BibleProject - The First Worldwide Meme – Chaos Dragon E2

Episode Date: August 7, 2023

When we read the word “myth,” often what comes to mind is a fictional story. However, a myth is a way of exploring universal concerns of human existence, using symbols for things we may or may not have words to describe. The dragon is one such myth—a symbol humans have used for millennia to talk about chaos and death. Some might say it was one of the first worldwide memes. In this episode, Tim and Jon discuss ancient Near Eastern literature about dragons.View more resources on our website →Timestamps Part one (00:00-6:21)Part two (6:21-20:43)Part three (20:43-31:49)Part four (31:49-49:18)Referenced ResourcesInterested in more? Check out Tim’s library here.You can experience our entire library of resources in the BibleProject app, available for Android and iOS.Show Music “Defender (Instrumental)” by TENTSAdditional sound design by the BibleProject teamShow produced by Cooper Peltz with Associate Producer Lindsey Ponder, Lead Editor Dan Gummel, and Editors Tyler Bailey and Frank Garza. Mixed by Tyler Bailey.  Podcast annotations for the BibleProject app by Hannah Woo. Powered and distributed by Simplecast.

Hey, this is Tyler at Bible Project. I record and mix the podcast. We've been exploring a theme called the Chaos Dragon, and because it's such a big theme, we've decided to do two separate question and response episodes about it. We're currently taking questions for the first Q&R and we'd love to hear from you. Just record your question by September 13th and send it into us at infoatbibelproject.com. Let us know your name and where you're from, and try to keep your question to about 20 seconds. And please transcribe your question when you email it in.

That's a huge help to our team. We're so looking forward to hearing from you. Here's the episode. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Last week we began a new theme study looking at the dragon in the story of the Bible. The Bible is not the only ancient text where dragons play a key role. Dragons pop up all over ancient Near Eastern literature.

Dragons are like the first global meme of the ancient world. They're a way to talk about chaos and death. There are forces out there that want to take the life of the precious good things in my world. And everybody knows that feeling in one way or another. And the dragon slaying myth was a common ancient near-Eastern way to talk and explore about that, on both an individual level and then on a corporate communal and cosmic level. Now when we talk about myth, we usually think about made-up stories, fiction, but the ancient world understood myth in a much more nuanced way.

The technical sense of myth is a symbolic narrative that's exploring or expressing universal concerns of human existence, usually about the origins of the cosmos, the nature of the cosmos, and they're using these symbols to explore the human experience that everybody sends them, and until now, and everybody on the planet now actually has the same experiences and feelings. We just have different symbols and language for them.

So if the Bible uses symbolic language and talks about mythic creatures, can I trust the Bible? I mean, is the Bible accurate? Are you saying that narratives in the Bible aren't true because they may employ the language of mythology or symbolism? Yes, that's my question. So that's not what we're saying. What we're saying is as this family, Israelite family, told their family history in in narrative or in poetry, they regularly drew on the same set of symbols that their ancient Near Eastern neighbors did, because it was a common symbolic language of their time. Today, Tim Mackey and I talk about dragons and ancient Near Eastern mythology.

I'm John Collins, near listening to Bible Project Podcast. Thanks for joining us. Here we go. [♪ music playing in background, music playing in background, Hey Tim, here we are. Hey, here we are talking about dragons. Dragons in the Bible. Yeah.

Which is, it's kind of misleading, is it? Ha, ha, ha. Like last time, what we taught, what you really showed us was there's a lot of creatures in the Bible that you could translate some of them with the word dragon, but then there's more of a theme of like chaos creatures. Yeah, dangerous chaos creatures of the sea and of the wilderness, and there's lots of a variety of types of these animals that are connected in terms of what they mean. So lions, you know, are dark predatory creatures of the wilderness that hunt at night, and so were crocodiles or something

like that. But the one creature that has a word used to describe both the sea monster and the wilderness monster is the word nakhash in Hebrew, which means snake or serpent. And then there's a big vocabulary of what the water version of that creature is. The Leviathan. Leviathan and the Tannin. The Tannin. Which I mean, monstrous reptilian sea creatures. Yeah.

Okay. With multiple heads. As we'll see today. Yeah, cool. So, the reason why we're talking about this is it's actually a major repeated theme throughout the storyline of the Bible, starting with page one,

depending on the translation you read, but it's there in Hebrew on day five of creation. And all throughout imagery of snakes and dragons and monsters is used throughout the biblical story as an image for, well, it's part of what we'll talk about right now in this conversation. And then the story of the Bible culminates with the victory over the dragon in the revelation. So the basic point of our last conversation was just to say there be dragons in the Bible, and they're all over, actually, and all over all the parts of the Bible.

