Predictive History - The Story of "Civilization", "Secret History", "Game Theory" and more - Secret History #17: Literary Genesis

Episode Date: February 5, 2026

Secret History #17: Literary Genesis

Today we do the Bible, the most influential book in human history. And we'll discuss why the Jewish people are so creative. Today, the most creative people in the world are Jews. In the past 20 years, there have been three extremely influential individuals. Karl Marx, Simon Floyd, Albert Einstein. They're all Jews. So why are Jews so creative? And the answer is the Bible.

So let me provide some background as to how Israel, the nature of Israel was first formed. So remember, the Bronze Age, the Middle East was the center of the world. Okay, so he had Egypt, then you had the Lavant, up north is Anatolia. Across the Aegean is Mycininean Greece. and this is Mesopotamia. If you look at this map, the center of the world really is the Le Levant. And at this time in history, the Levant is really a colony of Egypt. This place is called Canine.

Now, the thing about the Egyptians is they didn't like to go outside of Egypt. So in order to control this colony, the Levant, which is, is strategically very important, they use Greek mercenaries, okay? Mercenaries from abroad. Many were Greek, but there are some other countries as well. Also at this time in history, there's a lot of religious strife in Egypt. And a lot of the priests who lost out in this struggle, they were exiled to the Levant. Okay, so you also had some Egyptian priests in the Levant. You also had the hill people of canine, okay? Hill people.

They lived in the hills, they farm. You also had nomadic pasturists, nomads. Because this place was a center of trade. So you had bandits, you had people who traded, and you also have people who raise livestock. So another we're saying this is the Levant, it is a multicultural melting pot, lots of different groups of people. And at this time in history, there's no concept of nation or race or ethnicity.

It was very common for people to just intermix together. But then what happened, of course, was the Brunge Age collapse. And what that meant was that now you have this surge of refugees coming through from North Europe and from Western Europe and overwhelm the former empires. So Marsden in Greece is destroyed. The high tide empire of Anatolia, it's destroyed. And the sea peoples are attacking Egypt. But Egypt is pretty strong. So it's able to resist the attack. And what the Egyptians say to the sea peoples is, listen, don't attack us, we'll set you somewhere else. We'll give you land somewhere else. And so they were put in the Lavant.

Okay? And these people are called the Philistines, and they're in the Bible. The problem is that there's already people in the Levant, and so they are a threat. And so these people now, the mercenaries, the Eastern priests, the Hill people, the nomads, they're forced to come together as a new alliance to fend off against the Philistines. Okay? And this grouping of people will give us a new nation called Israel. And at first, they have to elect a king in order to unite them against Philistines.

And they elect a king called Saul. So Saul is the first king of Israel. He has a mercenary named David. And remember, what's very common in history is for mercenaries to rebel against their king and become a king himself. That's what David did. But now that David is now king, he has three major problems. The first problem is legitimacy.

Why are you king? We saw as king, but you stole the form from him, so why are you king? So the first big problem that David faces is one of legitimacy. Second is the problem of unity. Because remember, Israel at this time, it's a diverse coalition. So how do you unite these people together? And the third problem is differentiation. Why are we different from the Egyptians, the Anatolians, the Mesopotamians, the Philistines?

So to solve these three problems, what David did was three major innovations that would forever change human history. The first is introduction of a patron god named Yahweh. So what David says, like, Yahweh is our god. our God is better than the other gods. Okay? So what the Bible is trying to do is trying to explain who Yahweh is, and trying to explain everyone that Yahweh is a better God, a superior God, than every other God that came

before him, okay? That's number one. Number two is a centralization of religion for a temple. So what David says is, okay, if Yahweh is our God and he's the best God, we need a house for him. So what we're going to do is we're going to build a temple in Jerusalem. and that's where he will live from now on. And by doing this, what David's really doing is centralizing the religion.

When you do that, you give jobs to Egyptian priests, who will now be your main political ally. Okay? All right. And the third thing that he did, that's very important, of course, is sponsor-initiate the Bible. All right? Okay.

So that's what the Bible comes from. The Bible comes from the fact that the Israelite people need to create mythology that explains why they are one family and why they're different from others and why they're actually better than other people okay so what is amazing about the Bible is that it does succeed and exceeds because of the great storytelling within the Bible okay so this in the beginning we have the origins of Yahweh And the Bible begins with Genesis.

The first book of the Bible is called Genesis, which just means birth or the beginning. Okay. And in the beginning, God creates the universe. And then he discovers that he's lonely. There's no one to talk to. It's not very interesting. So he creates man, Adam. But then he thinks that Adam might be lonely as well.

