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Speaker 1: And the Philistines took the Ark of God and brought

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Speaker 1: it from Ebenezer unto Ashdod. When the Philistines took the

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Speaker 1: Ark of God, they brought it into the house of

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Speaker 1: Dagon and set it by Dagon. And when they of

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Speaker 1: Ashdod arose early on the morrow, behold, Dagon was fallen

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Speaker 1: upon his face to the earth before the ark of

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Speaker 1: the Lord. And they took Dagon and set him in

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Speaker 1: his place again. And when they arose early on the

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Speaker 1: morrow morning, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to

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Speaker 1: the ground before the ark of the Lord, and the

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Speaker 1: head of Dagon, and both the palms of his hands

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Speaker 1: were cut off upon the threshold. Only the stump of

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Speaker 1: Dagon was left to him. Therefore, neither the priests of Dagon,

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Speaker 1: nor any that come into Dagon's house tread on the

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Speaker 1: threshold of Dagon and Ashdod unto this day. But the

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: for his hand is sore upon us, and upon Dagon,

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Speaker 1: our God. They sent therefore and gathered all the lords

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Speaker 1: of the Philistines unto them, and said, what shall we

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Speaker 1: do with the Ark of the God of Israel. And

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Speaker 1: they answered to let the ark of the God of

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Speaker 1: Israel be carried about unto God. And they carried the

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

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Speaker 1: was so that after they had carried it about, the

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Speaker 1: hand of the Lord was against the city with a

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Speaker 1: very great destruction. And he smote the men of the city,

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Speaker 1: both small and great. And they had immrods in their

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Speaker 1: secret parts, emmiads in their secret parts, immrods in their

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Speaker 1: secret parts, emirods in their secret parts, emads in their

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Speaker 1: secret parts. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from

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Speaker 1: how Stuffworks dot Com. Hey you welcome to Scuff to

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Speaker 1: Blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm

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Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And if you couldn't guess by that opening,

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Speaker 1: obviously we're gonna be talking about the Ark of the

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Speaker 1: Covenant today. Robert. I think it was when I came

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Speaker 1: back from Thanksgiving break that you were like, we're doing

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Speaker 1: the Arc of the Covenant on the show, and I

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Speaker 1: was like, what the heck are you talking about? Now?

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Speaker 1: You know, I'm always up for an exploration of some

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Speaker 1: kind of weird ancient artifactory something like that. So so

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Speaker 1: we're we're good to go. But why did you want

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Speaker 1: to talk about the arc on this show? Robert, Well,

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Speaker 1: it's like nothing we've gone after before. Jah. I was like,

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Speaker 1: um no, that that the arc is. I guess it

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Speaker 1: basically comes down to the arc has along fascinated me.

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Speaker 1: I grew up watching Raiders of the Lost Arc, the

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Speaker 1: Indiana Jones movie. I had it on VHS and I

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Speaker 1: would sit there and watch said and solved in slow motion.

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Speaker 1: Pretty much every special effect in the film I would

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Speaker 1: watch in 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 and

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

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

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Speaker 1: of the more fascinating. Uh, this's just there's just they

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: I've looked at it with new eyes, and more recently

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Speaker 1: I've been thinking, uh, you know what, what are some

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

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

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Speaker 1: and behold they do well. The way that the Arc

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Speaker 1: connects 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, fringey 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 today. 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 it what

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Speaker 1: it was, what it is like a two 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 Raiters of the Lost

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Speaker 1: Arc but with some sort of underlying understand thing pre

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

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Speaker 1: can relate to to to neither of those like the

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

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Speaker 1: the Lost Art has pretty much always been there in

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Speaker 1: my life. Essentially, Raiders is a book of the Bible

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Speaker 1: in a way. Yeah really, I saw that, and then

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Speaker 1: later on I learned how to read and came back

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Speaker 1: into and learned what the Bible had to say about it.

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Speaker 1: But you know, in Sunday School, we just never got

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

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

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Speaker 1: we'll get we'll get to this, but I think one

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

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

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Speaker 1: encountered 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 you know, Eldric horror heaped upon

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: made by David Cronenberg. And so when they open the arc,

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Speaker 1: 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: Raiders of the Lost Arc throughout this episode because this episode,

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

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Speaker 1: free license to talk about that movie at 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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: that are generally mold over concerning the Arc, uh, first

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Speaker 1: of all, what was it? And then secondly, where is

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Speaker 1: it now? Now we're mostly going to ruminate over the

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Speaker 1: first question, because the second is one of those questions

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

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Speaker 1: the fact that it's simply lost to history, likely destroyed

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Speaker 1: in some prior age or or hidden away and lost,

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Speaker 1: assuming that there was such an object, and that's the

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Speaker 1: other possibility is that it simply did not exist um

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Speaker 1: Or it leads one to various speculative or even downright

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Speaker 1: conspiracy theories involving you know, the Knights templars perhaps, Or

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Speaker 1: there's the notion that it's it's currently hidden out of

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Speaker 1: sight in the chapel of the tablet in northern Epethiopia,

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Speaker 1: which is possible, but there's no no proof or that

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Speaker 1: it was taken to heaven, an answer that requires more

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Speaker 1: of a speculative lead than the notion that the arc,

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Speaker 1: like so many treasures of history, simply failed to survive history. Now,

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Speaker 1: one of the main things that we're going to be

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Speaker 1: exploring in this look at the Arc is that the

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Speaker 1: Arc of the Covenant is yet another one of these

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Speaker 1: ancient stories, these objects of ancient myth, which there have

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Speaker 1: been great efforts by modern writers to ground the myth

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Speaker 1: and what we now know about science and technology, reimagining

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Speaker 1: what the ancients believe to be magic as some kind

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Speaker 1: of lost powerful science or technology. And we've discussed before

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Speaker 1: some of the risks of technologizing the myth. Uh, it's

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Speaker 1: not necessarily always wrong, but it's an impulse that's not all.

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Speaker 1: It's also not always justified. There's a sort of naive

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Speaker 1: way of reading ancient texts that says, Okay, let's take

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Speaker 1: what they say happened basically at face value, but posit

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Speaker 1: a different explanation for it than they would have. And

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Speaker 1: while this can be a fun exercise, I love doing it,

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Speaker 1: I personally enjoy it. We shoul always remember not to

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Speaker 1: start feeling like this is a necessary and especially not

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Speaker 1: like it's a parsimonious exercise, when in reality, ancient histories

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Speaker 1: of all kinds, religious texts, myths, and so forth are

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Speaker 1: likely to be full of narratives that are the result

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Speaker 1: of creative imagination and things like exaggeration across time and retellings.

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Speaker 1: In other words, there's no event that you ness really

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Speaker 1: have to explain, because the events described in these ancient

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Speaker 1: stories often just didn't take place. Right. We can't treat

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Speaker 1: a description of the arc in uh in the whole

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Speaker 1: Testament as being the same as say, you know, fossil

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Speaker 1: evidence or a or a crater, right right, We we

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Speaker 1: just don't know. I mean, it might be based on

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Speaker 1: something that actually happened, but we don't know. But if

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Speaker 1: we take the route of saying, well, okay, if these

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

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Speaker 1: something that actually happened. When we look at history that way,

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Speaker 1: ancient history with a bit of science under the belt,

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Speaker 1: there is this insatiable itch the retro sci fi hermonutic

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Speaker 1: which I've been looking for a concise name for, and

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Speaker 1: I think I just realized the perfect one for for

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

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Speaker 1: calling bronze punk. So you've got Yeah, you've got steampunk

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

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Speaker 1: atomic age. And I think we should have bronze punk

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Speaker 1: as the name for this retroactive technologizing of the time

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Speaker 1: period of classical civilizations in the ancient Near East, including

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Speaker 1: the Hebrew Bible and its contemporary civilizations and texts. So

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Speaker 1: with those important caveats, I think we should begin a

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Speaker 1: bronze punk adventure into the ark Bronze Bronze punk does

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Speaker 1: have a lot of of of opportunity here. It gives

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Speaker 1: us a chance to bring back uh tal Us, the

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

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Speaker 1: I think they'd be bronze. I don't want to be

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Speaker 1: too rigid about the time period that applies to either,

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Speaker 1: because a lot of the stuff we're talking about here,

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Speaker 1: I think would technically be bridging Bronze Age and Iron

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Speaker 1: Age in the regions that are affected. But all that aside, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: anything it doesn't need to stand in the way of

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Speaker 1: Talus battling the Ark of the Covenants. Let'm saying, well,

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Speaker 1: before we get into all these supposed bronze punk explanations

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Speaker 1: of what the arc might have been if it existed,

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Speaker 1: and if some of the stories about it are based

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Speaker 1: on things people saw, we we should just explore the myth,

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Speaker 1: like what is the story of the arc and what

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Speaker 1: do the text say about it? All? Right? Yeah, Well,

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Speaker 1: we're talking here about the airon Hobart, the Arc of God,

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Speaker 1: the Arc of Testimony, the Arc of the Covenant, just

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Speaker 1: a few names that were used to describe it. Here

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Speaker 1: a gold plated wooden chest used by the ancient Hebrews

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Speaker 1: to house the two stone tablets of Law given to

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Speaker 1: Moses by God, and it was also said to contain

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Speaker 1: a couple of other holy relics, such as Aaron's rod,

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Speaker 1: a magical item used by Moses brother, as well as

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Speaker 1: a pot of manna, the supernatural food stuff that fell

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

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Speaker 1: in addition to being made of gold, to the other

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Speaker 1: decorative element that is a signature of the art are

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Speaker 1: the two cherubim that are depicted atop it. Now. I'm

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Speaker 1: not quite sure why this has happened, but in modern

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Speaker 1: English usage cherubs or cherubim that has come to mean

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Speaker 1: naked baby angels like you would see on those cards

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Speaker 1: or the creepy little statues people put on their dressers.

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Speaker 1: But cherubim are not naked cute baby angels, right, right,

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Speaker 1: Even though, like if we describe something as bearing cherubic

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Speaker 1: today we're describing so it's got like a baby with

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

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Speaker 1: fat cheeks and kind of a baby's face. But really

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

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

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Speaker 1: of just holy wrath. Right. Classical example would be Angel

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Speaker 1: stationed outside the garden of Eden with a flaming sword

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

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

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Speaker 1: Renaissance 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 human oid

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

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

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Speaker 1: do an entire episode on angels and religious traditions in

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Speaker 1: the future, because there's so much fascinating material there. So

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Speaker 1: we're talking about creatures that would have been for ast

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Speaker 1: your second circle and the hierarchy of angels and their

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: and the four the four faces would include 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 chairs 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, folkloreis who I frequently sign on the show.

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Speaker 1: In her book spirits, fairies, leprecns, and goblins, and Encyclopedia

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Speaker 1: Hebrew religious writings state that images of Chibian guarded the

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Speaker 1: Ark of the Covenant, as well as Solomon's temple and

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

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Speaker 1: it's possible, Rose points out the Cherubim are derived from

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Speaker 1: the Assyrian Lamassu or se Dow, and these were the

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

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Speaker 1: They would have protected palaces and temples, and they were

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Speaker 1: there often depicted as winged bulls or lions with human heads,

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Speaker 1: and they mostly remained invisible and were assigned in the

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Speaker 1: manner of guardian angels to protect an individual human from

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Speaker 1: the evil uh tuku. There are some amazing carvings of

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Speaker 1: these in the met in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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Speaker 1: I believe from the palace of the Assyrian king Ashurbanapul

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Speaker 1: the second, or maybe not the palace, but I think

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Speaker 1: commissioned by that king, and that they're fearsome and wonderful

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Speaker 1: to behold, Yes they are, and to come back to

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Speaker 1: Raiders of the Lost Arc. These are of course presumably

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Speaker 1: the the the entities we see flying around after the

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Speaker 1: Nazi open the Ark of the Covenant at the end

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Speaker 1: of the film, the Cherubim, Yeah, yeah, because it first

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Speaker 1: thought look like like women, you know, sort of beautiful

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Speaker 1: ghost women. And then of course the face changes and

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Speaker 1: it becomes this kind of snarling, skeletal lion type face,

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Speaker 1: and then of course it's death for all who view

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Speaker 1: the ark. Now for a for an artifact that has

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Speaker 1: come to be imbued with so much mystery retrospectively, the

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Speaker 1: Bible actually does just straightforwardly explain how to build the arc.

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Speaker 1: It's like minute specifications on what you're supposed to do

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Speaker 1: to make one. Yeah. And also it almost makes you wonder, like,

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Speaker 1: what's the big deal about losing it, because clearly you

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Speaker 1: have you have a strict set of instructions on how

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Speaker 1: to build another one. Well, I mean I think they

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Speaker 1: were just like magical beliefs about the sacredness of what

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Speaker 1: it contains. Oh yes, certainly, but that but that ultimately

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Speaker 1: is the thing, right, The art is a container, a

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Speaker 1: fancy container. Uh perhaps even a holy container if you're

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Speaker 1: approaching with that worldview, but just a container for other

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Speaker 1: otherwise holy relics. That is one thing that I think

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Speaker 1: makes it very fascinating and kind of unique. And there

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Speaker 1: are probably some other great artifacts like this, but fascinating

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Speaker 1: in that it is uh this artifact with all this significance,

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Speaker 1: but it is essentially just a vessel for other things.

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Speaker 1: It's a container, it's not a statue. Well, should we

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Speaker 1: read the instructions from Exodus twenty five 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, um, get your your cubit

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Speaker 1: ruler ready, and they shall make an arc of shittim wood.