Yeah, I know you show that in Greek, the Greek translation of the Bible, the Septuagit, used the Greek word dragon, and dragon. Yeah, you know, so I think what we're going to do right now in this conversation is examine, explore the cultural backstories that the biblical authors are working with. Okay.

So we're going to look at the dragon combat myth in ancient Near Eastern culture and literature. And there, the monster is primarily a sea dragon. What the biblical authors do, and this is what we'll do in all the episodes to follow, is take up that cultural symbolism, that's very common in their day, and they tweak it, and develop it, and do interesting things with it.

And that's where you get the variety of monster creatures that are all associated. But where it all started with an ancient, ancient, cross-cultural mythology about the storm god fighting the sea dragon. Cool. This will be great because I think my category of what a dragon is is pretty narrow. And I think I mentioned this last episode. I just think of your classic, you know, winged dragon living a cave, hoarding a pot of gold.

And he doesn't live in the sea. Mm. Yeah. You're right. Yeah. So I don't actually have a category of a sea dragon. Okay. Yeah. So like, let's create one. Let's create it.

And to do that, let us turn to a variety of ancient stories, many of them, much older than the Bible that were in the air and in the language and literature, in which the Bible came to existence. So what we're looking at is ancient, near Eastern, culture background of the dragon slang myth. So in the ancient Near East, and actually as we're going to see beyond the ancient Near East, there is a really widespread symbolic narrative told across cultures that preceded the Israelites and surrounded them. And it all has the same basic plot line with the same characters. It's really fascinating. So just as a note, I learned a lot from Robert Miller's works. He

revival scholar called the dragon, the mountain and the nations. I learned a lot from a recent PhD from University of Chicago, Medaud Richie, a Rotter dissertation on visions of gods and monsters. And then an older work, John Day, a British scholar called God's Conflict with the Dragon and the Sea. So fascinating. Okay, so here's the basic summary. You can go back to the oldest roots of Indian culture in Hindu religious texts. How old are we talking? Well, the textual versions are dated to somewhere around, I haven't heard the notes. Likely, an oral formation period from 1900 BC through 1000 BC. So long, 900 year formation history, but Abraham's cruising the promised land maybe around 1700 BC.

So this is predating his mic. The stories would have been around before. Yep, around before. There's an ancient Hittite version that comes from around the period when Abraham and his descendants were cruising around from the Old Kingdom period of the Hittites, around 1700 BC.

There is a version of this story told by the Hurians, which is a really unique people group, at least their languages, because it's not Indo-European or Semitic language. It's really interesting. I'm not familiar with this crew. Yeah, the Hurians. But around 1500 BC, they're kind of way up in the north of Turkey. Then you have Ugarit, the ancient city of Ugarit, which is a coastal archeology site in Lebanon, on the coast of Lebanon. And there around the time of Joshua and the judges, around 1500 to 1200 BC, they have a really elaborate version of this story. And then we get to Assyria and Babylon, Mesopotamia, and there's this from around the same period, 1500s. So it's kind of like, if you look at a pond and you can see that there's a ripple

going out, you presume there's a stone. And you can kind of angle from where the ripples are back to where the center was. So that's kind of the idea of how the story spread. It's in all these cultures around this time period, 1900 to 1500. And so most certainly, it's roots go back even to the prehistoric period where all these cultures descended from. Prehistoric meanings before any written-

For written records. Yeah, that's right. So we're right on the brink. Yeah. In the 1900 BC, right? Yeah, well for the alphabet. For the alphabet. So the hieroglyphic and the Sumerian.

That's been around for a thousand years. That's been around, yeah, for a much longer period. But in terms of an oral story about the storm god facing down the sea dragon, it must have lived on orally for a much longer period to have all these descendants in these very different languages and cultures. Okay. Because here's the basic outline of the story.

There's a Sea Dragon with its minions and- What does it usually look like? Oh, I'll show you lots of pictures. There's lots of pictures of it. Actually, here, do you just want to do that now? I mean, yeah, I you lots of pictures. There's lots of pictures of it. Actually, here. She just want to do that now. I mean, yeah, I kind of want one in my head. Okay, got it. All right. So this is the work of Medaud Richie that I just mentioned. She's brought together really what is the most comprehensive now collection of depictions of the seed dragon.

