at quote the

429
00:22:53,160 --> 00:22:57,400
Speaker 1: crossroads between myth and reality. And I think that's that's

430
00:22:57,520 --> 00:23:02,040
Speaker 1: essential to keep in mind for the entirety of this episode.

431
00:23:02,040 --> 00:23:04,919
Speaker 1: In the next well, I would say, for example, I

432
00:23:04,920 --> 00:23:09,160
Speaker 1: think the arc probably has a better chance of being

433
00:23:09,920 --> 00:23:12,679
Speaker 1: in some way based on a real historical artifact than

434
00:23:12,800 --> 00:23:16,359
Speaker 1: something like Noah's Ark. But people constantly go looking for

435
00:23:16,440 --> 00:23:18,840
Speaker 1: Noah's Ark, and every time they go looking, they find it.

436
00:23:19,280 --> 00:23:21,680
Speaker 1: You know, there's well, here's some wood on a mountain

437
00:23:21,680 --> 00:23:24,320
Speaker 1: and turkey here it is, right, And likewise, the arc

438
00:23:24,400 --> 00:23:28,119
Speaker 1: is simply essentially just wood and gold. Uh. And it's

439
00:23:28,200 --> 00:23:30,239
Speaker 1: not it's even less of a feat to build. Like

440
00:23:30,320 --> 00:23:33,080
Speaker 1: we have the instructions you could, if you had the materials,

441
00:23:33,080 --> 00:23:35,840
Speaker 1: you could build one today. So even if we were

442
00:23:35,840 --> 00:23:38,960
Speaker 1: to uncover an ARC candidate, it's not really possible to

443
00:23:38,960 --> 00:23:41,320
Speaker 1: tell that if you have the arc of the Covenant.

444
00:23:41,760 --> 00:23:44,200
Speaker 1: I mean, there could probably be multiple arcs out. They're

445
00:23:44,240 --> 00:23:46,040
Speaker 1: saying that they're the arc, yeah, I mean there And

446
00:23:46,080 --> 00:23:48,639
Speaker 1: there have been cases where they where market artists have

447
00:23:48,680 --> 00:23:51,880
Speaker 1: found something that is like an arc, a box that

448
00:23:52,560 --> 00:23:55,080
Speaker 1: has perhaps excited a few people here and there, but

449
00:23:55,160 --> 00:23:58,119
Speaker 1: ultimately you know, it doesn't pan out. I mean, I

450
00:23:58,320 --> 00:24:00,359
Speaker 1: suppose if you had a strong candidate, you could do

451
00:24:00,400 --> 00:24:04,040
Speaker 1: carbon dating on the on the relic, perhaps the wood,

452
00:24:04,680 --> 00:24:06,960
Speaker 1: especially if there are any humans of the wood remaining,

453
00:24:07,080 --> 00:24:08,800
Speaker 1: to at least know if it's old enough. Yeah, to

454
00:24:08,840 --> 00:24:13,040
Speaker 1: know if it's it's old enough. But again, it could

455
00:24:13,160 --> 00:24:17,840
Speaker 1: just be another box from that time period. That being said,

456
00:24:18,119 --> 00:24:20,680
Speaker 1: some of the possible final resting places for the arc

457
00:24:20,760 --> 00:24:25,320
Speaker 1: include has already already alluded to St. Mary of Zion

458
00:24:25,400 --> 00:24:29,439
Speaker 1: Cathedral in Oxom, Ethiopia, under the care of the Ethiopian

459
00:24:29,560 --> 00:24:33,440
Speaker 1: Orthodox to a head O church, and more specifically, under

460
00:24:33,480 --> 00:24:36,240
Speaker 1: the care of a single caretaker who alone gets to

461
00:24:36,280 --> 00:24:39,159
Speaker 1: see the arc. Naturally, that means no one gets to

462
00:24:39,280 --> 00:24:42,440
Speaker 1: verify what they actually have or don't have much less

463
00:24:42,440 --> 00:24:45,240
Speaker 1: study it. Some claim that it was hidden beneath the

464
00:24:45,240 --> 00:24:48,359
Speaker 1: First Temple in Jerusalem before the Babylonians destroyed it in

465
00:24:48,440 --> 00:24:51,520
Speaker 1: five eighty six b C. But this can't be verified either,

466
00:24:51,560 --> 00:24:53,600
Speaker 1: because that means it would be somewhere beneath the Dome

467
00:24:53,640 --> 00:24:55,919
Speaker 1: of the Rock Shrine, which of course is a holy

468
00:24:55,960 --> 00:24:59,280
Speaker 1: site in its Lam. Now, there's another claim mentioned in

469
00:24:59,280 --> 00:25:02,080
Speaker 1: that nat Geo article that I sided earlier, that it

470
00:25:02,200 --> 00:25:04,800
Speaker 1: was buried beneath the hill, and not just any hill,

471
00:25:05,080 --> 00:25:08,360
Speaker 1: but the very hill that would later be known as Galgatha,

472
00:25:08,520 --> 00:25:10,639
Speaker 1: the place of the Skull, right, which is the place

473
00:25:10,680 --> 00:25:13,480
Speaker 1: where it is said that Jesus was crucified right And

474
00:25:13,520 --> 00:25:16,399
Speaker 1: according to this story, when he's crucified, his blood like

475
00:25:16,480 --> 00:25:20,080
Speaker 1: drains down into the hill and eventually to the Ark

476
00:25:20,160 --> 00:25:23,920
Speaker 1: itself buried beneath him. And uh. This relates to a

477
00:25:24,000 --> 00:25:28,600
Speaker 1: quote unquote find of amateur adventurer Ron Wyatt, who lived

478
00:25:28,640 --> 00:25:33,679
Speaker 1: nineteen who claimed to have found, among other things, Noah's Ark,

479
00:25:34,320 --> 00:25:38,120
Speaker 1: the Ark of the Covenant, the Tower of Babel, the

480
00:25:38,119 --> 00:25:41,399
Speaker 1: graves of Noah and his wife, as well as the

481
00:25:41,400 --> 00:25:45,000
Speaker 1: blood of Christ itself. Needless to say, one should take

482
00:25:45,040 --> 00:25:47,800
Speaker 1: his account with all the salt that Wyatt claimed to

483
00:25:47,880 --> 00:25:50,680
Speaker 1: have also discovered at the ruins of Sodom. Uh. Yeah,

484
00:25:50,680 --> 00:25:55,520
Speaker 1: he was not a true archaeologist. Now, this guy is

485
00:25:55,560 --> 00:25:59,720
Speaker 1: not unique and essentially being um, somebody who is a

486
00:26:00,000 --> 00:26:02,600
Speaker 1: hologist for their religion who goes out. I mean I

487
00:26:02,680 --> 00:26:06,160
Speaker 1: mainly know of this within within Christian you know, like

488
00:26:06,640 --> 00:26:09,840
Speaker 1: somebody who's basically a Christian apologist, a defender of the faith,

489
00:26:10,320 --> 00:26:14,119
Speaker 1: who goes out seeking artifacts. That has always struck me

490
00:26:14,160 --> 00:26:15,520
Speaker 1: as a kind of odd thing to want to do.

491
00:26:15,560 --> 00:26:17,440
Speaker 1: I guess I get it on the level of these

492
00:26:17,480 --> 00:26:19,479
Speaker 1: are people who are trying to prove that the Bible

493
00:26:19,560 --> 00:26:22,320
Speaker 1: is literally true and everything, all the stories in it

494
00:26:22,359 --> 00:26:24,920
Speaker 1: literally happened on Earth a certain number of years ago.

495
00:26:25,480 --> 00:26:30,200
Speaker 1: But it seems like kind of a profaning of the

496
00:26:30,200 --> 00:26:33,080
Speaker 1: the orientation towards their myths if they're going out and

497
00:26:33,119 --> 00:26:36,080
Speaker 1: saying like, I'm going to find the bones of this

498
00:26:36,359 --> 00:26:38,920
Speaker 1: person who's the you know in the stories that I believe,

499
00:26:39,240 --> 00:26:41,680
Speaker 1: or I'm going to find the wood left over from

500
00:26:41,680 --> 00:26:44,919
Speaker 1: the boat. Yeah. I mean, I guess you can approach

501
00:26:44,920 --> 00:26:46,439
Speaker 1: it from a few different points of view. I mean

502
00:26:46,440 --> 00:26:49,440
Speaker 1: I always the way I always approach it is that

503
00:26:49,440 --> 00:26:52,000
Speaker 1: that the you know, the deep mythology of a given

504
00:26:52,000 --> 00:26:55,879
Speaker 1: faith need not be factual to have power and uh,

505
00:26:55,920 --> 00:26:57,840
Speaker 1: and therefore there's no reason to go and try and

506
00:26:57,920 --> 00:26:59,840
Speaker 1: find fragments of it or expect them to be there

507
00:27:00,280 --> 00:27:02,600
Speaker 1: be there. Uh. You could, I guess, approach it as

508
00:27:02,680 --> 00:27:06,560
Speaker 1: someone who needs to find those items because that again

509
00:27:06,640 --> 00:27:10,800
Speaker 1: supports their religion. Perhaps the racist doubt. If only I

510
00:27:10,800 --> 00:27:12,800
Speaker 1: could find a piece of the arc, then I know

511
00:27:12,920 --> 00:27:15,439
Speaker 1: it was real and I can silence these doubts. The

512
00:27:15,480 --> 00:27:17,000
Speaker 1: other way of looking at it, of course, is someone

513
00:27:17,040 --> 00:27:19,720
Speaker 1: who has no doubts whatsoever, and they're like, hey, the

514
00:27:19,880 --> 00:27:23,159
Speaker 1: arc was obviously real. Um, I gotta prove it to

515
00:27:23,160 --> 00:27:25,360
Speaker 1: everybody else. Yeah, I need to prove it to everybody else,

516
00:27:25,520 --> 00:27:27,080
Speaker 1: or I just I just want to find it. It's

517
00:27:27,080 --> 00:27:29,520
Speaker 1: out there somewhere. Why has nobody found it. I'm going

518
00:27:29,560 --> 00:27:31,640
Speaker 1: to be the one to do it. And to your point,

519
00:27:31,680 --> 00:27:34,399
Speaker 1: if you go into this read these regions, there is

520
00:27:34,480 --> 00:27:37,360
Speaker 1: just so much history that, especially somebody who's just bumbling

521
00:27:37,400 --> 00:27:40,520
Speaker 1: around and they don't really know what they're doing, they're

522
00:27:40,560 --> 00:27:42,760
Speaker 1: going to find something that they can pass off, they

523
00:27:42,800 --> 00:27:44,840
Speaker 1: can believe in. I don't know, they end up being

524
00:27:44,920 --> 00:27:47,280
Speaker 1: kind of like the villains in all the Indiana Jones

525
00:27:47,359 --> 00:27:52,040
Speaker 1: movies who want to possess some powerful, mysterious saction artifact,

526
00:27:52,359 --> 00:27:55,480
Speaker 1: but they want to possess it for some earthly purpose,

527
00:27:55,640 --> 00:27:58,200
Speaker 1: like you know, then I can show everybody this thing

528
00:27:58,320 --> 00:28:00,560
Speaker 1: or something. It's sort of the more all of Raiders

529
00:28:00,560 --> 00:28:03,920
Speaker 1: of the Lost Ark at the end that Indie Indie

530
00:28:03,920 --> 00:28:08,600
Speaker 1: loses his his sort of profane curiosity and he realizes

531
00:28:08,680 --> 00:28:10,679
Speaker 1: I can just let this thing be sacred and not

532
00:28:10,800 --> 00:28:13,000
Speaker 1: have to look inside and not have to want to

533
00:28:13,040 --> 00:28:15,840
Speaker 1: own it and control it and show the world. Yeah,

534
00:28:15,880 --> 00:28:18,879
Speaker 1: I think that's a that's a solid read on Raiders

535
00:28:18,880 --> 00:28:20,840
Speaker 1: of the Lost Dark. You know, well, while we're talking

536
00:28:20,840 --> 00:28:23,120
Speaker 1: about Raiders, so let's let's go ahead and uh and

537
00:28:23,160 --> 00:28:25,879
Speaker 1: discuss a few of the details about it, because I'm

538
00:28:25,680 --> 00:28:28,680
Speaker 1: I'm assuming most people have seen Raiders, but I know

539
00:28:28,920 --> 00:28:31,240
Speaker 1: there are some individuals out there who just haven't seen

540
00:28:31,280 --> 00:28:33,960
Speaker 1: the film yet. Uh, And I certainly encourage everyone to

541
00:28:33,960 --> 00:28:38,120
Speaker 1: see it because it is a damn near perfect motion picture.