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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 round 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 shittim wood

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

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Speaker 1: 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 said, 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 it in the Bible, and you

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

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

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Speaker 1: the m roads. We're gonna get to some more later. Well,

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

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Speaker 1: and 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 breath 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 ye make

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Speaker 1: the cherubims on the two ends thereof, So, in other words,

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

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

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Speaker 1: is important. Anyway continues, And the cherubims shall stretch forth

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

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Speaker 1: and their faces shall look one to another toward the

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Speaker 1: mercy seat. Shall the faces of the cherubims be, And

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Speaker 1: thou shalt put the mercy seat above upon the arc,

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Speaker 1: and in the arc thou shalt put the testimony that

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

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

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Speaker 1: seat from between the two cherubims, which are upon the

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: but it's also a chair, and it's a chair for

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Speaker 1: God himself. Right, the ideas that that mercy seat is

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Speaker 1: where God is going to manifest It sounds from the

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Speaker 1: instructions like there is going to be a presence of

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Speaker 1: the Lord there, and uh and Moses and perhaps you know,

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Speaker 1: some other priests. Whoever is in charge, whoever is authorized

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Speaker 1: 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 alright, we're back. Alright, So if the arc was

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Speaker 1: actually built, about when do we think that would have happened.

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Speaker 1: It would have been about three thousand years ago. Now

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Speaker 1: we've seen the instructions in the Bible where they believed

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Speaker 1: God had sent his people, uh, you know, the detailed

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

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Speaker 1: they do with it once they've got it. Well, after

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Speaker 1: they've they've built it, they carried around with them and

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Speaker 1: they use it as a central part of their religious observations.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's essentially a mobile altar piece. Right, I

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Speaker 1: mean it's it's a it's a temple that you can

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Speaker 1: pick up and move. So think back again to that

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

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Speaker 1: which God speaks to the children of Israel. And if

385
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Speaker 1: Raiders is any indication, it's also from Wincey sends out

386
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Speaker 1: his smiting laser beams of Holy Nazi frying death. Now

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

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

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Speaker 1: haw copperette well and coufer that's k k a p

390
00:20:45,080 --> 00:20:48,800
Speaker 1: h a r means to cover, but kapareth means a

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Speaker 1: thing of wiping out or cleansing. So they carry it

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Speaker 1: a bit before them when during the Exodus, and it

393
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Speaker 1: was said to clear impediments and poisonous animals in their path,

394
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Speaker 1: and it was even said to stop the flow of

395
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Speaker 1: the river Jordan's so that they could cross into the

396
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Speaker 1: Promised Land. But it was also conceived of as a

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Speaker 1: kind of a magical weapon of war. Right, Yeah, they

398
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Speaker 1: marched with it at the Siege of Jericho. Of course

399
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Speaker 1: that you know, they were blowing those trumpets, but still

400
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Speaker 1: the arc was there. And as they're blowing those trumpets.

401
00:21:18,760 --> 00:21:22,399
Speaker 1: Eventually the walls come tumbling down. But then in five

402
00:21:22,920 --> 00:21:28,000
Speaker 1: seven and five BC, the Babylonian Empire conquered the Israelites,

403
00:21:28,440 --> 00:21:30,879
Speaker 1: and the arc was supposedly taken from the temple in

404
00:21:30,960 --> 00:21:34,560
Speaker 1: Jerusalem and from their advantishes from history. So if it

405
00:21:34,600 --> 00:21:38,200
Speaker 1: did indeed exist, as as to some degree as the

406
00:21:38,240 --> 00:21:40,680
Speaker 1: stories are told, this is where it stops. We don't

407
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Speaker 1: know what happens after this, right, this is this is

408
00:21:43,720 --> 00:21:47,360
Speaker 1: where it becomes the lost. Now, as with any Bible

409
00:21:47,520 --> 00:21:50,040
Speaker 1: artifact of any significance, I would bet that there are

410
00:21:50,080 --> 00:21:52,879
Speaker 1: some people out there who claimed to have found it. Yes,

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Speaker 1: and but but before we we touch on those, I

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Speaker 1: do want to point out just a wonderful fragment of

413
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Speaker 1: a quote here came to It came to us from

414
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Speaker 1: National Geographic Society fellow Fred Hybert. He told the website

415
00:22:04,720 --> 00:22:08,000
Speaker 1: Nationally Geographic that it's not really something that you can

416
00:22:08,040 --> 00:22:10,480
Speaker 1: go after. You can't really search for the arc because

417
00:22:10,480 --> 00:22:15,120
Speaker 1: the arc exists at quote the crossroads between myth and reality.

418
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Speaker 1: And I think that's that's essential to keep in mind

419
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Speaker 1: for the entirety of this episode. In the next well,

420
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Speaker 1: I would say, for example, I think the arc probably

421
00:22:25,520 --> 00:22:30,200
Speaker 1: has a better chance of being in some way based

422
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Speaker 1: on a real historical artifact than something like Noah's Ark.

423
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Speaker 1: But people constantly go looking for Noah's Ark, and every

424
00:22:36,760 --> 00:22:39,480
Speaker 1: time they go looking they find it. You know, there's well,

425
00:22:39,560 --> 00:22:42,680
Speaker 1: here's some wood on a mountain and turkey here it is, right,

426
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Speaker 1: And likewise the arc is simply essentially just wood and gold,

427
00:22:46,760 --> 00:22:48,840
Speaker 1: uh and is not is even less of a feat

428
00:22:48,840 --> 00:22:51,639
Speaker 1: to build. Like we have the instructions you could, if

429
00:22:51,680 --> 00:22:54,359
Speaker 1: you had the materials, you could build one today. So

430
00:22:54,400 --> 00:22:57,360
Speaker 1: even if we were to uncover an ARC candidate, it's

431
00:22:57,359 --> 00:22:59,360
Speaker 1: not really possible to tell though, if you have the

432
00:22:59,640 --> 00:23:02,280
Speaker 1: Arc of the Covenant, I mean, there could probably be

433
00:23:02,400 --> 00:23:04,840
Speaker 1: multiple arcs out. They're saying that they're the arc, yeah,

434
00:23:04,880 --> 00:23:06,600
Speaker 1: I mean there and there have been cases where they're

435
00:23:06,640 --> 00:23:10,160
Speaker 1: where marchaeologists have found something that is like an arc,

436
00:23:10,200 --> 00:23:13,760
Speaker 1: a box that has perhaps excited a few people here

437
00:23:13,880 --> 00:23:16,159
Speaker 1: here and there, but ultimately, uh, you know, it doesn't

438
00:23:16,160 --> 00:23:18,480
Speaker 1: pan out. I mean, I suppose if you had a

439
00:23:18,480 --> 00:23:21,800
Speaker 1: strong candidate, you could do carbon dating on the on

440
00:23:21,840 --> 00:23:24,960
Speaker 1: the relic, perhaps the wood, especially if there are any

441
00:23:25,080 --> 00:23:27,080
Speaker 1: women into the wood remaining, to at least know if

442
00:23:27,080 --> 00:23:29,240
Speaker 1: it's old enough, yeah to know if it's it's old enough,

443
00:23:29,440 --> 00:23:33,639
Speaker 1: but again it could just be another box from that

444
00:23:33,680 --> 00:23:38,639
Speaker 1: time period. That being said, some of the possible final

445
00:23:38,680 --> 00:23:42,920
Speaker 1: resting places for the arc include has already already alluded

446
00:23:42,960 --> 00:23:47,600
Speaker 1: to St. Mary of Zion Cathedral in Oxom, Ethiopia, under

447
00:23:47,640 --> 00:23:51,000
Speaker 1: the care of the Ethiopian Orthodox, to a head O church,

448
00:23:51,480 --> 00:23:54,360
Speaker 1: and more specifically, under the care of a single caretaker

449
00:23:54,400 --> 00:23:57,880
Speaker 1: who alone gets to see the arc. Naturally, that means

450
00:23:57,920 --> 00:24:00,320
Speaker 1: no one gets to verify what they actually we have

451
00:24:00,560 --> 00:24:03,639
Speaker 1: or don't have much less study it. Some claim that

452
00:24:03,680 --> 00:24:06,200
Speaker 1: it was hidden beneath the First Temple in Jerusalem before

453
00:24:06,200 --> 00:24:08,720
Speaker 1: the Babylonians destroyed it in five eighty six b C.

454
00:24:09,520 --> 00:24:11,520
Speaker 1: But this can't be verified either, because that means it

455
00:24:11,520 --> 00:24:13,920
Speaker 1: would be somewhere beneath the Dome of the Rock Shrine,

456
00:24:13,960 --> 00:24:17,160
Speaker 1: which of course is a holy site in his Lam. Now,

457
00:24:17,160 --> 00:24:20,000
Speaker 1: there's another claim mentioned in that nat Geo article that

458
00:24:20,080 --> 00:24:22,760
Speaker 1: I sided earlier, that it was buried beneath the hill,

459
00:24:23,040 --> 00:24:25,480
Speaker 1: and not just any hill, but the very hill that

460
00:24:25,520 --> 00:24:28,840
Speaker 1: would later be known as Galgatha, the place of the Skull,

461
00:24:29,200 --> 00:24:31,480
Speaker 1: which is the place where it is said that Jesus

462
00:24:31,520 --> 00:24:35,040
Speaker 1: was crucified right, and according to this story, when he's crucified,

463
00:24:35,080 --> 00:24:38,480
Speaker 1: his blood like drains down into the hill and eventually

464
00:24:38,720 --> 00:24:42,479
Speaker 1: to the arc itself buried beneath him and U. This

465
00:24:42,560 --> 00:24:46,640
Speaker 1: relates to a quote unquote find of amateur adventurer Ron

466
00:24:46,720 --> 00:24:51,159
Speaker 1: Wyatt who lived nineteen thirty, who claimed to have found,

467
00:24:51,200 --> 00:24:54,960
Speaker 1: among other things, Noah's Ark, the Ark of the Covenant,

468
00:24:55,240 --> 00:24:59,760
Speaker 1: the Tower of Babel, the graves of Noah and his wife,

469
00:24:59,800 --> 00:25:03,440
Speaker 1: as well as the blood of Christ itself. Needless to say,

470
00:25:03,640 --> 00:25:06,320
Speaker 1: one should take his account with all the salt that

471
00:25:06,400 --> 00:25:09,960
Speaker 1: Wyatt claimed to have also discovered at the ruins of Sodom. Uh. Yeah,

472
00:25:10,000 --> 00:25:14,800
Speaker 1: he was not a true archaeologist. Now, this guy is

473
00:25:14,880 --> 00:25:19,120
Speaker 1: not unique and essentially being um, somebody who is an

474
00:25:19,119 --> 00:25:21,879
Speaker 1: apologist for their religion who goes out I mean I

475
00:25:21,960 --> 00:25:25,440
Speaker 1: mainly know of this within within Christian you know, like

476
00:25:25,920 --> 00:25:29,119
Speaker 1: somebody who's basically a Christian apologist, a defender of the faith,

477
00:25:29,600 --> 00:25:33,399
Speaker 1: who goes out seeking artifacts. That has always struck me

478
00:25:33,440 --> 00:25:34,800
Speaker 1: as a kind of odd thing to want to do.

479
00:25:34,840 --> 00:25:36,760
Speaker 1: I guess I get it. On the level of these

480
00:25:36,760 --> 00:25:38,760
Speaker 1: are people who are trying to prove that the Bible

481
00:25:38,840 --> 00:25:41,600
Speaker 1: is literally true and everything, all the stories in it

482
00:25:41,680 --> 00:25:44,200
Speaker 1: literally happened on Earth at a certain number of years ago.

483
00:25:44,800 --> 00:25:49,520
Speaker 1: But it seems like kind of a profaning of the

484
00:25:49,520 --> 00:25:52,280
Speaker 1: the orientation towards their myths. If they're going out and

485
00:25:52,440 --> 00:25:55,399
Speaker 1: saying like, I'm going to find the bones of this

486
00:25:55,640 --> 00:25:58,240
Speaker 1: person who's the you know in the stories that I believe,

487
00:25:58,520 --> 00:26:00,960
Speaker 1: or I'm going to find the had left over from

488
00:26:01,000 --> 00:26:04,200
Speaker 1: the boat. Yeah, I mean, I guess you can approach

489
00:26:04,240 --> 00:26:05,719
Speaker 1: it from a few different points of view. I mean,

490
00:26:05,760 --> 00:26:08,720
Speaker 1: I always the way I always approach it is that

491
00:26:08,720 --> 00:26:11,280
Speaker 1: that the you know, the deep mythology of a given

492
00:26:11,320 --> 00:26:15,159
Speaker 1: faith need not be factual to have power and h

493
00:26:15,240 --> 00:26:17,159
Speaker 1: and therefore there's no reason to go and try and

494
00:26:17,200 --> 00:26:19,200
Speaker 1: find fragments of it or expect them to be there

495
00:26:19,320 --> 00:26:21,720
Speaker 1: to be there. Uh, you could, I guess, approach it

496
00:26:21,760 --> 00:26:25,400
Speaker 1: as someone who needs to find those items because that

497
00:26:25,560 --> 00:26:29,960
Speaker 1: again supports their religion. Perhaps the racist doubt if only

498
00:26:30,000 --> 00:26:31,919
Speaker 1: I could find a piece of the arc, then I

499
00:26:32,000 --> 00:26:34,600
Speaker 1: know it was real and I can silence these doubts.

500
00:26:34,640 --> 00:26:36,080
Speaker 1: The other way of looking at it, of course, is

501
00:26:36,119 --> 00:26:38,800
Speaker 1: someone who has no doubts whatsoever, and they're like, hey,

502
00:26:38,920 --> 00:26:42,359
Speaker 1: the arc was obviously real. Um I gotta prove it

503
00:26:42,359 --> 00:26:44,000
Speaker 1: to everybody else. Yeah, I need to prove it to

504
00:26:44,040 --> 00:26:46,239
Speaker 1: everybody else, or I just I just want to find it.