So here's one from the late Assyrian period, and it's of the Storm God carrying a bunch of lightning bolts in his hand. So really what it looks like is a long snake with crisscross scales, but it has horns. And he's trying a little feet, Elizabeth. Oh, yeah, right. Yep, two little tiny hands. Little tiny claws, yeah, whatever. Here is an Acadian cylinder seal it's also

Mesopotamian so you've got a deity with a long spear who has horns on its head and it is piercing one of the many heads seven of them of this seven headed monster with four legs and huge spikes coming out of its back. And then there's a deity on the back, kind of holding onto its tail, so the other deity can spear a tad. Here's one from much later. This is from Greek, like a Greek vase, that dates from around 600 BC. And here it's actually reflecting a Greek mythology who went down into Greek culture. So, Heracles and Yolás, both bashing the many heads of like a hydra.

That's what it's called in Greek mythology, a hydra. The hydra. Yeah. And Houdor is a word water in Greek. So, the water monster. Yeah. Houdor, hydra. And that one looks like, um, looks like a bunch of snakes coiled together as like one snake. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah. Here's one that's interesting. This is a Mesopotamian from a temple in the town called Nimrud from around 870 BC. And here, so you have a god in Inerta, but he looks exactly like how, like the king of a Syria would dress He's got lightning bolts in his hand and what he's facing off with. Oh, you tell me what that thing looks like Yeah, it looks kind of like oh My gosh, this is like every animal So it's legs. Let's start with the legs. They look like ostrich legs. Yeah, sure.

Yeah. And then it starts to become scaly, and you get the scaly body that like turns into this crazy head. Yep. Kind of like what maybe like a lion would look like if it didn't have, if it was just didn't have any fur. Yep, no mane, but it has horns. And then horns and just crazy fangs.

Yep. It looks almost demonic. Yeah, and then it has wings. And it has wings. Eagle wings. And then it's standing up, I guess I call the ostrich legs because it's like, it looks like it's standing up like a bird would.

But then it's, but it's, hands are not bird like, it's like, almost like lion hands. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, this is gonna be important when we eventually get to Daniel chapter seven, okay, which is describing monsters that sound like, what this thing looks like.

This is really high fidelity. Is this like a recreation of it or? Let's see. Yeah, this is etched in a rock. So, yeah, this is like a shaded version with high contrast. Okay. So, what's interesting. Yeah, this is an etched in a rock. So yeah, this is like a shaded version. Okay. With high contrast. Okay. Yeah. So what's interesting here is, so this is, again, if you were to Google like Nimrod

or Ninerta battling the monster, you know, Google will give you this image. It's a famous famous image. The posture of the Storm God is the same as the posture of the first picture I showed you, which is from a little cylinder seal. So these are little tiny clay seals that are in a circle, they're called cylinders, and they have a little drawing etched on all the sides, and you would roll it on clay out, and you would use it to make a decorative mark on a piece of clay or something like that. There are hundreds and hundreds of these that have surfaced. So part of Medaud Richie's dissertation was to say that most people in the ancient world would have not read the versions of the story that I'm going to tell you about. They would have heard the story, but more they would just know it by seeing it everywhere.

Seeing it on letters. Seeing it on temples, seeing it, like billboards, that's their way for us. Yeah, yeah. So this was one of the iconic popular tales of the ancient Eastern world. It's really fascinating to think about. So here's the basic storyline of how it goes.

There's the basic plot line. There is a sea monster. Now you have some images. But what that sea monster does is it lives in the sea and sometimes is just embodied as the sea. And it threatens the stability and order of all life on the dry land. Not hard to imagine. And what senses at threatening the order of life on the dry land? If you're able to go to a coastal region that's not just like gold white sand beaches or something like that. Right. Where the waves are crashing under rocks. Yeah. Go to where it's like...

This is like a northern Greece where the Poseidon myth was and like it's just like caves and yeah. Yeah. The iconic like you know the coastal cliffs of Ireland or Scotland. Okay. Or the coast of Oregon. Yeah. The coast of Oregon. Be it a place like that an hour and a half from right now. So anywhere where the sea is crashing up against the dry land and shattering it to pieces, bashing against the rocks. So that's a fundamental human experience. Well, if anybody who's ever seen something like that, where you're like, I live on this dry land stuff.