So he creates Eve. Okay? and that's the beginning. So then the Lord God form men from the dust of the ground, okay, dust. So man is made of dust. And breathed in his nostrils, the breath of life, and then man became a living being. Okay? So God's essence is in Adam. And the Lord God planted a guard in Eden in the east, and there he put the men whom had formed. Out of the ground, the Lord God, made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life, also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

So this is garden, paradise, called Eden, and man was created in order to farm it, to take care of it, okay? He's basically a servant, a slave. And in the center of the garden are two trees. The tree of life and a tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The tree of life, as you can imagine, grants immortality. right the tree of the knowledge of good and evil grants the ability to learn okay so let me explain let's imagine that there's a war in front of me okay so I walk oh I hit the

wall it hurts right but I don't know that hurting is bad so I keep on oh I keep on hitting the wall and I keep on hurting myself okay because I don't know what's good and what's bad. But now if I know what is good and what is bad, I know, okay, I should not hit the wall. Okay? I now have the capacity to learn. And over a lifetime, I will learn a lot. This is a secret of creativity, right? What's really important about this idea is that you need to make a mistake for you to know what is good and evil. Okay? So that's why school is stupid. Because school, we tell you, there's a wall, don't touch it because you will hurt yourself and you don't touch it you don't hurt yourself but you never learn for yourself because when you hit the wall you now

are able to reflect and understand how the world works okay so the secret to creativity is trying for yourself and learning for yourself what is good and evil and what this is also saying is that these two things together creativity plus immortality allows you to become God. Okay? Does that make sense? Because if you can live forever but you're always learning, eventually you will absorb all the knowledge of the universe, which is what God is. God knows everything in the universe. And you can also argue that's why he created us. Because once you're our perfection, once you learn everything,

you're no longer capable of making mistakes of learning for yourself. So what you do, do is you teach students or you get students to learn for themselves and that way your knowledge expands okay so it's a really important idea is that men and woman were created be part of the creative process okay that's why god created us um the lord god took the man and put in the garden of eden to till it and keep it okay so again the man now is basically a servant or slave and the lord god commanded the man you freely, okay, you can do whatever you want, okay, this idea of free choice. So if you want people to be creative, you have to give people free choice, okay? You have to give people the capacity to make mistakes for themselves, otherwise don't ever

learn for themselves. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, from the day that you eat of it, you shall die. Okay? Now, what's amazing about the Bible is that it is poetry. Like all poetry, its meaning is very complicated. Okay, there's multiple layers to the meaning here. So you shall die could mean, okay, the food is poisonous. Okay? Don't eat the apple, sorry, it's not the apple. Don't eat the fruit because you'll eat it, it'll be poisonous,

and then you'll die, okay? But it's also, it could be interpreted as a punishment, right? If you eat it, I will have to kill you. Okay? all right so what so this is a very ambiguous story and that's what makes the story so amazing because it is uncertain to us what the true meaning of the the bible is and therefore we have to keep on thinking about it discussing it and finding out for ourselves and at different stages in our lives our understanding may be different okay what's also interesting

is that God draws attention to one tree but not the other. That's kind of weird, right? There are two trees, the tree of immortality and a tree of learning, but God only says, hey, there's a tree of learning, don't touch that. Which means now that our attention is how focused on this one tree, right? So think of a metaphor. Let's just say that we go to the amusement park, okay, and you're my kids, and I say to you, you can ride any ride you want in this amusement park,

but there's a ride called the Dragon Roller Coaster. Do not write that or you will die. What do you do? You ride that stupid thing, okay? So it's a really strange setup where God knows everything, but he draws attention to the one thing that, he's afraid of and it's almost like he's pushing us towards that tree okay because again you know you know that if you if you warn them not to do something they'll go and do it okay so what's going

on here well again the nature of god is up for debate you can say that a god is being truthful and little and says that if you touch that tree you will die okay so he's being being dishonest basically okay that's one possibility another possibility is that he's just stupid he doesn't really understand how humans work he got into humans but he doesn't really understand what it means to be human and he gave it and he gave us free choice so he doesn't really appreciate that we would disobey him okay that's another possibility now another third another possibility okay which can also be true is that it's all part of his plan right

he truly wants us to understand free choice he truly wants us to be creative, then he needs to allow us to make our mistake. And so therefore, he's sort of like setting us up, okay? He's sort of like provoking us into making a mistake. All right? Doesn't make sense. So as you can see how it's only a few words, but it's so complex and it's an entire universe onto itself. All right.

Okay. All right. Now, this is a story of God creating woman. Okay, Eve. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man. The man is lonely, he wants a female companion, okay? And he slept, then he took one of his ribs and closed up his place with flesh. The rib like the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.

The man said, this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. This one should be called woman, for out of man this one was taken. Okay? Now, you can make the argument that men is superior because man came first. But you can also make the argument that woman is superior because woman is made of higher quality. Woman is made of flesh, right? Man is made out of dust. So this is almost revolutionary, the concept conception, because you would think that in this world, men are at the top.

But this Bible is telling us, no, women are made of higher quality material. They made actual flesh. Right? And that's why we think that the person wrote this was actually a woman. And as you read the Bible more and more, you would discover, like, this genius who wrote the Bible, who first wrote the Bible, was in fact a woman. And that's revolutionary, okay? All right. So, therefore, a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.

and the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Okay? All right, let's continue. Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord had made. He said to a woman, did God say, you shall not eat from any tree in the garden? The woman said to the serpent,

we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it or you shall die. Okay, this is really strange, because what you will notice is that the serpent, Truth is to talk to the woman, but not to the man.

Okay? And also what's really interesting is that they're having a debate. But the first serpent said to the woman, you will not die for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be open and you'll be like God, knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that was a light to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise,

she took of its fruit and ate and she gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate and then the eyes of both were open and they knew that they were naked and they sold thick leaves together and made loans clothes for themselves okay this is really interesting because the woman is making this decision by herself right the serpent says hey why don't you judge for yourself whether whether food is good or not the woman looks at the friend says I judge for myself it is good. Okay? This is revolutionary. Where the woman is making the decisions. You would think that once the serpent said this to her, she would go to her husband and say, Hey, Adam, the servant said this.