505
00:26:46,240 --> 00:26:48,600
Speaker 1: It's out there somewhere. Why has nobody found it. I'm

506
00:26:48,720 --> 00:26:50,439
Speaker 1: going to be the one to do it. And to

507
00:26:50,520 --> 00:26:52,880
Speaker 1: your point, if you go into this read these regions,

508
00:26:53,400 --> 00:26:56,199
Speaker 1: there is just so much history that especially somebody's just

509
00:26:56,240 --> 00:26:58,640
Speaker 1: bumbling around and they don't really know what they're doing,

510
00:26:59,560 --> 00:27:01,760
Speaker 1: They're going to find something that they can pass off,

511
00:27:01,960 --> 00:27:03,960
Speaker 1: they can believe in. I don't know. They end up

512
00:27:03,960 --> 00:27:06,120
Speaker 1: being kind of like the Villains and all the Indiana

513
00:27:06,240 --> 00:27:11,320
Speaker 1: Jones movies who want to possess some powerful, mysterious action artifact,

514
00:27:11,640 --> 00:27:14,760
Speaker 1: but they want to possess it for some earthly purpose,

515
00:27:14,960 --> 00:27:17,440
Speaker 1: like you know, then I can show everybody this thing

516
00:27:17,640 --> 00:27:19,879
Speaker 1: or something. It's sort of the moral of Raiders of

517
00:27:19,920 --> 00:27:23,680
Speaker 1: the Lost Dark at the end that Indie, Indie loses

518
00:27:23,840 --> 00:27:28,040
Speaker 1: his his sort of profane curiosity and he realizes I

519
00:27:28,040 --> 00:27:30,199
Speaker 1: can just let this thing be sacred and not have

520
00:27:30,320 --> 00:27:32,520
Speaker 1: to look inside and not have to want to own

521
00:27:32,560 --> 00:27:35,200
Speaker 1: it and control it and show the world. Yeah. I

522
00:27:35,240 --> 00:27:38,280
Speaker 1: think that's a's a solid read on Raiders of the

523
00:27:38,320 --> 00:27:40,760
Speaker 1: Lost Dark. You know, well, while we're talking about Raiders.

524
00:27:40,760 --> 00:27:42,920
Speaker 1: So let's let's go ahead and uh and discuss a

525
00:27:42,920 --> 00:27:45,840
Speaker 1: few of the details about it, because I'm I'm assuming

526
00:27:45,920 --> 00:27:48,640
Speaker 1: most people have seen Raiders, but I know there are

527
00:27:48,680 --> 00:27:51,800
Speaker 1: some individuals out there who just haven't seen the film yet. Uh,

528
00:27:51,840 --> 00:27:53,800
Speaker 1: And I certainly encourage everyone to see it because it

529
00:27:53,840 --> 00:27:58,080
Speaker 1: is a damn near perfect motion picture. Is there a

530
00:27:58,119 --> 00:28:01,560
Speaker 1: better action adventure movie? I can't think of. I mean

531
00:28:01,600 --> 00:28:03,960
Speaker 1: you could, you could say Star Wars, right, you could

532
00:28:04,200 --> 00:28:09,199
Speaker 1: point to other yeah, things of that nature. But but

533
00:28:09,240 --> 00:28:11,359
Speaker 1: I mean, it's such a tentpole film in terms of

534
00:28:11,400 --> 00:28:13,520
Speaker 1: like big summer action films. It is the film that

535
00:28:13,600 --> 00:28:18,000
Speaker 1: so many other motion pictures have have tried to be. This,

536
00:28:18,040 --> 00:28:20,480
Speaker 1: of course, is a film came out in one directed

537
00:28:20,480 --> 00:28:23,960
Speaker 1: by Steven Spielberg, screenplay by Lawrence Kasden's story by George

538
00:28:24,040 --> 00:28:27,680
Speaker 1: Lucas and Philip Kaufman. Uh. Philip Kaufman, by the way,

539
00:28:27,880 --> 00:28:32,159
Speaker 1: is uh is the person who reportedly brought up the

540
00:28:32,200 --> 00:28:35,840
Speaker 1: idea of using the arc in the story, and he

541
00:28:35,920 --> 00:28:38,840
Speaker 1: was He was also the grandson of German Jewish immigrants

542
00:28:38,880 --> 00:28:43,080
Speaker 1: to the US. Spielberg's parental grandparents were Jewish Ukrainians. Uh

543
00:28:43,240 --> 00:28:46,480
Speaker 1: so I one would assume that the that this played

544
00:28:46,480 --> 00:28:48,840
Speaker 1: into the the use of the Arc in the film,

545
00:28:49,040 --> 00:28:52,320
Speaker 1: but also some of these themes regarding the you know,

546
00:28:52,360 --> 00:28:55,600
Speaker 1: the struggle of the Jewish people against depression. Yeah. Well,

547
00:28:55,600 --> 00:28:58,880
Speaker 1: one of the unspoken subtexts to the film, I think

548
00:28:58,920 --> 00:29:01,680
Speaker 1: is that ultimately the Arc ends up fulfilling its destiny

549
00:29:01,760 --> 00:29:04,400
Speaker 1: as the weapon that protects the Jewish people in the end.

550
00:29:04,440 --> 00:29:08,520
Speaker 1: It's it's destroying Nazis, right, and it's recreating a tale

551
00:29:08,520 --> 00:29:10,080
Speaker 1: that will touch on in a bit, the idea that

552
00:29:10,120 --> 00:29:13,360
Speaker 1: the Arc is stolen by an enemy force and then

553
00:29:13,480 --> 00:29:17,000
Speaker 1: uses its power against that enemy force. Yeah, it's sort

554
00:29:17,000 --> 00:29:20,240
Speaker 1: of a retelling of the of the Amrods story almost. Yeah.

555
00:29:21,280 --> 00:29:23,600
Speaker 1: I should also point out that John Williams did the

556
00:29:23,640 --> 00:29:26,280
Speaker 1: score for the film, and I'm usually I'm I'm kind

557
00:29:26,280 --> 00:29:28,800
Speaker 1: of over John Williams scores for the most part. I

558
00:29:28,840 --> 00:29:30,960
Speaker 1: don't know what you're talking about, dude, How can you

559
00:29:31,000 --> 00:29:35,480
Speaker 1: not love John Williams. Well, the thing is in rewatching

560
00:29:35,720 --> 00:29:37,960
Speaker 1: portions of this film for this episode, I I still

561
00:29:38,040 --> 00:29:39,240
Speaker 1: I have to give him all the credit in the

562
00:29:39,240 --> 00:29:43,120
Speaker 1: world because that that the scene when they finally opened

563
00:29:43,160 --> 00:29:46,200
Speaker 1: the Arc and the Arc unleashes it's um, it's wrath

564
00:29:46,400 --> 00:29:49,280
Speaker 1: upon the Nazis. The music is perfect in that it

565
00:29:49,360 --> 00:29:52,400
Speaker 1: just really adds to the sense of just holy mystery

566
00:29:53,040 --> 00:29:56,240
Speaker 1: that is unfolding. There. Take any movie with the John

567
00:29:56,280 --> 00:29:58,680
Speaker 1: Williams score and take the score out, replace it with

568
00:29:58,720 --> 00:30:01,000
Speaker 1: something else. You wouldn't have half the movie. But what

569
00:30:01,040 --> 00:30:05,360
Speaker 1: if it was Tangerine Dream, then I can only imagine it.

570
00:30:05,480 --> 00:30:07,560
Speaker 1: It might be just a little better. Maybe, well, I

571
00:30:07,600 --> 00:30:11,040
Speaker 1: love Tangerine Dream too, But you're wrong about this, no,

572
00:30:11,240 --> 00:30:14,160
Speaker 1: well maybe so. Now key scenes in the film for

573
00:30:14,200 --> 00:30:16,200
Speaker 1: our purposes, because there's a lot of stuff in there

574
00:30:16,240 --> 00:30:19,760
Speaker 1: that is of course added on and uh um, you know,

575
00:30:20,200 --> 00:30:24,360
Speaker 1: historically inaccurate, certainly, But there are a few key scenes

576
00:30:24,400 --> 00:30:26,080
Speaker 1: that that that match up with a lot of stuff

577
00:30:26,120 --> 00:30:27,560
Speaker 1: we're talking about here today. There's a scene in which

578
00:30:27,600 --> 00:30:30,400
Speaker 1: the arc burns the swastick off of the crate containing

579
00:30:30,440 --> 00:30:33,120
Speaker 1: the arc. And then of course there's that fabulous scene

580
00:30:33,120 --> 00:30:35,720
Speaker 1: at the end where the Nazis opened the arc, uh

581
00:30:35,720 --> 00:30:38,200
Speaker 1: and those Cherubim emerge. And then you also have the

582
00:30:38,240 --> 00:30:42,280
Speaker 1: burning light of God finally emerging as well and just

583
00:30:42,400 --> 00:30:45,640
Speaker 1: eradicating everybody that has their eyes open, and the idea

584
00:30:45,720 --> 00:30:48,600
Speaker 1: of a fire that burns people emerging from the Arc

585
00:30:48,640 --> 00:30:51,920
Speaker 1: is absolutely biblical and we will explore more of those

586
00:30:51,960 --> 00:30:54,640
Speaker 1: stories later on. Now, a side question that I saw

587
00:30:54,680 --> 00:30:57,880
Speaker 1: come up on the internet. Does Indie actually impact the

588
00:30:57,920 --> 00:31:01,120
Speaker 1: situation with the Arc and the Nazis at all? Because

589
00:31:01,160 --> 00:31:07,000
Speaker 1: outside of saving Marian's life Marian the romantic interest, does

590
00:31:07,040 --> 00:31:10,280
Speaker 1: he accomplish anything? No, And I think that's the genius

591
00:31:10,280 --> 00:31:14,040
Speaker 1: of it. The movie ends with with Indie. It doesn't.

592
00:31:14,080 --> 00:31:16,680
Speaker 1: It's an action movie that doesn't end with a fist fight.

593
00:31:17,000 --> 00:31:19,520
Speaker 1: There's no fight of any kind at the end. The

594
00:31:19,520 --> 00:31:21,960
Speaker 1: the hero of the movie at the end is completely

595
00:31:22,000 --> 00:31:25,600
Speaker 1: powerless and his victory at the end is assuming a

596
00:31:25,680 --> 00:31:29,560
Speaker 1: posture of humility in the presence of the sacred Yeah, totally,

597
00:31:29,600 --> 00:31:32,480
Speaker 1: because to remind everybody, at the end, he and Marian

598
00:31:32,520 --> 00:31:36,200
Speaker 1: are tied up. The Nazis have the Arc and UH

599
00:31:36,200 --> 00:31:40,120
Speaker 1: and Bellock is opening it in the full regalia, in fact,

600
00:31:40,160 --> 00:31:45,160
Speaker 1: wearing some version of the vestiments that are described UH

601
00:31:45,200 --> 00:31:48,480
Speaker 1: alongside the instructions for the for the construction of the Arc.

602
00:31:49,280 --> 00:31:52,440
Speaker 1: And then the arcis murders all of the bad guys

603
00:31:52,880 --> 00:31:55,720
Speaker 1: and UH and Harrison Ford is left to pick up

604
00:31:55,720 --> 00:31:58,080
Speaker 1: the pieces. Okay, we can't just fully turn this into

605
00:31:58,120 --> 00:32:00,600
Speaker 1: a movie crush episode. Now we've got a get back to,

606
00:32:00,840 --> 00:32:02,960
Speaker 1: so we should probably get into exploring some of the

607
00:32:03,040 --> 00:32:07,680
Speaker 1: weird scientific tangents people have gotten into on the subject

608
00:32:07,760 --> 00:32:10,280
Speaker 1: of the Arc, and one of them that you can

609
00:32:10,280 --> 00:32:14,000
Speaker 1: clearly look at is the idea of the immerrods and

610
00:32:14,120 --> 00:32:16,240
Speaker 1: what happened with the Arc in the presence of the

611
00:32:16,240 --> 00:32:18,800
Speaker 1: Philistines if you assume this story is based on any

612
00:32:18,880 --> 00:32:22,200
Speaker 1: kind of historical memory or even an exaggerated version of

613
00:32:22,280 --> 00:32:25,520
Speaker 1: something that people remembered, right, Yeah, because this is getting

614
00:32:25,560 --> 00:32:27,240
Speaker 1: to one of my favorite things about the Arc, the

615
00:32:27,240 --> 00:32:30,200
Speaker 1: idea that it brings plague and or madness to those

616
00:32:30,240 --> 00:32:33,920
Speaker 1: who should not possess it, that it is a dangerous artifact.

617
00:32:34,200 --> 00:32:36,600
Speaker 1: So should we explore the idea of the Arc as

618
00:32:36,640 --> 00:32:40,240
Speaker 1: a sort of bio weapon. Yeah, let's talk about the

619
00:32:40,400 --> 00:32:42,959
Speaker 1: Arc as plague bearer. I just want to remind everybody

620
00:32:42,960 --> 00:32:45,760
Speaker 1: that previous passage that we read, and it was so

621
00:32:46,080 --> 00:32:48,440
Speaker 1: that after they had carried it about, the hand of

622
00:32:48,440 --> 00:32:51,320
Speaker 1: the Lord was against the city with a very great destruction,

623
00:32:51,360 --> 00:32:53,560
Speaker 1: and he smoked the men of the city, both small

624
00:32:53,600 --> 00:32:57,400
Speaker 1: and great, and they had immerrods in their secret parts.