And that sea wants to get me, wants to get up onto the dry land constantly. About every five seconds, it sends a big bashing wave. Okay. That's a pretty fundamental human experience. So that image is turned into a narrative about forces of disorder, of chaos that are constantly threatening bashing at the shores of the ordered place that is where humans have their realm. So the Sea Dragon is, so you can either be the dark sea that's threatening, or you can think of the sea as kind of brought together in an image of the monster of the sea. So who's gonna, oh no, the seed coming, the seed

dragon's coming, who's going to rescue us, the storm god. So the god of the waters above, because if the danger is in the waters below, the waters above. So just as terrifying as watching the ocean, you know, wash up and crash at cliffs, he is watching a storm cloud come. I never really had this experience here in Oregon, like I did once I lived in the Midwest for a while. Oh, of like a storm that just comes out of nowhere

and just has its way. Beautiful clear day, then you see the clouds on the horizon, within 30 minutes, it's just like bonkers outside. Right. And it's terrifying. And then it passes on. You know? So that idea of a storm god that is scary in its own right.

Yeah, you know, a storm is scary, but less because of all the water typically. It's usually because it's cold and windy too. And that like could rip things apart and your shelter gets destroyed. But isn't water to be celebrated? Water from the sky. I mean that was like... Exactly right. Exactly right. So the storm waters have a different role because the ocean waters, if they cover you up, you're done. You're done. tsunami, you're done. But the storm god comes and he will give gift

Hmm of rain that brings fertility to the land so storm gods are often associated in some way with fertility Okay, so that storm god can come and go out to see and Like battle. Yeah, if you've ever watched the storm and see it looks like a battle. Oh my gosh Yeah, yeah, Yeah, yeah. So the way the mythology works is the Storm God goes out from the land, which is the ordered realm, over which it rules, because it's definitely the most powerful thing.

It's above. Above. And so it goes out to the sea, and there's some multi-stage conflict usually involves some bashing of head. Then the Sea Dragonons body in different versions of the myth becomes a benefit in some way. So the dragon's body can be split. And again, the dragon is the image of the sea water itself. So like in the Babylonian version, the sea monster is split in half.

Like flayed, we talked about this. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, and one half is a reestablished order in the waters above. The other half is to establish order in the waters below, and then dry land is protected. Sometimes the monster's body is dragged up onto the dry land, and then is given as food for all the creatures to come and have a feast. After the victory of the Sea Dragon, the Storm God moves up onto a high mountain and has a feast.

Sometimes the feast is the dragon's body. Other times it's just having a big feast. It's a regular Storm God feast. Yep. Totally. Where a royal palace is built from which the storm god rules over the rescued and newly ordered cosmos. That's the basic story. Okay. There's a monster.

There's a monster. Threatening. Storm god comes. Fight. Bashing. Storm god wins. Storm god wins. Storm God wins, ascends a high mountain, feast for everyone, from the royal palace from which the Storm God to the storm god wins?

I'm just imagining being an ancient person. I'm going to still go out to the sea and see the sea still chaotic. Well, that's exactly right. So in what sense is the dragon been slayed? That's exactly right. So what is very interesting is in the ancient hitite version of this, in which the stormgild is named Taruna, and the monster is named Illuyanka. Oh, and he actually defeats this sea servant by getting it drunk. Feds it was wine, and then once it's drunk, then he chops it set off. But this story was narrated and reenacted, like stage actors, as a part of an annual

new year festival. In other words, it was reenacted every year. And the battle happens every year. Yeah, in the spring, to mark the transition from winter into spring again. So it's about, in other words, it's cyclical. This needs to happen every year. The battle happens every year. Hmm.

So, there, the myth is a way of giving symbolic language to the cycling of the seasons of death, right? The death in the fall and the winter, where the powers of chaos bring death to the land and nothing grows. But then, the spring, the spring rains come, the spring storms come. And they bring rain and the storm god comes. So every year you celebrate a new victory that brings a new season of fertility to the

land. Okay. That is also true for the Mesopotamian version, which is the story's captured most vividly in a well-known, we've actually read some of this before in past series called Enuma-Elish, which is a big complex. It's also a story of creation. So there the monster is named Tiamat, who is saltwater. She represents the ocean. And then rather than herself being a dragon, she has a huge army of monsters that include dragons, but also Harry hero men like monster warriors, Harry monster men, lion monsters, scorpions,

fish men, all these hybrid monster creatures. Yeah, exactly. Human monster, yeah, birds. So their Tiamat represents the ocean and then she's got an army of mutant creatures. But and Marduk, the patron god of Babylon, is the storm god. But what's interesting is that this was literally performed also every year at a spring festival called a Kitu festival.