What do you think? Okay. The woman's like, no, I can see for myself what is true. And then so she eats the fruit by herself. And then she tells her husband, eat the fruit as well. And the husband falls as well. So this tells us that the real hero of the story is actually the woman.

Okay? Then they heard the sound of the Lord God walk in the garden at the time of the evening breathed, and the man and his wife hid themselves in presence of the God among the trees of the garden. So they know they're in trouble. They know that God will discover that they ate from a fruit, they ate from the tree, and they're scared.

The Lord God called the man and said to him, where are you? He said, I heard the sound of you in the garden, I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. So he knows that being naked is wrong, okay? Being naked is bad. Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?

The man said, the woman whom you gave to me with me, she gave me fruit from the tree and I ate. Okay? So the man is blaming the woman. The man says, it's not my fault. I was just following her, okay? So again, the woman, what's amazing about this is a woman is the hero. of the story. Then the Lord God said to the woman, what is it that you have done? The woman said, the servant tricked me and I ate. Okay? All right. So at this point in the story, what can we expect?

We can expect that God had no choice but to kill Adam and Eve, right? Because God's words were, if you eat from that fruit, you will surely die. And so even though the fruit, fruit wasn't poisonous, God still has a duty to kill Adam and Eve. And if we were in the evil, you were in the evil, you were in the Eliad, okay, then surely Adam and Eve would have died. Because the gods and the Iliad, the Greek gods, most gods, are vengeful, the wrathful, right? But not this god. Yahweh is different. Look, what happens next is the man named his wife Eve because she was the mother of all living

and the Lord God made garments of skins for the man and his wife and cloth them. Instead of being angry at Adam and Eve, he offers them a present. Okay? The question then is, why? Well, there are different possibilities, right? The first possibility is that God himself recognizes that I made a mistake here. I actually have drawn attention to this fruit, right? Therefore, it's my fault.

Therefore, this is a God that's capable of self-reflection and forgiveness. This is revolutionary, guys, okay? Because again, remember, gods at this time are vengeful, wrathful. must obey them or they will strike you down but this God is different this God is like listen it's you should not have enough fruit but it was my fault as well so I forgive you he's capable of self-reflection okay another possibility is again this is what God wanted all along okay and we know this because the man named his wife Eve so the man honors his wife okay with a name and it's the mother of

all living You are the true goddess. Okay? So what happens next is God's like, okay, well you still disobey me, so I want to punish you now. So what he does is he punished a man by making him now have to toil for food, okay? He has to be a farmer. He punished a woman by making childbirth painful. He punished the serpent by making him slither on the ground.

So this is all good, right? But now what God does is this. He actually froze the Adam and Eve out of the gardener, okay? Okay? So why? The Lord God said, see, the man has become like one of us. All right? So Eve did the right thing.

Knowing good and evil, and now he might reach out his hand and also take from a tree of life and eat and live forever. So that's what Godhood is. Godhood is the capacity to learn for yourself as well as to live forever. So God's afraid. hey if Adam and Eve eat that tree of life he'll become like God as well therefore the God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken he drove out the man and at east of the Garden of Eden he placed a

share of him an angel and sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life and so this is our banishment from the Garden of Eden now most people think that this is a bad thing okay but you can then also interpreters as a good thing. So God chose us to make us creative without the possibility of living forever. Why? Because if you think about it, creativity is death. Well, the concept of death, you cannot be truly creative. Okay? First of all, if you think I'm going to live forever, you're not actually motivated to do anything, right? You're not motivated to make the most of your life. But actually making the most of your life, you can't be creative.

Also, if you live forever, your children cannot be creative. Your grandchildren cannot be creative. So for humans to be creative as a species, death must be an inevitability. Does that make sense? So you can say that, okay, God doesn't really know what he's doing. It's his first time having children. He's making a lot of mistakes. But you can also say that it's all part of this plan.

His plan is to make us creative because that is what's divine. Creativity is what's truly divine. Okay? All right. So we continue. Now that Adam and Eve are outside the Garmin Eden, they have children named Cain and Abel.

Now the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, I produced a man with the help of the Lord. Next, she bore his brother Abel. Now, Abel is a keeper of sheep, and Cain, a tiller of him. the ground okay so Cain is a farmer and Abel a shepherd in the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground and Abel for his part

brought of the firstlings of his flock their fat portions and the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering but for Cain is offering he had no regard okay this is a very common thing in this world where you have to make sacrifices to the gods the gods will favor you if the offerings are good okay and so You're God, Cain comes with some plants. And then Abel comes with some meat. So you're like, Abel, you're a better person, okay? And this is a very common thing in this world.

But Cain gets very angry, his face fail. The Lord said to Cain, why are you angry and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is looking at the door. It's ours for you, but you must master. Okay, a very common thing in this world where the gods are like, This person sucks, do better next time, okay? All right, but Kane gets really angry.

And what he does is he kills his brother. And then the Lord gets angry and says, What have you done? Your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground. And now you're a curse from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you kill the ground, it will no longer yield to you with strength. You'll be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.