625
00:32:57,720 --> 00:33:03,080
Speaker 1: Now let's talk about those m rods. So those emorrods

626
00:33:03,600 --> 00:33:08,480
Speaker 1: are often interpreted as hemorrhoids. Okay, that would there seems

627
00:33:08,480 --> 00:33:11,600
Speaker 1: to be a cognate issue there, and a lot seems

628
00:33:11,640 --> 00:33:14,000
Speaker 1: to have been written about them over the years, in

629
00:33:14,120 --> 00:33:18,080
Speaker 1: part because it seems like anytime you have a hemorrhoid paper, yes,

630
00:33:18,360 --> 00:33:20,240
Speaker 1: and there are a lot of hemoroid papers out there,

631
00:33:21,000 --> 00:33:24,280
Speaker 1: the doctor's writing them often like to throw in a

632
00:33:24,320 --> 00:33:26,920
Speaker 1: little bit of biblical flavor at the beginning. Yes, how

633
00:33:26,960 --> 00:33:29,840
Speaker 1: many times has this story been cited in the International

634
00:33:29,920 --> 00:33:32,640
Speaker 1: Journal of Hemorrhoid Research, Right, yeah, right at the very

635
00:33:32,680 --> 00:33:35,000
Speaker 1: beginning of any paper, Because you're ultimately just going to

636
00:33:35,080 --> 00:33:37,800
Speaker 1: talk about swollen veins and the lower part of the

637
00:33:37,800 --> 00:33:39,640
Speaker 1: rectum and anus. But if you can make it a

638
00:33:39,640 --> 00:33:42,520
Speaker 1: little magical right at the start, you can hook readers. Right,

639
00:33:42,640 --> 00:33:44,800
Speaker 1: So for people who don't actually know, can you just

640
00:33:44,960 --> 00:33:48,520
Speaker 1: briefly explain what a hemorrhoid is? Yeah, it is swollen

641
00:33:48,600 --> 00:33:52,080
Speaker 1: veins and the lower part of the rectum and anus. Okay, Yeah,

642
00:33:52,120 --> 00:33:54,200
Speaker 1: that's all it is. Yeah, that basically, I mean, you

643
00:33:54,200 --> 00:33:57,320
Speaker 1: can get more detailed in describing what causes them, and

644
00:33:57,320 --> 00:34:01,719
Speaker 1: of course the treatments that are necessary. But it's been

645
00:34:01,760 --> 00:34:04,720
Speaker 1: a problem for a long time. Obviously, it's something that

646
00:34:04,800 --> 00:34:07,800
Speaker 1: may have been described here in the Bible. Uh and

647
00:34:07,880 --> 00:34:11,320
Speaker 1: just throughout human history people have had to deal with hemorrhoids. Now,

648
00:34:11,440 --> 00:34:16,799
Speaker 1: if the story actually does mean that the Philistines got hemorrhoids,

649
00:34:16,840 --> 00:34:19,040
Speaker 1: I know it's been translated in other ways, But if

650
00:34:19,080 --> 00:34:23,319
Speaker 1: it did mean that, would the story be best interpreted

651
00:34:23,320 --> 00:34:26,319
Speaker 1: as something that's supposed to be humorous? Is it like

652
00:34:26,360 --> 00:34:30,320
Speaker 1: a joke on the Philistines? You know this comes down,

653
00:34:31,560 --> 00:34:33,359
Speaker 1: oh man, if you you kind of end up asking

654
00:34:33,400 --> 00:34:36,359
Speaker 1: a big question about humor there, right, because I don't

655
00:34:36,400 --> 00:34:39,480
Speaker 1: think hemorrhoids are ever humorous to the individual that has them.

656
00:34:40,040 --> 00:34:42,600
Speaker 1: But clearly we have a lot of jokes about hemorrhoids.

657
00:34:42,640 --> 00:34:45,720
Speaker 1: It's really funny when your enemies get one, I guess,

658
00:34:45,760 --> 00:34:49,720
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's it's kind of an insulting curse

659
00:34:49,960 --> 00:34:53,359
Speaker 1: from a powerful god figure. Right, It's not just like

660
00:34:54,000 --> 00:34:56,359
Speaker 1: causing them to go blind or something. It's giving them

661
00:34:56,360 --> 00:35:00,000
Speaker 1: this this annoying health problem. And then there's this other

662
00:35:00,000 --> 00:35:03,080
Speaker 1: apart to it as well. So the Philistines suffer these

663
00:35:03,200 --> 00:35:05,319
Speaker 1: after they steal it and they locked it up in

664
00:35:05,320 --> 00:35:08,239
Speaker 1: the temple of Dagon, and we see the statue of

665
00:35:08,320 --> 00:35:12,279
Speaker 1: Dagon fall over multiple times. Um and the the arc

666
00:35:12,320 --> 00:35:14,840
Speaker 1: of course not only mutilated there with their god's statue,

667
00:35:14,880 --> 00:35:18,120
Speaker 1: it also caused these uh, these emrods, as well as

668
00:35:18,120 --> 00:35:22,719
Speaker 1: a plague of rampaging mice. The emeralds again are also

669
00:35:22,800 --> 00:35:26,160
Speaker 1: sometimes referred to as tumors. So a lot of people

670
00:35:26,200 --> 00:35:29,120
Speaker 1: have have looked at these examples and tried to figure

671
00:35:29,120 --> 00:35:31,920
Speaker 1: out what could possibly be going on here, because if

672
00:35:31,960 --> 00:35:35,279
Speaker 1: these these immrods be they hemorrhoids or some sort of

673
00:35:35,280 --> 00:35:37,799
Speaker 1: a tumor, well, that's that's a symptom. That's something we

674
00:35:37,840 --> 00:35:41,800
Speaker 1: can look look to that we can analyze via modern medicine,

675
00:35:42,160 --> 00:35:43,520
Speaker 1: and then maybe we can look at some of these

676
00:35:43,560 --> 00:35:46,040
Speaker 1: other elements and try and piece something together as well. Now,

677
00:35:46,080 --> 00:35:48,440
Speaker 1: just to be clear, once again, we mentioned this earlier,

678
00:35:48,480 --> 00:35:51,360
Speaker 1: but we don't we don't have direct evidence that this

679
00:35:51,480 --> 00:35:54,799
Speaker 1: story actually happened. We right, we don't know that this

680
00:35:54,880 --> 00:35:57,839
Speaker 1: is based on something that people remember, but it could

681
00:35:57,840 --> 00:36:00,520
Speaker 1: be it could be based on some kind of historical event, right,

682
00:36:00,560 --> 00:36:03,080
Speaker 1: And likewise, a lot of a lot of work has

683
00:36:03,120 --> 00:36:05,920
Speaker 1: been done looking at Okay, we had we had immerrods

684
00:36:05,960 --> 00:36:08,319
Speaker 1: and we have mice. What's the connection there, when in

685
00:36:08,360 --> 00:36:11,120
Speaker 1: reality you could have two separate stories that end up

686
00:36:11,160 --> 00:36:15,799
Speaker 1: being combined into a story that has imrods and mice. So,

687
00:36:15,840 --> 00:36:17,920
Speaker 1: as I said, a number of people have written about this.

688
00:36:18,080 --> 00:36:20,600
Speaker 1: Two of the earlier ones where nineteenth century historians Gaston

689
00:36:20,719 --> 00:36:25,080
Speaker 1: Maspero and Archibald Henry Says, who summarized the quote the

690
00:36:25,200 --> 00:36:29,120
Speaker 1: Philistine soothsayer, being consulted at the end of seven months,

691
00:36:29,280 --> 00:36:32,759
Speaker 1: ordered that the solemn sacrifices should be offered up and

692
00:36:32,800 --> 00:36:37,200
Speaker 1: the arc restored to its rightful worshippers, accompanied by expiratory

693
00:36:37,320 --> 00:36:41,279
Speaker 1: offerings of five gold mice and five gold tumors, one

694
00:36:41,440 --> 00:36:46,000
Speaker 1: for each of the repentant cities. So they're not only saying, here,

695
00:36:46,080 --> 00:36:48,880
Speaker 1: take your arc back because it is causing mice to

696
00:36:48,880 --> 00:36:51,880
Speaker 1: be everywhere and has given us some weird growths. They're saying,

697
00:36:51,920 --> 00:36:54,920
Speaker 1: here it is back, but also here's here's some golden

698
00:36:54,960 --> 00:36:58,400
Speaker 1: mice and some golden hemorrhoids or or tumors or something

699
00:36:58,800 --> 00:37:01,240
Speaker 1: uh too, sort of as pay aiment or perhaps warning

700
00:37:01,320 --> 00:37:03,560
Speaker 1: to her whoever gets the arc next. Now, I don't

701
00:37:03,600 --> 00:37:05,279
Speaker 1: want to get too far ahead of things here, but

702
00:37:05,600 --> 00:37:08,000
Speaker 1: I can't help but notice, if you've got mice and

703
00:37:08,120 --> 00:37:11,920
Speaker 1: you've got tumors or lumps of some kind, I'm going

704
00:37:11,960 --> 00:37:15,120
Speaker 1: to start thinking about bubonic plague. That's right, because bubonic

705
00:37:15,160 --> 00:37:18,799
Speaker 1: plague does result in bu bos, which are swellings of

706
00:37:18,840 --> 00:37:21,240
Speaker 1: the lymph nodes. So that could sort of be classed

707
00:37:21,239 --> 00:37:23,759
Speaker 1: as something like a tumor. You get a lump under

708
00:37:23,800 --> 00:37:25,960
Speaker 1: your skin, right, And if you if you want to

709
00:37:26,040 --> 00:37:29,080
Speaker 1: do a Google search, you can find images of these, uh,

710
00:37:29,239 --> 00:37:31,640
Speaker 1: these swellings, and indeed they look kind of like like

711
00:37:31,880 --> 00:37:36,560
Speaker 1: lumpy tumor like growths. Frank R. Freeman, in a two

712
00:37:36,600 --> 00:37:39,960
Speaker 1: thousand five Royal Society of Medicine article, highlighted some some

713
00:37:40,040 --> 00:37:42,720
Speaker 1: other writings on the topic, including a two thousand argument

714
00:37:42,880 --> 00:37:46,359
Speaker 1: by JP Griffin that it was in fact plague that

715
00:37:46,480 --> 00:37:51,600
Speaker 1: was afflicting the Philistines here. But then one W. M. S.

716
00:37:51,680 --> 00:37:56,400
Speaker 1: Russell insisted that the tumors were amorroids due to dysenterry

717
00:37:56,480 --> 00:37:59,320
Speaker 1: and that quote the rat carrier of the plague wasn't

718
00:37:59,320 --> 00:38:02,160
Speaker 1: in the region at time of the described events, but

719
00:38:02,320 --> 00:38:05,480
Speaker 1: that quote Since then, advances in archaeology have shifted the

720
00:38:05,480 --> 00:38:08,880
Speaker 1: weight of evidence towards Griffin. Moreover, the emrods of the

721
00:38:08,960 --> 00:38:12,400
Speaker 1: King James Bible appear in all modern translations as tumors.

722
00:38:12,440 --> 00:38:14,719
Speaker 1: So if you're just trying, really trying to make it

723
00:38:14,760 --> 00:38:17,960
Speaker 1: work as hemorrhoids, you're probably out of luck. Right. It

724
00:38:17,960 --> 00:38:23,040
Speaker 1: seems like like like tumors are more likely interpretation, and

725
00:38:23,080 --> 00:38:25,240
Speaker 1: that leads a number of people to say, well, maybe

726
00:38:25,280 --> 00:38:29,400
Speaker 1: it was it was debonic plague. Here's another quote from Freeman.

727
00:38:30,160 --> 00:38:33,440
Speaker 1: Recent archaeological evidence has caused a rethinking of plague in

728
00:38:33,480 --> 00:38:36,959
Speaker 1: the ancient Near East. Fossilized remains of the plague flea

729
00:38:37,080 --> 00:38:40,600
Speaker 1: have been found in large numbers in Amarana, Egypt, and

730
00:38:40,640 --> 00:38:43,320
Speaker 1: since a Marna was occupied for only a few years,

731
00:38:43,680 --> 00:38:46,880
Speaker 1: we can date this contact between human beings and plague

732
00:38:46,880 --> 00:38:51,280
Speaker 1: fleas accurately to about fifty b C, which is before

733
00:38:51,320 --> 00:38:54,839
Speaker 1: the events described in the Book of Samuel. Moreover, archaeological

734
00:38:54,880 --> 00:38:58,319
Speaker 1: studies in the Nile Valley indicate that our Rattus was

735
00:38:58,680 --> 00:39:02,560
Speaker 1: introduced at this time, probably via ships from India. Evidence

736
00:39:02,560 --> 00:39:05,600
Speaker 1: of bubonic plague has not been seen in Egyptian mummies,

737
00:39:05,840 --> 00:39:08,719
Speaker 1: but all the vectors were in place. Okay, so this

738
00:39:08,800 --> 00:39:12,040
Speaker 1: is saying based on some evidence we have there, the

739
00:39:12,160 --> 00:39:16,239
Speaker 1: historical setting is is there like you could imagine that

740
00:39:16,239 --> 00:39:19,400
Speaker 1: there could be bubonic plague at the right time, in

741
00:39:19,440 --> 00:39:21,640
Speaker 1: the right place for this to be what is what

742
00:39:21,800 --> 00:39:24,239
Speaker 1: is described in the story about the arc in the Philistines.

