Speaker 1: Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show
Speaker 1: where we explore the stories behind the stories in the news.
Speaker 1: I'm Noah Feldman. For those of you who have been
Speaker 1: listening in recent weeks, you know that we have been
Speaker 1: very deep inside Corona. In fact, sometimes I think we
Speaker 1: don't talk about anything else, and from an ethical perspective,
Speaker 1: maybe that's correct. This is a pressing problem. People are
Speaker 1: dying and we need to take that all extremely seriously.
Speaker 1: Yet it's also true that a little while ago, when
Speaker 1: I spoke to doctor Laurie Santos of Yale University, she
Speaker 1: advised me that maintaining routine and tradition is a powerful
Speaker 1: way of managing ourselves under these circumstances. Well, for a
Speaker 1: lot of us, the maintenance of routine includes the schedule
Speaker 1: of holidays, and with Passover and Easter coming, we have
Speaker 1: to make a decision of whether to ignore those holidays
Speaker 1: altogether or to celebrate them as appropriately as we can
Speaker 1: under our current straightened circumstances. Here a Deep Background. We
Speaker 1: don't celebrate holidays as a podcast, but we do try
Speaker 1: to maintain some sense of continuity, and so we thought
Speaker 1: it was appropriate to have an episode that did talk
Speaker 1: about Passover, but pass Over with a little bit of
Speaker 1: a Corona twist. And what better way to think about
Speaker 1: Passover and Corona than to talk about the biblical plague's
Speaker 1: associate with the Exodus story. For those of you who
Speaker 1: need a little bit of a refresher on what exactly
Speaker 1: those plagues are. The traditional count starts with blood, frogs,
Speaker 1: lice and goes on in a list until it culminates
Speaker 1: with pale darkness and the killing of the firstborn. If
Speaker 1: that rings a bell for you, you might enjoy the
Speaker 1: rest of this episode. I'm joined by doctor i Don Dershowitz.
Speaker 1: He's a junior fellow at Harvard University's Society of Fellows.
Speaker 1: His academ mcwork has appeared in JBL, VT ZAW. Those
Speaker 1: are big journals in the Bible world. I promise you
Speaker 1: not to mention The New York Times. His forthcoming book
Speaker 1: on the Redaction of the Herbival will be published by
Speaker 1: more Seabeck, and he's currently studying the composition history of
Speaker 1: the Book of Deuteronomy. Dan is one of the most
Speaker 1: creative scholars thinking about the Bible today, and he's also
Speaker 1: very engaging at talking about it. Dan, thank you for
Speaker 1: joining me. I wanted to start by asking you about
Speaker 1: the biblical story of the plagues. Well, usually start by
Speaker 1: saying there are ten plagues, but you think that that
Speaker 1: might be a misnomer. Yeah, So the idea of ten
Speaker 1: plagues appears first in Rabbinic literature, and they count ten
Speaker 1: events that are described in the biblical text in the
Speaker 1: Book of Exodus. However, the decision to count those specific
Speaker 1: ten events is a matter of interprets and does not
Speaker 1: at all derive directly from the text. But it's not
Speaker 1: even clear that the correct classification is plagues at all,
Speaker 1: as opposed to say miracles, signs, wonders, and so on. Well,
Speaker 1: then where would you start if you wanted to tell
Speaker 1: the story of the signs or wonders? Because I take
Speaker 1: it that signs and wonders are words that the biblical
Speaker 1: story uses repeatedly, rather than the word plague. So where
Speaker 1: would you start your list? And we now know they
Speaker 1: don't have to be ten in your list? But where
Speaker 1: would you start with signs and wonders in the Accodus story?