Okay? So at this time, what God should do is just kill Cain, right? An eye for an eye. But God doesn't do that. All right? God says that, I banish you. And then Cain says, if you do that, my punishment is greater than I can bear. I truly have driven me from the soil and I shall be hidden from your face. I should be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.

And anyone who meets me may kill me, okay? So people will know that I've left my community. I must have done something wrong. And therefore, they may kill me. And God says, okay, I'm going to put a mark on you, and this will protect you. So that no one who came upon him would kill him. Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of non-east of Eden. Okay?

So again, this is a God of forgiveness, of reconciliation, of compromise, of debate. Kane says, your punishment is unfair. And then most gods would be like, screw you, man. I'm going to do whatever you want. But this God is like, you know what? You make a good point. Look, I have reflected and I recognize that I shouldn't have said that your brother is better than you, okay? I recognize that this is partly my fault, so as a compromise, I will protect you.

Okay? This is, again, a revolutionary idea. This is really within 3,000 years ago, okay? Today we think, okay, this is a very common concept. But remember, in the Eliad, the major problem is one of forgiveness. And in the Bible, this is a God of forgiveness, okay? He's kind of silly, but he's not perfect. And what he's telling us that perfection is not a possibility.

What is a possibility, what we should all try to do is try to reflect and improve ourselves. Okay, and this is a theme throughout the Bible. So as humanity continues to develop, God looks down and says, you know what, these humans, I designed to be creative to do wonderful things, but they're killing themselves. They're enslaving each other, explaining each other. This is stupid. I need to start over, okay?

So he creates a flood. But there's one person on the earth that he thinks is a noble person, Noah. Right? So he says, Noah, build an ark and save yourself. So Noah builds an ark, and he saves himself. And then after the flood recedes, Noah comes and rebuild humanity.

And then God looks down to Noah and says, you know what, I will never again curse the ground because of me of humankind. For the inclination of the human heart is evil from you. No, I ever destroy every living creature as I've done. As long as the earth endures, see time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease. This is God saying, oops, I made a mistake again, okay? I didn't like the evil that humans were creating on this earth, and if I want to wipe evil from this earth. But you know what?

If I give them free will, if they have that fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, then, yeah, some of them are going to make mistakes. Okay? And it's something that I'm going to have to put up with. So he promised no one humanity. I will never do this again. If you guys do evil, well, you're going to have to solve this problem yourself.

I'm not going to come and solve it for you. All right? It was my mistake to make everyone suffer like this. I will never do this again. So, Humaney is rebuilt, and of course humans go back to being evil, starting wars, instead of each other, exploiting each other. So then God's like, you know what? What I need to do is this.

I need to build a nation that is the best nation, and which will be a great example to everyone. And this nation, I will call Israel, okay? So he looks around the earth. He does say it was a name, named Abraham. And Abraham is the patriarch. of the Asian of Israel, but these are also the patriarch of the religions of Christianity and Islam, okay?

So Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are considered the Abrahamic faiths because they all think Abraham is their patriarch or their forefather. And so, Yahweh says to Abraham, I will make a covenant with you. I will make a contract with you where I will favor you,

but you must swear loyalty to me. You must promise me that your people will be loyal to me. They will worship me only, okay? And that's a covenant. The Abrahamic covenant. Now what's interesting is the relationship between Abraham and Yahweh. You would think that Abraham would just be a slave and a servant to Yahweh. But that's not actually what happens.

Okay? So let's read the story. So what happens is this. God promised to not destroy the earth, but then he's like, yeah, but then there's some places that are so evil, I need to destroy them to teach everyone a lesson, okay? So this place is called Sodom and Salomon Gamara. And Solomon Gamara is known for its wickedness.

So God sends men, okay, angels, to Solomon Gamara to destroy it. Abraham is shocked by this. She Abraham's like, yeah, but you can't destroy everyone, okay? So what happens, and this is really interesting is that Abraham and Yahweh start having a bait. And Abraham pleads with Yahweh to change his mind, okay? So Abraham says to Yahweh, will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are 50 righteous within the city, will you then sweep away the place not forgive it for the 50 righteous who are in it?

Far be it from you do such a thing to stay the righteous with the wicked, so the righteous fear as the wicked, okay? He's saying, Yahweh, you're making a mistake. Think about that, okay? A mortal is telling a God you're making mistake. But not only that, but Yahweh is like, yeah, I think you're right, okay? So, Abraham says, if there's 50 people who are righteous, you cannot destroy Sodom and Gamara. And God says, you're right.

If I find 50 righteous, I will forgive everyone. So Yahweh agrees with Abraham. At this point, you would think that Abraham is like, yes, okay, and then he would run away. But he doesn't do that. He keeps on arguing. He says, yeah, but let's just say there's 40. 45, okay? 45.

Suppose 5 of the 50 are lacking. If there's only 45, we can't find 50. Don't you think we should still forgive Sapsum and Gomara? And God's like, you know, that's good point. Yeah, so, you know, 45 is good as well, okay? And he keeps on going on and on until they get to 10. For the sake of 10, I will not destroy it, okay? This is what Yahweh promises Abraham.

So in other words, it's not that Yahweh and Abraham, it's not like, master servant, it's more like friend friend. Because what a friend does is, a friend is honest with you. A friend tries you to tell the truth. A friend tries to get you to be better, okay? So what I'm saying to Yahweh is like, I know your virtue is gone, but sometimes you make mistakes. So it's important for me to argue with you, okay?