743
00:39:25,280 --> 00:39:27,160
Speaker 1: That being said, I don't think anybody is arguing that

744
00:39:27,200 --> 00:39:30,839
Speaker 1: the arc was full of plague infested mice. This would

745
00:39:30,840 --> 00:39:35,680
Speaker 1: just be a situation where the soothsayers made sort of

746
00:39:35,680 --> 00:39:40,480
Speaker 1: a connection between plague mice and the illness, but instead

747
00:39:40,480 --> 00:39:42,719
Speaker 1: of connecting those two things together, they just assumed they

748
00:39:42,760 --> 00:39:46,440
Speaker 1: were both curses of the arc. Now, in a minute,

749
00:39:46,440 --> 00:39:48,719
Speaker 1: I do want to come back and discuss the possibility

750
00:39:48,960 --> 00:39:53,000
Speaker 1: of bio warfare and germ warfare in the ancient world. Yes,

751
00:39:53,080 --> 00:39:54,960
Speaker 1: and now before we get to that, I do I

752
00:39:55,000 --> 00:39:58,600
Speaker 1: do want to also mentioned that one doctor Otto news

753
00:39:58,600 --> 00:40:02,839
Speaker 1: Stator in nineteen forty considered that the swellings described here

754
00:40:02,880 --> 00:40:06,120
Speaker 1: might be possible. It might possibly be due to syphiletic infection,

755
00:40:06,600 --> 00:40:10,160
Speaker 1: which is that the Philistines would have contracted syphilis from

756
00:40:10,200 --> 00:40:13,560
Speaker 1: the Ark of the Covenant, or or again that an

757
00:40:13,600 --> 00:40:16,239
Speaker 1: outbreak of syphilis lined up with the presence of the

758
00:40:16,360 --> 00:40:18,480
Speaker 1: arc or was attributed to the presence of the arc

759
00:40:18,800 --> 00:40:22,520
Speaker 1: in some fashion. Is there anything that syphilis doesn't explain.

760
00:40:23,040 --> 00:40:25,279
Speaker 1: But I mean, yeah, if we go back to to

761
00:40:25,400 --> 00:40:28,560
Speaker 1: our earlier discussions of syphilis on this uh, this podcast,

762
00:40:28,600 --> 00:40:30,400
Speaker 1: it it seems like you can pretty much describe just

763
00:40:30,440 --> 00:40:33,000
Speaker 1: about everything if the only thing is you probably get

764
00:40:33,040 --> 00:40:37,239
Speaker 1: into an argument about when syphilis would have impacted a

765
00:40:37,239 --> 00:40:40,520
Speaker 1: given region. No, by that, I didn't mean that syphilis

766
00:40:40,520 --> 00:40:43,400
Speaker 1: is a good explanation for everything. I just people have

767
00:40:43,480 --> 00:40:47,480
Speaker 1: tried it on everything. It's like every powerful force in

768
00:40:47,800 --> 00:40:51,680
Speaker 1: human history. For sure, every historical event has a syphilis hypothesis,

769
00:40:53,000 --> 00:40:55,600
Speaker 1: as will come up repeatedly in this episode. It's not

770
00:40:55,840 --> 00:40:59,759
Speaker 1: necessary to invoke bronze punk bio warfare explanations to just

771
00:40:59,840 --> 00:41:02,600
Speaker 1: a file legends of the Ark. But it is certainly,

772
00:41:02,640 --> 00:41:07,640
Speaker 1: I think plausible that forms of biological warfare were practiced

773
00:41:07,640 --> 00:41:11,000
Speaker 1: in the ancient world. That who knows that the ancient

774
00:41:11,680 --> 00:41:14,000
Speaker 1: the ancient Hebrews, or or any of the other peoples

775
00:41:14,000 --> 00:41:16,640
Speaker 1: of the time period could have figured out how to

776
00:41:16,680 --> 00:41:19,440
Speaker 1: do germ warfare and could have used it. And in fact,

777
00:41:19,480 --> 00:41:23,080
Speaker 1: we have some pretty interesting evidence that it did actually happen,

778
00:41:23,160 --> 00:41:26,799
Speaker 1: at least in one case, uh, in the second millennium BC.

779
00:41:28,520 --> 00:41:31,240
Speaker 1: That's right, we're talking about the hit tights of Asia

780
00:41:31,280 --> 00:41:35,680
Speaker 1: Minor going back to what BC around then, so I

781
00:41:35,719 --> 00:41:39,080
Speaker 1: think in the fourteenth century BC. So there was an

782
00:41:39,120 --> 00:41:41,839
Speaker 1: epidemic at the time in the fourteenth century BC, known

783
00:41:41,920 --> 00:41:45,560
Speaker 1: to historians as the hit Tite plague, that spread throughout

784
00:41:45,560 --> 00:41:49,760
Speaker 1: the Middle East, And historical records of this pestilence appear

785
00:41:49,840 --> 00:41:54,160
Speaker 1: in correspondence Stella to the Egyptian pharaoh akinat In from

786
00:41:54,200 --> 00:41:59,239
Speaker 1: around thirteen thirty five BC, and they say that there's

787
00:41:59,280 --> 00:42:02,360
Speaker 1: a horrible play that spread throughout the land. It's affecting

788
00:42:02,520 --> 00:42:05,319
Speaker 1: some Phoenician cities, and there was a fear that it

789
00:42:05,360 --> 00:42:08,200
Speaker 1: was being spread by donkeys, which led to them barring

790
00:42:08,280 --> 00:42:12,319
Speaker 1: people from infected cities from coming into other cities and

791
00:42:12,400 --> 00:42:17,200
Speaker 1: from preventing donkeys from being used in traveling caravans. And

792
00:42:17,280 --> 00:42:20,239
Speaker 1: so there is a paper I wanted to talk about

793
00:42:20,239 --> 00:42:23,799
Speaker 1: published in Medical Hypotheses in two thousand seven by a

794
00:42:23,920 --> 00:42:28,120
Speaker 1: microbiologist named Zero E. G No trevis Sinato called the

795
00:42:28,160 --> 00:42:31,880
Speaker 1: Hittite plague an epidemic of tularemia and the first record

796
00:42:31,920 --> 00:42:35,520
Speaker 1: of biological warfare. And this is a really interesting hypothesis.

797
00:42:36,040 --> 00:42:40,480
Speaker 1: So Trevisano believes that the evidence indicates that the Hittite

798
00:42:40,520 --> 00:42:44,680
Speaker 1: plague was in fact an epidemic of tularemia, which is

799
00:42:44,719 --> 00:42:49,840
Speaker 1: a bacterial infection caused by the bacterium francis sella to lawrensis.

800
00:42:50,480 --> 00:42:54,480
Speaker 1: Tularemia can spread between animals and humans, so it's potentially

801
00:42:54,600 --> 00:42:57,920
Speaker 1: zoonotic infection UH and it can spread via several routes,

802
00:42:57,960 --> 00:43:02,080
Speaker 1: including tick bites and by just direct contact or inhalation

803
00:43:02,120 --> 00:43:05,880
Speaker 1: of infected aerosols. It has different symptoms depending on the

804
00:43:05,960 --> 00:43:09,760
Speaker 1: route of transmission, including high fever and ulcers and swelling

805
00:43:09,800 --> 00:43:13,160
Speaker 1: of the lymph glands, and the pneumonic version of this

806
00:43:13,280 --> 00:43:16,840
Speaker 1: infection leads to a cough, chest pain, difficulty breathing, and

807
00:43:16,880 --> 00:43:20,160
Speaker 1: can definitely be deadly to Tularemia is actually often known

808
00:43:20,200 --> 00:43:23,560
Speaker 1: to kill off large numbers of rabbits, which has led

809
00:43:23,600 --> 00:43:27,280
Speaker 1: to it being commonly known as rabbit fever, and especially

810
00:43:27,280 --> 00:43:30,960
Speaker 1: without modern medical intervention, primarily antibiotics, it can be fatal

811
00:43:31,000 --> 00:43:35,160
Speaker 1: to humans, so it is a deadly dangerous disease. Trevis

812
00:43:35,160 --> 00:43:38,319
Speaker 1: Sinato says that after the outbreak of this plague hit

813
00:43:38,320 --> 00:43:41,640
Speaker 1: the Phoenician city of Simura, the Hittites also known as

814
00:43:41,680 --> 00:43:44,400
Speaker 1: the nest Shites, attacked the area and looted it, so

815
00:43:44,400 --> 00:43:47,120
Speaker 1: you've got the city weakened by disease. The Hittites say, hey,

816
00:43:47,160 --> 00:43:49,799
Speaker 1: some free stuff, so they run in. They attacked the

817
00:43:49,800 --> 00:43:53,440
Speaker 1: city and they loot it, taking along livestock among the

818
00:43:53,480 --> 00:43:58,160
Speaker 1: many spoils of war. But soon after they returned, the

819
00:43:58,239 --> 00:44:01,640
Speaker 1: Hittite raiders were hit within outbreak of disease that Trevis

820
00:44:01,680 --> 00:44:05,959
Speaker 1: Sano Trevis Sinato also thinks was tularemia, and this would

821
00:44:06,000 --> 00:44:09,360
Speaker 1: make sense because they brought the livestock. The animal hosts

822
00:44:09,520 --> 00:44:14,080
Speaker 1: were arcs if you will, for the bacteria. Then while

823
00:44:14,120 --> 00:44:17,600
Speaker 1: the Hittites were weakened with this epidemic, another people known

824
00:44:17,640 --> 00:44:22,440
Speaker 1: as the Arzawans attacked them. Then Trevis Sinato writes that

825
00:44:22,480 --> 00:44:26,000
Speaker 1: their historical records that indicate strange incidents and when like

826
00:44:26,120 --> 00:44:30,560
Speaker 1: wandering rams appeared in our Zawa, and the Arzawans of

827
00:44:30,560 --> 00:44:33,680
Speaker 1: course wouldn't pass up free live stock, so they incorporated

828
00:44:33,719 --> 00:44:36,600
Speaker 1: these rams into their flocks. But then they were hit

829
00:44:36,640 --> 00:44:40,880
Speaker 1: with the disease, probably tularemia. And Trevis Sinato also mentioned

830
00:44:40,920 --> 00:44:44,480
Speaker 1: the story that there was this Arzawan leader called Uasdis

831
00:44:44,880 --> 00:44:48,120
Speaker 1: who was struck by a divine thunderbolt in the knee

832
00:44:48,800 --> 00:44:52,480
Speaker 1: disabling him. Quote a ruler infected with the plague and

833
00:44:52,560 --> 00:44:55,320
Speaker 1: symptoms thereof being observed in the knees or in a

834
00:44:55,400 --> 00:45:00,120
Speaker 1: region euphemistically and or puritanically described as the knees at

835
00:45:00,120 --> 00:45:02,319
Speaker 1: the metaphor. Oh, this is the idea where like if

836
00:45:02,320 --> 00:45:05,759
Speaker 1: an individual is wounded in the in the groin, they

837
00:45:05,800 --> 00:45:08,080
Speaker 1: describe it as the knee instead, or like the foot,

838
00:45:08,360 --> 00:45:11,000
Speaker 1: like often in the Bible. The use of the word

839
00:45:11,200 --> 00:45:16,279
Speaker 1: foot is clearly a euphemism for the genitals. So here's

840
00:45:16,280 --> 00:45:20,160
Speaker 1: Trevis Sinato's hypothesis. It's that the Hittites, who had experience

841
00:45:20,239 --> 00:45:25,520
Speaker 1: with this epidemic, deliberately planted disease carrying rams among their

842
00:45:25,640 --> 00:45:29,319
Speaker 1: enemies in order to deliberately spread the rabbit fever the

843
00:45:29,320 --> 00:45:32,880
Speaker 1: tularemia and weaken those enemies. And if that's true, it

844
00:45:32,960 --> 00:45:36,240
Speaker 1: seems like it worked. The Lands were unable to defeat

845
00:45:36,239 --> 00:45:39,040
Speaker 1: the Hittites after the fever hit them, And we've got

846
00:45:39,080 --> 00:45:43,360
Speaker 1: historical records that the Hittite king wished plague upon the lands,

847
00:45:43,840 --> 00:45:46,879
Speaker 1: and that there was this Hittite scapegoat ritual in which

848
00:45:46,920 --> 00:45:49,680
Speaker 1: a ram and a female attendant were sent out on

849
00:45:49,719 --> 00:45:53,759
Speaker 1: the road spreading disease where they went, So we don't

850
00:45:53,760 --> 00:45:57,399
Speaker 1: have direct evidence that the Hittites knew exactly what they

851
00:45:57,400 --> 00:45:59,920
Speaker 1: were doing, you know, that they knew they were spreading disease,

852
00:46:00,640 --> 00:46:04,319
Speaker 1: or that they understood how the spread of disease was happening. So,

853
00:46:04,360 --> 00:46:06,600
Speaker 1: while the evidence for this is very interesting, I would

854
00:46:06,600 --> 00:46:09,239
Speaker 1: not say it's a proven case of germ warfare and

855
00:46:09,239 --> 00:46:12,320
Speaker 1: that it doesn't seem like this has become accepted theory

856
00:46:12,360 --> 00:46:14,320
Speaker 1: about what happened in this case. But it does seem

857
00:46:14,360 --> 00:46:18,239
Speaker 1: like a very promising hypothesis. But despite not having a

858
00:46:18,280 --> 00:46:20,759
Speaker 1: germ theory of disease, I think it's certainly feasible that

859
00:46:20,800 --> 00:46:25,719
Speaker 1: ancient people's could work out basic principles of epidemic transmission,

860
00:46:26,040 --> 00:46:30,240
Speaker 1: such as that infected or maybe cursed animals would spread

861
00:46:30,320 --> 00:46:33,239
Speaker 1: the disease to people they came in contact with, and

862
00:46:33,360 --> 00:46:36,600
Speaker 1: using this basic knowledge, it's possible that ancient people's could

863
00:46:36,600 --> 00:46:40,600
Speaker 1: have deliberately spread diseases among their enemies. And it's clear

864
00:46:40,719 --> 00:46:44,239
Speaker 1: that later armies with not much more scientific understanding than

865
00:46:44,239 --> 00:46:47,239
Speaker 1: the ancient people's had did this. Yeah, indeed, I mean

866
00:46:47,239 --> 00:46:50,080
Speaker 1: two of them. The most probably famous examples of this

867
00:46:50,120 --> 00:46:53,960
Speaker 1: would be throwing dead things, be they animals or soldiers

868
00:46:54,320 --> 00:46:57,880
Speaker 1: UH over the walls into a besieged city, or throwing

