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 okay so um let me provide some background as to how israel the nation of israel was first formed so remember um the bronze age the middle east was the center of the world okay so you had egypt then you had the levant up north is anatolia across the asian is mycenaean greece and this is mesopotamia if you look at this map the center of the world really is the levant and at this time in history the levant is really a colony of egypt okay this place is called canine now um

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 strategically very important they use greek mercenaries okay many were greek but there's 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 farmed you also had nomadic pastoralists nomads because this place was a center of trade so you had bandits you had people who traded and you also have people who raised livestock so another 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 intermixed together okay but then what happened of course was the Bronze 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 okay so my city 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 send you somewhere else we'll give you land somewhere else and so they were put in the Levant okay and these people 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 are

the people of the Levant and they are the people of the Levant and so they are the mercenaries they should please 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're they have to elect a king in order to unite them against the 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 elected Saul as king but you stole the throne 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 okay and the third problem is differentiation why are we different from the Egyptians the Anatolians the Mesopotamians the Philistines okay so to solve these problems what David did was three major innovations that would forever change forever change human history the first is introduction of a pagan god named Yahweh okay so what David says like Yahweh is our God and 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 try to explain to 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 the centralization of religion for a people 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 to initiate the Bible all right okay so that's where 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 it 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 is means birth or the beginning okay and in the beginning God creates the universe and 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 formed 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 garden Eden in the East and there he put the men whom he had formed of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree

that is pleasant to the site 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 the 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 this is 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 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 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 okay 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 what you so what you 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 women were created to be part of the creative process okay that's why God created us 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 may 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 uh 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 oh sorry don't it's not the apple it's 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 um that's what makes the story so amazing because it is uncertain to us what the true meaning of the Bible is and therefore we have to keep on thinking about it discussing it and finding out for ourselves and at different stages of 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 the trees the tree of immortality and tree of learning but God only says hey there's a tree of learning don't touch that which means sound that 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 you're my kids and I say to you you can have you

can ride any ride you want in this amusement park but there's a ride called the dragon roller coaster do not ride 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 if you talk to children you will know that if you 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 uh being truthful and little and says that if you touch that tree you will die okay so he's 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 created 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 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 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 it's an entire universe onto itself all right okay all right now um this is a story of God creating woman okay Eve so 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 and brought her to the man the man said this at last is bone my bones and flesh of my flesh this one should be called woman for out of men this one was taken okay now you can make the argument that um 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 flesh so this is almost revolutionary the conception 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 who wrote this was actually a woman and as you read the Bible more and more you will 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 um therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife and they become one flesh the man his wife were both naked and were not ashamed okay all right let's fit let's continue now the serpent was more Crafty than any other Wild animal that the Lord had made he said the woman did God say you shall 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 other fruit of the tree nor shall you touch

it or you shall die okay this is really strange okay because what you will notice is that the serpent chooses 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 the 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 fig leaves together and made loans clothes for themselves okay this

is really interesting because the woman is making this decision 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 she like you would think that once she once the serpent said this to her she would she would go to her husband said hey adam the serpent said this what do you think okay but the one'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 okay then they

heard the sound of the lord god walking the garden at the time of the evening breeze and the man and his wife hid themselves in presence of the god among the trees of the garden okay 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 they're scared okay the lord god called the man and said to him where are you i 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 which 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 man says it's not my fault i'm just i'm i was just following her okay so again the woman what's amazing about this is the 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 will have no choice but to kill adam and eve right because god's words were if you eat from that fruit you will surely die so even though the food fruit wasn't poisonous god still has a duty to kill adam and eve and if we were in the iliad okay then surely adam and eve would have died because the gods in the iliad the greek gods most gods are vengeful they're wrathful right but not this god

okay yahweh is different okay look what happens next is the man named his wife eve because she was the mother of all living his wife and clothed 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 shouldn't 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 you 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 okay you are the true goddess okay so um what happens next is god's like okay well you still disobey me so i want to punish you now okay so what he does is he punished the man by making him now have to toil for food okay he has to be a farmer he punched a woman by making childbirth painful he punished a serpent by making him slither on the ground okay so this is all good right but now what god's doing is like does is this he actually froze the adam and eve out of the garden 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 the tree of life and eat and live forever okay so that's what godhood is god 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 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 a 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 um most people think that this is a bad thing okay but you can also interpret this as a good thing so god chose us to make us creative but 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 gonna 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 okay does that make sense so you can 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 okay but you can also say that um it's all part of his 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 garden eden they have children named uh cain and abel okay 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 came a tiller of the ground okay so cain is a and abel uh 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's 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 the if the offerings are good okay and so your