And that's why Judaism is such a powerful religion, because the basis of Judaism is debate and argument and questions, Okay, debating questions. Why are you so creative? It's just simple, guys. Jews are encouraged to debate each other to figure out what is truly right. There is no absolute truth.

It's always a process of asking questions, open debate, and self-reflection. Okay? All right. So eventually what happens is that what will happen is that Abraham will give birth, will have a son named Isaac. and Isaac will have two sons, Esso and Jacob.

Jacob's name will eventually become Israel. So Israel is founded by Jacob. What happened is that Jacob is the younger son, Esso is the older son. So you would think that Esso would inherit everything from Isaac. But Jacob and his mother, Rebecca, schemes and steals from Esso. They trick Isaac. and they steal the birthright from Esso.

So now the Esso is pissed off at Jacob. So Jacob has no choice but to run away. He runs away and he meets a relative. And what follows next is the greatest love story in the Bible. You can also argue it's the greatest love story ever in human history. Okay? And what's amazing about the story is how simple it is. But once we start analyzing, you will discover that it's actually a very complex story.

It's a beautiful, complex, and sophisticated story. All right. Laban, who's a relative, says to Jacob, you're my kinsman, should you therefore serve me for nothing? Tell me, what shall your wages be? Okay. So Jacob's running away from his brother,

and he finds safety with Laban. And he offers to work for Laban. But Laban said, listen, I can't just enslave you. So you work for me and I'll give you whatever you want, okay? And then Jacob says, Laban had two daughters. The name of the elder was Leah, and the younger was Rachel.

Leah's eyes were lovely, and Rachel was graceful and beautiful. Jacob loved Rachel, so he said, I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter, Rachel. Laban said, it is better that I give her to you than I should give her to anyone else. So yeah, I agree to this deal. Okay, it's a contract now. All right. Jacob served seven years for Rachel and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for.

So he loves her so much that seven years is nothing to him, okay? Then Jacob said to Laban, give him to my wife so that may go into her for my time is completed. So Laban gathered together all the people of the place and made a feast. But in the evening he took his daughter Leah and brought her to Jacob and he went into her. morning came it was Leah and Jacob said to Leah what is it that you have done to me did I not serve you for Rachel why didn't have you deceived me Leban said this is not done in our country in the younger before the firstborn complete the week of this one and we will give you the other awesome return for serving me another seven years Jacob did so and completed her week then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel as a wife so Jacob went into

Rachel and he loved Rachel more than Leah he served Laban for the seven years okay this again is a beautiful love story and it doesn't sound like it okay but let's go into the complexity of it okay first of all clearly laban deceived Jacob right but did he did he mean to in the beginning the answer is no okay the question then is why did he do so and the answer is Rachel and Leah are sisters right and therefore we probably hate each other they're in competition with each other so when And Jacob says to Laban, I love Rachel, but not Leah. Leah now is pissed, right? So what do you think he did?

She did for seven years. For seven years, she just pester her father and says, hey, am I not your daughter? Am I not your firstborn? Will you let me be insulted and humiliate this? If Jacob were to marry Rachel, who will ever want to marry me? And Laban's a father, okay? And he doesn't want to deal with this crap.

So he's like, how to get out of this mess? Well, what I'll do is I'll trick Jacob and first give him Leah and then I'll give him Rachel. And how does he know this? Because he knows that Jacob loves Rachel, right? Laban is able to like stand far away and look at how Jacob and looks at Rachel. So he knows that Rich Jacob will have to endure, okay? He'll do this. But the other question is, does Rachel love Jacob?

And the answer is yes, of course. Right? Because once Jacob married Leah, then Rachel could have just said, screw this, I'm going to marry someone else. But she didn't. She had to wait seven years. And you can imagine those seven years were a long seven years for both Jacob and Rachel. In fact, every day Leah probably said to Rachel, ha ha ha ha ha, okay? She was laughing at Rachel. She was saying, you see, Jacob doesn't really love you. and Rachel have to endure, okay? So that's, this is the power of love. The way that Jacob and Rachel were able to endure

all the human relation in order to just be together. It's a beautiful love story. And this is a great thing about the Bible. The Bible, we didn't buy this person, okay, who's clearly a woman, right? Only a woman writes stories like this. It has both economy and irony. Economy just means that she's able to, with very few words, convey deep meaning.

She's able to, in the story, just a couple paragraphs, create an entire universe. We can see actually the movie play out, okay? It's 14 years where in the first seven years, Jacob was really happy. But in the last seven years, every day he's agonizing because he doesn't want to be with Leah, he wants to be with Rachel, but they can't be together and has to wait all these seven years. Okay? So economy, but also irony. It just means it's funny guys, okay? I know that you're taught the Bible as a religious

text, but when it was first conceived, it was meant to be a funny story, okay? This is a story of two sisters who hate each other and they're competing for the same guy. All right? And this competition continues. When Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, she envy her sister, and she said to Jacob, give me children or I shall die, okay? You have to get me pregnant because Leah is having a lot of kids. Jacob became very angry with Rachel and said, am I the place of God who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb? Then she said, here is my maid. Go into her that she may bear upon my knees and that I may have children through her. So she gave him near, she gave him her maid as a wife and

Jacob went to her and belike conceived and bore Jacob a son. Then we just said, God has judgment. She has heard my voice and given me a son. This is a comedy where she's in competition with Leah. Leah has a lot of kids. So, Rachel is going to cheat and give her maid to Jacob. And whenever a baby comes out, Rachel is like, it's mine, it's mine. And she's going to go around and cheer to try to out-compete Leah, okay? This is a comedy. Then Jacob said, God's judge me and has heard my voice and give me a son.