Speaker 1: I think a good place to start would probably be
Speaker 1: the story of a competition between Aaron, brother of Moses,
Speaker 1: and the Egyptian magicians, where Aaron takes his staff and
Speaker 1: casts it upon the ground and it becomes a Tannin
Speaker 1: is the Hebrew word which may be a crocodile. Some
Speaker 1: people think that it's that it's a reference to a snake,
Speaker 1: but it turns magically into a living creature. And then
Speaker 1: there's a bit of a battle between the magical creature
Speaker 1: created by Erin's staff and a magical creature created by
Speaker 1: the magicians. But that seems to be the beginning of
Speaker 1: a series of miracle competitions between Moses and Aaron and
Speaker 1: the Egyptians, And so that continues in the exactly the
Speaker 1: same form with the miracle of blood in the Nile
Speaker 1: and in other bodies of water, the miracle of what
Speaker 1: we call the plague of frogs. All of those are
Speaker 1: told in exactly the same sort of language and literary
Speaker 1: structure as that story of Aaron's Staff. You then talked
Speaker 1: about how the Egyptian magicians also perform others of these miracles,
Speaker 1: and there's a kind of face off, as it were,
Speaker 1: between Moses and Aaron and what they're doing, and then
Speaker 1: what the Egyptian experts are doing it their magicians are
Speaker 1: doing can I ask you seen in the light of
Speaker 1: sort of ancient Near Eastern practice or imagination or ideology,
Speaker 1: is there a reason to think that there would be
Speaker 1: some fame associated with the idea of egypt magicians. That's
Speaker 1: a good question. I mean, they're definitely was a very
Speaker 1: robust tradition of magic in Egypt, and we also know
Speaker 1: that there were interactions between magicians from different cultures. So
Speaker 1: sometimes we find spells that are actually transliterated from in
Speaker 1: antiquity from one language to another. So we do know
Speaker 1: that Egypt had a robust tradition of magicians, and we
Speaker 1: do know that there was contact between those magicians and
Speaker 1: magicians elsewhere in the ancient Near East. What you're describing,
Speaker 1: by the way it sounds to me, is like the
Speaker 1: practice of what I like to call ancient plagiarism, Right
Speaker 1: that if I had a good hymn or poem or
Speaker 1: story in my civilization, and you came for another civilization
Speaker 1: and you heard it, you would just copy that story
Speaker 1: or translate that story into your own civilization and maybe
Speaker 1: swap out some of the proper nouns of the gods
Speaker 1: or the kings or the heroes, and then boom, you'd
Speaker 1: have a fresh story of your own. The most famous
Speaker 1: example of this of where stories make their way through
Speaker 1: different ancient civilizations is the flood story, which occurs not
Speaker 1: only in the Bible, but in older sources, ancient Ear
Speaker 1: Eastern Mesopotamian sources as well. Do you happen to know
Speaker 1: off the top of your head whether there are plague
Speaker 1: stories in other ancient Near Eastern traditions or is the
Speaker 1: Biblical story sort of a one off. You definitely do
Speaker 1: have stories of plagues in the ancient Near East. In
Speaker 1: fact that there's also traditions of plagues having occurred in
Speaker 1: each We have ancient Egyptian texts describing things like epidemics.
Speaker 1: The Nile turning to red is something that's described in
Speaker 1: some ancient Egyptian texts. You're saying, there is an ancient
Speaker 1: Egyptian text that has the story where the Nile turns
Speaker 1: read Yes, I'm quite sure that there are Egyptian traditions
Speaker 1: that are not entirely dissimilar. So when one hears that
Speaker 1: there are some ancient Egyptian sources that talk about the
Speaker 1: nile turning red, there are two ways to think about that.
Speaker 1: Roughly speaking, one way is the way that a religious
Speaker 1: traditionalist apologist would They would say, aha, you know, here
Speaker 1: we have some independent evidence that these events might have
Speaker 1: actually happened. And then there's the way that a historian
Speaker 1: or a literary scholar would approach it, which is to say, well,
Speaker 1: this is a trope that existed in the ancient world,
Speaker 1: and if you've got a good story, people like to
Speaker 1: tell that story to each other. And it's not so
Speaker 1: surprising that story would have turned up in multiple different
Speaker 1: literary traditions. I suppose that approach might also leave open
Speaker 1: room for the possibility that there was some natural phenomenon
Speaker 1: that sometimes occurred in Egypt that led to the reddening
Speaker 1: of water. But if there isn't any natural exclination for that,
Speaker 1: that's credible. I'm not aware of it, right, And there
Speaker 1: are various different phenomena that can lead to the reddening
Speaker 1: of waters, you know, from algae to declayed deposits and
Speaker 1: all sorts of things like that. But clearly what's described
Speaker 1: in part of the biblical account where it says that
Speaker 1: it was accompanied by the water became undrinkable and all
Speaker 1: the fish died. I mean, that's a sort of very
Speaker 1: dramatic occurrence that doesn't necessarily align with the presence of algae.
