BibleProject - Why Do Cain's Descendants Show Up After the Flood? – Family of God E10 Q+R

Episode Date: February 1, 2021

Thank you to our audience for your incredible questions. In this week’s episode, we tackle questions like, did Adam represent a male human? Where did Cain’s wife come from? And what is the relationship of the Church to Israel?  Listen in to hear the team answer your questions.View full show notes from this episode →Timestamps How Could There Be Descendants of Cain After the Flood? (0:50)Where Did Cain’s Wife Come From? (13:25)Was Adam Male? (19:35)Was the Promised Land Conquest a Case of Sibling Rivalry? (36:28)Does the Church Replace Israel? (52:35)Referenced ResourcesS. Joshua Swamidass, The Genealogical Adam and Eve: The Surprising Science of Universal AncestryC. John Collins, Reading Genesis Well: Navigating History, Poetry, Science, and Truth in Genesis 1-11Interested in more? Check out Tim’s library here.Show Music “Defender (Instrumental)” by TentsShow produced by Dan Gummel. Show notes by Lindsey Ponder.  Audience questions collected by Christopher Maier.Powered and distributed by Simplecast.

Hey, this is Cooper at Bible Project. I produce the podcast in Classroom. We've been exploring a theme called the City, and it's a pretty big theme. So we decided to do two separate Q and R episodes about it. We're currently taking questions for the second Q and R and we'd love to hear from you. Just record your question by July 21st

and send it to us at infoatbiboproject.com. Let us know your name and where you're from, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds and please transcribe your question when you email it in, 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 excited to hear from you. Here's the episode.

Alright, we have some questions from this series we did. Yeah, on the family of God. On the family of God. And so you went through and you selected some. If you haven't been following along with the Family of God series, maybe these will feel out of left field. Maybe not, I don't even know. Yeah, and as always, the caveat is we got tons of questions.

So I try and pick the ones that are repeated the most to make sure we address, you know, what is the most common questions? Also, I'm always ambitious that this will finally be the Q&R that we get through more than like four questions in an episode. I'll move us along. Okay. Let's do this. Okay. This first one is Sarah from England. Hi, I'm Sarah. I'm from England and I live in Bosnia, Herzegovina. I enjoyed your discussion on Genesis 10 about the different nations descended from Noah. In another episode you talked about the Kenites and I wanted to ask how there were still descendants of Kane after the flood. I've learnt so much from your podcast and videos. Thanks for all you do. Yeah, that's a

great question. Super. I actually knew I didn't bring it up when you and I talked about it. I didn't even think I didn't even think that. You didn't even think that. Think about it. I knew that the thing and I knew that somebody would ask it. And it was actually the most repeated question out of any Q&R we've ever received. Yeah. There were so many questions about the same thing.

So I let it. I knew I was poking the bear. Kane, the first generation, second generation of humans. Yep. Kane enable brothers. Kane murders his brother able. And then he goes east and he's and then the he starts a city. He builds a city.

He marries a wife out there. And builds a city that's somehow full of some population. Right. Right, so actually we'll talk about that in the next question. Okay. But so one, his name is actually in Hebrew, Kion. If you're gonna transliterate, it would be Q-A-Y-I-N, Kion. Okay.

So what the narrative says is it traces seven generations through him up to a guy named Lemek, who's a pretty violent deal. By Lemek King guy. Yeah, and then Lemek has two wives, first polygamist in the Bible, and you're told of three sons from Lemek, Yaval Yuval Tuvalcane, or Tuvalcayan. The third son has Cain's name in it. And what you're told is that these are the fathers of all these different early industries.

So, once the father of those suple music, once the father of the migrating shepherd groups, and then Tuvalcayan was the first metallurgist like the blacksmith and so on. Yeah. Now what's interesting about that is this narrative is set within Genesis 1 to 11 before the flood. Right. But yet you're being told that it's from Cain's descendants that these first practices of industry and

culture and civilization started to come from. Because there was civilization before the flood. Exactly, totally. But the point is, is from the perspective there was civilization before the flood. Exactly, totally. But the point is, is from the perspective of the narrator and the readers who are all after the flood, the question is, why does that matter? I see. If they are all wiped out in the flood,

no, and his sense has been... Someone else is going to have to start all that over anyway. In other words, Cain's descendants are talked about as if they started things that are still going in the reader's day. Right. Right? I'm just saying it's there in the narrative and it's worth noticing. Even though the flood does happen, Cain's descendants are described in a way as if they made a lasting contribution to human civilization. So that's just interesting. Yeah. But, you know, let's say they

were wiped out and let's say it had to all be then restarted. Restarted through Noah's family and they remember because and they're just giving credit to Kane. They're like, oh yeah, I remember or you know, Kane's descendants did this stuff so we can restart it. And of course none of that's in the narrative of Genesis 10 or 11. So the curiosity is after the flood you get into the book of Exodus, the rest of the Pentateuch, you get into the book of Numbers, and you start meeting a people group that has Kayn's name. They're called the Kayn-ee, or the Kayn-ee in Hebrew, and in English, you get translated, not with the spelling of Kayn's name, but with K-E-N, Kenites.

But it's the same word in Hebrew. Got it. So just like you get, Lot has two sons from his daughters, because of Drunk Sex and a cave, the Moav and Ammon, from whom come the Moabites and the Ammonites. This happens for all kinds of people groups.

They'll be an ancestor, and then the people who come from them are called by that ancestors name. Same thing here. You have a guy named Kane, and then come the Canites.. Let's create a roadmap. So let's say is Cain, or we meant to think of him as the ancestor of the Caneites that you meet on the other side of the flood later on the Bible. And it seems like you are supposed to think of him that way. So let's say we answer yes to that question. Or all kinds of evidence that makes sense of that.