Rachel's maid can see it again and bore Jacob a second son. Then Rachel said, with mighty wrestlings, I have wrestled with my sister and have prevailed, so she named him Nathalie, okay? All right, okay? So does that make sense? And now what needs to do is give her maid to Jacob as well in order to continue the competition, all right, to try out compete Rachel.

Okay, so this is all just a comedy. Okay, it's meant to be beautiful stories that force you, that provoke you into deep reflection. All right, and this is why the Jews are so creative. If you look at the media, if you look at Hollywood, if you look at academia, the Jews dominate, okay? Because from the moment they're born, they're born with these stories that forced them to think deeply about who they are, what it means to be human, and what life is about. Okay?

And as you can understand, you can just have multiple interpretations of what's going on. But they force you think very deeply about life, to have an inner debate with yourself. Okay? All right. Okay. So now we go on to David, okay? The story of David, it's very, very complicated. Okay? So in the Bible, what it tells us is that God needs a king for the nation of Israel. And he sends a prophet named Samuel to find a king, and he goes to the house of Jesse. he finds David who's the youngest boy and he says you will not you in the future be the favorite king of Israel okay and David in and his early age does one of the things for example he defeats Goliath okay so you've heard the story of David and Goliath right but after he kills Goliath the king Saul becomes envious jealous of David and that forces David to run away

eventually Saul is killed and David comes back and becomes king okay that's that story in the Bible. Guys, as you learn in this class, this is all propaganda, okay? What really happened is that Saul is king. David is the mercenary, and he's a very good and popular mercenary. He has a lot of soldiers who follow him, and therefore he heals Saul and becomes king himself, okay? But now what the Bible will need to do is legitimize David, okay? Try to tell us that, oh no, no, David is not ambitious he was not ruthless God wield him to be king okay and that's why the Bible Bible was written the way it was so this is written by the court historian okay the person who wrote Genesis is a person we call the Yahwehs okay because for her

the god is Yahweh the Yahwehs or J this person is a court historian so his job is to clean up the image of David to tell the story of David again but in a much more clean way that absolves him of any crimes. So, so, where we're on the story is that Saul is dead. But Saul's family is still around. And Saul's family has a general name Abner, okay? But after Soul is dead, Abner feels slighted by the family. So Abner's like, screw this, I'm gonna go and support David.

And David, of course, is very happy, okay? All right. Abner came with 20 men to David at Hebron. David made a feast for Abner and the man who were with him. Abner said to David, let me go and rally all Israel to you in order that you may take a covenant with me and you may reign over all that your heart desires. So what Amner is make me your general and I will give you Israel. David dismissed Abner and went away in peace.

When the servants of David arrived with Job from a raid. So Job is David's general. Being much spoil with him. But Abner was not with David at Hebron, for David had dismissed him and he had gone away in peace. When Job and all the army that was with him came, it was told Jobner came to the king and he has dismissed him and has gone away in peace. Now Job and Abner have a conflict because Abner killed one of Job's brothers. So Job wants to kill Abner.

Okay? What have you done? came to you, why did you dismiss him so that he got away? You know that Abner came to deceive you and to learn your comings and goings and to learn all that you are doing. Job came out from David's presence. He sent messengers after Abner, they brought him back from the Christian of Sarah. But David did not know about this, okay?

So Job goes and kills Abner. Okay. Now, so if you read this story, you think that David did nothing wrong. Okay? But if you think about it, there are lots of problems with this story. The first problem is that Job, the general, is rebelling against David, right? If you're David, who are you more afraid of? Are you afraid of Adner or are you afraid of Job?

You're afraid of Job, right? Because Job has your army. Okay? So there's no way that David would allow Job to rebel against him. So the argument conclusion is that Job acted with the permission of David. So David knew about this, okay? This is a lie. David knew all about this. In fact, David probably ordered Job to kill Abner. Then the question is why? Well, if you're a king, you're most concerned about loyalty, right?

If Adler betrayed Saul's family, this is possibly Adler will come and betray you as well, okay? So this guy needs to be eliminated because he's dangerous. Okay? And it makes sense because remember, David betrayed Saul, so he's afraid that others will betray him as well. all right so this story even though it's a lie it gives it gives us enough clues to construct the truth for ourselves that's what makes a bible different from other religious texts other religious texts are sayings or truisms but these are stories and stories are living things that we can we construct in our heads okay and again this explains helps us explain why the jews are so creative people because they grew up in a tradition of stories as opposed to truths or sayings.

Okay? So they can constantly reimagine these stories from themselves. All right. So now we get to the most famous story of David. All right? So in the spring of the year, when kings go out to battle, David sent Job with his officers and all Israel with him. Okay?