542
00:28:38,360 --> 00:28:41,800
Speaker 1: Is there a better action adventure movie? I can't think of.

543
00:28:42,080 --> 00:28:44,200
Speaker 1: I mean, you could, you could say Star Wars, right,

544
00:28:44,320 --> 00:28:48,880
Speaker 1: you can point to other maybe things of that nature.

545
00:28:49,360 --> 00:28:51,640
Speaker 1: But but I mean, it's such a tentpole film in

546
00:28:51,760 --> 00:28:53,880
Speaker 1: terms of like big summer action films. It is the

547
00:28:53,880 --> 00:28:56,959
Speaker 1: film that so many other motion pictures have have tried

548
00:28:57,000 --> 00:28:59,800
Speaker 1: to be. This of course with a film came out

549
00:28:59,800 --> 00:29:03,000
Speaker 1: in eighteen eighty one, directed by Steven Spielberg, screenplay by

550
00:29:03,040 --> 00:29:06,960
Speaker 1: Lawrence Kasden's story by George Lucas and Philip Kaufman. U.

551
00:29:07,160 --> 00:29:12,000
Speaker 1: Philip Kaufman, by the way, is the person who reportedly

552
00:29:12,400 --> 00:29:15,560
Speaker 1: brought up the idea of using the arc in the story,

553
00:29:16,240 --> 00:29:18,760
Speaker 1: and he was he was also the grandson of German

554
00:29:18,840 --> 00:29:23,120
Speaker 1: Jewish immigrants to the US. Spielberg's parental grandparents were Jewish Ukrainians.

555
00:29:23,640 --> 00:29:26,720
Speaker 1: Uh So, I one would assume that the that this

556
00:29:26,840 --> 00:29:29,560
Speaker 1: played into the the use of the arc in the film,

557
00:29:29,760 --> 00:29:33,000
Speaker 1: but also some of these themes regarding the you know,

558
00:29:33,040 --> 00:29:36,280
Speaker 1: the struggle of the Jewish people against depression. Yeah. Well,

559
00:29:36,320 --> 00:29:39,560
Speaker 1: one of the unspoken subtexts to the film, I think

560
00:29:39,640 --> 00:29:42,680
Speaker 1: is that ultimately the arkans up fulfilling its destiny as

561
00:29:42,880 --> 00:29:45,120
Speaker 1: the weapon that protects the Jewish people in the end,

562
00:29:45,160 --> 00:29:49,160
Speaker 1: it's it's destroying Nazis, right, and it's recreating a tale

563
00:29:49,200 --> 00:29:50,800
Speaker 1: that will touch on in a bit the idea that

564
00:29:50,840 --> 00:29:54,040
Speaker 1: the Arc is stolen by an enemy force and then

565
00:29:54,200 --> 00:29:57,680
Speaker 1: uses its power against that enemy force. Yeah, it's sort

566
00:29:57,720 --> 00:30:01,960
Speaker 1: of a retelling of the of the Amrods story. Almost. Yeah.

567
00:30:02,000 --> 00:30:04,320
Speaker 1: I should also point out that John Williams did the

568
00:30:04,360 --> 00:30:07,000
Speaker 1: score for the film, and I'm usually I'm I'm kind

569
00:30:07,000 --> 00:30:09,520
Speaker 1: of over John Williams scores for the most part. I

570
00:30:09,520 --> 00:30:11,680
Speaker 1: don't know what you're talking about, dude, how can you

571
00:30:11,720 --> 00:30:16,200
Speaker 1: not love John Williams. Well, the thing is in rewatching

572
00:30:16,440 --> 00:30:18,680
Speaker 1: portions of this film for this episode. I I still

573
00:30:18,760 --> 00:30:19,880
Speaker 1: I have to give him all the credit in the

574
00:30:19,960 --> 00:30:23,840
Speaker 1: world because that that the scene when they finally opened

575
00:30:23,840 --> 00:30:26,920
Speaker 1: the Arc and the Arc unleash's it's um, it's wrath

576
00:30:27,080 --> 00:30:30,000
Speaker 1: upon the Nazis. The music is perfect in that it

577
00:30:30,080 --> 00:30:33,080
Speaker 1: just really adds to the sense of just holy mystery

578
00:30:33,760 --> 00:30:36,960
Speaker 1: that is unfolding there. Take any movie with the John

579
00:30:36,960 --> 00:30:39,360
Speaker 1: Williams score and take the score out, replace it with

580
00:30:39,440 --> 00:30:41,719
Speaker 1: something else. You wouldn't have half the movie. But what

581
00:30:41,760 --> 00:30:46,200
Speaker 1: if it was Tangerine Dream. I can only imagine it

582
00:30:46,200 --> 00:30:48,280
Speaker 1: it might be just a little better. Maybe. Well, I

583
00:30:48,280 --> 00:30:51,720
Speaker 1: love Tangerine Dream too, but you're wrong about this time. No?

584
00:30:51,960 --> 00:30:54,840
Speaker 1: Well maybe so. Now key scenes in the film for

585
00:30:54,880 --> 00:30:56,920
Speaker 1: our purposes, because there's a lot of stuff in there

586
00:30:56,920 --> 00:31:00,479
Speaker 1: that is of course added on and uh um, you know,

587
00:31:00,920 --> 00:31:04,720
Speaker 1: historically inaccurate, certainly, h But there are a few key

588
00:31:04,760 --> 00:31:06,520
Speaker 1: scenes that that that match up with a lot of

589
00:31:06,520 --> 00:31:08,080
Speaker 1: stuff we're talking about here today. There's a scene in

590
00:31:08,080 --> 00:31:10,560
Speaker 1: which the Arc burns the swastick off of the crate

591
00:31:10,600 --> 00:31:13,560
Speaker 1: containing the arc. And then of course there's that fabulous

592
00:31:13,600 --> 00:31:15,840
Speaker 1: scene at the end where the Nazis open the arc

593
00:31:16,280 --> 00:31:18,720
Speaker 1: uh and those Cherubim emerge, and then you also have

594
00:31:18,800 --> 00:31:22,560
Speaker 1: the burning light of God finally emerging as well and

595
00:31:22,840 --> 00:31:25,959
Speaker 1: just eradicating everybody that has their eyes open. And the

596
00:31:26,000 --> 00:31:29,040
Speaker 1: idea of a fire that burns people emerging from the

597
00:31:29,160 --> 00:31:32,640
Speaker 1: arc is absolutely biblical. And will explore more of those

598
00:31:32,680 --> 00:31:35,360
Speaker 1: stories later on. Now, a side question that I saw

599
00:31:35,400 --> 00:31:38,600
Speaker 1: come up on the internet. Does Indie actually impact the

600
00:31:38,640 --> 00:31:41,800
Speaker 1: situation with the Arc and the Nazis at all? Because

601
00:31:41,840 --> 00:31:47,680
Speaker 1: outside of saving Marian's life Marian the romantic interest, does

602
00:31:47,720 --> 00:31:50,960
Speaker 1: he accomplish anything? No, And I think that's the genius

603
00:31:51,000 --> 00:31:54,760
Speaker 1: of it. The movie ends with with Indie. It doesn't.

604
00:31:54,760 --> 00:31:57,400
Speaker 1: It's an action movie that doesn't end with a fist fight.

605
00:31:57,680 --> 00:32:00,240
Speaker 1: There's no fight of any kind at the end. The

606
00:32:00,240 --> 00:32:03,280
Speaker 1: the hero of the movie at the end is completely powerless,

607
00:32:03,760 --> 00:32:06,840
Speaker 1: and his victory at the end is assuming a posture

608
00:32:06,880 --> 00:32:10,280
Speaker 1: of humility in the presence of the Sacred Yeah, totally,

609
00:32:10,320 --> 00:32:13,160
Speaker 1: because to remind everybody, at the end, he and Marian

610
00:32:13,240 --> 00:32:16,880
Speaker 1: are tied up. The Nazis have the Arc and UH

611
00:32:16,920 --> 00:32:20,360
Speaker 1: and Belloc is opening it in the full regalia and

612
00:32:20,440 --> 00:32:23,520
Speaker 1: in fact wearing some version of the vestiments that are

613
00:32:23,760 --> 00:32:28,720
Speaker 1: described UH, alongside the instructions for the for the construction

614
00:32:28,720 --> 00:32:32,280
Speaker 1: of the Arc, and then the Arc just murders all

615
00:32:32,320 --> 00:32:35,720
Speaker 1: of the bad guys and UH and Harrison Ford is

616
00:32:35,800 --> 00:32:37,800
Speaker 1: left to pick up the pieces. Okay, we can't just

617
00:32:37,920 --> 00:32:40,160
Speaker 1: fully turn this into a movie crush episode. Now we've

618
00:32:40,160 --> 00:32:42,480
Speaker 1: got to get back to so we should probably get

619
00:32:42,480 --> 00:32:46,240
Speaker 1: into exploring some of the weird scientific tangents people have

620
00:32:46,720 --> 00:32:50,000
Speaker 1: gotten into on the subject of the Arc, and one

621
00:32:50,040 --> 00:32:53,080
Speaker 1: of them that you can clearly look at is the

622
00:32:53,160 --> 00:32:55,760
Speaker 1: idea of the m Rods and what happened with the

623
00:32:55,880 --> 00:32:58,120
Speaker 1: Arc in the presence of the Philistines. If you assume

624
00:32:58,200 --> 00:33:00,960
Speaker 1: this story is based on any kind of historical memory

625
00:33:01,080 --> 00:33:05,400
Speaker 1: or even an exaggerated version of something that people remembered, right, Yeah,

626
00:33:05,400 --> 00:33:07,320
Speaker 1: because this is getting to one of my favorite things

627
00:33:07,320 --> 00:33:09,600
Speaker 1: about the Arc, the idea that it brings plague and

628
00:33:09,800 --> 00:33:12,600
Speaker 1: or madness to those who should not possess it, that

629
00:33:12,720 --> 00:33:16,200
Speaker 1: it is a dangerous artifact. So should we explore the

630
00:33:16,240 --> 00:33:19,520
Speaker 1: idea of the arc as a sort of bio weapon. Yeah,

631
00:33:19,600 --> 00:33:22,800
Speaker 1: let's talk about the Arc as plague bearer. I just

632
00:33:22,800 --> 00:33:25,440
Speaker 1: want to remind everybody that previous passage that we read,

633
00:33:25,760 --> 00:33:28,440
Speaker 1: and it was so that after they had carried it about,

634
00:33:28,680 --> 00:33:30,800
Speaker 1: the hand of the Lord was against the city with

635
00:33:30,880 --> 00:33:33,200
Speaker 1: a very great destruction, and he smoked the men of

636
00:33:33,240 --> 00:33:36,880
Speaker 1: the city, both small and great, and they had immrods

637
00:33:37,000 --> 00:33:41,040
Speaker 1: in their secret parts. Now, let's talk about those emrods.