One is that's the normal way ancestors and people groups are named in the Bible. Ooh, in Balam's oracles, he's standing up on the cliff overlooking. After he blesses Israel, he starts pronouncing other oracles over other nations. And in chapter 24 of Numbers, it says, he looked at the canee, the cane knights, and he starts speaking about them. And in the next line, he looked at the canee, the cane nights, and he starts speaking about them. And in the next line, he calls them to straight up cane. He calls the people that he sees,

call the cane nights. He calls them cane. And that happens a lot. Bailem's, is he an amy-right, or is he an amy-n-night? Bailem. No, he's a mercenary. So pagan sorcerer. But he's hired by the King of Moab.

Moab, yeah, the Moabites. With the elders of the Midianites, who are all working together. So really, all of that is kind of on a face value, makes you think that these are people that come from Cain. And then it would also make sense why, that through design patterns, whenever these figures appear, it's where you get a surprising reconciliation of hostile brothers. So it's as if the hostility of Cain gets reversed when sibling rivalries are healed or overcome

later on in the story. Because the Cainites are mostly like a good guy group that keeps rejoining Israel in these interesting different ways through marrying Moses or rescuing the Israelites with jail and so on. So, okay, so that's all on the yes side. If these are the canites, come from can. People do make the argument that they don't come from can. The main reason being... They'd be wiped out.

We wiped out in the flood. So it just so happens you meet a group of people along the way called canites. Yeah, there must have been another cane. Yeah, just some other people group that happen to have the same name. In other words, the similar name doesn't mean necessarily there's a genealogical connection. And so those are essentially the two choices that interpreters take. And you can stack commentators up on each side pros and cons. So related to that first fork in the road,

is the other question of, okay, let's say you choose yes, they are connected. Which is kind of the assumption you made when you walked us through the table nation. Correct. Yeah, yeah. So let's go with that one. So then you have another set of questions,

which is about, well, how did the senders of Cain survive the flood? Yeah, it's good swimmers. Good swimmers. So one option that you can take off the map is that they watched what is the Aeronopsky's Noah movie. And they do what's going. We went side together.

No, we went side Exodus together. Oh. There's Noah. Oh yeah. Yeah, with Noah. No, I never saw that. So in Aeronopsky's Noah, he takes up a really minority view in Jewish legend that Tuvalcane, which is that third son of Lemek, actually escaped and hit himself on the ark.

Oh. He would like stowed himself on the ark and so on. So it's nothing about that in the Bible, but it is a possibility. It's a possibility that some Jews thought explained why you would meet Caneites in the other sites. Makes sense. There was a stowaway. So one option would be to say, did the canides survive the flood? You could answer no. In which case the later canites you meet have no connection to can. Right. If you say yes, there are some interesting options if you follow that route. Stowaway being once. Stowa is one. Poss possibility seems unlikely, but another one is the

Cain's descendants had married into the line of Seth so that by the time you get to Noah, either his wife, Noah's wife, or any of the wives of Noah's sons, maybe could come. Again, nothing about this in the biblical text, but you're just saying, before the flood, there was a line coming from Seth, and a line coming from Cain. Seth was the third child of it. Seth was, yep, after Cain killed Abel, Adam and Eve have one more son, Seth. And he burst the line that leads to Noah.

Yeah, I see. So Cain's line wasn't completely separate. Correct. And so you're asking, well, no head wife and his sons all had wives. Yeah. What families do they come from? Okay. Biblical text and say. Yeah. So that's one possibility that people have thought of.

The last one is that there's actually a glitch in the narrative. In other words, there's another group of people you meet before the flood that you meet after the flood. We've talked about this before. The Nephilim. The Nephilim, yeah. Because they're a part of the violence on the land that leads to the flood. And then Israelites meet Nephilim in the promised land when the spies are sent into the land. So there's actually two groups of people.

Yeah. Canites and the Nephilim that reappear after the flood that shouldn't be there. Right. So that's, you're just, you're not even being skeptical, you're just noticing details in the Bible. Yeah. So there's another fork in the veil. You could say they just happen to be more on the other side by the same name. Yeah. We're talking the Nephilim now. Correct. Yeah. Or the Kennites. Or you can say it's actually an acknowledgement by the biblical authors that the cosmic language of the flood. Cosmic being. Cosmic. That it killed. It took over the whole world every person. All land, all the mountains were submerged. That it's intentionally

hyperbolic language to describe a catastrophic flood as the undoing of the cosmos from their point of view. It's so interesting the way all these you pull on one question about Cade and his descendants and you end up with you know classic debates about the flood. And you've brought up before that in terms of like another hot topic being Israel killing off other tribes that the biblical narrative will say, wipe them all out. And then later in the story, you meet them again. That's right. And so, either, again, you would say there's some hyperbole happening.

And actually, those two examples are related, because in the book of Joshua, the Israelites being commissioned to dispossess the tribes of the Canaanites in the hill country, it's presented in the narrative as another flood, as a flood of divine justice on the generation of Canaanites. So in other words, the fact that there's Nephilim and Canaanites before the flood and after the flood, the fact that there's Canaanites before Joshua, but then after Joshua. It's a related. Even though right in between are stories that said there were no more, they were left nothing alive. That gives a clue that both of those narratives are ratcheting up hyperbolic language to make a theological point. And so I know that's a view that might make some people uncomfortable, but actually it's

a pretty ancient interpretation that's been in both Jewish and Christian traditions, viewing the flood and the conquest of Canaan as using hyperbolic language. And so what would be the theological point that the hyperbolic is making? The hyperbolic would be about that it's a de-creation moment. The flood is an undue of Genesis 1. Precisely so that God can now begin through a new people to restart and carve out a new ordered Eden spot. So the hyperbrily is rationing up this idea of starting again.