869
00:46:57,880 --> 00:46:59,880
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff down a well to try and

870
00:47:00,040 --> 00:47:04,920
Speaker 1: destroy poison uh an enemy's drinking water. Yeah, so I

871
00:47:05,040 --> 00:47:07,160
Speaker 1: just wanted to mention a few examples that are cited

872
00:47:07,160 --> 00:47:09,640
Speaker 1: in a paper called the History of Biological Warfare by

873
00:47:09,680 --> 00:47:13,600
Speaker 1: Friedrich Frishnecht, and this these would all be before the

874
00:47:13,600 --> 00:47:16,320
Speaker 1: germ theory of disease, but he mentions that in eleven

875
00:47:16,400 --> 00:47:21,120
Speaker 1: fifty five, Emperor Barbarossa poisons water wells with human bodies

876
00:47:21,160 --> 00:47:25,680
Speaker 1: in Italy. In thirteen forty six, the Mongols catapulted bodies

877
00:47:25,719 --> 00:47:28,360
Speaker 1: of plague victims over the city walls of Kafa and

878
00:47:28,360 --> 00:47:32,920
Speaker 1: the crime Crimean Peninsula, And in fourteen the Spanish mixed

879
00:47:32,960 --> 00:47:36,239
Speaker 1: wine with blood of leprosy patients to sell to their

880
00:47:36,280 --> 00:47:41,240
Speaker 1: French enemies in Naples Cocktail. So while I would absolutely

881
00:47:41,680 --> 00:47:45,680
Speaker 1: say that we do not need to resort to explanations

882
00:47:45,719 --> 00:47:49,839
Speaker 1: like this to explain the origins of these stories, at

883
00:47:49,880 --> 00:47:53,319
Speaker 1: the same time, I think it's fascinating and highly plausible

884
00:47:53,719 --> 00:47:57,760
Speaker 1: that there could have been cases where ancient people's used

885
00:47:58,239 --> 00:48:02,160
Speaker 1: biological or germ based why bends to hurt their enemies

886
00:48:02,200 --> 00:48:05,319
Speaker 1: like you can imagine a vessel or a container as

887
00:48:05,400 --> 00:48:09,560
Speaker 1: some kind of biological trojan horse, tricking enemies into taking

888
00:48:09,600 --> 00:48:12,080
Speaker 1: home some disease vector with them. What if you you

889
00:48:12,120 --> 00:48:14,880
Speaker 1: get people to steal your ARC and it's actually a

890
00:48:14,920 --> 00:48:18,919
Speaker 1: box full of rabbit corpses covered into laremia ticks. Yeah,

891
00:48:19,040 --> 00:48:21,080
Speaker 1: I just I would have assumed they'd look inside it

892
00:48:21,120 --> 00:48:22,960
Speaker 1: before they take it home. I mean that just seems

893
00:48:23,000 --> 00:48:26,600
Speaker 1: like like this is common sense. Well, maybe you make

894
00:48:26,640 --> 00:48:29,880
Speaker 1: a crafty one with like some hidden you know, containers

895
00:48:29,920 --> 00:48:32,720
Speaker 1: on the compartment stuff on the hidden compartments, with grates

896
00:48:32,719 --> 00:48:34,279
Speaker 1: for the ticks to get out. You can you can

897
00:48:34,320 --> 00:48:36,799
Speaker 1: get really creative with this. So there are no instructions

898
00:48:36,880 --> 00:48:40,200
Speaker 1: about that, though in the biblical account it's true there

899
00:48:40,239 --> 00:48:43,840
Speaker 1: are not. Again, but I'm not saying that this actually

900
00:48:43,880 --> 00:48:46,000
Speaker 1: happened and explains the story. I don't think you need

901
00:48:46,080 --> 00:48:48,920
Speaker 1: to go there. All right, we're gonna take one more break,

902
00:48:48,920 --> 00:48:51,279
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we'll talk a little bit

903
00:48:51,280 --> 00:48:55,399
Speaker 1: about radiation and uh, the idea of the arc being

904
00:48:55,520 --> 00:49:00,640
Speaker 1: indeed a radio for talking to God. All right, we're back.

905
00:49:01,200 --> 00:49:03,840
Speaker 1: So I I mentioned earlier, you know, the influence of

906
00:49:03,880 --> 00:49:08,800
Speaker 1: fiction on our considerations of the arc and I definitely

907
00:49:08,840 --> 00:49:12,040
Speaker 1: remember being I guess this was like junior high reading

908
00:49:12,120 --> 00:49:16,320
Speaker 1: Stephen King's The Stand and then also looking around in

909
00:49:16,360 --> 00:49:18,600
Speaker 1: the Bible and thinking about the arc of the Covenant,

910
00:49:18,800 --> 00:49:22,879
Speaker 1: because of course this this wonderful sequence throughout the later

911
00:49:22,920 --> 00:49:25,640
Speaker 1: portions of Stephen King's The Stand And which what was

912
00:49:25,680 --> 00:49:28,239
Speaker 1: his name? Do you remember this character? Which character? The

913
00:49:28,320 --> 00:49:31,400
Speaker 1: character is dragging the the atomic bomb across the trash

914
00:49:31,719 --> 00:49:35,360
Speaker 1: trash can man? Yeah, Donald Merwin, Albert, that's good. Do

915
00:49:35,400 --> 00:49:37,480
Speaker 1: you remember his whole name? Yeah? I just remember him

916
00:49:37,520 --> 00:49:40,680
Speaker 1: just being like the melty bomb guy, because he's just

917
00:49:40,840 --> 00:49:44,960
Speaker 1: he's just ravaged by radiation, sickness and mutation. He's just

918
00:49:45,080 --> 00:49:49,360
Speaker 1: his skins basically dripping off his body as he drags this, uh,

919
00:49:49,480 --> 00:49:53,719
Speaker 1: this bomb into the final scene of the entire book. Well,

920
00:49:53,760 --> 00:49:57,279
Speaker 1: based on a kind of atomic age monster movie understanding

921
00:49:57,280 --> 00:50:02,480
Speaker 1: of how radioactivity works, you could certainly imagine somebody looking

922
00:50:02,520 --> 00:50:05,120
Speaker 1: at the story of Oh the you know, they took this,

923
00:50:05,120 --> 00:50:08,560
Speaker 1: this thing killed people and sometimes at one time point

924
00:50:08,560 --> 00:50:11,480
Speaker 1: people took it and they got tumors. This must be radioactive.

925
00:50:11,560 --> 00:50:14,359
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a plutonium bomb. Yeah, it sounds like something

926
00:50:14,440 --> 00:50:16,480
Speaker 1: right out of a Fallout game or a plan of

927
00:50:16,480 --> 00:50:20,240
Speaker 1: the Apes movie. Right, yeah, Um, but of course we

928
00:50:20,239 --> 00:50:24,960
Speaker 1: we can't really seriously consider any explanation that involves an

929
00:50:25,000 --> 00:50:29,080
Speaker 1: ancient atomic weapon. No, there's just no explanation for why

930
00:50:29,160 --> 00:50:31,960
Speaker 1: that would have occurred, right. I think the use of

931
00:50:32,560 --> 00:50:35,000
Speaker 1: germ warfare among the ancients, even though they might not

932
00:50:35,080 --> 00:50:36,799
Speaker 1: have had a germ theory of disease, I do think

933
00:50:36,840 --> 00:50:39,279
Speaker 1: it's plausible given what they could have figured out just

934
00:50:39,320 --> 00:50:43,120
Speaker 1: based on experience. It is not plausible at all that

935
00:50:43,160 --> 00:50:46,080
Speaker 1: they I mean not even close, that they came up

936
00:50:46,080 --> 00:50:50,919
Speaker 1: with any kind of highly radioactive materials, right, Because, of course,

937
00:50:50,920 --> 00:50:53,000
Speaker 1: the other side of the equation is, hey, we have

938
00:50:53,200 --> 00:50:56,800
Speaker 1: naturally occurring radioactive materials. Perhaps they just dug that stuff

939
00:50:56,880 --> 00:50:59,560
Speaker 1: up and stuff the arc full of it, because I mean,

940
00:50:59,640 --> 00:51:03,920
Speaker 1: certainly there are you have sites like Ramsar Iran that

941
00:51:04,080 --> 00:51:08,239
Speaker 1: that have a lot of naturally occurring radioactive materials there,

942
00:51:08,800 --> 00:51:11,399
Speaker 1: but they still don't produce anything near the high level

943
00:51:11,440 --> 00:51:15,799
Speaker 1: doses required to cause radiation sickness. Yeah, digging uranium out

944
00:51:15,800 --> 00:51:18,480
Speaker 1: of the ground, even it's not going to be anything

945
00:51:18,520 --> 00:51:21,799
Speaker 1: like that. The highly radioactive elements we would find in

946
00:51:22,040 --> 00:51:25,840
Speaker 1: like nuclear reactor fuel or nuclear weapons exist only in

947
00:51:26,000 --> 00:51:30,840
Speaker 1: extremely tiny trace amounts naturally, and to produce significant amounts

948
00:51:30,920 --> 00:51:33,960
Speaker 1: of something like uranium two thirty five or plutonium two

949
00:51:33,960 --> 00:51:38,040
Speaker 1: thirty nine, you have to subject naturally occurring rocks containing

950
00:51:38,040 --> 00:51:41,360
Speaker 1: mostly more stable elements like uranium two thirty eight to

951
00:51:41,440 --> 00:51:44,279
Speaker 1: some kind of process. Right, You've gotta like bombard it

952
00:51:44,280 --> 00:51:47,560
Speaker 1: with neutrons and a reactor, or you've got a centrifuge

953
00:51:47,560 --> 00:51:50,399
Speaker 1: it to separate out the more dangerous you two thirty five.

954
00:51:51,120 --> 00:51:55,279
Speaker 1: The greatest natural terrestrial source of human exposure to ionizing

955
00:51:55,360 --> 00:51:58,920
Speaker 1: radiation seems to be radon gas. Radon is one of

956
00:51:58,920 --> 00:52:02,760
Speaker 1: the radioactive decay products of uranium, along with other elements

957
00:52:02,800 --> 00:52:06,279
Speaker 1: like radium and thorium. And I just haven't found any

958
00:52:06,320 --> 00:52:10,960
Speaker 1: evidence of a natural terrestrial radiation source strong enough to

959
00:52:11,040 --> 00:52:15,600
Speaker 1: cause acute or noticeable radiation poisoning within a short span

960
00:52:15,640 --> 00:52:20,280
Speaker 1: of time. Exposure to natural terrestrial radiation sources can be dangerous,

961
00:52:20,320 --> 00:52:22,960
Speaker 1: for example rad on gas, but this is more because

962
00:52:23,000 --> 00:52:26,360
Speaker 1: it tends to increase something like your risk of cancer

963
00:52:26,520 --> 00:52:30,120
Speaker 1: over long periods of time. For example, rate on gas

964
00:52:30,160 --> 00:52:32,239
Speaker 1: is believed to be the number one cause of lung

965
00:52:32,280 --> 00:52:36,200
Speaker 1: cancer among non smokers and the number two cause of

966
00:52:36,280 --> 00:52:41,520
Speaker 1: lung cancer overall. So even the most potent natural radiation sources,

967
00:52:41,840 --> 00:52:44,600
Speaker 1: they're not gonna do anything to you that you could

968
00:52:44,640 --> 00:52:48,920
Speaker 1: detect I think without modern science. So I find it

969
00:52:49,000 --> 00:52:52,040
Speaker 1: extremely unlikely that anybody in the ancient world could have

970
00:52:52,280 --> 00:52:55,160
Speaker 1: an acutely lethal radiation source in a box. I think

971
00:52:55,160 --> 00:52:57,400
Speaker 1: we've got to rule that one out. Take that junior

972
00:52:57,440 --> 00:53:00,360
Speaker 1: high Robert lamp I'm sorry, I'm not out he had

973
00:53:00,400 --> 00:53:02,680
Speaker 1: it kind of now you made me feel like a jerk. No, no, no,

974
00:53:02,760 --> 00:53:05,680
Speaker 1: this is this is this is not at all. I mean,

975
00:53:06,120 --> 00:53:08,239
Speaker 1: this was something I was curious about when I was

976
00:53:08,280 --> 00:53:10,360
Speaker 1: in junior high, and then later on you get to

977
00:53:10,400 --> 00:53:12,480
Speaker 1: look into it and realize that, well, that didn't really

978
00:53:12,560 --> 00:53:14,840
Speaker 1: pan out. Now, I do want to mention something that

979
00:53:14,880 --> 00:53:17,120
Speaker 1: I think we should come back and explore in a

980
00:53:17,200 --> 00:53:22,399
Speaker 1: future episode, which is the idea of natural nuclear reactors.

981
00:53:23,320 --> 00:53:26,680
Speaker 1: I don't believe any exists today, but there is evidence

982
00:53:26,760 --> 00:53:29,760
Speaker 1: that billions of years ago, long ago, in Earth's history,

983
00:53:29,840 --> 00:53:32,960
Speaker 1: when the when the elements in the Earth's crust were younger,

984
00:53:33,520 --> 00:53:38,600
Speaker 1: there were some natural fission reactions that were sustained within rocks,

985
00:53:38,840 --> 00:53:42,080
Speaker 1: in in rock formations within the Earth's crust, like it

986
00:53:42,320 --> 00:53:44,759
Speaker 1: h I know it. At least one side in Western Africa,

987
00:53:44,920 --> 00:53:48,759
Speaker 1: there are these two billion year old natural fission reactors

988
00:53:48,760 --> 00:53:50,680
Speaker 1: that we found all this evidence of that there was

989
00:53:50,760 --> 00:53:55,960
Speaker 1: essentially a nuclear fission reactor happening naturally under Earth's crust,

990
00:53:56,200 --> 00:53:59,719
Speaker 1: and that's led to even these really strange hypotheses, like

991
00:53:59,760 --> 00:54:03,239
Speaker 1: all heternative hypotheses for the origin of the Moon, which

992
00:54:03,320 --> 00:54:06,880
Speaker 1: say that it was the result of a natural fission

993
00:54:07,000 --> 00:54:12,520
Speaker 1: reaction explosion in Earth's crust billions of years ago, which

994
00:54:12,800 --> 00:54:15,200
Speaker 1: that I know that is not a favorite hypothesis, but

995
00:54:15,280 --> 00:54:17,319
Speaker 1: it has been put forward. I believe this was also

996
00:54:17,360 --> 00:54:22,120
Speaker 1: the underlying science in the more recent American Godzilla film.