So, it needs to happen every year because nature is itself playing out this battle and humans are just helpless little, you know. Man, they get like this powerful, just dragon ritual. And we celebrate like a bunny. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha I suppose in theory, what resurrection Sunday is supposed to be? Is celebrating? Yeah, it's celebrating the crucified Messiah's victory over the snake. Mm, like that's Easter.

Whoa, what if that was my chocolate? I was just chocolate dragon. Chocolate snake dragon that I... It's a decapitated head. Yeah, so like that. And I bite into its head and I'm like, Oh, it's hollow. That's, yes, it would be much more fitting.

I'm getting a vision here. You should. What would we call the chocolate dragons? You know, we could mark it. You know, our friend Rudy talks about how he wants and his family easter to be the biggest celebration of the year. The biggest holiday of the year.

Maybe did he get that idea from you? I don't know. I just love that vision. Yeah. But it doesn't sound enticing when you just think about... Like easter, I guess. Yeah. Okay, so let's address a question.

Okay. Which is this. So I named a bunch of cultures. We could go into each one. And again, if you want to go down the rabbit hole, actually Robert Miller's book, could I mention earlier, is really great. He gets really nerdy on all of these other backstories. So in each of these cultural stories, the word myth is what's used to refer to them in like the scholarly literature. So, and the word myth, the way it's used in religious studies in the West today,

in academic circles is actually really different. The meaning of myth is different than what it means for most of us in like day-to-day language. I mean, my kids, like my kids doing it to this. When we say myth, we mean you're telling me a lie often and yeah, regular vernacular. Yeah, well, I can mean fabricated to deceive. Okay. Or it could just mean a fantastic, unbelievable story. Oh, okay. Super stitious, you know, that kind of thing primitive, maybe, for kids. So that is not So that is not the meaning of the word myth, that people, that scholars are using, anthropologists, professors of religion. So the technical sense of myth that has developed in just the last couple hundred years is about this, a symbolic narrative that's exploring or expressing universal concerns of human existence, usually about the origins of the cosmos, or the nature of the cosmos, where it came from and what it is, exploring the relationship between the transcendent and the heavenly and the above and beyond,

and then the earthly and the mundane and the day-to to day, and how those two overlap or interact, exploring the reality of the divine and the human and how those two interrelate. And then also, another kind of binary in there is about death and chaos, and terror and darkness and evil, but then also beauty and in order, and goodness. And humans experience both of those realities

on a given day. And myth, the way it's used and the way we're gonna explore this, is about using narratives that give symbols for all of these things. And so it's not hard to see how this works. So we're not trying to just figure out do people actually believe there were dragons in the sea?

Okay. Not what these stories are about. These stories are symbolic. Well, maybe, but that's not the point. The point is, is that from the earliest, I mean, these really ancient cultures, and they're using these symbols to explore the human experience that everybody sense then and until now and everybody on the planet now actually has

the same experiences and feelings. We just have different symbols and language for them. Well, I'm trying to understand, let me maybe first repeat back what I'm hearing. Well, you want us to appreciate when we say myth, we don't mean just some fantastic story or something made up and incredible, but more specifically or more appropriately, we're talking about a story which is trying to help us understand and wrestle through some of the most important and most kind of existential realities that we encounter, life and death, chaos and beauty, good existence, good and evil, death and life. Yeah. Yeah. And then the ultimate, the

beyond, the transcendent, the divine, and then the earthly in the human and the mortal and these things are so so big That in order to try to understand them we have to use we don't have to but we like to use fantastic imagery larger than life characters and stories yeah help us yep appreciate the of these things. Yeah, to give meaning, feeling, concreteness to the experiences that we have. I mean, just to make it concrete, for example,

I remember my first years after my first son was born and then my second when my kids were like toddlers, and my job whenever I spent time with them was essentially to one of the main job was to make sure they didn't kill themselves or get themselves killed or hurt. And so you know just going for a walk with two toddlers is for me a really stressful experience constantly because all I what I'm seeing is you know all this stuff that could hurt them. And often there were a lot of close calls.

And so for years, my last moments of being awake before falling asleep every night would be some moment memory that would come into my mind of how close one of my kids was to death or decapitation or something. And it was so weird. And I started talking about this and I realized, this is a really common experience. Like with other parents, not everybody, but some.