Yeah. And that the event are of cosmic significance. So again, these are actually way more complex than we can treat in a Q and R. But they're helpful perspectives to say that the landscape of interpretations, everybody has to deal with these details in the text. And some people prioritize some details of others. But there are some just pure skeptics out there, and they just wanna debunk the Bible

or make it seem like it's primitive, stupid ancient literature. But for the most part, people of good will who are trying to understand the narratives are trying to account for all of these details that are sometimes in tension with each other. And so the canites are a great example of that kind of thing.

So thank you Sarah, super perceptive question. I hope at least that gives a lay of the land for those questions. This next question is from Ariel in Canada. Hi there, my name is Ariel El Jira and I'm from Manitoba, Canada. I'm wondering, how did Adam and Eve's children continue to procreate?

Genesis 4 talks about how after Cain killed Abel, he found a wife, had a son named Enoch, and he built cities. If Adam and Eve were in Protestant tradition at least, considered to be the first people here on Earth, where did Cain find a wife, and how did he build cities? You alluded to this question was coming. Yeah. And another great question.

I mean, this classic. Where did Cain's wife come from? Totally. That's become the famous version of this issue. Right. To name this issue. But I've also, he built the first city, which don't think like New York or Dubai or something. The Hebrew word is

Eir which means a walled, you know, a collection of homes in a village with a wall around it, a walled city. But even still, where did- Where did all those people come from? So this classic question all the way back to ancient Jewish and Christian readers. Part of the reason why I wanted to address it, Ariel, was because one, I just listened to a brand new book that's incorporating that question into a bunch of others that I'm actually really excited about, learned so much from, and it helped me process this question in a new way. So the narrative just presents this as a matter of fact. It doesn't give you any explanations as to why. And so again, you have a fork in the road

for interpretation. You could say in Genesis 5, you learn Adam and Eve had other children after Seth. It says, other sons and daughters. And so could it be that Cain married one of his sisters? And then some or some other siblings and they went off and built the city and so on. So that's technically possible. However, the narrative presents Cain. It says that he went away from the presence of Yahweh, and God said, you'll be a wander and a...

You get this idea that he took off on his own. He's exiled from his family. He murdered a brother. He's exiled from his family. Yeah. He murdered a brother. He's exiled from his family. Right. In which case, it makes- Did he take along a sister or is it a wife?

Totally. So it's not mentioned, but the narrative gives the impression that he leaves his family. Right. And you go somewhere else, Mary's a wife, built a city. It's clear that the narrative raises it

as a genuine possibility that he meets other people and intermarries with them and build the city there. That's a real viable possibility raised by the text itself. It seems it's hard to imagine that the author didn't know that that there was a probability it was being raised. There are many ways he could have given details to solve that. And clearly that wasn't on the agenda of the author. So, going back in ancient Jewish and Christian tradition, it raises the question of the existence of people outside the garden. So, one other additional, it's not

biblical evidence or anything like that, but it is interesting. Adam and Eve began a design pattern of God selecting a couple, appointing them in an ideal Eden-like situation, and then giving them opportunity to pass or fail. Noah and his wife, for example, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel and Leah, it keeps happening. Over and forth. It's a design pattern.

And so the question is, are we meant to take that design pattern and fur back and understand the Adam and Eve are being either appointed out of a larger population or being created in scholarly conversation, DeNovo, a Latin phrase, meaning brand new, without parents. Well, they're made out of mud. They're made out of mud. Totally, but the question is that

they could be figural language of being made of dust, which is a common biblical idiom, meaning mortal. So, are we meant to infer that Adam and Eve are appointed or created as a royal priesthood from among a larger population? Right. And again, the biblical author is the agenda isn't to talk about that. Explain that more.

So they just don't go there. So it's interesting perspectives and some new research that I recently came across that just has me thinking new directions all this. I'll just name it. One is a scientist who's a follower of Jesus. His name's Joshua was Swamidas. Came out with a recent book called The Genealogical Adam and Eve. And all I can do is recommend it.

Or Google him and he's done many interviews now on podcasts and shows and listen to one of the interviews where he'll summarize the ideas in the book. I learned more about genetics. I mean, of course, it's a whole field. So there's lots I don't know. But what I learned was so counterintuitive and surprising. Okay. And what Swamadas is done is actually made this an interdisciplinary project. So he has worked through the content of the book with workshops of scientists,

Christian and who are not Christian, and of theologians of the whole Christian tradition, and he's crafted the conclusions of the book that are really surprising. That's all I want to say. I want to encourage people to take in the book. One of the biblical scholars that he worked with in developing kind of the Theses of his book is a scholar named C. John Collins who has a great book on Genesis 1-11,

called Reading Genesis Well. And both of them are trying to help just modern readers, adjust our expectations. This is ancient Jewish literature. And the way it's talking about these events is not the same way that we talk about them or conceive of these things. And so, Ariel, your question actually is addressed in the work of these two scholars, and if you follow their footnotes, you'll find that they're tuning in to even more conversations. And so, there you go. I just wanted to make sure we brought that up because I'm excited about this new work happening in Genesis. It's a good homework. Yep. So this next question is from Angie and Washington state Hi, my name is Angie Mossy, and I live in Spokane, Washington

My question is in the discussion of the creation account in Genesis You talk about the Adam being created first and that that stands for humanity not a male human But in first Corinthians 11 Paul seems to state that men were created first and women's second. Is he saying something different here? What's going on is their contradiction. Thanks for all you do. You guys are amazing. Wow. Look at all these people just finding the... Tolley. The little things, the little... Yep. Like, I love it. I love it, too. It's like another set of brains just kind of keeping us honest. Like, I love it. I love it too. It's like another set of brains just kind of keeping us honest. Yep, I love it.