638
00:33:41,080 --> 00:33:48,280
Speaker 1: So those immrods are often interpreted as hemorrhoids. That would

639
00:33:48,400 --> 00:33:51,719
Speaker 1: there seems to be a cognate issue there, and a

640
00:33:51,760 --> 00:33:54,200
Speaker 1: lot seems to have been written about them over the years,

641
00:33:54,600 --> 00:33:56,800
Speaker 1: in part because it seems like anytime you have a

642
00:33:56,840 --> 00:34:00,960
Speaker 1: hemorrhoid paper, and there are a lot herroid papers out there,

643
00:34:01,720 --> 00:34:05,040
Speaker 1: the doctor's writing them often like to throw in a

644
00:34:05,040 --> 00:34:07,640
Speaker 1: little bit of biblical flavor at the beginning. Yes, how

645
00:34:07,680 --> 00:34:10,560
Speaker 1: many times has this story been cited in the International

646
00:34:10,640 --> 00:34:13,359
Speaker 1: Journal of Hemorrhoid Research. Right, yeah, right at the very

647
00:34:13,360 --> 00:34:15,719
Speaker 1: beginning of any paper, because you're ultimately just going to

648
00:34:15,800 --> 00:34:18,480
Speaker 1: talk about swollen veins and the lower part of the

649
00:34:18,520 --> 00:34:20,360
Speaker 1: rectum and anus. But then you can make it a

650
00:34:20,360 --> 00:34:23,239
Speaker 1: little magical right at the start. You can hook readers. Right,

651
00:34:23,360 --> 00:34:25,520
Speaker 1: So for people who don't actually know, can you just

652
00:34:25,680 --> 00:34:29,200
Speaker 1: briefly explain what a hemorrhoid is? Yeah, it is swollen

653
00:34:29,320 --> 00:34:32,799
Speaker 1: veins and the lower part of the rectum and anus. Okay, Yeah,

654
00:34:32,840 --> 00:34:34,880
Speaker 1: that's all it is. Yeah, that basically. I mean you

655
00:34:34,920 --> 00:34:38,000
Speaker 1: can get more detailed in describing what causes them and

656
00:34:38,040 --> 00:34:42,319
Speaker 1: of course the treatments that that are necessary. But it's

657
00:34:42,320 --> 00:34:45,319
Speaker 1: been a problem for a long time. Obviously, it's something

658
00:34:45,360 --> 00:34:48,319
Speaker 1: that may have been described here in the Bible, uh,

659
00:34:48,400 --> 00:34:50,759
Speaker 1: and just throughout human history people have had to deal

660
00:34:50,840 --> 00:34:55,480
Speaker 1: with hemorrhroids. Now, if the story actually does mean that

661
00:34:55,520 --> 00:34:58,839
Speaker 1: the Philistines got hemorrhoids, I know it's been translated in

662
00:34:58,880 --> 00:35:02,239
Speaker 1: other ways, But if it did mean that, would the

663
00:35:02,280 --> 00:35:06,160
Speaker 1: story be best interpreted as something that's supposed to be humorous?

664
00:35:06,560 --> 00:35:10,160
Speaker 1: Is it like a joke on the Philistines? You know

665
00:35:10,280 --> 00:35:13,640
Speaker 1: this comes down? Oh man, you you kind of end

666
00:35:13,719 --> 00:35:16,640
Speaker 1: up asking a big question about humor there, right, because

667
00:35:16,640 --> 00:35:19,440
Speaker 1: I don't think hemorroids are ever humorous to the individual

668
00:35:19,520 --> 00:35:21,759
Speaker 1: that has them, right, But clearly we have a lot

669
00:35:21,760 --> 00:35:24,880
Speaker 1: of jokes about hemorrhoids. It's really funny when your enemies

670
00:35:24,920 --> 00:35:28,279
Speaker 1: get one, I guess, I mean it's it's it's kind

671
00:35:28,280 --> 00:35:33,160
Speaker 1: of an insulting curse from a powerful god figure. Right,

672
00:35:33,239 --> 00:35:36,440
Speaker 1: It's not just like causing them to go blind or something.

673
00:35:36,440 --> 00:35:40,239
Speaker 1: It's giving them this this annoying health problem. And then

674
00:35:40,239 --> 00:35:42,400
Speaker 1: there's this other part to it as well. So the

675
00:35:42,440 --> 00:35:45,719
Speaker 1: Philistines suffer these after they steal it and they locked

676
00:35:45,719 --> 00:35:47,359
Speaker 1: it up in the temple of Dagon, and we see

677
00:35:47,400 --> 00:35:52,319
Speaker 1: the statue of Dagon fall over multiple times. Um and

678
00:35:52,400 --> 00:35:54,880
Speaker 1: the arc of course not only mutilated there with their

679
00:35:54,920 --> 00:35:58,640
Speaker 1: god's statue, it also caused these these imrods as well

680
00:35:58,680 --> 00:36:03,200
Speaker 1: as a plague of rampaiy mice. The emerrods again are

681
00:36:03,200 --> 00:36:06,600
Speaker 1: also sometimes referred to as tumors. So a lot of

682
00:36:06,600 --> 00:36:09,480
Speaker 1: people have have looked at these examples and tried to

683
00:36:09,560 --> 00:36:12,400
Speaker 1: figure out what could possibly be going on here, because

684
00:36:12,480 --> 00:36:15,879
Speaker 1: if these these imrods be the hemorrhoids or some sort

685
00:36:15,920 --> 00:36:18,399
Speaker 1: of a tumor. Well, that's that's a symptom. That's something

686
00:36:18,440 --> 00:36:21,480
Speaker 1: we can look look to that we can analyze via

687
00:36:21,560 --> 00:36:24,000
Speaker 1: modern medicine, and then maybe we can look at some

688
00:36:24,000 --> 00:36:26,000
Speaker 1: of these other elements and try and piece something together

689
00:36:26,040 --> 00:36:28,160
Speaker 1: as well. Now, just to be clear, once again, we

690
00:36:28,200 --> 00:36:31,280
Speaker 1: mentioned this earlier, but we don't We don't have direct

691
00:36:31,320 --> 00:36:34,759
Speaker 1: evidence that this story actually happened. We right, We don't

692
00:36:34,840 --> 00:36:38,040
Speaker 1: know that this is based on something that people remember,

693
00:36:38,120 --> 00:36:39,759
Speaker 1: but it could be it could be based on some

694
00:36:39,880 --> 00:36:42,879
Speaker 1: kind of historical event. Right. And likewise, a lot of

695
00:36:43,080 --> 00:36:45,040
Speaker 1: a lot of work has been done looking at Okay,

696
00:36:45,040 --> 00:36:47,759
Speaker 1: we had we had immerrods and we have mice. What's

697
00:36:47,800 --> 00:36:50,160
Speaker 1: the connection there, when in reality you could have two

698
00:36:50,239 --> 00:36:53,920
Speaker 1: separate stories then end up being combined into a story

699
00:36:54,200 --> 00:36:57,080
Speaker 1: that has immerrods and mice. So, as I said, a

700
00:36:57,160 --> 00:36:59,080
Speaker 1: number of people have written about this. Two of the

701
00:36:59,080 --> 00:37:02,960
Speaker 1: earlier ones were ninety century historians Gaston Maspero and Archibald

702
00:37:02,960 --> 00:37:07,680
Speaker 1: Henry Says, who summarized the quote. The Philistine soothsayer, being

703
00:37:07,760 --> 00:37:10,560
Speaker 1: consulted at the end of seven months, ordered that the

704
00:37:10,560 --> 00:37:14,440
Speaker 1: solemn sacrifices should be offered up and the arc restored

705
00:37:14,480 --> 00:37:19,040
Speaker 1: to its rightful worshippers, accompanied by expiatory offerings of five

706
00:37:19,080 --> 00:37:22,880
Speaker 1: gold mice and five gold tumors, one for each of

707
00:37:22,920 --> 00:37:26,960
Speaker 1: the repentant cities. So they're not only saying, here, take

708
00:37:27,000 --> 00:37:29,680
Speaker 1: your arc back because it is causing mice to be

709
00:37:29,719 --> 00:37:32,560
Speaker 1: everywhere and has given us some weird growths. They're saying,

710
00:37:32,640 --> 00:37:35,600
Speaker 1: here it is back, but also here's here's some golden

711
00:37:35,640 --> 00:37:39,080
Speaker 1: mice and some golden hemorrhoids or or tumors or something

712
00:37:39,520 --> 00:37:42,200
Speaker 1: uh too, sort of as payment or perhaps warning who

713
00:37:42,560 --> 00:37:44,520
Speaker 1: whoever gets the arc next. Now, I don't want to

714
00:37:44,520 --> 00:37:46,800
Speaker 1: get too far ahead of things here, but I can't

715
00:37:46,800 --> 00:37:49,319
Speaker 1: help but notice, if you've got mice and you've got

716
00:37:50,040 --> 00:37:53,040
Speaker 1: tumors or lumps of some kind, I'm going to start

717
00:37:53,040 --> 00:37:56,520
Speaker 1: thinking about bubonic plague. That's right, because bubonic plague does

718
00:37:56,600 --> 00:38:00,360
Speaker 1: result in bu bos, which are swellings of the lemp notes.

719
00:38:00,560 --> 00:38:02,600
Speaker 1: So that could sort of be classed as something like

720
00:38:02,680 --> 00:38:05,440
Speaker 1: a tumor. You get a lump under your skin, right,

721
00:38:05,520 --> 00:38:07,520
Speaker 1: And if you if you want to do a Google search,

722
00:38:07,560 --> 00:38:10,759
Speaker 1: you can find images of these uh, these swellings, and

723
00:38:10,760 --> 00:38:14,280
Speaker 1: indeed they look kind of like like lumpy tumor like growths.

724
00:38:15,400 --> 00:38:18,760
Speaker 1: Frank R. Freeman, in a two thousand five Royal Society

725
00:38:18,760 --> 00:38:21,840
Speaker 1: of Medicine article highlighted some some other writings on the topic,

726
00:38:21,880 --> 00:38:25,279
Speaker 1: including a two thousand argument by JP Griffin that it

727
00:38:25,400 --> 00:38:30,160
Speaker 1: was in fact plague that was afflicting the Philistines here.