So in other words, what an amazing experience to have a child. And it's such a rich experience and beautiful, so fun to take your toddler to the park and look at flowers and all that. It's amazing. But yet that's same. But there's a snake out there. There's a snake out there.

And it could take the form of a dump truck. It could take the form of an angry dog. Yeah. Or if you live out in the wilderness, it could take the form of a literal snake. Of an actual snake, of a cliff, of a storm wave. We had a terrifying experience with a sneaker wave on the Oregon coast once that almost did take somebody's life, not my kids, but somebody else's kid. And so like there are forces out there that want to take the life of the precious good

things in my world. And that feeling, everybody knows that feeling in one way or another. And the dragon myth, dragon slaying myth, was a common ancient Near Eastern way to talk and explore about that, those feelings on both the individual level and them on a corporate communal and cosmic level. So it's true myth. This is what CS Lewis was trying to communicate with the chronicle synonych. True myth. Yeah. Myth that is actually speaking to the truth of the human experience. Right. And so in that category to say is this true or not, in the sense that we as modern people want to ask that question.

Yeah. It's just not an appropriate question. Yeah, because when we think of narrative and truth, we're primarily thinking of historical reference, are the characters, events, and dates represented in the narrative? Do they refer to what I would call that actually? What happened in space-time reality? Yeah, totally. And that is not these types of symbolic narratives don't have as their purpose to refer to reality

in that way. What they're referring to are these universal realities and experiences through the language of symbols. Yeah. So the reason why this is important is because there is a good and right concern among people who have a conviction about scripture that it is both human and divine. That through these human words from ancient Israelites inspired by God's spirit, God speaks to his people. And that's an enduring conviction about the Bible that God's people have had Jewish and Christian many years. So there's a concern when this idea of symbolic narrative comes up of, wait, are you saying that narratives in the Bible aren't true

because they may employ the language of mythology or symbolism. And so that's not what we're saying. What we're saying is, as this family, Israelite family, told their family history, in narrative or in poetry, they regularly drew on this same set of symbols that their ancient Near Eastern neighbors did, because it was a common symbolic language of their time. And specifically you're talking about how, for example, in Genesis 1, when they tell the

story of how God, their God, Yahweh, Elohim, created and ordered the cosmos, they mentioned that in the... In the waters. The chaotic waters. Yeah, yeah. God put the Sea Dragon, the Tann waters. Yeah, yeah, God put the sea dragon. Yeah, the Tannin the Tannin. That's right. And for them, they've heard of the Tann they know about the Tannin. Everyone's talking about the Tannin. Yeah, yeah, everyone's seen the billboards.

Everyone's seen the the clay pottery and they've heard the stories and they're just they've taken many different forms. And so when they're like, wanna explain reality, they're like, you know that sea monster? That you celebrate the battle of every year? The true God of the universe created that tunneling. Yeah, okay. Yes, so here this gets us to an important reality. First of all, the meaning of the dragon,

and then second of all, the way the biblical author is both adopted and adapted this cultural story. So first, the dragon comes to represent what the dark waters represent, which is a force of disorder, of what threatens life, order, goodness, beauty, existence. So the word evil, it doesn't quite capture the full picture. Chaos is a better word. But it's what is opposed to life and order and goodness here on the dry land, which is pretty much what humans care about. Yeah, for us that is evil. I mean that is that is the bad, that is the enemy. But to depict it as an animal, actually I just had this conversation the other night because we have a rabbit and we have a rabbit now. We have a rabbit now. Yeah, we have for almost

a year. Well, nine months or so. Oh, yeah. Wonderful. We haven't talked about your life. Wonderful little rabbit. It's my younger son's pet. He's been dreaming and talking about it for years. So this wonderful little rabbit entered our life. And when my son treats it like a stuffed animal, carries it like a stuffed animal, the rabbit resists, and has sharp little claws if we don't clip them often enough, which we don't. And so it's crouched him accidentally the other night.

And so he was in like fight or flight mode, you know, he's nine. And so he was trying to understand this adorable, precious creature that he loves. Is this one of those like, chubby, like big ones or like kind of little tiny? He's so staking adorable. It's so amazing. It's, yeah, what do you call a lot beard? Ear's flopped down. Yeah.