Yeah, totally. Yeah. And this was another point where I knew that I was open in a can of something. But yeah, because that was a bit, I mean, you really were purposely making that point that it wasn't like there was just human and then he needed woman that a dumb was representing all humanity. He was split in half. Yeah. And then male and female.

So there's two parts of Andy's question. One is just about that interpretation based on the genesis narrative itself. Then there's a question though, we have a text in the New Testament that has a different seems to read it in a different way. So let's take it in one, one, two steps. So first let's just retrace real quick what we did in that episode. So the first time the word Adam appears is in Genesis 1 in the image of God, palm.

Oh, and remember there's Adam and then in Hebrew, ha-adam, the word ha is our word, the. So the first time Adam occurs without the, God said, let us make Adam in our image and on our likeness. And then after that, there's a little poem. And there it's ha-adam. God created ha-adam in his image, in the image of God he created,

him that is ha- hot Adam, humanity. And then hot Adam is explained for you, male and female. So your top on page one, that the phrase hot Adam means male and female, it's that it's a species term. Turn the page. In Genesis 2.5, you're told the creation story, but from a different timeline, different angle.

And it begins saying there was no plants or farming, because there was no Adam to work the ground. But there was an ed, it's the first two letters of Adam, an ed, a stream. It came up out of the Adama, the dirt. In aid comes from the Adama. So there was no Adam to work the ground, but an aid came up from the Adama and watered the face of the Adama. So you got clay. Yep, and then you got the mud.

And then that's what God forms. The next verb is that of God is that potter. He works the clay and he forms Adama. So there, the word play, choice of the word adam, is also most closely connected to the adama, which is the ground. So haadam has two main nuances now. It's a species term, and it's a term describing connection of origins from the Audhama. And so in other words, the portrait of Audhama as a male human doesn't seem at all something the author is trying to emphasize or put in front of us. There's two other things that of that it's a species term in Audhama. And then in Genesis 2, 18, the first thing that is no good is that you have the ha-adam is al-lam. And then you get the deep sleep and the taking of the side.

So here's the trick. Once you get the taking of the side and then God builds that side into e-shah, and then the guy wakes up and he says, this is e-shah because she's taken from Isha. So the Adam, the residual Adam that's left over calls himself Isha. And Isha is a Hebrew word for male. Male. Yeah. Isha, female.

Male, female. Yeah. Man, woman. And then from that point on in the narrative, the female is called Isha. And the male can go be referred to in two ways as Isha or as Adam. And so both Adam and Isha can then refer to the male human. And is Adam also used to mean a species of humanity as well?

And it can refer to just humanity as a species after that. So Adam throughout the rest of the Bible plays both roles. Correct. Yeah. The main point there is the meaning of the word Adam before the splitting of the Adam primarily is connected to its origin. It's clearly the species in the ground connection. Yeah. And that the gender differentiating only comes after the splitting. So that's just a feature of the narrative that I think is really illuminating. Because then what's going to happen in the next line is about God's ideal destiny is for those two who were, the one was, they came to, and then the two were to become one again.

Yeah. To covenant. So you could say that prior to the splitting, the Adam contained both, right, genders, both halves. Both halves, and then the two split, and then become one again. There's also a little detail in Genesis three

when the snake starts talking to the woman, and the snake, you know, says, did God really say this? And then what? The woman says, as she repeats the divine command, she says, God told us in the narrative in Genesis 2, that divine command is given before the Adam is split. Does that make sense? Sorry. In Genesis 2, God gives the command to not eat from the tree of only good and bad, before he splits the Adam. So it's just to the singular Adam. But the woman includes herself among those whom God told to not eat from the tree.

That's pretty wild. It's a really, it's an interesting little detail. Yeah. So, yeah, to me, it's a compelling reading that explains a lot of details of the text. So if you want to learn more about this, there's a couple scholars. One is Ian Provan, a Hebrew Bible scholar who wrote a really fun theology of Genesis 1 through 11, called seriously dangerous religion. This is so fascinating.

And he walks you through the Eden narrative way that really gets you thinking. And actually, he builds into his footnotes a whole lot of Jewish and Christian interpreters through history who have understood this to be what's going on. Okay, so that's the first step. Yeah, now what about Paul? Now what about Paul?

That one seems easy. What about Paul? So in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, which is actually his second letter to the Corinthians. And that's important for Angie's question. So first Corinthians 11, it's one of the most complicated texts in all of Paul's letters to understand.

He is reasoning, his line of thought, his choice of vocabulary, and the way that he quotes from alludes to Genesis 1 and 2, it's not easy to follow. So I'll spare the details. I am persuaded that this is one of those texts where Paul is quoting from the letter the Corinthians wrote to him and dialoging and interacting with it. Because there's a part, it has to do with certain men and women were putting their head, their heads in some ways when they get together in the worship gathering.

And he finds what the men are doing and what the women are doing to be really inappropriate and distracting and not giving the right picture of the new humanity to their neighbors. It should be read it. Oh, yeah, deal. The trick is what translation you read will determine a lot of when you get out of it, but you got NIV open. Yeah, I could pull up anything. Yeah, great.

So the key versus really star in verse seven, but anytime you read any of this out of context, it creates problems. It creates problems, but we have to do it. I can't read the whole paragraph here. So why don't you read verses 7 to 12? A man ought not cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God. But woman is the glory of man, for man did not come from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. It is for this reason that a woman ought to have authority over her own head because of the angels.