Speaker 1: But but back to your your previous question about ancient
Speaker 1: Near Eastern texts talking about plagues. I mean, we have
Speaker 1: that even in the Bible. Moreover, you know, a really
Speaker 1: interesting text in that regard, I would say, is in
Speaker 1: Deuteronomy twenty eight, where we have a whole series of curses,
Speaker 1: and those curses include reference to an Egyptian disease of
Speaker 1: some sort, says meet sign, so may the Lord strike
Speaker 1: you with the Egyptian boils or something like that. And
Speaker 1: that's in fact one of the plagues described an exodus,
Speaker 1: so that it's not only a mention in the Bible
Speaker 1: of a of a plague of some story, but it's
Speaker 1: even associating this particular one with Egypt. And I don't
Speaker 1: think that it needs to be a reference specifically to
Speaker 1: the plagues as told in the narrative. It could just
Speaker 1: be a disease that's associated with Egypt. You know, some
Speaker 1: people call the coronavirus virus. I'm gonna say it's the
Speaker 1: Chinese virus of its era, the Egyptian boils. Yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: be back in just a moment. Let's turn to some
Speaker 1: more of the concrete plagues now and see if we
Speaker 1: can come up with anything interesting about them. So the frogs,
Speaker 1: I've always been fascinated by the frogs. Essentially, all of
Speaker 1: the other plagues or miracles sound to me sort of
Speaker 1: vaguely plausible. You know, large number of locusts eating everything,
Speaker 1: that happens sometimes in the world. You know, pestilence, animals dying,
Speaker 1: that happens, boils definitely disgusting, and that happens even the darkness,
Speaker 1: which maybe doesn't exactly happen in the way that it's
Speaker 1: depicted in the Biblical text. There are eclipses, and you
Speaker 1: can imagine people extending from that. But the inundation of
Speaker 1: an entire country by frogs has always seen to be
Speaker 1: a little weird and outlying. Do you have any insight
Speaker 1: into that? What's but the frogs? Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: agree with you that frogs taking over a whole country
Speaker 1: sounds relatively implausible, even as a once in a millennium
Speaker 1: sort of event. I'm not an expert on ecology or
Speaker 1: on the habitat of frogs, but my understanding is that
Speaker 1: they're amphibians and don't like to be very far from
Speaker 1: the water. At all. So, assuming that all of Egypt
Speaker 1: didn't become marshland, I'm not sure frogs could have survived
Speaker 1: in the city centers. All right, Well, we'll have to
Speaker 1: leave then as a mystery for the moment. What about
Speaker 1: the plague that in the Hebrew is called arov and
Speaker 1: which usually gets translated in most English translations as a
Speaker 1: mixture of wild animals or something to that effect. The
Speaker 1: word literally means a mixture. If you think of the
Speaker 1: children's picture books of the plagues, you sort of imagine
Speaker 1: lions and tigers and other things walking around, which notably
Speaker 1: are never mentioned in the biblical text. What is this
Speaker 1: confusing plague probably meant to have been in the original context. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: I mean it's worth pointing out with the question of
Speaker 1: what it means literally. So as you say, the root
Speaker 1: iron leigh bet of this word is something that sometimes
Speaker 1: has connotations of mixture, although that same root other times
Speaker 1: has different connotations. It's the root of the word west,
Speaker 1: and relatedly the root associated with evening, and so it
Speaker 1: has various different meanings that root, And in the case
Speaker 1: of this particular plague, some of the ancient translations suggests
Speaker 1: that this was some sort of insect flying, perhaps not
Speaker 1: entirely dissimilar from the plague of what we call lice
Speaker 1: or keynan in Hebrew. Eton let's fast forward to, as
Speaker 1: it were, the granddaddy of them all, the plague of
Speaker 1: the Death of the Firstborn, which is maybe the most
Speaker 1: maybe I don't know if it's the most Corona appropriate,
Speaker 1: but it's certainly the one that involves the warning that
Speaker 1: people not leave their homes until the day, and so
Speaker 1: there's a there's a little bit of self isolation going
Speaker 1: on at the family level. And it's also the one
Speaker 1: of the plagues, it's most embedded in the story of
Speaker 1: actually the children of Visible getting up and leaving. Why
Speaker 1: do you think the firstborn are so much in play here?
Speaker 1: Why not just you know, a plague that kills off
Speaker 1: all of your offspring, or maybe it's about Pharaoh being
Speaker 1: the king. Any thoughts on the firstborn aspect. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a really good question. I think that there's you know,
Speaker 1: something even more impressive about killing just the firstborn then
Speaker 1: say killing everyone. And if you're going to kill anyone,
Speaker 1: then killing the firstborn is really devastating. It really is
Speaker 1: appropriate as a climactic plague in terms of the impact.