So what's important to know is that even though Job disobeyed David and killed Abner, Job was never punished, okay? Which tells us that Job was probably acting on the orders of David. They reverts the Ammonites and besieged rabbi, but David remained at Jerusalem. So David's in Jerusalem while the army is fighting elsewhere. It happened late one afternoon when David rolls from a couch and was walking about on the roof of the king's house that he saw from the roof a woman bathing. And the woman was very beautiful.

David sent someone to inquire about her. It was reported, this is above Shiba. Shiba, daughter of Aalium, the wife of Eurea, the Haightight. So David sent messengers to get her and she came to him and he lay with her. Then she got pregnant. Again, this is very problematic story because first of all, a woman doesn't sleep with you just because you asked her to, okay? And Bishiba, remember, is married to Eurea the Heightight.

Okay, so who is Eurea? Rhea is the best soldier in David's army. He's very popular with the man. So if you're David, who are you afraid of? You're afraid of your Rhea. It doesn't make sense. All right? Urea is the person you're most afraid of.

All right. So now he has a problem because Bishiba is pregnant. And David's like, I need to fix a problem because if he comes back and discovers that his wife got pregnant while he's away, he's going to know that I slept before, okay? So he has to solve this problem. So David sent word to Job, send me Eurea the Heightight. And Job sent Eurea to David. When you came to him, David asked how it's going, and David says to Eriah, okay, you know what?

You're a great warrior. When do you go and see your wife? But then Eurya doesn't go see his wife because Eurya says to David, listen, your army is fighting for you I cannot go see my wife and feel good by myself while your men are dying I refuse to be my wife if the men are outside okay so now David has a huge problem so what David does is he writes a letter to Joel and tells Joel hey go do this okay set Luria in the forefront of the hardest fighting and then draw back from him so that he may struck down and die.

So David orders the assassination of Eurea. And Job tells David, your servant Eurya, the Hyda is dead. So I've done what you've asked me to do. So in the Bible, what it tells us is that David fell in love for Bishiba and his heart took over him. him and that led him to go kill Eurea okay but if you think about it what

probably happened was reverse where David becomes jealous of Eurea and he becomes fearful of Eurea because he's so popular with the soldiers okay because that's how David got the throne by betraying so so he's afraid that Eurea will betray him as well okay so he probably ordered the assassination of Eurea to prevent this threat from arising. And then what do you do with, what do you do to show that you're better than your worst enemy? If you have an enemy, how do you prove that you are better than he is? You go marry his wife.

So that's the real story. The real story is that David felt that Urea was being better than him. He got very jealous and so he killed Eurea and married his wife to show ha I'm better than urea okay that's the real story but you can you can see how the Bible framed a story in a different way so in other words the Bible was written as an apology for David to disguise his crimes and the story of Genesis was written to show that God favors David okay because if David is fallible but what David does that's really important is that he omits his mistakes and he reflects

and he improves that's what God does as well okay so David and God are the same people and that's why Yahweh favors David above everyone else Yahweh is looking for a friend David is his best friend because David is most like him okay all right let's continue okay so the wife of Eurya Bafshiba he she hears that her husband is dead and she cries and then after after her morning is over David and Bashiba marry and have a son together okay then Nathan the prophet goes David and says tells him a story there are two men in a city and one is rich and the other is poor

okay so there's two men one rich one poor the rich had many sheep and the poor had just one okay then a traveler comes to the rich man and the rich man has to have a feast for the traveler but he doesn't want to use his sheep so he steals the poor man's sheep okay then David gets angry and says hey man man Man, that's wrong, okay? I will find this man and I will kill him, okay? And I will give the poor four lam instead of one. And then Nathan says to David, David, you are that rich man, okay?

So what Nathan is saying to David is, your crime is you stole of Peshiba. Guys, that's not David's crime, okay? David's crime is he killed Uriya. All right? So this is what we call gaslighting. You see how clever this is where the Bible set up so that you forget that David's crime

is killing your Rhea. You think that the real crime is David's stealing Bashiba. No, that's not the real crime. The real crime is murder, okay? Not adultery. All right? So, in other words, the Bible,

it's an apology for David. But because of the nature of Israel society, okay? So what's special about Israel at this point in history is that it's a very small community of people. So David can't be like, I'm king. If you disobey me, I'll kill you, okay? He has to get everyone to support him. So they have to make up these stories to justify why David is a good person, okay?

David cannot say he didn't do this because everyone knows he did this. So instead, they change the story. and what they say instead is that what makes David special is not that he is infallible what makes him special is that he's a poet and he is capable of reflection and forgiveness which is what Yahweh is okay so Yahweh support king and so is David

right and this is why again the Jews are so literally so literary and so creative. They're not great warriors, but they are tremendous intellectuals. This has been true throughout their history. They're capable of deep reflection, open debate, and argumentation. Okay? And this is why the Jews are so creative. Okay?

Any questions, guys? Okay, all right. I don't know much about Bible. So Bible is a collection of different stories and poems, right? Yeah. And so the common feature of these stories are, like, I can't really tell the common feature between this story and the previous story about Rachel and Leah. Okay, all right. Okay, so that's a great question. Okay, so let's go over some basic introduction to the Bible, okay? So the Bible, it's a library. Okay, Bible means, sorry.

Bible means books in Greek. So it's a library. And it's composed of three major parts. The first is what's called the Tanakh. Sorry, it's a Torah, okay? So it's the first five books of the Bible. Second is the historical books, history. and then you have the writings, okay, which include poetry.