Oh, because of the angels. Nevertheless, in the Lord, woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman, for as woman come from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from God. Yeah. Yeah, this strikes you as a kind of misogynistic text. First, before we go there, let's try and just make some observations. So there's something happening about how men are doing something with their hair heads

and... Recovering their head. Putting something over their heads and women are... Fancy hats. Right. Women are not. And he thinks this is backwards, and it's sending all the wrong signals. So in verse seven, there's this reflection about a male

is the image and glory of God, but a woman is the image and glory of the male. Yeah. So where's he getting this? Well, that's exactly right. In other words, that sentence is the opposite of what Genesis 1, 26, and 27 say. Yeah.

This is register that point. Yeah. Before we make a conclusion. Sure. This comment is making the opposite point that a simple face value reading of Genesis 1 leads you to. Second, for a man didn't come from woman, but woman from man, that's a conclusion from the narrative.

You can get there. You can get there from Genesis 2. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man, you could interpret Genesis 2 with that kind of meaning. And then the conclusion, so for this reason, a woman ought to have some sign of authority on her head, or have authority on her head,

how you translate that line is extremely complicated. So basically, there's two options. Because of the angels. Because of the angels. However, then verse 11 comes along in 12 and seems to bring a counter perspective. And I know of you, it says, but nevertheless, in Greek, it's the word plain. It means, however, it's a contrasting. Got it.

In other words, what happens in the next sentences is meant to contrast what was just said. So however, however, in the Lord, in Curios, which is about Jesus. But yes, in the body of the Messiah, men and women are not independent of each other. And you're like, oh, that starts to sound a little more like Paul.

And Genesis 2. And Genesis 2. Verse 12, listen, woman came from man and Isha for Ish, but also man is born of woman. Yeah. And everything comes from God. In other words, verses 11 and 12 sound like they're actually offering a perspective that's counter to the sentences that came before it. Totally. And so this happens multiple chapters throughout the letter where he quotes from something from the Corinthians letter to him. We talked about this before. He was in reading the New Testament letters. Yeah, and there's no quotation marks in the Greek. Correct. So you kind of have to infer where they would be. That's right. Because the way that letters would have been drafted and sent and performed for the audience, people would have been given cues and instruction in training

of how to read the letter to know what Paul's voice, what's not his voice. That's how this device, this rhetorical device, worked. Who'd have been much easier if they just used quotation marks? Totally, yeah, totally. Well, yeah, it doesn't seem Paul necessarily knew that like people all over the planet would be reading this. But, you know, that's the whole other question. That's a whole other question.

When I mean, was there such a device back in the summer district? Oh, well, the device would have been in the original drafting and then the sending, putting it in the hands of somebody who was trained to go and read it out loud. And understand how to read it. Yes, and yeah, this is how it works. Uh, I mean, that's a very compelling reading. Versus 7, 8, and 9, you're like, what? Tell us.

Where is he getting this? The most recent and articulate exponent of this view is the New Testament scholar Lucy Peppiott in her book Women in Worship at Corrance. There's a whole book on this handful of passages in 1 Corinthians 11 and chapter 14. And it's not just her view. This view has a long history, but she's the most recent

and I think kind of persuasive. There's multiple lines in this paragraph are not Paul's voice. And this is such an easy to spot example, I think. Now there are people really smart who take a different view, and so I respect that. But part of it is that the view of verses 7 through 9 and 10 is counter to the face value reading of this one. What about what he goes on to say about the verse 13 and following? Oh, yeah. So Paul's got this thing where the men and women of Corinth are pushing the boundaries of the kind of signals their appearances give off in the worship gathering.

And he wants the worship gathering to be a genuine display of a new kind of model for human relationships and of the relationships between men and women. And he gets on the mend for having long hair or for the women for not growing their hair long or doing something, the vocabulary and Greek because we're more complicated than the English translations give off. Yeah. When verse 13 it seems like he just throws it back at them. He says just for yourself. Yeah. Is it proper for women to pair their head uncovered? Yeah. He just throws a ball back in their court. Yeah. So so it's kind of the point is like look you guys have to figure this out. It seems like Paul wants them to worship in unity

and to display God's manifold wisdom, as he says in Ephesians. Yeah, yeah, that's right. But he doesn't prescribe them the exact thing to do. He says, like, figure it out. Oh, sure. But that's often Paul's strategy, is he's trying to help mostly non-Israelites learn to inhabit a new cultural narrative

based on the story of Jesus and being brought into the story of Israel and Then you have to learn how to think messianically think Christianly about communal behavior and individual behavior in light of this story So he's often he'll like paint the story and then he'll say, you figure it out. What kinds of behaviors are... And but then he actually does seem to prescribe something because he says, if anyone wants to be contentious

about this, what's the this? Ah. If anyone wants to be contentious about this, we don't have any other practice. Oh, totally. Oh man. What's the this? The long hair?

Oh, about, yeah, I think about the guidance that he's giving here. The trick is that in this paragraph, he actually eludes to the fact that they've already had conversations about this before. He says, I want to encourage you for remembering me and everything and holding to the traditions that I passed on to you. So we've had lots of conversations about the Sun, about the worship gathering and how it works. There's a lot that you're doing great in, but there's this handful of things about how what women and men are doing with their hair.

And then he starts interacting with quotes from their letter back and forth throughout the whole paragraph. And then at the end, says, listen, if you want to be more problematic about this, just remember what I talked about and that we don't have any other practice and here's what the other churches are doing. So. I'm taking us down to rabbit hole. Tell us at the point, the point here is,

why was he saying that woman comes from man? Totally. So Angie, what you're noticing actually is a real tension. Yeah. And one way to explain that is Paul has drawn a very specific and new conclusion based on a, I guess you'd say, reinterpretation of the image of God poem in Genesis 1. Or at least my opinion is more likely is that he's quoting from what he sees as a misunderstanding of Genesis 1, and then he offers his own correction to it.