728
00:38:30,680 --> 00:38:33,920
Speaker 1: But then one W. M. S. Russell insisted that the

729
00:38:33,960 --> 00:38:38,160
Speaker 1: tumors were emorrhoids due to dysenterry and that quote the

730
00:38:38,280 --> 00:38:40,640
Speaker 1: rat carrier of the plague wasn't in the region at

731
00:38:40,680 --> 00:38:44,120
Speaker 1: the time of the described events, but that quotes Since then,

732
00:38:44,200 --> 00:38:48,480
Speaker 1: advances in archaeology have shifted the weight of evidence towards Griffin. Moreover,

733
00:38:48,640 --> 00:38:51,160
Speaker 1: the emmrods of the King James Bible appear in all

734
00:38:51,239 --> 00:38:54,760
Speaker 1: modern translations as tumors, So if you're just trying, really

735
00:38:54,800 --> 00:38:57,359
Speaker 1: trying to make it work as hemorrhoids, you're probably out

736
00:38:57,360 --> 00:39:01,399
Speaker 1: of luck. Right. It seems like like tumors are more

737
00:39:01,480 --> 00:39:05,640
Speaker 1: likely interpretation, and that leads a number of people to say, well,

738
00:39:05,680 --> 00:39:09,560
Speaker 1: maybe it was it was bubonic plague. Here's another quote

739
00:39:09,560 --> 00:39:13,680
Speaker 1: from Freeman. Recent archaeological evidence has caused a rethinking of

740
00:39:13,680 --> 00:39:17,000
Speaker 1: plague in the ancient Near East. Fossilized remains of the

741
00:39:17,040 --> 00:39:21,080
Speaker 1: plague flea have been found in large numbers in Amarna, Egypt,

742
00:39:21,200 --> 00:39:24,040
Speaker 1: and since a Marna was occupied for only a few years,

743
00:39:24,400 --> 00:39:27,600
Speaker 1: we can date this contact between human beings and plague

744
00:39:27,600 --> 00:39:32,000
Speaker 1: fleas accurately to about fifty b C, which is before

745
00:39:32,040 --> 00:39:35,560
Speaker 1: the events described in the Book of Samuel. Moreover, archaeological

746
00:39:35,560 --> 00:39:39,040
Speaker 1: studies in the Nile Valley indicate that our rattus was

747
00:39:39,400 --> 00:39:43,240
Speaker 1: introduced at this time, probably via ships from India. Evidence

748
00:39:43,280 --> 00:39:46,320
Speaker 1: of bubonic plague has not been seen in Egyptian mummies,

749
00:39:46,520 --> 00:39:49,440
Speaker 1: but all the vectors were in place. Okay, so this

750
00:39:49,520 --> 00:39:52,759
Speaker 1: is saying based on some evidence we have there. The

751
00:39:52,840 --> 00:39:56,920
Speaker 1: historical setting is is there like you could imagine that

752
00:39:56,960 --> 00:40:00,160
Speaker 1: there could be bubonic plague at the right time in

753
00:40:00,200 --> 00:40:02,319
Speaker 1: the right place for this to be what is what

754
00:40:02,520 --> 00:40:04,920
Speaker 1: is described in the story about the arc in the Philistines.

755
00:40:05,960 --> 00:40:07,880
Speaker 1: That being said, I don't think anybody is arguing that

756
00:40:07,920 --> 00:40:11,560
Speaker 1: the arc was full of plague infested mice. This would

757
00:40:11,560 --> 00:40:16,360
Speaker 1: just be a situation where the soothsayers made sort of

758
00:40:16,400 --> 00:40:21,160
Speaker 1: a connection between plague mice and the illness, but instead

759
00:40:21,200 --> 00:40:23,440
Speaker 1: of connecting those two things together, they just assumed they

760
00:40:23,480 --> 00:40:27,120
Speaker 1: were both curses of the Ark. Now, in the minute,

761
00:40:27,160 --> 00:40:29,440
Speaker 1: I do want to come back and discuss the possibility

762
00:40:29,640 --> 00:40:33,720
Speaker 1: of bio warfare and germ warfare in the ancient world. Yes,

763
00:40:33,800 --> 00:40:35,680
Speaker 1: and now before we get to that, I do I

764
00:40:35,719 --> 00:40:39,239
Speaker 1: do want to also mentioned that one doctor Otto news

765
00:40:39,280 --> 00:40:44,320
Speaker 1: stator In considered that the swellings described here might be possible.

766
00:40:44,320 --> 00:40:47,719
Speaker 1: It might possibly be due to syphiletic infection, which is

767
00:40:47,880 --> 00:40:51,160
Speaker 1: that the Philistines would have contracted syphilis from the Ark

768
00:40:51,200 --> 00:40:54,800
Speaker 1: of the Covenant or lahore again, that an outbreak of

769
00:40:54,840 --> 00:40:57,320
Speaker 1: syphilis lined up with the presence of the arc or

770
00:40:57,440 --> 00:41:00,360
Speaker 1: was attributed to the presence of the arc in some action.

771
00:41:00,560 --> 00:41:04,640
Speaker 1: Is there anything that syphilis doesn't explain? But I mean, yeah,

772
00:41:04,640 --> 00:41:07,160
Speaker 1: if we go back to to our earlier discussions of

773
00:41:07,200 --> 00:41:10,040
Speaker 1: syphilis on this uh this podcast, it it seems like

774
00:41:10,040 --> 00:41:12,919
Speaker 1: you can pretty much describe just about everything. The only

775
00:41:12,920 --> 00:41:16,120
Speaker 1: thing is you probably get into an argument about when

776
00:41:16,200 --> 00:41:19,600
Speaker 1: syphilis would have impacted a given region. No, by that,

777
00:41:19,719 --> 00:41:23,000
Speaker 1: I didn't mean that syphilis is a good explanation for everything.

778
00:41:23,040 --> 00:41:25,839
Speaker 1: I just people have tried it on everything. It's like

779
00:41:26,040 --> 00:41:30,600
Speaker 1: every powerful force in human history. For sure. Every historical

780
00:41:30,640 --> 00:41:34,960
Speaker 1: event has a syphilis hypothesis, as will come up repeatedly

781
00:41:34,960 --> 00:41:38,520
Speaker 1: in this episode. It's not necessary to invoke bronze punk

782
00:41:38,560 --> 00:41:42,400
Speaker 1: biowarfare explanations to justify legends of the ark. But it

783
00:41:42,640 --> 00:41:47,400
Speaker 1: is certainly, I think plausible that forms of biological warfare

784
00:41:47,480 --> 00:41:51,160
Speaker 1: were practiced in the ancient world. That who knows that

785
00:41:51,239 --> 00:41:54,160
Speaker 1: the ancient Uh, the ancient Hebrews, or any of the

786
00:41:54,160 --> 00:41:56,720
Speaker 1: other peoples of the time period could have figured out

787
00:41:57,040 --> 00:41:59,359
Speaker 1: how to do germ warfare and could have used it.

788
00:41:59,560 --> 00:42:02,279
Speaker 1: And in fact, we have some pretty interesting evidence that

789
00:42:02,400 --> 00:42:05,919
Speaker 1: it did actually happen, at least in one case UH

790
00:42:05,960 --> 00:42:10,600
Speaker 1: in the second millennium BC. That's right, we're talking about

791
00:42:10,880 --> 00:42:16,080
Speaker 1: the Hittites of Asia Minor going back to whatc around then,

792
00:42:16,160 --> 00:42:19,600
Speaker 1: so I think in the fourteenth century BC. So there

793
00:42:19,640 --> 00:42:22,080
Speaker 1: was an epidemic at the time in the fourteenth century BC,

794
00:42:22,320 --> 00:42:26,280
Speaker 1: known to historians as the Hittite plague, that spread throughout

795
00:42:26,280 --> 00:42:30,520
Speaker 1: the Middle East, And historical records of this pestilence appear

796
00:42:30,560 --> 00:42:34,879
Speaker 1: in correspondence Stella to the Egyptian pharaoh aknat In from

797
00:42:34,880 --> 00:42:39,959
Speaker 1: around thirteen thirty five BC, and they say that there's

798
00:42:39,960 --> 00:42:43,080
Speaker 1: a horrible plague that's spread throughout the land. It's affecting

799
00:42:43,200 --> 00:42:46,040
Speaker 1: some Phoenician cities, and there was a fear that it

800
00:42:46,080 --> 00:42:48,920
Speaker 1: was being spread by donkeys, which led to them barring

801
00:42:48,960 --> 00:42:53,040
Speaker 1: people from infected cities from coming into other cities and

802
00:42:53,120 --> 00:42:57,920
Speaker 1: from preventing donkeys from being used in traveling caravans. And

803
00:42:58,000 --> 00:43:00,919
Speaker 1: so there is a paper I wanted to talk about

804
00:43:00,960 --> 00:43:04,520
Speaker 1: published in Medical Hypotheses in two thousand seven by a

805
00:43:04,640 --> 00:43:08,800
Speaker 1: microbiologist named Zero e gin No trevis Sinato called the

806
00:43:08,880 --> 00:43:12,600
Speaker 1: Hittite plague an epidemic of tularemia and the first record

807
00:43:12,600 --> 00:43:16,640
Speaker 1: of biological warfare. And this is a really interesting hypothesis.

808
00:43:16,760 --> 00:43:21,160
Speaker 1: So Trevisano believes that the evidence indicates that the Hittite

809
00:43:21,239 --> 00:43:25,400
Speaker 1: plague was in fact an epidemic of tularemia, which is

810
00:43:25,440 --> 00:43:30,520
Speaker 1: a bacterial infection caused by the Bacterium francis sella to lawrensis.

811
00:43:31,200 --> 00:43:35,200
Speaker 1: Tularemia can spread between animals and humans, so it's potentially

812
00:43:35,320 --> 00:43:38,640
Speaker 1: zoonotic infection UH and it can spread via several routes,

813
00:43:38,680 --> 00:43:42,759
Speaker 1: including tick bites and by just direct contact or inhalation

814
00:43:42,840 --> 00:43:46,600
Speaker 1: of infected aerosols. It has different symptoms depending on the

815
00:43:46,680 --> 00:43:50,480
Speaker 1: route of transmission, including high fever and ulcers and swelling

816
00:43:50,480 --> 00:43:53,840
Speaker 1: of the lymph glands and the pneumonic version of this

817
00:43:54,000 --> 00:43:57,560
Speaker 1: infection leads to a cough, chest pain, difficulty breathing, and

818
00:43:57,600 --> 00:44:00,879
Speaker 1: can definitely be deadly to Tularemias is actually often known

819
00:44:00,880 --> 00:44:04,239
Speaker 1: to kill off large numbers of rabbits, which has led

820
00:44:04,280 --> 00:44:08,000
Speaker 1: to it being commonly known as rabbit fever, and especially

821
00:44:08,000 --> 00:44:11,680
Speaker 1: without modern medical intervention, primarily antibiotics, it can be fatal

822
00:44:11,719 --> 00:44:15,840
Speaker 1: to humans, so it is a deadly dangerous disease. Trevis

823
00:44:15,840 --> 00:44:19,000
Speaker 1: Sinato says that after the outbreak of this plague hit

824
00:44:19,040 --> 00:44:22,319
Speaker 1: the Phoenician city of Simura, the Hittites also known as

825
00:44:22,400 --> 00:44:25,080
Speaker 1: the nest Shites, attacked the area and looted it. So

826
00:44:25,120 --> 00:44:27,839
Speaker 1: you've got the city weakened by disease. The Hittites say, hey,

827
00:44:27,880 --> 00:44:30,480
Speaker 1: some free stuff, so they run in. They attacked the

828
00:44:30,520 --> 00:44:34,160
Speaker 1: city and they looted, taking along live stock among the

829
00:44:34,200 --> 00:44:38,880
Speaker 1: many spoils of war. But soon after they returned, the

830
00:44:38,960 --> 00:44:41,960
Speaker 1: Hittite raiders were hit with an outbreak of disease that

831
00:44:42,000 --> 00:44:46,279
Speaker 1: Trevis Sano. Trevis Sinato also thinks was to laremia, and

832
00:44:46,320 --> 00:44:49,040
Speaker 1: this would make sense because they brought the livestock. The

833
00:44:49,080 --> 00:44:53,640
Speaker 1: animal hosts were arcs if you will, for the bacteria.

834
00:44:53,920 --> 00:44:57,600
Speaker 1: Then while the Hittites were weakened with this epidemic. Another

835
00:44:57,680 --> 00:45:01,839
Speaker 1: people known as the r za Ones attacked them. Then.