997
00:54:22,160 --> 00:54:24,440
Speaker 1: Oh wait what Yeah, I believe so. Like the idea

998
00:54:24,520 --> 00:54:27,239
Speaker 1: was that Godzilla is this ancient organism from back when

999
00:54:27,320 --> 00:54:30,479
Speaker 1: you had naturally occurring high levels of radiation on Earth

1000
00:54:30,520 --> 00:54:34,400
Speaker 1: and the eight radiation, and that's their the whole reason

1001
00:54:34,480 --> 00:54:40,120
Speaker 1: for being gigantic radiations viewing monsters, what's the I don't

1002
00:54:40,120 --> 00:54:42,200
Speaker 1: think they get into. The one I've seen recently is

1003
00:54:42,280 --> 00:54:46,919
Speaker 1: shin Godzilla, which is absolutely amazing, But they don't really

1004
00:54:46,920 --> 00:54:49,520
Speaker 1: explore the origin, do they know? I don't think they do.

1005
00:54:49,600 --> 00:54:54,080
Speaker 1: They're more they're hyper concerned with the present. How do

1006
00:54:54,120 --> 00:54:56,480
Speaker 1: we react to this, What do we have legal authority

1007
00:54:56,560 --> 00:54:58,839
Speaker 1: to do? Where to hold the meeting? Yeah, that sort

1008
00:54:58,840 --> 00:55:00,920
Speaker 1: of thing. So there's a with really fun movies in

1009
00:55:00,960 --> 00:55:04,000
Speaker 1: their their their own right. So at this point, let's

1010
00:55:04,080 --> 00:55:07,239
Speaker 1: let's come back to again that that fabulous quote from

1011
00:55:07,239 --> 00:55:12,280
Speaker 1: belloc Are it's a transmit to a radio for speaking

1012
00:55:12,320 --> 00:55:15,640
Speaker 1: to God. As a little more Peter Lauri. But you know,

1013
00:55:15,760 --> 00:55:18,319
Speaker 1: any of the idea the more earthly indies says, you

1014
00:55:18,320 --> 00:55:20,760
Speaker 1: want to talk to God, we'll go see him together

1015
00:55:20,920 --> 00:55:24,759
Speaker 1: right now? Yeah, you know, it's it's a fun moment

1016
00:55:24,760 --> 00:55:27,279
Speaker 1: in the film. But the the idea is central to

1017
00:55:27,400 --> 00:55:30,600
Speaker 1: the whole purpose of the arc. As we've discussed already,

1018
00:55:30,640 --> 00:55:34,080
Speaker 1: it's described as not only a place to how sacred relics,

1019
00:55:34,120 --> 00:55:37,000
Speaker 1: but as a focus of ritual, an altar of sorts,

1020
00:55:37,000 --> 00:55:40,839
Speaker 1: a mobile altar God manifests upon the Mercy Seat and

1021
00:55:40,920 --> 00:55:46,160
Speaker 1: speaks to the priests, instructing the priests of God's will. Okay,

1022
00:55:46,200 --> 00:55:50,000
Speaker 1: so if this is how they believed the arc to

1023
00:55:50,040 --> 00:55:52,879
Speaker 1: function in their worship, what are the ways you could

1024
00:55:52,920 --> 00:55:56,719
Speaker 1: interpret this? Well, I think the most likely explanation of

1025
00:55:56,760 --> 00:55:58,759
Speaker 1: all would be that it just would simply serve as

1026
00:55:58,760 --> 00:56:01,480
Speaker 1: a focal point of devote in the same way that

1027
00:56:01,560 --> 00:56:04,480
Speaker 1: any altar or any statue or religious work of art

1028
00:56:04,840 --> 00:56:08,640
Speaker 1: does so, without the need for supernatural occurrences or ancient

1029
00:56:09,120 --> 00:56:12,719
Speaker 1: you know, technological devices or weird traps or what have

1030
00:56:12,840 --> 00:56:15,600
Speaker 1: you know, bells and whistles required. You know, I also

1031
00:56:15,640 --> 00:56:17,360
Speaker 1: can't help but compare it to the notion of a

1032
00:56:17,440 --> 00:56:20,880
Speaker 1: focal point or a drift in yoga. And this is

1033
00:56:20,920 --> 00:56:24,360
Speaker 1: where you're you're not even looking necessarily at anything in particular.

1034
00:56:24,400 --> 00:56:26,520
Speaker 1: Maybe you're looking at a you know, a line on

1035
00:56:26,560 --> 00:56:30,359
Speaker 1: the wall or just a point in space, and you're

1036
00:56:30,400 --> 00:56:34,480
Speaker 1: focusing your attention on that and in doing so, hopefully

1037
00:56:34,600 --> 00:56:37,600
Speaker 1: entering some sort of meditative state. Right. The goal is

1038
00:56:37,680 --> 00:56:43,319
Speaker 1: to to center consciousness, to crowd out other thoughts entering right,

1039
00:56:43,360 --> 00:56:45,319
Speaker 1: And I imagine a lot of our listeners out there

1040
00:56:45,360 --> 00:56:48,759
Speaker 1: you've had that experience, either by focusing on nothing, focusing

1041
00:56:48,800 --> 00:56:50,520
Speaker 1: on and say a clock on a wall or a

1042
00:56:50,560 --> 00:56:54,359
Speaker 1: wall socket, or perhaps some bit of religious art, uh,

1043
00:56:54,440 --> 00:56:58,719
Speaker 1: you know, an altarpiece across what have you in a

1044
00:56:58,840 --> 00:57:02,400
Speaker 1: various Hindu iconography as well, Like these conserves just a

1045
00:57:02,440 --> 00:57:05,000
Speaker 1: way to to focus our mind and also think about

1046
00:57:05,080 --> 00:57:10,719
Speaker 1: perhaps what is illustrated in the work itself, and this is,

1047
00:57:10,920 --> 00:57:14,239
Speaker 1: you know, all ultimately very much a form of induction

1048
00:57:14,400 --> 00:57:18,400
Speaker 1: or a formally ritualized procedure whose function is the narrowing

1049
00:57:18,440 --> 00:57:22,680
Speaker 1: of consciousness by focusing attention. I also can't help but

1050
00:57:22,760 --> 00:57:26,160
Speaker 1: think that with a golden item like the like the arc.

1051
00:57:26,400 --> 00:57:28,680
Speaker 1: So you have the arc, it's covered in gold. You

1052
00:57:28,720 --> 00:57:31,400
Speaker 1: have it in a like a dark pavilion, and what

1053
00:57:31,520 --> 00:57:33,520
Speaker 1: kind of illumination do you have around you? Well, you

1054
00:57:33,600 --> 00:57:38,200
Speaker 1: might have burning sacrifices, so they're indoors. You generally probably

1055
00:57:38,240 --> 00:57:42,120
Speaker 1: have firelight, but you could also have a sacrifice burning

1056
00:57:42,200 --> 00:57:44,400
Speaker 1: at the altar. That would be a sort of like

1057
00:57:44,600 --> 00:57:48,600
Speaker 1: a fire there. And I have to think also that

1058
00:57:48,720 --> 00:57:51,240
Speaker 1: there there would generally be smoke in this environment you

1059
00:57:51,320 --> 00:57:54,480
Speaker 1: do burning something in sensors, So you have you have

1060
00:57:54,600 --> 00:57:57,640
Speaker 1: you probably have smoke, You have some some firelight of

1061
00:57:57,720 --> 00:58:02,560
Speaker 1: some sort. You have this gleamy golden artifact, not even

1062
00:58:02,560 --> 00:58:05,520
Speaker 1: getting into the cherubim that are on it, but it

1063
00:58:05,560 --> 00:58:07,800
Speaker 1: seems like that the light would play off of it

1064
00:58:07,840 --> 00:58:10,960
Speaker 1: in curious ways. The smoke would add to the mystique.

1065
00:58:11,120 --> 00:58:13,880
Speaker 1: It sounds like an environment that is generous to the

1066
00:58:13,920 --> 00:58:18,040
Speaker 1: creation of altered states of consciousness exactly again with no

1067
00:58:18,840 --> 00:58:24,000
Speaker 1: drugs or or magical interpretations required. Yeah, exactly. Now. I

1068
00:58:24,040 --> 00:58:25,640
Speaker 1: know some of you out there that have listened to

1069
00:58:25,680 --> 00:58:28,160
Speaker 1: the show for a while are probably thinking at this point, well,

1070
00:58:28,200 --> 00:58:32,760
Speaker 1: what about the bicameral mind, right, because clearly, this whole time, Yeah,

1071
00:58:33,160 --> 00:58:35,480
Speaker 1: this whole time, we've been talking about a way of

1072
00:58:35,520 --> 00:58:38,680
Speaker 1: speaking to God, a way of hearing God's voice, right,

1073
00:58:38,760 --> 00:58:41,080
Speaker 1: so it it seems like it would naturally be a

1074
00:58:41,080 --> 00:58:44,080
Speaker 1: part of all that. Well, first of all, let's just

1075
00:58:44,120 --> 00:58:46,800
Speaker 1: refresh about the bicameral mind and the idea of bicameral

1076
00:58:46,920 --> 00:58:50,800
Speaker 1: hallucinations in the origin of consciousness. In the Breakdown of

1077
00:58:50,840 --> 00:58:54,640
Speaker 1: the Bicameral Mind, Julian James, the late Julian James argued

1078
00:58:54,720 --> 00:58:58,320
Speaker 1: that ancient humans heard hallucinated voices and that human consciousness

1079
00:58:58,280 --> 00:59:01,720
Speaker 1: as we know it today began roughly three thousand years

1080
00:59:01,760 --> 00:59:04,120
Speaker 1: ago as a cultural invention, which of course would kind

1081
00:59:04,120 --> 00:59:06,439
Speaker 1: of line up with the time frame that we're talking

1082
00:59:06,440 --> 00:59:10,120
Speaker 1: about here with the arc. It's an unproven hypothesis and um,

1083
00:59:10,200 --> 00:59:12,960
Speaker 1: we've discussed some objections to it in the in past episodes,

1084
00:59:12,960 --> 00:59:16,280
Speaker 1: but it remains possible that at least some aspect of

1085
00:59:16,320 --> 00:59:18,160
Speaker 1: it is correct. In a way, it's a very safe

1086
00:59:18,240 --> 00:59:21,000
Speaker 1: kind of idea for James to have proposed, because there

1087
00:59:21,120 --> 00:59:24,320
Speaker 1: was in remains no real way of proving or disproving

1088
00:59:24,320 --> 00:59:26,400
Speaker 1: it right. You can't prove it because it's in history.

1089
00:59:26,400 --> 00:59:30,040
Speaker 1: But I do think it's subject to undermining by evidence.

1090
00:59:30,080 --> 00:59:32,600
Speaker 1: I mean, like one of the things that I think

1091
00:59:33,000 --> 00:59:35,320
Speaker 1: would help undermine it is if you can just find

1092
00:59:35,360 --> 00:59:41,360
Speaker 1: more and more ancient examples of people demonstrating inner consciousness

1093
00:59:41,400 --> 00:59:45,400
Speaker 1: in ancient literature. I mean, like he he pointed to

1094
00:59:45,440 --> 00:59:48,360
Speaker 1: some examples of ancient literature and said, oh, they're remarkably

1095
00:59:48,440 --> 00:59:51,080
Speaker 1: devoid of the idea of an inner, inner voice or

1096
00:59:51,120 --> 00:59:54,040
Speaker 1: inner thoughts. So I think one pretty easy way of

1097
00:59:54,080 --> 00:59:56,240
Speaker 1: saying no, he was probably wrong is just to look

1098
00:59:56,240 --> 00:59:59,960
Speaker 1: at ancient texts that do show signs of of consciousness

1099
01:00:00,120 --> 01:00:03,120
Speaker 1: an inner, inner monologue. And then also he was very

1100
01:00:03,120 --> 01:00:05,600
Speaker 1: open about the fact that he basically just looked at

1101
01:00:05,920 --> 01:00:12,840
Speaker 1: Western and classical examples, classical literature, classical architecture for evidence

1102
01:00:12,960 --> 01:00:15,080
Speaker 1: of the bicameral mind. He didn't really look at Eastern

1103
01:00:15,120 --> 01:00:17,760
Speaker 1: examples because he did not speak the linkage. Now you

1104
01:00:17,800 --> 01:00:20,240
Speaker 1: mentioned and we've said this before that it's it's one

1105
01:00:20,240 --> 01:00:23,200
Speaker 1: of these ideas that is probably wrong but really interesting

1106
01:00:23,240 --> 01:00:27,080
Speaker 1: and could be correct in some ways, like some sub

1107
01:00:27,160 --> 01:00:30,720
Speaker 1: parts of the the hypothesis could have something to them.