Okay. So the problem of Bible is that it was actually constructed much later than the time of David. Okay, so David was about 1,000 BC around this time, okay? And the Bible, we think, was constructed about 400 BC. around this time, okay? So there's a 600 year difference. So the Bible that we have was very different from the Bible that was first conceived.

Okay? So what's the structure of the Bible? The structure of the Bible is this. It's a history of the people of Israel. Remember, Israel is a fake nation. It's a collection of different tribes, different peoples, and they need to make it as so it's one people. So they create a fake history.

All right? So the fake history is, Adam and Eve, then Noah, then Abraham, then Isaac, then Jacob, then Moses, then you get all the way to David, okay? All right. So this is a cosmology, an order of events, or a fake history. And what this is doing is this. It's combining all the different tribes and groups of Israel together into one family history. So remember, you have the Egyptian priest, you have the mercenaries, you have the nomads,

you have the hill people. Okay? So Egyptian priests get explained away by Moses. That's why the Israelites go into Egypt because they have the Egyptian influence, okay? Then you have the hill people. And the hill people come from different families. and what you do is you make them into one big family so Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are all different part family and when you combine the nation together you make it so it's one nation together okay

so now rather than Abraham Isaac and Jacob are different families it's like no I think is the son of Jacob and Jacob is the son of Isaac okay all right so this is the original Bible and then what happened later on was then they added other stuff as well okay poetry and ritual and all that, okay? Over time. Does that make sense? All right. Good.

Great. Any more questions, guys? I don't understand, like, why does the Bible kind of trying to embellish, like kind of trying to make people believe that David is a very successful figure or something? Sorry, what is the question? So, like, um... So the intention of the story about David is to use these stories to let the readers, the Israel people, to understand their culture? Or is it just...

Okay, listen. Okay, so the Bible will change over time, okay? This is really important to understand. What the Bible is changed over time because Israel will become... different over time and we'll go over this next class oh sorry next week okay not next class next week okay so what's happening now is okay um you're David and you're Solomon okay so Saul Solomon is the son of David who becomes king all right and there are people around you okay and they're gossiping okay gossiping they know what

happened with Bishiba they know what happened with Abner they're all gossiping and that causes problems for the king. It's like being in a village and everyone's talking behind your back. So what you do is you need to spin this, okay, or what we call public relations or media. You need to tell the story in a different way that makes the gossiping less bad. So the gossiping right now is that David, he is ruthless, he killed Eurea because Eurea was a threat. Now the problem with this, with the story is

is that if people believe this story to be true, one, it's possible that Uri as friends would want revenge for what happened, okay? It's also possible that a soldier tries to kill David, because David is clearly ambitious. So you change the gossip to like, no, no, no, no, no. David was not ambitious. David is just a poet who fell in love with Fashiba, okay?

Now people think that David is just irresponsible, infallible. But this is a lot better than people thinking that he's a ruthless killer. Because if people think that he's a ruthless killer, then I should be a ruthless killer as well. Okay? Now people are like, well, you know, David, he's king, but he's not perfect. And he made a mistake and we should forgive him. Because Yahweh, remember the story of Yahweh is that he makes mistakes,

too and we should forgive Yahweh as well all right you don't you understand what's happening okay this is what called spin before it was like he killed your Rhea and therefore we should avenge your Rhea or it's okay to be violent now you switch the story to say no it was really about Bashiba and this is just really about okay you know what people make mistakes we should forgive him okay and that and that's why the Bible was created in the way it was to change the gossip around so that it would be less harmful.

They both suck, okay? But everyone knows you kill Jurya. Now the question is, why did you do so? You don't have people thinking that, hey, David killed Jorea because he saw you as a threat. Because then people think, okay, then we know that David had to kill Saul as well. Okay?

Maybe a huge problem on your hands. So you switch, it's like, no, no, no, it was just Bishiba. Does that make sense? So Bible is needed to like kind of manipulate their value. Okay, all right, listen. All right, very simple. We remember this from writing. What if writing?

Writing those three things. First is legitimacy. Okay? To explain that this guy should be the king because that's the will of God. Second is unity. We are one family guys. We have the same values.

The third is differentiation. We're different from other people, okay? All right, differentiation is. Yahweh is a god of forgiveness, a god of fallibility, but a god of reflection and debate and openness, okay? So our God is different from other gods. The Greek gods is pure vengeance. Our God is one of forgiveness, okay? He's good. Unity is we're just one family with one history, okay? And legitimacy is that David is a poet king, which is just like Yahweh, okay?

That's why Yahweh favors him. Does that make sense? That's what the Bible was constructed or initially to do, but over time its nature will change and something we will discuss as we go along. But when the Bible was first constructed, it was constructed as propaganda. But Yahweh is, okay? The Yahwehs, or the J, she uses this opportunity to create beautiful stories that become living entities, living memories onto themselves, and they ignite the imagination of the Jewish people.

why the Jewish people are so creative. All right? So, is it... Okay, and do you have any more questions? Okay, great. Okay, so we've done the Greeks, we've done the Jews. Next class, we'll do the Persians. Okay, and these are the three most creative peoples of this period.

The Jews, the Greeks, and the Persians. And you can argue that it's these three people, the Jews, the Greeks, and the Persians that have... that are the pillars of Western civilization. Okay, so we will continue this next class.