836
00:45:01,920 --> 00:45:05,640
Speaker 1: Trevis Sinato writes that their historical records that indicate strange

837
00:45:05,640 --> 00:45:09,640
Speaker 1: incidents and when like wandering rams appeared in our Zawa,

838
00:45:10,200 --> 00:45:13,319
Speaker 1: and the Arzawans, of course wouldn't pass up free live stock,

839
00:45:13,440 --> 00:45:16,239
Speaker 1: so they incorporated these rams into their flocks. But then

840
00:45:16,680 --> 00:45:20,000
Speaker 1: they were hit with the disease, probably to laremia and

841
00:45:20,000 --> 00:45:22,719
Speaker 1: Trevis Sinato also mentioned the story that there was this

842
00:45:22,880 --> 00:45:27,200
Speaker 1: Arzawan leader called Hsidas who was struck by a divine

843
00:45:27,239 --> 00:45:32,360
Speaker 1: thunderbolt in the knee, disabling him. Quote. A ruler infected

844
00:45:32,400 --> 00:45:35,239
Speaker 1: with the plague and symptoms thereof being observed in the

845
00:45:35,320 --> 00:45:39,440
Speaker 1: knees or in a region euphemistically and or puritanically described

846
00:45:39,520 --> 00:45:42,120
Speaker 1: as the knees fit the metaphor. Oh. This is the

847
00:45:42,160 --> 00:45:45,200
Speaker 1: idea where like if an individual is wounded in the

848
00:45:45,560 --> 00:45:47,880
Speaker 1: in the groin, they describe it as the knee instead

849
00:45:48,040 --> 00:45:50,520
Speaker 1: or like the foot to like often in the Bible,

850
00:45:50,719 --> 00:45:54,560
Speaker 1: the use of the word foot is clearly a euphemism

851
00:45:54,640 --> 00:45:59,040
Speaker 1: for the genitals. So here's Trevis Sinato's hypothesis. It's the

852
00:45:59,040 --> 00:46:03,680
Speaker 1: the hit tights who experience with this epidemic. Deliberately planted

853
00:46:03,800 --> 00:46:08,360
Speaker 1: disease carrying rams among their enemies in order to deliberately

854
00:46:08,520 --> 00:46:12,040
Speaker 1: spread the rabbit fever the tularemia and weaken those enemies.

855
00:46:12,520 --> 00:46:14,840
Speaker 1: And if that's true, it seems like it worked. The

856
00:46:15,520 --> 00:46:18,319
Speaker 1: Lands were unable to defeat the Hittites after the fever

857
00:46:18,440 --> 00:46:21,440
Speaker 1: hit them, and we've got historical records that the Hittite

858
00:46:21,520 --> 00:46:25,279
Speaker 1: king wished plague upon the lands and that there was

859
00:46:25,360 --> 00:46:28,400
Speaker 1: this Hittite scapegoat ritual in which a ram and a

860
00:46:28,480 --> 00:46:32,040
Speaker 1: female attendant were sent out on the road, spreading disease

861
00:46:32,080 --> 00:46:35,840
Speaker 1: where they went. So we don't have direct evidence that

862
00:46:35,880 --> 00:46:38,880
Speaker 1: the Hittites knew exactly what they were doing, you know,

863
00:46:38,920 --> 00:46:41,920
Speaker 1: that they knew they were spreading disease, or that they

864
00:46:42,000 --> 00:46:45,279
Speaker 1: understood how the spread of disease was happening. So while

865
00:46:45,320 --> 00:46:47,360
Speaker 1: the evidence for this is very interesting, I would not

866
00:46:47,440 --> 00:46:50,040
Speaker 1: say it's a proven case of germ warfare, and that

867
00:46:50,480 --> 00:46:53,320
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem like this has become accepted theory about

868
00:46:53,320 --> 00:46:55,160
Speaker 1: what happened in this case, but it does seem like

869
00:46:55,320 --> 00:46:59,200
Speaker 1: a very promising hypothesis. But despite not having a germ

870
00:46:59,280 --> 00:47:01,840
Speaker 1: theory of disease, I think it's certainly feasible that ancient

871
00:47:01,880 --> 00:47:06,959
Speaker 1: people's could work out basic principles of epidemic transmission, such

872
00:47:06,960 --> 00:47:11,080
Speaker 1: as that infected or maybe cursed animals would spread the

873
00:47:11,120 --> 00:47:14,360
Speaker 1: disease to people that came in contact with, and using

874
00:47:14,400 --> 00:47:17,400
Speaker 1: this basic knowledge, it's possible that ancient people's could have

875
00:47:17,520 --> 00:47:21,480
Speaker 1: deliberately spread diseases among their enemies. And it's clear that

876
00:47:21,600 --> 00:47:25,040
Speaker 1: later armies with not much more scientific understanding than the

877
00:47:25,040 --> 00:47:28,080
Speaker 1: ancient people's had did this. Yeah, indeed, I mean two

878
00:47:28,080 --> 00:47:31,040
Speaker 1: of them. The most probably famous examples of this would

879
00:47:31,080 --> 00:47:35,480
Speaker 1: be throwing dead things, be they animals or soldiers uh

880
00:47:35,520 --> 00:47:38,640
Speaker 1: over the walls into a besieged city, or throwing that

881
00:47:38,719 --> 00:47:41,200
Speaker 1: kind of stuff down a well to try and destroy

882
00:47:41,640 --> 00:47:45,839
Speaker 1: poison uh an enemy's drinking water. Yeah. So I just

883
00:47:45,880 --> 00:47:47,920
Speaker 1: wanted to mention a few examples that are cited in

884
00:47:47,920 --> 00:47:52,040
Speaker 1: a paper called the History of Biological Warfare by Friedrich Frishnecht,

885
00:47:52,600 --> 00:47:54,920
Speaker 1: and this these would all be before the germ theory

886
00:47:54,920 --> 00:47:57,719
Speaker 1: of disease, but he mentions that in eleven fifty five,

887
00:47:58,480 --> 00:48:02,400
Speaker 1: Emperor Barbarossa poison water wells with human bodies in Italy.

888
00:48:02,960 --> 00:48:06,880
Speaker 1: In thirteen forty six, the Mongols catapulted bodies of plague

889
00:48:06,920 --> 00:48:09,520
Speaker 1: victims over the city walls of Kafa and the crime

890
00:48:09,719 --> 00:48:14,200
Speaker 1: Crimean peninsula, And in fourteen the Spanish mixed wine with

891
00:48:14,320 --> 00:48:17,840
Speaker 1: blood of leprosy patients to sell to their French enemies

892
00:48:17,880 --> 00:48:22,600
Speaker 1: in Naples a cocktail. So while I would absolutely say

893
00:48:22,600 --> 00:48:26,560
Speaker 1: that we do not need to resort to explanations like

894
00:48:26,680 --> 00:48:30,640
Speaker 1: this to explain the origins of these stories, at the

895
00:48:30,680 --> 00:48:34,680
Speaker 1: same time, I think it's fascinating and highly plausible that

896
00:48:34,760 --> 00:48:39,720
Speaker 1: there could have been cases where ancient people's used biological

897
00:48:39,840 --> 00:48:43,200
Speaker 1: or germ based weapons to hurt their enemies. Like you

898
00:48:43,239 --> 00:48:46,440
Speaker 1: can imagine a vessel or a container as some kind

899
00:48:46,440 --> 00:48:50,719
Speaker 1: of biological trojan horse, tricking enemies into taking home some

900
00:48:50,840 --> 00:48:53,400
Speaker 1: disease vector with them. What if you you get people

901
00:48:53,440 --> 00:48:56,160
Speaker 1: to steal your arc and it's actually a box full

902
00:48:56,200 --> 00:48:59,880
Speaker 1: of rabbit corpses covered into laremia tis. Yeah, I to

903
00:49:00,160 --> 00:49:02,200
Speaker 1: I would have assumed they look inside it before they

904
00:49:02,200 --> 00:49:04,319
Speaker 1: take it home. I mean that just seems like like

905
00:49:05,160 --> 00:49:07,880
Speaker 1: this is common sense. Well, maybe you make a crafty

906
00:49:07,920 --> 00:49:10,759
Speaker 1: one with like some hidden you know, containers on the

907
00:49:10,880 --> 00:49:13,600
Speaker 1: compartment stuff on the hidden compartments, with grates for the

908
00:49:13,640 --> 00:49:15,439
Speaker 1: ticks to get out. You can. You can get really

909
00:49:15,480 --> 00:49:18,879
Speaker 1: creative with this. So there no instructions about that, though

910
00:49:19,040 --> 00:49:22,440
Speaker 1: in the biblical account, it's true there are not. Again,

911
00:49:22,560 --> 00:49:25,520
Speaker 1: but I'm not saying that this actually happened and explains

912
00:49:25,560 --> 00:49:27,319
Speaker 1: the story. I don't think you need to go there.

913
00:49:28,200 --> 00:49:29,919
Speaker 1: All right, we're gonna take one more break, and when

914
00:49:29,920 --> 00:49:33,400
Speaker 1: we come back, we'll talk a little bit about radiation

915
00:49:33,960 --> 00:49:36,680
Speaker 1: and uh, the idea of the arc being indeed a

916
00:49:36,800 --> 00:49:42,080
Speaker 1: radio for talking to God. All right, we're back. So

917
00:49:42,280 --> 00:49:45,000
Speaker 1: I I mentioned earlier, you know, the influence of fiction

918
00:49:45,239 --> 00:49:50,040
Speaker 1: on our considerations of the arc, and I definitely remember

919
00:49:50,239 --> 00:49:53,200
Speaker 1: being I guess this was like junior high reading Stephen

920
00:49:53,280 --> 00:49:57,160
Speaker 1: King's The Stand and then also looking around in the

921
00:49:57,160 --> 00:49:59,760
Speaker 1: Bible and thinking about the arc of the Covenant because

922
00:49:59,800 --> 00:50:04,000
Speaker 1: of was this this wonderful sequence throughout the later portions

923
00:50:04,000 --> 00:50:06,799
Speaker 1: of Stephen King's The Stand And which what was his name?

924
00:50:06,920 --> 00:50:09,480
Speaker 1: Do you remember this character? Which character? The character is

925
00:50:09,560 --> 00:50:13,439
Speaker 1: dragging the the atomic bomb across the trash trash can man? Yeah,

926
00:50:13,480 --> 00:50:17,319
Speaker 1: Donald Merwin, Albert that's good. Do you remember his whole name? Yeah?

927
00:50:17,360 --> 00:50:20,319
Speaker 1: I just remember him just being like the melty bomb guy,

928
00:50:20,760 --> 00:50:25,320
Speaker 1: because he's just he's just ravaged by radiation, sickness, and mutation.