1108
01:00:30,800 --> 01:00:33,640
Speaker 1: I think that I've been convinced that James is probably

1109
01:00:33,720 --> 01:00:37,200
Speaker 1: wrong about his model of consciousness, where consciousness came from

1110
01:00:37,240 --> 01:00:40,800
Speaker 1: and all that very likely wrong there, but could very

1111
01:00:40,840 --> 01:00:44,880
Speaker 1: well be right about the idea that ancient religions involved

1112
01:00:45,080 --> 01:00:49,640
Speaker 1: much more visions and hallucinations than modern religions do. I

1113
01:00:49,680 --> 01:00:52,520
Speaker 1: think that that's entirely plausible. And there's a lot of

1114
01:00:53,120 --> 01:00:56,600
Speaker 1: about reading, at least about ancient religious practices that seems

1115
01:00:56,640 --> 01:00:59,480
Speaker 1: to indicate that that maybe is true. Yeah, because there

1116
01:00:59,560 --> 01:01:01,680
Speaker 1: is there is lot of listening to the voices of

1117
01:01:01,680 --> 01:01:03,880
Speaker 1: the gods, seeking the voices of the gods, and then

1118
01:01:04,200 --> 01:01:07,480
Speaker 1: we still see it reflected in our in in hymns

1119
01:01:07,560 --> 01:01:10,400
Speaker 1: and prayers that are said every day, asking to hear

1120
01:01:10,480 --> 01:01:14,240
Speaker 1: some voice. Even though we do not hear the voice,

1121
01:01:14,720 --> 01:01:18,160
Speaker 1: the voice does not actually speak to us in our minds. Yeah,

1122
01:01:18,360 --> 01:01:21,040
Speaker 1: and so yeah, I think even if the main part

1123
01:01:21,040 --> 01:01:23,920
Speaker 1: of his hypothesis, the idea of you know, the development

1124
01:01:23,920 --> 01:01:27,000
Speaker 1: of consciousness in these different stages. If that's completely wrong,

1125
01:01:27,400 --> 01:01:29,600
Speaker 1: he could have been on on the right track looking

1126
01:01:29,600 --> 01:01:34,880
Speaker 1: at all these ancient examples of the almost ubiquitous religious

1127
01:01:34,960 --> 01:01:40,360
Speaker 1: visions and hallucinations in ancient worship right now. M. James's

1128
01:01:40,480 --> 01:01:43,760
Speaker 1: ultimate argument was that modern consciousness was a learned development

1129
01:01:44,360 --> 01:01:48,640
Speaker 1: tied to metaphorical language, and that that this change wouldn't

1130
01:01:48,640 --> 01:01:50,919
Speaker 1: occurred all at once. Then it would have been something

1131
01:01:50,920 --> 01:01:54,600
Speaker 1: that's spread, and it wouldn't have affected like everybody within

1132
01:01:55,360 --> 01:01:57,600
Speaker 1: like a given talent at once. It wouldn't be like everybody, Ope,

1133
01:01:57,600 --> 01:02:00,680
Speaker 1: you got the new consciousness. Shot, We're all good to go.

1134
01:02:01,120 --> 01:02:03,080
Speaker 1: You would have had a lot of confusion, a lot

1135
01:02:03,120 --> 01:02:06,880
Speaker 1: of of chaos. The voices of the gods they grow fainter,

1136
01:02:07,320 --> 01:02:10,160
Speaker 1: but then they can be reached again via various practices.

1137
01:02:10,360 --> 01:02:14,720
Speaker 1: Like essentially, it was becoming harder to hallucinate now. James

1138
01:02:14,920 --> 01:02:18,080
Speaker 1: did mention the arcs specifically in his original book. He

1139
01:02:18,120 --> 01:02:21,320
Speaker 1: said quote poetry then was divine knowledge, and after the

1140
01:02:21,320 --> 01:02:24,520
Speaker 1: breakdown of the bicameral mind, poetry was the sound and

1141
01:02:24,640 --> 01:02:28,920
Speaker 1: tenor of authorization. Poetry commanded where prose could only ask

1142
01:02:29,400 --> 01:02:32,400
Speaker 1: it felt good. In the wanderings of the Hebrews, after

1143
01:02:32,440 --> 01:02:35,480
Speaker 1: the exodus from Egypt. It was the sacred shrine that

1144
01:02:35,560 --> 01:02:38,520
Speaker 1: was carried before the multitude and followed by the people.

1145
01:02:38,880 --> 01:02:41,480
Speaker 1: But it was also the poetry of Moses that determined

1146
01:02:41,480 --> 01:02:44,479
Speaker 1: when they would start and when stop, where they would

1147
01:02:44,480 --> 01:02:47,240
Speaker 1: go and where stay. And this is of course referring

1148
01:02:47,280 --> 01:02:49,480
Speaker 1: to the fact that the Moses would speak to through

1149
01:02:49,520 --> 01:02:54,360
Speaker 1: the arc. It authorized his decision making. So James didn't

1150
01:02:54,400 --> 01:02:56,600
Speaker 1: really get into the arc all that much in the

1151
01:02:56,640 --> 01:02:59,080
Speaker 1: book or in other papers of his that I've seen.

1152
01:02:59,200 --> 01:03:01,600
Speaker 1: It's possible and sain something because I haven't read everything

1153
01:03:01,640 --> 01:03:06,040
Speaker 1: that James wrote, but I did run across some, uh,

1154
01:03:06,120 --> 01:03:10,120
Speaker 1: some writings by Brian J McVeigh, a scholar of Asia

1155
01:03:10,200 --> 01:03:14,360
Speaker 1: specializing in Japan, and he also studied under Julian Jays

1156
01:03:14,400 --> 01:03:17,240
Speaker 1: as a graduate student, and he discussed this a bit

1157
01:03:17,280 --> 01:03:21,320
Speaker 1: in his paper Biblical Evidence of bicameral Mentality Vestiges of

1158
01:03:21,360 --> 01:03:25,040
Speaker 1: super Religiosity in the Old Testament. He discussed how the

1159
01:03:25,120 --> 01:03:29,080
Speaker 1: art could have functioned as an object of hallucinatory focus

1160
01:03:29,200 --> 01:03:32,080
Speaker 1: or o h F, and a portable one at that

1161
01:03:32,640 --> 01:03:35,200
Speaker 1: for the ancient Hebrews as they wandered the desert and

1162
01:03:35,280 --> 01:03:39,640
Speaker 1: wandered out of the bicameral mindset. So this is his

1163
01:03:39,720 --> 01:03:42,200
Speaker 1: quote from the paper. He's describing what an o h

1164
01:03:42,360 --> 01:03:49,440
Speaker 1: F is quote hallucinatory aids, broadcast instructions, commandments, warnings, speaking idols,

1165
01:03:49,440 --> 01:03:53,840
Speaker 1: living statues, effigies treated as if alive, fed, paraded, taken

1166
01:03:53,880 --> 01:03:57,280
Speaker 1: on journeys and into battles. These emitted holy power and

1167
01:03:57,400 --> 01:04:01,800
Speaker 1: authorized decision making, in some cases portable. Ohf we're used,

1168
01:04:02,320 --> 01:04:06,400
Speaker 1: an example being the Israelites Ark of the Covenant. Yeah,

1169
01:04:06,440 --> 01:04:08,760
Speaker 1: that's interesting. I mean, again, as I said a minute ago,

1170
01:04:08,880 --> 01:04:13,040
Speaker 1: you you don't really have to accept the bicameral framework

1171
01:04:13,120 --> 01:04:17,000
Speaker 1: for for consciousness and the the origin of these hallucinations

1172
01:04:17,520 --> 01:04:20,880
Speaker 1: in order to think, well, maybe that they're they're just

1173
01:04:20,960 --> 01:04:25,200
Speaker 1: physical objects that aid the mind in having religious visions

1174
01:04:25,280 --> 01:04:29,200
Speaker 1: or religious experiences, much in the in the like in

1175
01:04:29,240 --> 01:04:31,680
Speaker 1: the example of induction, like we were talking about earlier

1176
01:04:31,720 --> 01:04:37,040
Speaker 1: with the object of focus in say Hindu or Buddhist meditation. Yeah, exactly.

1177
01:04:37,040 --> 01:04:41,960
Speaker 1: The bi cameral explanation, as fascinating as it is, it's

1178
01:04:42,000 --> 01:04:47,320
Speaker 1: not completely necessary for understanding why individuals would carry around

1179
01:04:47,400 --> 01:04:50,400
Speaker 1: a sacred item, carried it into battle and uh and

1180
01:04:50,480 --> 01:04:53,680
Speaker 1: also use it in their rituals. Isn't it so interesting

1181
01:04:53,800 --> 01:04:58,120
Speaker 1: the way religions around the world, so many of them

1182
01:04:58,240 --> 01:05:04,440
Speaker 1: have what you call scene setting, all these all this paraphernalia,

1183
01:05:04,640 --> 01:05:10,360
Speaker 1: the like different clothing, different sights and smells, physical objects

1184
01:05:10,480 --> 01:05:14,360
Speaker 1: to hold or be in the presence of, to look at, smoke.

1185
01:05:14,880 --> 01:05:19,040
Speaker 1: Uh you know, uh, washing of the body, like all

1186
01:05:19,120 --> 01:05:22,240
Speaker 1: these different things that are in order to get you

1187
01:05:22,480 --> 01:05:25,640
Speaker 1: into a different mind state than you are. The rest

1188
01:05:25,680 --> 01:05:28,880
Speaker 1: of your life. You're out walking around getting your groceries,

1189
01:05:28,960 --> 01:05:31,240
Speaker 1: going to work, doing your stuff. But when you enter

1190
01:05:31,600 --> 01:05:34,720
Speaker 1: a religious space, you have to go through a process

1191
01:05:35,040 --> 01:05:38,080
Speaker 1: and surround yourself with things that put you in a

1192
01:05:38,200 --> 01:05:41,360
Speaker 1: different state of mind. And this seems to be core

1193
01:05:41,520 --> 01:05:44,760
Speaker 1: to to not every version of religion around the world,

1194
01:05:44,800 --> 01:05:46,960
Speaker 1: but a whole lot of them. Oh yeah. I mean,

1195
01:05:46,960 --> 01:05:51,160
Speaker 1: if it's not a particular icon a representation, because certainly

1196
01:05:51,200 --> 01:05:56,160
Speaker 1: there are religions that that frown upon that depicting individuals

1197
01:05:56,280 --> 01:05:59,520
Speaker 1: or deities, etcetera, there's still is often like a focus

1198
01:05:59,640 --> 01:06:03,120
Speaker 1: on our texture or space. Oh yeah, exactly. Like in Islam,

1199
01:06:03,200 --> 01:06:05,920
Speaker 1: you're generally not gonna have representative art, but you do

1200
01:06:06,080 --> 01:06:08,480
Speaker 1: have a lot of attention to the creation of a

1201
01:06:08,640 --> 01:06:12,720
Speaker 1: sacred feeling environment. Uh, you know, the interior architecture of

1202
01:06:12,800 --> 01:06:15,840
Speaker 1: many mosques around the world. Is is beautiful and it

1203
01:06:16,080 --> 01:06:19,080
Speaker 1: puts you in a different mind state. All right, Well,

1204
01:06:19,080 --> 01:06:21,600
Speaker 1: hopefully we've put everybody in a different mind state today

1205
01:06:22,080 --> 01:06:24,520
Speaker 1: as we discussed the Ark of the Covenant. And hey,

1206
01:06:24,840 --> 01:06:27,720
Speaker 1: here's the fun part. We're not done. There's gonna be

1207
01:06:27,920 --> 01:06:30,120
Speaker 1: another episode on the Ark of the Covenant looking at

1208
01:06:30,160 --> 01:06:33,840
Speaker 1: a particular idea, the idea that, okay, what if the

1209
01:06:33,960 --> 01:06:38,440
Speaker 1: Ark of the Covenant was a machine. I'm gonna give

1210
01:06:38,440 --> 01:06:40,600
Speaker 1: a spoiler. We don't think it was a machine, but

1211
01:06:40,920 --> 01:06:43,680
Speaker 1: there there that does lead us down some other interesting

1212
01:06:43,760 --> 01:06:46,240
Speaker 1: paths that that will be a lot of fun to explore.

1213
01:06:46,440 --> 01:06:48,360
Speaker 1: All right. In the meantime, you can check out all

1214
01:06:48,400 --> 01:06:50,640
Speaker 1: the episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind at Stuff

1215
01:06:50,720 --> 01:06:52,920
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. That's the mothership, that's

1216
01:06:52,960 --> 01:06:55,200
Speaker 1: we'll find them all. That's where we'll find links out

1217
01:06:55,800 --> 01:06:59,960
Speaker 1: to our social media accounts, including the discussion module pay

1218
01:07:00,080 --> 01:07:02,320
Speaker 1: that I mentioned earlier. Obviously, we'd love to hear from

1219
01:07:02,360 --> 01:07:05,320
Speaker 1: everybody about the Ark of the Covenant. Um, your thoughts

1220
01:07:05,400 --> 01:07:08,520
Speaker 1: on it, crazy theories you've read about it, your thoughts

1221
01:07:08,560 --> 01:07:10,680
Speaker 1: on Raiders of the Lost Arc, all of it is

1222
01:07:10,800 --> 01:07:14,000
Speaker 1: fair game. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio

1223
01:07:14,080 --> 01:07:17,320
Speaker 1: producers Alex Williams and Tarry Harrison. If you would like

1224
01:07:17,400 --> 01:07:19,240
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us directly, let us know

1225
01:07:19,360 --> 01:07:22,640
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other to uh say hi,

1226
01:07:22,800 --> 01:07:24,640
Speaker 1: let us know where you listen from. To suggest a

1227
01:07:24,680 --> 01:07:27,040
Speaker 1: topic for the future. You can always do that. Blow

1228
01:07:27,240 --> 01:07:39,400
Speaker 1: the mind at how stuff works dot com for more

1229
01:07:39,480 --> 01:07:41,760
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how

1230
01:07:41,800 --> 01:08:02,760
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. The Grass has a tame back

1231
01:08:02,840 --> 01:08:03,439
Speaker 1: by a prot