So anyway, hope that's helpful. Check out Lucy's book and her footnotes if you want to learn about this in more depth. This next question is from Lindsay in Pennsylvania. Hi, my name is Lindsay, and I'm from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and I just listened to the episode on sibling rivalry and biblical election and I was wondering how the conquest narratives fit into this idea. It seems the Israelites were given specific instructions to completely annihilate and wipe out certain people groups who were living in the land.

Are these people groups that are outside of and separate from Abraham's family, or is this just a really intense case of sibling rivalry? What's going on there? Yep. And we alluded to this. Yeah. And the question about the flood. Yeah. We did briefly address it.

You raised this question somewhere along the line. We had a brief conversation about it, but not in depth. You're talking other than today. Yeah, in the, somewhere earlier in the series, I think we were in the profits. Okay. And you brought up the similar question to Lindsay, but we only talked about for a brief moment.

Yeah, oh man, the conquest narratives present all kinds of important growth moments. Growth opportunities. What are you for me and lots of other people, they're challenging narratives on many levels. They present challenges for how you put together the character of God from all the stories in the Bible, how do you integrate them, how do you square them with the teaching non-violence and the teachings of Jesus, and the narratives about religious-inspired violence are really sensitive topics right now,

and so finding these narratives, you know, in the Christian scriptures or Jewish scriptures are challenging. So just, I'm just acknowledging Lindsay, you're not alone. So many people presenting questions about this and how it fits in. So I'm actually still, and maybe I will be the rest of my life. I'm still working out how to process through this set of questions. I do think it is a part of the design pattern of sibling rivalry, for sure. But in an interesting way. So maybe one place to start is the design pattern of the flood that we talked earlier about in this conversation is actually really significant. In

other words, what the flood narrative is trying to tell you about how God responds to human communities that have reached a point of such extreme violence and degradation of human dignity. What is God to do with human communities like that in his world? And the theology of the flood narrative is that it's within God's prerogative. We also talked about this in the Anger of God series with Krista, for God to hand humanity over to the outcome of its decisions and let the cosmos itself collapse in on them, and let that the theology of the flood narrative. But then what happens after the flood is no offers that sacrifice. The righteous intercessor gets up on the high place, surrenders everything. And what God says is, you know, humans haven't changed.

Implication being still evil. I could still do this again. Yeah. But God says, I'm not gonna do it again. Do a cosmic collapse. But what will happen through the design pattern of the flood is local floods. Local climate collapses. Where God will hand specific human families or cities, design pattern of the flood is local floods, of divine judges.

Where God will hand specific human families or cities, or places over to a cosmic collapse. They themselves contributed to and started going. Like Sodom and Gomorrah. With a vocabulary, it's all mapped onto that. Very similar. The rebellion of the tribe of the family of Kora in the wilderness, or the Earth's split open.

So the conquest narrative is all designed on the same analogy. So the Canaanites are depicted throughout the Pentateuch, Natura coming from the line of Ham, and the line of Ham itself began with that act of sexual assault that Ham did in some form to his father or mother. There's different interpretive views there. But the point is that it's a family line born out of sexual abuse and that keeps repeating the pattern of their ancestors. And so the portrait of the Canaanites in the Torah is super negative. I mean, child sacrifice really really distorted, sexually abusive practices. And so by the time you reach the book of Joshua, they are like unto the generation of the flood.

It's filling the earth with so much violence that God's, it's what Abraham says to God, want the judge of all the earth to do justice. We're like in the Psalms crying out, rise up, O Lord, you know, vindicate the oppressed. And so the conquest narrative in that frame is viewed as an active divine judgment on a generation that's gone past the point of eternal. So I'm not saying that's comfortable to sit with. It's not comfortable because what keeps me from being part of that. Totally. People that went to the point where we turned. Exactly.

I'm just, I was born where I was born, and the family I was born in. Yep, yep. And the flood, I suppose, is as uncomfortable. Exactly. It's like, the theological problems, or the personal problems we have with the conquest narrative, are the same problems raised by the story of the flood.

Right. They're just a different manifestation of it. Yeah. So, none of this has solved anything for me. I'm just trying to understand the narratives on their own terms. Yeah. So, the difference between the flood and the conquest narrative is that the waters that are the vehicle of God's judgment in the case of the conquest are the Israelites.

Yeah. So, for me, that's the next layer of challenges to think through. One set of humans on another. Correct. So, and specifically, the way God is dealing with the problem of human violence and evil is to keep committing Himself more and more and more to one human family, and God keeps investing Himself in the future and security of this one human family. And so, we talked about this with Abraham when he lies to Pharaoh.

And then God sends plagues on Egypt. But Pharaoh did nothing wrong. But Pharaoh, what he did is what ancient kings do, which isn't like it's great. It's just like, I want that woman in my harem and you take her. Yeah. Like that's actually not awesome at all. That's true.