929
00:50:25,400 --> 00:50:28,399
Speaker 1: He's just his skins basically dripping off his body as

930
00:50:28,440 --> 00:50:32,720
Speaker 1: he drags this, uh, this bomb into the final scene

931
00:50:32,760 --> 00:50:35,480
Speaker 1: of the entire book. Well, based on a kind of

932
00:50:35,680 --> 00:50:39,680
Speaker 1: atomic age monster movie understanding of how radioactivity works, you

933
00:50:39,719 --> 00:50:44,239
Speaker 1: could certainly imagine somebody looking at the story of oh

934
00:50:44,480 --> 00:50:47,040
Speaker 1: the you know, they took this, this thing killed people

935
00:50:47,440 --> 00:50:50,000
Speaker 1: and sometimes at one point people took it and they

936
00:50:50,040 --> 00:50:54,359
Speaker 1: got tumors. This must be radioactive. Maybe it's a plutonium bomb. Yeah,

937
00:50:54,360 --> 00:50:56,520
Speaker 1: it sounds like something right out of a Fallout game

938
00:50:56,600 --> 00:50:59,320
Speaker 1: or a plan of the Apes movie. Right, yeah, Um,

939
00:51:00,080 --> 00:51:03,480
Speaker 1: But of course we we can't really seriously consider any

940
00:51:03,719 --> 00:51:08,160
Speaker 1: explanation that involves an ancient atomic weapon. No, there's just

941
00:51:08,239 --> 00:51:11,360
Speaker 1: no explanation for why that would have occurred, right. I

942
00:51:11,400 --> 00:51:15,080
Speaker 1: think the use of germ warfare among the ancients, even

943
00:51:15,080 --> 00:51:17,040
Speaker 1: though they might not have had a germ theory of disease,

944
00:51:17,080 --> 00:51:19,279
Speaker 1: I do think it's plausible given what they could have

945
00:51:19,280 --> 00:51:23,080
Speaker 1: figured out just based on experience. It is not plausible

946
00:51:23,120 --> 00:51:26,160
Speaker 1: at all that they I mean not even close, that

947
00:51:26,239 --> 00:51:31,200
Speaker 1: they came up with any kind of highly radioactive materials, right, Because,

948
00:51:31,360 --> 00:51:33,440
Speaker 1: of course, the other side of the equation is, hey,

949
00:51:33,480 --> 00:51:37,000
Speaker 1: we have naturally occurring radioactive materials. Perhaps they just dug

950
00:51:37,040 --> 00:51:39,200
Speaker 1: that stuff up and stuff the arc full of it,

951
00:51:39,719 --> 00:51:42,560
Speaker 1: because I mean, certainly there are you have sites like

952
00:51:42,680 --> 00:51:47,080
Speaker 1: Ramsar Iran that did have a lot of naturally occurring

953
00:51:47,320 --> 00:51:51,359
Speaker 1: radioactive materials there, but they still don't produce anything near

954
00:51:51,400 --> 00:51:55,560
Speaker 1: the high level doses required to cause radiation sickness. Digging

955
00:51:55,719 --> 00:51:58,400
Speaker 1: uranium out of the ground even it's not going to

956
00:51:58,480 --> 00:52:01,879
Speaker 1: be anything like that. The highly radioactive elements we would

957
00:52:01,960 --> 00:52:06,040
Speaker 1: find in like nuclear reactor fuel or nuclear weapons exist

958
00:52:06,120 --> 00:52:10,600
Speaker 1: only in extremely tiny trace amounts naturally, and to produce

959
00:52:10,640 --> 00:52:13,799
Speaker 1: significant amounts of something like uranium two thirty five or

960
00:52:13,840 --> 00:52:17,760
Speaker 1: plutonium two thirty nine, you have to subject naturally occurring

961
00:52:17,880 --> 00:52:21,480
Speaker 1: rocks containing mostly more stable elements like uranium two thirty

962
00:52:21,520 --> 00:52:24,080
Speaker 1: eight to some kind of process. Right, You've got to

963
00:52:24,080 --> 00:52:27,279
Speaker 1: like bombard it with neutrons and a reactor, or you've

964
00:52:27,280 --> 00:52:30,160
Speaker 1: got a centrifuge it to separate out the more dangerous

965
00:52:30,160 --> 00:52:34,360
Speaker 1: you two thirty five. The greatest natural terrestrial source of

966
00:52:34,440 --> 00:52:38,360
Speaker 1: human exposure to ionizing radiation seems to be radon gas.

967
00:52:38,880 --> 00:52:42,320
Speaker 1: Radon is one of the radioactive decay products of uranium,

968
00:52:42,360 --> 00:52:45,920
Speaker 1: along with other elements like radium and thorium. And I

969
00:52:46,000 --> 00:52:50,520
Speaker 1: just haven't found any evidence of a natural terrestrial radiation

970
00:52:50,560 --> 00:52:54,719
Speaker 1: source strong enough to cause acute or noticeable radiation poisoning

971
00:52:55,040 --> 00:52:59,040
Speaker 1: within a short span of time. Exposure to natural terrestrial

972
00:52:59,160 --> 00:53:02,560
Speaker 1: radiation source can be dangerous, for example rd on gas,

973
00:53:02,600 --> 00:53:05,520
Speaker 1: but this is more because it tends to increase something

974
00:53:05,560 --> 00:53:08,920
Speaker 1: like your risk of cancer over long periods of time.

975
00:53:09,600 --> 00:53:11,719
Speaker 1: For example, rate on gas is believed to be the

976
00:53:11,800 --> 00:53:15,480
Speaker 1: number one cause of lung cancer among non smokers and

977
00:53:15,880 --> 00:53:19,359
Speaker 1: the number two cause of lung cancer overall. So even

978
00:53:19,560 --> 00:53:23,400
Speaker 1: the most potent natural radiation sources, they're not gonna do

979
00:53:23,480 --> 00:53:27,000
Speaker 1: anything to you that you could detect, I think without

980
00:53:27,200 --> 00:53:31,440
Speaker 1: modern science. So I find it extremely unlikely that anybody

981
00:53:31,480 --> 00:53:34,719
Speaker 1: in the ancient world could have an acutely lethal radiation

982
00:53:34,800 --> 00:53:36,440
Speaker 1: source in a box. I think we've got to rule

983
00:53:36,520 --> 00:53:41,600
Speaker 1: that one out. Take that junior High Robert Lamp I'm sorry, no, no, now,

984
00:53:41,640 --> 00:53:43,399
Speaker 1: you made me feel like it's jerk. No, no, no,

985
00:53:43,440 --> 00:53:46,359
Speaker 1: this is this is this is not at all. I mean,

986
00:53:46,840 --> 00:53:48,960
Speaker 1: this was something I was curious about when I was

987
00:53:48,960 --> 00:53:51,120
Speaker 1: in junior high. And then later on you get to

988
00:53:51,120 --> 00:53:53,200
Speaker 1: look into it and realize that, well, that didn't really

989
00:53:53,280 --> 00:53:55,520
Speaker 1: pan out. Now, I do want to mention something that

990
00:53:55,600 --> 00:53:57,799
Speaker 1: I think we should come back and explore in a

991
00:53:57,920 --> 00:54:03,080
Speaker 1: future episode, which is the idea of natural nuclear reactors.

992
00:54:04,040 --> 00:54:07,400
Speaker 1: I don't believe any exists today, but there is evidence

993
00:54:07,440 --> 00:54:10,440
Speaker 1: that billions of years ago, long ago in Earth's history,

994
00:54:10,560 --> 00:54:13,640
Speaker 1: when the when the elements in the Earth's crust were younger,

995
00:54:14,239 --> 00:54:19,320
Speaker 1: there were some natural fission reactions that were sustained within rocks,

996
00:54:19,560 --> 00:54:22,800
Speaker 1: in in rock formations within the Earth's crust, like a

997
00:54:23,160 --> 00:54:25,440
Speaker 1: I know it, at least one side in Western Africa,

998
00:54:25,640 --> 00:54:29,480
Speaker 1: there are these two billion year old natural fission reactors

999
00:54:29,480 --> 00:54:31,360
Speaker 1: that we found. All this evidence of that there was

1000
00:54:31,440 --> 00:54:36,640
Speaker 1: essentially a nuclear fission reactor happening naturally under Earth's crust,

1001
00:54:36,920 --> 00:54:40,440
Speaker 1: and that's led to even these really strange hypotheses like

1002
00:54:40,480 --> 00:54:44,239
Speaker 1: alternative hypotheses for the origin of the Moon, which say

1003
00:54:44,320 --> 00:54:48,319
Speaker 1: that it was the result of a natural fission reaction

1004
00:54:48,480 --> 00:54:53,600
Speaker 1: explosion in Earth's crust billions of years ago, which that

1005
00:54:53,680 --> 00:54:56,080
Speaker 1: I know that is not a favorite hypothesis, but it

1006
00:54:56,120 --> 00:54:58,120
Speaker 1: has been put forward. I believe this was also the

1007
00:54:58,200 --> 00:55:02,840
Speaker 1: underlying science in the the more recent American Godzilla film.

1008
00:55:02,880 --> 00:55:05,160
Speaker 1: Oh wait what, Yeah, I believe so, Like the idea

1009
00:55:05,239 --> 00:55:07,960
Speaker 1: was that Godzilla is this ancient organism from back when

1010
00:55:08,000 --> 00:55:11,200
Speaker 1: you had naturally occurring high levels of radiation on Earth,

1011
00:55:11,239 --> 00:55:15,120
Speaker 1: and they ate radiation and that's their the whole reason

1012
00:55:15,160 --> 00:55:20,799
Speaker 1: for being gigantic radiations viewing monsters. What's the I don't

1013
00:55:20,840 --> 00:55:22,920
Speaker 1: think they get into. The one I've seen recently is

1014
00:55:22,960 --> 00:55:27,640
Speaker 1: shin Godzilla, which is absolutely amazing, But they don't really

1015
00:55:27,640 --> 00:55:30,239
Speaker 1: explore the origin, do they know? I don't think they do.

1016
00:55:30,320 --> 00:55:34,799
Speaker 1: They're more they're hyper concerned with the present. How do

1017
00:55:34,840 --> 00:55:37,200
Speaker 1: we react to this? What do we have legal authority

1018
00:55:37,280 --> 00:55:39,520
Speaker 1: to do? Where to hold the meeting? Yeah, that sort

1019
00:55:39,560 --> 00:55:41,640
Speaker 1: of thing. So those are both really fun movies in

1020
00:55:41,640 --> 00:55:44,560
Speaker 1: their their their own right. So at this point, let's

1021
00:55:44,800 --> 00:55:47,920
Speaker 1: let's come back to again that that fabulous quote from

1022
00:55:47,960 --> 00:55:53,000
Speaker 1: Belloc and it's a transmit to a radio for speaking

1023
00:55:53,040 --> 00:55:56,040
Speaker 1: to God. As a little more than Peter Laurie. But

1024
00:55:56,120 --> 00:55:58,520
Speaker 1: you know, any of the idea the more earthly indies

1025
00:55:58,600 --> 00:56:00,879
Speaker 1: says you want to talk to God, will go see

1026
00:56:00,960 --> 00:56:05,000
Speaker 1: them together? Right now? Yeah, you know, it's it's a

1027
00:56:05,040 --> 00:56:07,000
Speaker 1: fun moment in the film, but the the idea is

1028
00:56:07,080 --> 00:56:09,680
Speaker 1: central to the whole purpose of the art, because we've

1029
00:56:09,680 --> 00:56:13,080
Speaker 1: discussed already it's described as not only a place to

1030
00:56:13,160 --> 00:56:16,680
Speaker 1: how sacred relics, but as a focus of ritual, an

1031
00:56:16,680 --> 00:56:20,680
Speaker 1: altar of sorts, a mobile altar God manifests upon the

1032
00:56:20,719 --> 00:56:25,160
Speaker 1: mercy seat and speaks to the priests, instructing the priests

1033
00:56:25,160 --> 00:56:29,600
Speaker 1: of God's will. Okay, so if this is how they

1034
00:56:29,680 --> 00:56:32,960
Speaker 1: believed the art to function in their worship, what are

1035
00:56:32,960 --> 00:56:35,360
Speaker 1: the ways you could interpret this? Well? I think the

1036
00:56:35,440 --> 00:56:38,480
Speaker 1: most likely explanation of all would be that it just

1037
00:56:38,520 --> 00:56:41,560
Speaker 1: would simply serve as a focal point of devotion, in

1038
00:56:41,600 --> 00:56:44,080
Speaker 1: the same way that any altar or any statue or

1039
00:56:44,120 --> 00:56:47,080
Speaker 1: religious work of art does so, without the need for

1040
00:56:47,120 --> 00:56:52,480
Speaker 1: supernatural occurrences or ancient you know, technological devices or weird

1041
00:56:52,560 --> 00:56:55,080
Speaker 1: traps or what have you know, bells and whistles required.