Speaker 1: I think that it's it at least feels when when
Speaker 1: I read it, like in a particularly traumatic event. Part
Speaker 1: of that might be totally literary, and that it's it's
Speaker 1: a more expensive description than what we have, say for
Speaker 1: for frogs or life. But there is something about both
Speaker 1: afflicting everyone and like proving the power, proving that this
Speaker 1: isn't just you know, a pandemic, but something that can
Speaker 1: only be the hand of God. In the fact that
Speaker 1: it's just the firstborns who are afflicted, that really shows
Speaker 1: who's in charge. A don I wonder if I could
Speaker 1: close by asking you a more personal question, and it's this.
Speaker 1: You know, you maintain a traditional Jewish practice. You know,
Speaker 1: you go to the synagogue, you perform the rituals, you
Speaker 1: keep the Sabbath, and you're also brilliant and path breaking
Speaker 1: Bible scholar who engages with the Biblical narratives as historical artifacts.
Speaker 1: When you think about Passover, do you draw a line.
Speaker 1: Do you think, well, if the Passover state or I'll
Speaker 1: talk like a traditionalist, or do you think no, like
Speaker 1: this is how I tell the story of the pastor
Speaker 1: you know, the rabbi say, whoever says more about the
Speaker 1: telling of the Passover story deserves praise is a your
Speaker 1: review for yourself at least that telling more about the
Speaker 1: Passover story includes the kind of historical analysis that we
Speaker 1: were just doing. For me personally, it does. These are
Speaker 1: the things that I enjoy. I delight in reading the
Speaker 1: texts critically, in thinking about the historical contexts, and you know,
Speaker 1: the actual historical events that may or may not be
Speaker 1: reflected in these texts and traditions. So I grew up
Speaker 1: like my parents and grandparents doing the Passover Sater every year,
Speaker 1: and it's extremely important to me and part of my heritage.
Speaker 1: But I do like to ask questions, and that, you
Speaker 1: know that, famously is one of the points of the
Speaker 1: Passover Sater is to have you know, the children ask questions.
Speaker 1: And I haven't grown out of that, and and so
Speaker 1: every year I do like to think about the problems
Speaker 1: and the complications and the evolution of the different traditions
Speaker 1: and the multiplicity of traditions. In fact, you know, a
Speaker 1: wonderful thing is that you know, one of the elements,
Speaker 1: one of the central elements of the Passover Sater is
Speaker 1: you know, this sort of codified question asking. And so
Speaker 1: to me, these you know there are layers upon layers
Speaker 1: of questions. You know, the Passover Stater is designed to
Speaker 1: inspire questions, and even the questions that are being asked
Speaker 1: have questions that can be asked about them, and that's
Speaker 1: my favorite part of the Passoversader. Well, I appreciate it,
Speaker 1: Don that you're giving us a version of the Passover
Speaker 1: Sader where it is the origin of your engagement with
Speaker 1: the Biblical criticism. So I appreciate that very much. I'm
Speaker 1: very grateful to Dan for joining me for our special
Speaker 1: Passover episode. I know you're working on some very big things,
Speaker 1: and with any luck, when those are published, we'll have
Speaker 1: you back to report on those other projects too. Thank
Speaker 1: you very much for joining me. Thank you. Talking to
Speaker 1: Dan made me feel ready to try, in a limited
Speaker 1: sort of way, to re engage some of that tradition
Speaker 1: and some of that ritual in the form of a
Speaker 1: Passover Sader. I hope it had that effect for you,
Speaker 1: whether you're celebrating Passover, Easter or none of the above.
Speaker 1: Until the next time I talk to you, be careful,
Speaker 1: be safe, be well, and enjoy whatever holidays work for you.
Speaker 1: Deep Background is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. Our
Speaker 1: producer is Lydia gene Coott, with research help from zooe Wynn.
Speaker 1: Mastering is by Jason Gambrell and Martin Gonzalez. Our showrunner
Speaker 1: is Sophie mckibbon. Our theme music is composed by Luis Guerra.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to the Pushkin Brass, Malcolm Gladwell, Jacob Weisberg,
Speaker 1: and Mia Lobel. I'm Noah Feldman. I also write a
Speaker 1: regular column for Bloomberg Opinion, which you can find at
Speaker 1: bloomberg dot com Slash Feldman. To discover Bloomberg's original slate
Speaker 1: of podcasts, go to Bloomberg dot com slash Podcasts. You
Speaker 1: can follow me on Twitter at Noah R. Feldman. This
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