But the point is that his motives weren't at all. That's terrible. But the point is is that his motives weren't to steal another man's wife. Yeah, it was he thought she was available. Right. Because Abraham made him believe that. Because of Abraham's deception. So Abraham's the one at fault in the story. And he does it. And the second time he really is at fault because God comes to the second time he does it. God comes to that king of Bimimolek, and says, you're a dead man. And a Bimolek says, what, I'm innocent. I didn't know he lied to me. And God's like, yeah, I know you're innocent. And you are innocent as far as you're supposed. So that itself begins a theme where God becomes more... God standing up for the family he elected. Exactly. Whether they

are good or bad. Yeah. And they're often bad, even worse than their neighbors. And so this is another uncomfortable portrait of God. Right. And we're back to that thing of, well, God, there's two poles here. There's God's justice. And there's God's commitment to His promises

to somehow work out redemption through this one family. And every time they act even worse, he doubles down and binds himself more to this family. So by the time you get to Joshua, God's fully committed to and invested in the security of this federation of tribes, going to inhabit this land that's been promised to their ancestor. And so there's seven-h people groups in this hill

country that are like under the generation of the flood, and God wants to dispossess them and put his people in their place. And that's how God is going to fulfill His promises to them. So that is uncomfortable, but that is the logic of the narrative. Another piece then is you get into the battle narratives and the language of wipe them out leave no one breathing. We're back to that hyperbole issue because there are lots of canonites still alive and breathing in this very land.

Right after all the narratives of battle, there's like canonites all over the place through the rest of the biblical story. So they didn't actually do what God fully told them to do anyway. So the last step where at least I go in this is to say, if I read the Bible as a unified story that leads to Jesus, whose name is Joshua. I mean, Jesus' name is Joshua. The ultimately where the story is going is that God commits himself to such a degree to this human family that eventually he himself becomes the victim of the violence that humans have been committing and that God himself has participated in throughout the story.

God becomes the victim of the story of violence that he's been at work through and takes it into himself on the cross. And so those are all factors that have helped me process. The book of Joshua isn't the end of the biblical story. The story comes with its culmination in Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. And somehow all of those work together for me in a way

that's helping me think about these stories. But I still have lots of questions, and I'm sure you do too, Lindsey, and lots of other people do too, I know. When you hear all these different angles, what do you think, John? Well, so a part of me just thinks, are we dancing around this when maybe, you know,

Occam's razor would suggest the simplest solution is that this literature came from a group of people who just thought God was on their side and thought that that's why they needed to go and take people out. Humans for all of human history have taken each other out and need excuses for why that it's okay. So, you know, that's kind of the unsaid, just kind of like, yeah, but we believe that this, you know, Jesus believed that this scripture was God breathed and led to Him. And fits in to a story that gives us a portrait of God. And so we believe there's something more than just that.

The mere group of people using their God as an excuse to wipe out other people. And what you suggested, these, I think two things that feel separate, but then together kind of create a way through this. One being the whole idea of God's wrath, of cosmic... Or anger. We use the normal English word. Yes, sorry. Anger. God's anger. That God, He wants humans to be representing Him, bringing goodness, tove. And instead, there's all this violence and corruption. So in his anger, he lets humanity kind of fold back in and destroy itself. And the cosmos,

fold back in and be destroyed. And we talked a lot about this and the anger thing. And so you're saying that is part of these conquests, which is there was some level of corruption that God just was done with. And while he's not doing it on the level of the whole cosmos like it did in Noah's generation, that it still happens. Okay, that's one piece. And then the second piece you said was that there's this weird,

almost glitch. I don't know how to describe it, not a glitch. There's this weird kind of like sticky mess that God gets himself into by electing Israel. Yeah, yeah. And maybe I didn't quite describe it. I think from the narrowest point of view, it's a mess that God is putting himself in as a part of the plan. Yeah. Yeah. The God says, I'm gonna choose this one family and I'm gonna stand up for them

and I'm gonna make their name great. And now he's obligated himself to this people and what happens if they go off the rails? It's almost kind of like any parent in their kid. Yeah, sure. It's like you bring this kid in the world and you obligate yourself to them. They go off the rails, you know, they're still your child. And you get this conundrum right at the beginning with Abraham's stories. I mean, right out of the gate, you get it. And so there's this whole issue of God standing up for people that don't really deserve it. Correct.

And the Jacob stories make it even more plain, because he's even worse than Abraham. And he's named Israel. So the whole point is in these two figures, Abraham and Jacob, you get the whole basic point that this family is, they're not good people. Yeah. But God is going to keep committing himself to them, which is not great news for them all the time. Sometimes it's good news when he's defending them for Canaanites. Right.

But often what it means is that they're even liable for greater judgment than the nations around them. Yeah. And so it puts them in a bind as well as God. Yeah. Yeah. So that doesn't solve all of the tension because I think some of the other tension bubbles up from like, what about just the sanctity of all human life? And I don't know, second chance is in redemption and all these things.

I guess maybe the third perspective is the Jesus part. If I'm reading this story as a part. Yeah, but can't they? It's gone. They're dead. Oh, I understand. Jesus came, but they don't care. They're dead. Totally. Not with you. Yeah. I'm with you.

So if I'm reading this as a unified story, the least of Jesus, what it means now is that I follow Jesus and he's a part of this long complicated story with a lot of casualties along the way that God participated in. And that God's climactic statement is a statement where he becomes the victim of the whole violent story as his ultimate response to it all. And that I, in other words, I don't take the book of the whole violent story as his ultimate response to it all. And that I, in other words, I don't take the book of Joshua as my marching orders. I take the second Joshua's words as my marching orders, which is the sermon on the Mount, which tells me that there was a moment when God did that, but now what God is saying and has said through