So it's a big, just like, big brown, just stuffy cuddly, and it just wants to sit and just snuggle. Nice. It's rad. But it hurt him. Yeah, scratching. And so I was trying to explain to him, and he was both mad, and he was trying to figure out

how to relate to the bunny now that it heard him. And so we had this conversation about how the bunny doesn't know right from wrong. Like the bunny didn't have the intent to hurt you. So what it got me thinking about is so interesting how when we use the word evil to describe a bunny or an earthquake or a wave. You put malice in there. Yeah, it's easy for us to attribute human purpose and intent, which is the result of consciousness into something that is not conscious in the same way.

So anyway, but whatever it is that threatens life goodness beauty order, it's chaos disorder. And as we're going to turn to Genesis 1 in the next conversation, we'll see that the biblical authors use all the same images that their cultural neighbors do. But the dragon is a symbol for chaos disorder, anti-creation, the opposite of creation. So what God's on a mission to do in the Bible, however, and the biblical authors have a deep conviction, that God is on a mission to not just create and sustain a realm of goodness and order and beauty,

but to partner with humans in making sure that it flourishes and spreads forever in every man. And so as they tell the story that expresses that conviction about the one God, they regularly bring up the dragon myth, the images of the dragon myth in their poetry and in their narratives. You could just call these, they have three basic dragon taming strategies. They meaning biblical authors. Biblical authors.

There's three ways that they deal with the dragon. Because what I'm not saying is the biblical authors just copied and retold copy and repaste. You're saying the biblical authors talk about the dragon. So I want the dragon. They're referencing this larger body of dragon mythology. And so to what end, why do they care about the dragon, and what sense is it important to them? Yeah, and it's important because it's a symbol. It's the symbol in their world of chaos, death, and disorder, which is opposed to the purpose of God that they

believe, the God that they believe in, that is Yahweh, Creator of Heaven and Earth. And so they don't just adopt the dragon symbols into their poetry and stories wholesale, they always tweak it. They adopt it and they adapt it. And they adapt it in three ways to make clear who they think the dragon is. In all these stories, the dragon really gives the storm god a run for his money. Like sometimes it's many rounds of the storm god to fight the dragon. Sometimes he barely fights it.

One time, in the ugaritic version called the Baal epic, Baal in the Bible, he actually defeats the dragon. Yeah, Baal fights the dragon and overcomes it. And then builds a big palace and has a feast for all the nations that he rules over. But one of the guests that he invites to his feast is a god named Mote, which is the Semitic word for death. He invites death to his feast because he wants to show off that he beat the dragon. And at his own feast, death swallows up bail. It kills him. At his own feast. And so then, um, bail has like a girlfriend. Her name's Anat, the goddess of war.

And she's so mad. And so she takes out moat. She defeats death. And then rescues ball from death. and then brings him back to life again. Wait, so, um, pulls ball from like the belly of death? Mm-hmm, yeah. Yeah. So in other words, my point is just in all these versions,

the storm god really meets his match in the dragon. And you're like, I'm not sure which way this could go for you. Right. That's how winter feels. Yeah, totally. The biblical authors never tell the story that way. Here's how they use. So dragon-taming strategy number one, whatever ball or marduette can do, Yahweh can do better.

So if defeating the sea dragon is hard, a real challenge for the storm god, no challenge for Yahweh. He can do it easy. So you get something like Psalm 74, which will depict Yahweh as doing easily what Marduke or Baal did, which is bashing the head of the dragon. So Psalm 74 says, God is my king from a vault, who works deeds of deliver head of the dragon. So Psalm 74 says, God is my king from of old, who works deeds of deliverance in the earth. You divided the sea by your strength. You broke the heads of the sea monster in the waters, the tannine. You crushed the heads of Leviathan and gave him as food for creatures of the wilderness. So that's what the storm god would often do. Yep. And here. So you're saying there's no epic battle here, just like

yeah, he does that's pretty easy. But what they're taking for granted is that they put Yahweh in the slot of Baal or Maardu. Right. Whatever Baal or Maardu does, Yahweh does. And he does it better. So that's one strategy. It's to actually retell the combat story, but Yahweh is the one doing the fighting. Another way that biblical authors tame the dragon is to reframe the power and significance of the dragon. So if it's like of a world threatening monster in the dragons laying myths of their neighbors, there are sometimes biblical authors will downsize the dragon and just make it like a little rubber ducky.

So a little floppy-yered bunny. Psalm 104, verse 24, How many are your works? Oh Yahweh? You made them all in wisdom, the earth is full of your creatures. There's the great and wide sea, moving without number living things small and great There are the ships that sail. There's Leviathan that you formed to play Yeah, it's a little friendly creature here. Yeah, there's Leviathan out there. You thought that was a big deal

Yeah, yeah, he's just out there just frulking around and see. So this is the strategy at work in the seven day creation story of Genesis 1, where he's just one of the creature out there. He's a part of God's good world. You don't have to be afraid. In the ultimate purpose of God. Don't fear the God's master.