1042
00:56:55,840 --> 00:56:57,279
Speaker 1: You know, I also can't help but compare it to

1043
00:56:57,280 --> 00:57:00,760
Speaker 1: the notion of a focal point or a drift in yoga.

1044
00:57:01,200 --> 00:57:04,040
Speaker 1: And this is where you're you're not even looking necessarily

1045
00:57:04,080 --> 00:57:06,520
Speaker 1: at anything in particular. Maybe you're looking at a you know,

1046
00:57:06,600 --> 00:57:10,320
Speaker 1: a line on the wall or just a point in space,

1047
00:57:10,760 --> 00:57:13,600
Speaker 1: and you're focusing your attention on that and in doing

1048
00:57:13,680 --> 00:57:17,840
Speaker 1: so hopefully entering some sort of meditative state. Right. The

1049
00:57:17,880 --> 00:57:22,720
Speaker 1: goal is to to center consciousness, to crowd out other

1050
00:57:22,800 --> 00:57:25,360
Speaker 1: thoughts entering right. And I imagine a lot of our

1051
00:57:25,400 --> 00:57:28,280
Speaker 1: listeners out there you've had that experience either by focusing

1052
00:57:28,320 --> 00:57:30,680
Speaker 1: on nothing, focusing on and say a clock on a

1053
00:57:30,680 --> 00:57:33,560
Speaker 1: wall or a wall socket, or perhaps some bit of

1054
00:57:33,600 --> 00:57:37,960
Speaker 1: religious art, uh, you know, an altarpiece across what have

1055
00:57:38,120 --> 00:57:42,920
Speaker 1: you in a various Hindu iconography as well, like these conserves,

1056
00:57:42,920 --> 00:57:45,240
Speaker 1: just a way to to focus our mind and also

1057
00:57:45,280 --> 00:57:48,960
Speaker 1: think about perhaps what is illustrated in the work itself.

1058
00:57:50,960 --> 00:57:53,880
Speaker 1: And this is you know, all ultimately very much a

1059
00:57:53,920 --> 00:57:58,360
Speaker 1: form of induction or a formally ritualized procedure whose function

1060
00:57:58,440 --> 00:58:02,919
Speaker 1: is the narrowing of consciousness by focusing attention. I also

1061
00:58:02,960 --> 00:58:05,880
Speaker 1: can't help but think that with a golden item like

1062
00:58:05,960 --> 00:58:07,840
Speaker 1: the like the arc. You so you have the arc,

1063
00:58:07,880 --> 00:58:10,040
Speaker 1: it's covered in gold. You have it in a like

1064
00:58:10,120 --> 00:58:13,240
Speaker 1: a dark pavilion, and what kind of illumination do you

1065
00:58:13,240 --> 00:58:16,520
Speaker 1: have around you? Well, you might have burning sacrifices, so

1066
00:58:16,600 --> 00:58:20,480
Speaker 1: they're indoors. You generally probably have firelight, but you could

1067
00:58:20,560 --> 00:58:24,120
Speaker 1: also have a sacrifice burning at the altar that would

1068
00:58:24,200 --> 00:58:27,840
Speaker 1: be a sort of like a fire there. And I

1069
00:58:27,920 --> 00:58:30,520
Speaker 1: have to think also that there there would generally be

1070
00:58:30,600 --> 00:58:34,320
Speaker 1: smoke in this environment. You burning something in sensors, so

1071
00:58:34,400 --> 00:58:36,760
Speaker 1: you have you have, you probably have smoke, you have

1072
00:58:36,880 --> 00:58:40,840
Speaker 1: some some firelight of some sort. You have this gleaming

1073
00:58:41,000 --> 00:58:45,520
Speaker 1: golden artifact, not even getting into the cherubim that are

1074
00:58:45,520 --> 00:58:47,880
Speaker 1: on it, but it seems like that the light would

1075
00:58:47,880 --> 00:58:50,640
Speaker 1: play off of it in curious ways. The smoke would

1076
00:58:50,640 --> 00:58:53,520
Speaker 1: add to the mystique. It sounds like an environment that

1077
00:58:53,680 --> 00:58:56,960
Speaker 1: is generous to the creation of altered states of consciousness

1078
00:58:56,960 --> 00:59:04,600
Speaker 1: exactly again with no drug or or magical interpretations required. Yeah, exactly. Now.

1079
00:59:04,640 --> 00:59:06,280
Speaker 1: I know some of you out there that have listened

1080
00:59:06,320 --> 00:59:08,160
Speaker 1: to the show for a while are probably thinking at

1081
00:59:08,160 --> 00:59:12,320
Speaker 1: this point, well, what about the bicameral mind, right, because clearly,

1082
00:59:12,320 --> 00:59:14,960
Speaker 1: this whole time, Yeah, this whole time, we've been talking

1083
00:59:15,000 --> 00:59:17,640
Speaker 1: about a way of speaking to God, a way of

1084
00:59:17,680 --> 00:59:20,920
Speaker 1: hearing God's voice, right, so it it seems like it

1085
00:59:20,920 --> 00:59:24,200
Speaker 1: would naturally be a part of all that. Well, first

1086
00:59:24,240 --> 00:59:26,560
Speaker 1: of all, it's just refresh about the bicameral mind and

1087
00:59:26,600 --> 00:59:30,160
Speaker 1: the idea of bi cameral hallucinations. Uh, even the origin

1088
00:59:30,240 --> 00:59:32,439
Speaker 1: of consciousness. In the Breakdown of the bi Cameral Mind,

1089
00:59:32,920 --> 00:59:36,400
Speaker 1: Julian James, the late Julian James argued that ancient humans

1090
00:59:36,400 --> 00:59:39,400
Speaker 1: heard hallucinated voices and that human consciousness as we know

1091
00:59:39,520 --> 00:59:42,920
Speaker 1: it today began roughly three thousand years ago as a

1092
00:59:42,920 --> 00:59:45,280
Speaker 1: cultural invention, which of course would kind of line up

1093
00:59:45,360 --> 00:59:47,640
Speaker 1: with the time frame that we're talking about here with

1094
00:59:47,680 --> 00:59:51,560
Speaker 1: the arc. It's an unproven hypothesis, and um, we've discussed

1095
00:59:51,600 --> 00:59:53,760
Speaker 1: some objections to it in the in past episodes, but

1096
00:59:53,800 --> 00:59:57,160
Speaker 1: it remains possible that at least some aspect of it

1097
00:59:57,200 --> 00:59:59,160
Speaker 1: is correct. In a way. It's a very safe kind

1098
00:59:59,160 --> 01:00:01,680
Speaker 1: of idea for j Aims to have proposed, because there

1099
01:00:01,840 --> 01:00:05,520
Speaker 1: was and remains no real way of proving or disproving it. Right.

1100
01:00:05,560 --> 01:00:07,320
Speaker 1: You can't prove it because it's in history. But I

1101
01:00:07,600 --> 01:00:11,200
Speaker 1: do think it's subject to undermining by evidence. I mean, like,

1102
01:00:11,240 --> 01:00:14,840
Speaker 1: one of the things that I think would help undermine

1103
01:00:14,840 --> 01:00:16,960
Speaker 1: it is if you can just find more and more

1104
01:00:17,200 --> 01:00:23,360
Speaker 1: ancient examples of people demonstrating inner consciousness in ancient literature.

1105
01:00:24,280 --> 01:00:26,880
Speaker 1: I mean, like he he pointed to some examples of

1106
01:00:26,880 --> 01:00:29,840
Speaker 1: ancient literature and said, oh, they're remarkably devoid of the

1107
01:00:29,920 --> 01:00:33,280
Speaker 1: idea of an inner, inner voice or inner thoughts. So

1108
01:00:33,320 --> 01:00:35,400
Speaker 1: I think one pretty easy way of saying now he

1109
01:00:35,520 --> 01:00:38,040
Speaker 1: was probably wrong is just to look at ancient texts

1110
01:00:38,080 --> 01:00:41,600
Speaker 1: that do show signs of of consciousness and and inner

1111
01:00:41,680 --> 01:00:44,240
Speaker 1: inner monologue. And then also he was very open about

1112
01:00:44,240 --> 01:00:47,520
Speaker 1: the fact that he basically just looked at Western and

1113
01:00:48,080 --> 01:00:53,840
Speaker 1: classical examples, classical literature, classical architecture for evidence of the

1114
01:00:53,880 --> 01:00:56,800
Speaker 1: bicameral mind. He didn't really look at Eastern examples because

1115
01:00:56,800 --> 01:00:58,920
Speaker 1: he did not speak the language. Now you mentioned, and

1116
01:00:58,920 --> 01:01:01,240
Speaker 1: we've said this before, the it's it's one of these

1117
01:01:01,280 --> 01:01:04,280
Speaker 1: ideas that is probably wrong, but really interesting and could

1118
01:01:04,360 --> 01:01:08,480
Speaker 1: be correct in some ways, like some sub parts of

1119
01:01:08,520 --> 01:01:11,880
Speaker 1: the the hypothesis could have something to them. I think

1120
01:01:12,080 --> 01:01:15,160
Speaker 1: that I've been convinced that James is probably wrong about

1121
01:01:15,240 --> 01:01:18,200
Speaker 1: his model of consciousness, where consciousness came from and all

1122
01:01:18,280 --> 01:01:21,920
Speaker 1: that very likely wrong there, but could very well be

1123
01:01:22,080 --> 01:01:26,360
Speaker 1: right about the idea that ancient religions involved much more

1124
01:01:26,600 --> 01:01:30,840
Speaker 1: visions and hallucinations than modern religions do. I think that

1125
01:01:30,840 --> 01:01:34,600
Speaker 1: that's entirely plausible. And there's a lot of about reading,

1126
01:01:34,640 --> 01:01:37,880
Speaker 1: at least about ancient religious practices that seems to indicate

1127
01:01:37,880 --> 01:01:40,640
Speaker 1: that that maybe is true. Yeah, because there is there's

1128
01:01:40,680 --> 01:01:42,880
Speaker 1: a lot of listening to the voices of the gods,

1129
01:01:42,880 --> 01:01:45,520
Speaker 1: seeking the voices of the gods, and we still see

1130
01:01:45,520 --> 01:01:49,400
Speaker 1: it reflected in our in in hymns and prayers that

1131
01:01:49,440 --> 01:01:52,560
Speaker 1: are said every day asking to hear some voice. Even

1132
01:01:52,600 --> 01:01:56,080
Speaker 1: though we do not hear the voice, the voice does

1133
01:01:56,120 --> 01:01:59,160
Speaker 1: not actually speak to us in our minds. Yeah, and

1134
01:01:59,200 --> 01:02:01,840
Speaker 1: so yeah, I think even if the main part of

1135
01:02:01,840 --> 01:02:04,720
Speaker 1: his hypothesis, the idea of, you know, the development of

1136
01:02:04,720 --> 01:02:08,200
Speaker 1: consciousness in these different stages, if that's completely wrong, he

1137
01:02:08,240 --> 01:02:10,440
Speaker 1: could have been on on the right track looking at

1138
01:02:10,440 --> 01:02:16,040
Speaker 1: all these ancient examples of the almost ubiquitous religious visions

1139
01:02:16,040 --> 01:02:21,480
Speaker 1: and hallucinations in ancient worship right now. M James's ultimate

1140
01:02:21,560 --> 01:02:25,360
Speaker 1: argument was that modern consciousness was a learned development tied

1141
01:02:25,400 --> 01:02:29,320
Speaker 1: to metaphorical language and that and that this change wouldn't

1142
01:02:29,320 --> 01:02:31,360
Speaker 1: have occurred all at once. Then it would have been

1143
01:02:31,360 --> 01:02:35,120
Speaker 1: something that spread, and it wouldn't have affected like everybody

1144
01:02:35,160 --> 01:02:37,640
Speaker 1: within like a given talent at once. It wouldn't be

1145
01:02:37,640 --> 01:02:40,320
Speaker 1: like everybody, ope, you got the the new consciousness shot,

1146
01:02:40,400 --> 01:02:42,160
Speaker 1: all right, we're all good to go. You would have

1147
01:02:42,200 --> 01:02:44,360
Speaker 1: had a lot of confusion, a lot of a bit

1148
01:02:44,400 --> 01:02:47,600
Speaker 1: of chaos. The voices of the gods, they grow fainter,

1149
01:02:48,040 --> 01:02:50,880
Speaker 1: but then they can be reached again via various practices

1150
01:02:51,040 --> 01:02:55,400
Speaker 1: like essentially was becoming harder to hallucinate right now. James

1151
01:02:55,640 --> 01:02:59,400
Speaker 1: did mention the arts specifically in his original book. He said, quote,

1152
01:02:59,400 --> 01:03:02,560
Speaker 1: poetry then was divine knowledge, and after the breakdown of

1153
01:03:02,600 --> 01:03:06,600
Speaker 1: the bicameral mind, poetry was the sound and tenor of authorization.