Jesus is this. And if I'm a follower of Jesus, that's ground zero. And that's not because God has changed. No, I think it would say God operated in different ways. So this is where Protestant tradition of dispensationalism has a whole history and reputation now. I thought we were using normal English words. Oh, dispensationalism has a whole history and reputation now. I thought we were using normal English words. Oh, dispensational. The view that God used different strategies

in different seasons of working with humanity and the family of Abraham. But there's an element of truth in that perspective because the sermon on the mount issues in different types of behaviors than what he told the first Joshua to do. You just can't deny that, but they're both in the same Bible. So the question is, how did the two Joshua's relate to each other? And if you have a narrative

approach that was what God did at a moment in the family history, but we're at a different moment in the family history, and we take our marching orders from the second Joshua, and it doesn't resolve those things that God did in the past. You just have to sit with them. And I at this point that's where I'm at, I know I need to do more processing on this question, but that Lindsey that's where I'm at the present. We're out of time. Let's just do Ross's. Oh, Ross, you got in. This is from Ross in Virginia. Hello, my name is Ross Tuddle from Virginia Beach, Virginia. My question is about the design pattern of election,

specifically when Jesus was speaking to the Jewish leadership in Matthew 2143. This is where Jesus said, and I quote, the king to know God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruits. What do you think this meant to the Jewish leadership then and how do you think we should interpret this today? Thank you for your thoughts. Yeah, that's a great question. One of the issues that became even more clear for me working through this theme, having these conversations with you, John, was a whole set of issues related to what in the Protestant tradition has been given different titles, replacement theology, how does the church come from Jesus relate to Israel? And the problem is a lot of our terms for

these things are really blurry, what they mean. And so you can be using the same language as you have this conversation, but mean really different things, even though you're using the same words. So Ross, you're talking about a moment where Jesus is critiquing the strata of Israelite leadership in Jerusalem,

which has been a constant opponent of Jesus in the gospel narratives. And so what he's saying is, hey, y'all had been given a gift of stewardship, leadership over God's covenant people, the ones over whom God reigns, the kingdom of God, but you forfeited that chance. And the renewal, messianic renewal movement that I'm working on, this is the people that will produce its fruit.

So one way to think of that is Jesus saying, Israel, you've blown it too many times, I'm taking this to the nations. Ah, yeah, so you could take it to mean there are... And that's the replacement thing. But used to be Israel, Jesus came to start a new thing. That thing's called the church. Yes, and that's gonna replace Israel. And that's what you meant by replacement theology.

That's correct. Yeah. It's a common way that people, a conclusion people might draw. But that way of talking about it is so problematic with the actual details of the story. Because Jesus is in Israelite. Everybody in Jesus' movement are Israelites. So this is not about something replacing Israel. This is the same thing

that Jeremiah was doing when he stood up in the temple and critiqued the leaders of Jerusalem and said, you're going into exile, Babylon's coming to take you out, and God's going to make a new covenant and raise up a renewed people from within Israel. Yeah, it's the design pattern or it's the idea of the Remnant. The Remnant, which we probably do a theme video on. Yeah, that would be a good coming up. Yeah, so the point is, is that...

And that's a weird word, Remnant, but basically a smaller group who are faithful to the covenant will, God will use as a seedbed to start over. That's it. So this is not about anybody replacing Israel. It's about a renewed Israel being raised up in the place of a corrupt leadership. Which is what John the Baptist was also doing. Totally. It's what Isaiah was doing, what Jeremiah, John the Baptist, Jesus. So the story of the Gospels is about the creation of a new, a messianic renewal of Israel. And Book of Acts begins with that crew. With that messianic, Jewish groups,

with swelling numbers. And then the logic is, then, non-Israelites. This was our family of God's God's God's God's name, are grafted in, they become co-inheritors, they use Paul's language from Ephesians, co-Ares, co-bodies members, but it's non-Israelites being brought into Israel. Right. It's not about a group of people replacing Israel.

Yeah. It's Israel being made to include non-Israelites to become the family of the Messiah. And is that maybe what when Paul says not all israel is Israel? What do you mean? It's there was a remnant. Yeah, and that's just you to read the Hebrew Bible that the family of Abraham continued to always have a remnant line. But the point from the whole arc of the biblical narrative is for that remnant to then become

opened to integrate all the others. Right. And Jesus wasn't talking about that, the opening up to the others, he was talking about the remnant. Yeah, I think there, what you're talking about Ross is the moment where Jesus is like, the leaders of Israel are done. Yeah.

I'm doing the new Israel sign. He and I might have bought the crew for the new Israel. We're going to bring about the new covenant for the renewed Israel that will become the vehicle of God's blessing to the nations. That's how it would fit in. Something like a comment like that from Jesus, Ross would fit in to that. It's a fulfillment. It's a new covenant, Israel expanded.

It's the same thing when he says there's like other sheep. What's that thing that you said? Listen, John, other sheep that are not of this fold. Yeah. Yeah. I think John that's an Illusion to the inclusion of the non-Israelite. That's an illusion to the inclusion of the non-Israelite. I think so. I think so. There are some people who think it's reference to the Samaritans or the diaspora Jews. Okay.'s strange siblings. Which is a step in that direction. Exactly.

There you go. Okay, we got that one in. They're cross. Awesome. Thanks everybody for your great questions. Yeah, thank you everybody. It's great to hear what you're all thinking and processing. We have two interviews that we're going to release in the next two weeks on the podcast

and they both are around this theme of the family of God. So they fit in really well. I'm excited to release those. And then after that we are starting a brand new series on the theme of Royal priests. priests who are also kings, kings who are priests, and this idea and how it goes throughout the whole biblical narrative. And it was so cool, it was such a good conversation that instead of writing one theme video, I forced him to write six theme videos about this. Yeah. So we're gonna have a whole integrated series. Like a theme series, a theme mega series, which we kind of did for the spiritual beings. Yeah. So we're doing it again.

On this theme, moral priest, and so you'll see those videos coming and that conversation coming. And everything that we make is to show and help us experience the Bible's unified story that leads to Jesus. And everything we make gets to be free because it's been paid for by people like

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