God's more powerful. Yep. Or rather, it's nothing compared to the true power and authority of the one true God. In other words, in the first strategy, the C monster is really bad news. But Yahweh can take care of it just like the storm God. In the second strategy, the monster gets downsized in comparison to Yahweh. And the third strategy, well, is what will fill out more in the conversations that follow. And the third strategy, the dragon is a symbol for violent humans and their

kingdoms that spread death in the land like a flood of violence. And so often the downfall of human tyrants and kings and empires is described in the language of the downfall of the sea dragon. So Nebuchadnezzar is in like the book of Jeremiah. He's straight up called a sea dragon that swallows up Jerusalem and spits it out. But then this is in Jeremiah chapter 51, but then Yahweh says, I am going to stand up for Jerusalem and I am going to dry up her waters and make her fountain run dry and make Babylon a heap of ruins and a haunt of jackals. So defeating the Sea Dragon is defeating the Sea. Is defeating the Sea?

Which is defeating Nebuchadnezzar. Babylon, which is defeating Nebuchadnezzar. So here it's depicting Yahweh against a human kingdom who's actually an actual historical human king and kingdom, but using the the dragon slang symbolism to describe that victory. So these are the ways that the biblical authors use the dragon myth. They use it to describe reality. They use it to describe their family history, but they use the language of the myth to do it and they tweak it as they do so. Cool. Alright, so we'll jump in to these, we'll see these strategies that play. Yep, as we jump in. Yeah, I just wanted to create the little map.

Yeah, there's a little framework. Framework, and then as we go through, basically what we're gonna do now is just tour the biblical story from Genesis to the Revelation looking at places where the dragon imagery is brought up. second imagery is brought up. Okay. Well, hi everybody, this is Dan Gummel. Again, the podcast team, and I'm back with another employee introduction. And we've done a few number of these now, but I was thinking about before you walked to the stairs, I think you're the newest employee that everyone's about to meet. So do you want to introduce yourself?

Yeah, my name is Julia, and I've been working at Bible Project for about to meet. So do you want to introduce yourself? Yeah, my name is Julia, and I've been working at Bible Project for about nine months. Yeah. And I work on our operations team. Yeah, and specifically, what does that mean, Julia? Yes, for me, that means I work with anything relating to data and insights and kind of get to work with like everyone in the organization to help you what they're doing

and like how we can like even make a greater impact with the work that they're doing. What do you think is the most interesting data point that you could say like I'll talk about? Over the last six months our classroom audience has become increasingly more female as it's grown. Oh really? It's really cool to see women sometimes don't feel like they have a place necessarily in the seminary setting but are like own classroom experience is becoming increasingly a home for women who want online the Bible. Wow that is really cool. Okay one more thing tell me a specific podcast number that would just be really interesting.

Oh, this is so hard off the top of my head. I know. Oh, man. How many people listen to their podcasts with pets? I don't think I can know that number. Do you know that number? No, I'm asking you, you're the number, isn't it? How many people listen to their podcasts in the car? I have no idea.

Here's a number. We're looking at plays per capita, so the number of podcasts plays over the number of humans who are estimated to live in a country. Our top five countries for the podcast are the US, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and Singapore. That was really interesting. New Zealand is number two. It is. Tell me a little bit about your life outside of work.

Yeah, so outside of work, I'm an awesome musician. Are you really? Songwriter? I didn't know this. Yeah, I did a little, I was a worship director for a little bit. I used to use. Yeah. Oh, cool. I first sang in little, I was a worship director for a little bit. Are you serious? Yeah. Oh, cool. I first sang in church when I was four.

What, what do you play? A piano guitar, but I'm a sissy. Anything else? Yeah, I mean it's Portland, so I like to ride bikes. Oh right. For a lot, ride bikes. Well, let's, let's read the credits. Today's show came from our podcast team, including producer Cooper Peltz and associate producer Lindsey Ponder.

Our lead editor is Dan Gono. Additional editors are Tyler Bailey and Frank Garza. Tyler Bailey also mixed this episode. And Hannah Wu did our annotations for the Bible Project app. Bible Project is a crowd-funded nonprofit. Everything we make is free because of your generous support. Thank you.