1154
01:03:07,000 --> 01:03:11,120
Speaker 1: Poetry commanded where prose could only ask it felt good.

1155
01:03:11,280 --> 01:03:14,320
Speaker 1: In the wanderings of the Hebrews after the exodus from Egypt,

1156
01:03:14,560 --> 01:03:17,320
Speaker 1: it was the sacred shrine that was carried before the

1157
01:03:17,400 --> 01:03:20,280
Speaker 1: multitude and followed by the people. But it was also

1158
01:03:20,360 --> 01:03:23,160
Speaker 1: the poetry of Moses that determined when they would start

1159
01:03:23,240 --> 01:03:26,320
Speaker 1: and when stop, where they would go and where stay.

1160
01:03:27,040 --> 01:03:28,480
Speaker 1: And this is of course referring to the fact that

1161
01:03:28,480 --> 01:03:32,120
Speaker 1: the Moses would speak to through the arc. It authorized

1162
01:03:32,240 --> 01:03:36,040
Speaker 1: his decision making. So James didn't really get into the

1163
01:03:36,160 --> 01:03:38,479
Speaker 1: arc all that much in the book or in other

1164
01:03:38,560 --> 01:03:40,800
Speaker 1: papers of his that I've seen. It's possible in missing

1165
01:03:40,840 --> 01:03:44,440
Speaker 1: something because I haven't read everything that James wrote, but

1166
01:03:44,680 --> 01:03:48,280
Speaker 1: I did run across some, uh, some writings by Brian

1167
01:03:48,400 --> 01:03:52,640
Speaker 1: J McVeigh, a scholar of Asia specializing in Japan, and

1168
01:03:52,680 --> 01:03:56,160
Speaker 1: he also studied under Julian James as a graduate student,

1169
01:03:56,640 --> 01:03:59,000
Speaker 1: and he discussed this a bit in his paper Biblical

1170
01:03:59,040 --> 01:04:03,440
Speaker 1: Evidence of Bicamural Mentality Vestiges of super Religiosity in the

1171
01:04:03,480 --> 01:04:06,880
Speaker 1: Old Testament. He discussed how the art could have functioned

1172
01:04:06,920 --> 01:04:10,800
Speaker 1: as an object of hallucinatory focus or o h F,

1173
01:04:11,560 --> 01:04:14,400
Speaker 1: and a portable one at that for the ancient Hebrews

1174
01:04:14,440 --> 01:04:17,040
Speaker 1: as they wandered the desert and wandered out of the

1175
01:04:17,120 --> 01:04:21,440
Speaker 1: bicameral mindset. So this is his quote from the paper's

1176
01:04:21,480 --> 01:04:25,880
Speaker 1: describing what an o h F is quote hallucinatory aids,

1177
01:04:25,960 --> 01:04:32,040
Speaker 1: broadcast instructions, commandments, warnings, speaking idols, living statues, effigies treated

1178
01:04:32,120 --> 01:04:36,000
Speaker 1: as if alive, fed, paraded, taken on journeys and into battles.

1179
01:04:36,280 --> 01:04:40,680
Speaker 1: These emitted holy power and authorized decision making. In some cases,

1180
01:04:40,720 --> 01:04:44,640
Speaker 1: portable oh F were used, the example being the Israelites

1181
01:04:44,760 --> 01:04:48,320
Speaker 1: Ark of the Covenant. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, again,

1182
01:04:48,360 --> 01:04:50,360
Speaker 1: as I said a minute ago, you you don't really

1183
01:04:50,400 --> 01:04:55,120
Speaker 1: have to accept the bi cameral framework for for consciousness

1184
01:04:55,160 --> 01:04:59,720
Speaker 1: and the the origin of these hallucinations in order to think, well,

1185
01:04:59,760 --> 01:05:03,840
Speaker 1: maybe that they're they're just physical objects that aid the

1186
01:05:03,920 --> 01:05:08,080
Speaker 1: mind in having religious visions or religious experiences much in

1187
01:05:08,080 --> 01:05:11,160
Speaker 1: the in the like in the example of induction, like

1188
01:05:11,200 --> 01:05:14,000
Speaker 1: we were talking about earlier with the object of focus

1189
01:05:14,000 --> 01:05:19,120
Speaker 1: in say Hindu or Buddhist meditation. Yeah, exactly. The bicameral explanation.

1190
01:05:19,760 --> 01:05:24,760
Speaker 1: As fascinating as it is, it's not completely necessary for

1191
01:05:24,960 --> 01:05:29,560
Speaker 1: understanding why individuals would carry around a sacred item, carry

1192
01:05:29,560 --> 01:05:31,880
Speaker 1: it into battle and uh, and also use it in

1193
01:05:31,920 --> 01:05:35,920
Speaker 1: their rituals. Isn't it so interesting the way religions around

1194
01:05:35,960 --> 01:05:40,760
Speaker 1: the world, so many of them have what you might

1195
01:05:40,840 --> 01:05:45,720
Speaker 1: call scene setting, all these all this paraphernalia, the like

1196
01:05:45,880 --> 01:05:51,680
Speaker 1: different clothing, different sights and smells, physical objects to hold

1197
01:05:51,880 --> 01:05:55,720
Speaker 1: or be in the presence of, to look at, smoke, uh,

1198
01:05:56,240 --> 01:05:59,920
Speaker 1: you know, uh, washing of the body, like all these

1199
01:06:00,080 --> 01:06:03,480
Speaker 1: different things that are in order to get you into

1200
01:06:03,640 --> 01:06:06,440
Speaker 1: a different mind state than you are. The rest of

1201
01:06:06,520 --> 01:06:09,800
Speaker 1: your life. You're out walking around getting your groceries, going

1202
01:06:09,880 --> 01:06:12,360
Speaker 1: to work, doing your stuff. But when you enter a

1203
01:06:12,520 --> 01:06:15,800
Speaker 1: religious space, you have to go through a process and

1204
01:06:16,080 --> 01:06:19,240
Speaker 1: surround yourself with things that put you in a different

1205
01:06:19,320 --> 01:06:22,280
Speaker 1: state of mind. And this seems to be core to

1206
01:06:22,640 --> 01:06:25,560
Speaker 1: to not every version of religion around the world, but

1207
01:06:25,600 --> 01:06:27,800
Speaker 1: a whole lot of them. Oh yeah, I mean, if

1208
01:06:27,840 --> 01:06:32,040
Speaker 1: it's not a particular icon a representation, because certainly there

1209
01:06:32,040 --> 01:06:36,880
Speaker 1: are religions that that frown upon that and depicting individuals

1210
01:06:37,000 --> 01:06:40,240
Speaker 1: or deities, etcetera, there's still is often like a focus

1211
01:06:40,320 --> 01:06:43,920
Speaker 1: on architecture or space. Oh yeah, exactly, like in ISLAMI

1212
01:06:43,920 --> 01:06:46,520
Speaker 1: you're generally you're not gonna have representative art, but you

1213
01:06:46,600 --> 01:06:49,080
Speaker 1: do have a lot of attention to the creation of

1214
01:06:49,160 --> 01:06:53,320
Speaker 1: a sacred feeling environment. Uh. You know, the interior architecture

1215
01:06:53,360 --> 01:06:56,200
Speaker 1: of many mosques around the world is is beautiful and

1216
01:06:56,480 --> 01:06:59,800
Speaker 1: it puts you in a different mind state. All right, Well,

1217
01:06:59,800 --> 01:07:01,880
Speaker 1: hope fully we've put everybody in a different mind state

1218
01:07:02,000 --> 01:07:05,240
Speaker 1: today as we discussed the Ark of the Covenant, and hey,

1219
01:07:05,560 --> 01:07:08,400
Speaker 1: here's the fun part. We're not done. There's gonna be

1220
01:07:08,600 --> 01:07:10,840
Speaker 1: another episode on the Ark of the Covenant, looking at

1221
01:07:10,960 --> 01:07:14,560
Speaker 1: a particular idea, the idea that okay, what if the

1222
01:07:14,680 --> 01:07:19,160
Speaker 1: Ark of the Covenant was a machine. I'm gonna give

1223
01:07:19,160 --> 01:07:21,280
Speaker 1: a spoiler. We don't think it was a machine, but

1224
01:07:21,640 --> 01:07:24,400
Speaker 1: there there that does lead us down some other interesting

1225
01:07:24,480 --> 01:07:26,960
Speaker 1: paths that that will be a lot of fun to explore,

1226
01:07:27,120 --> 01:07:29,080
Speaker 1: all right. In the meantime, you can check out all

1227
01:07:29,120 --> 01:07:31,360
Speaker 1: the episodes of stuff to Blow Your Mind at stuff

1228
01:07:31,400 --> 01:07:33,640
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. That's the mothership. That's

1229
01:07:33,680 --> 01:07:35,919
Speaker 1: we will find them all. That's we'll find links out

1230
01:07:36,520 --> 01:07:40,760
Speaker 1: to our social media accounts, including the discussion module page

1231
01:07:40,800 --> 01:07:43,040
Speaker 1: that I mentioned earlier. Obviously, we'd love to hear from

1232
01:07:43,040 --> 01:07:46,040
Speaker 1: everybody about the Ark of the Covenant, um, your thoughts

1233
01:07:46,120 --> 01:07:49,240
Speaker 1: on it, crazy theories you've read about it, your thoughts

1234
01:07:49,280 --> 01:07:51,400
Speaker 1: on Raiders of the Lost Arc. All of it is

1235
01:07:51,480 --> 01:07:54,720
Speaker 1: fair game. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio

1236
01:07:54,800 --> 01:07:58,000
Speaker 1: producers Alex Williams and Tarry Harrison. If you would like

1237
01:07:58,120 --> 01:07:59,840
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us directly to let us

1238
01:07:59,880 --> 01:08:02,760
Speaker 1: know feedback on this episode or any other to uh

1239
01:08:02,960 --> 01:08:04,840
Speaker 1: say hi, let us know where you listen from. To

1240
01:08:04,880 --> 01:08:06,880
Speaker 1: suggest a topic for the future, you can always do

1241
01:08:07,000 --> 01:08:10,160
Speaker 1: that at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot

1242
01:08:10,280 --> 01:08:22,280
Speaker 1: com for moralness and thousands of other topics. Is it

1243
01:08:22,360 --> 01:08:29,760
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. B