god cain comes with some plants and then abel comes with some meat okay 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 fell 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 you do not do well sin is looking at the door it desires 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 it's the only way to do that okay so heADE een haf man that they like cause heAs nails because heなので okay all right but cain gets really angry and what he does is he kills his brother and then um 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 cursed in 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 its strength you'll be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth okay so at this time what god will could should do is just kill cain right an eye for an eye um 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 actually you 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 gonna put a mark on you and this will protect you so 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 cain says your punishment is unfair and then most gods would be like screw you man i'm god i can do whatever you want but this god's like you know what you make a good point look i have reflected 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 protect you okay this is again a revolutionary idea this is within 3 000 years ago okay today we think okay this is a very common concept but remember in the iliad

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 says is 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 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 a flood of evil and he starts to destroy 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 rebuilds humanity and then god looks down to noah and says you know what i will never again curse the ground because 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 seed 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 I want to wipe evil from this earth but you know what if I give them free will if they have that fruit of from the tree knowledge from the tree of knowledge of good and evil then yeah some of them are gonna make mistakes okay and it's something that I'm have had to put up with so he promised no

one humanity I will never do this again if you guys do evil well you're gonna have to solve this pump yourself I'm not gonna comment suffered for you all right it was a mist it was my mistake to make everyone suffer like this I will never do this again all right so many is rebuilt and of course humans go back to being evil starting Wars and sending each other explaining each other so then God's like you know what what I need to do is this I need to build a nation you , Abraham is their patriarch or their forefather and so Yahweh says to Abraham I will make a covenant with you I make a contract with you where I will favor you but you must swear loyalty to me you must 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 okay you would think that Abraham would just be a slave and a servant to Yahweh that's how 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 Gomorrah and so I'm Kumar is known for its weakness so God sends man okay angels to some Gomorrah to destroy it Abraham is shocked by Sodom and Gomorrah. by this shabram's like yeah but you can't destroy everyone okay so so what happens and this is really interesting is that abraham and yahweh start having a debate and abraham pleads with yahweh to change his mind okay so yeah 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 to such a thing to say the righteous were 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 a mistake but not only that but yahweh's like yeah i think you're right okay so they agree so abraham says um if there's 50 people who are righteous you cannot destroy sodom and gomorrah and god says you're right if i find 50 righteous i will forgive everyone okay so yahweh agrees with abraham at this point you would think that abraham's 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 45 okay 45.

suppose five of our 50 are lacking there's only 45 we can't find 50. don't you think we should still forgive some some gamara and god's like you know that's a 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 be 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 friend is honest with you 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 debate and questions why are you so creative it's this 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 um what will happen is that abraham will give birth will have a son named isaac and isaac will have two sons esso and uh jacob jacob's name will eventually become israel so israel is founded by jacob what happened is that um jacob is the younger son esso is the older son so you would think that esso would inherit everything from isaac but jacob jacob and his mother rebecca schemes and steals from esso okay 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 okay he runs away and he meets a relative okay 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 a little bit 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 all right it's a beautiful complex and sophisticated story all right laban who's a relative says to jacob you're my kinsman um should you therefore serve me for nothing tell me what shall your wages be okay so jacob's um running away from his brother and he's and he finds um safety with laban and he offers to work for laban but laban said listen i can't just um enslave you so you work for me and i'll

give you whatever you want okay and then you take what 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 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 her okay so he loves her so much that seven years is nothing to him okay then jacob said to laban give me 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 home when morning came it was leah and jacob said to liam what is it that you have done to me did i not serve you for rachel why didn't have you deceive me laban 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 complete 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 last 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 complexity of it okay first of all clearly laban deceived jacob right but he didn't mean

to in the beginning the answer is no okay the question is why did he do so and the answer is rachel and leah are sisters right and therefore they probably hate each other they're in competition with each other so when 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 pestered her father and says hey am i not your daughter am i not your firstborn will you let me be insulted and humiliated like this if jacob were to marry rachel who will ever want to marry me and laban's a father okay he doesn't want to deal with this crap so he's like how do i get out of this mess well what i'll do is i'll trick um jacob and first of all i'll 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 he'll do this but then the question then is does rachel love jacob and the answer is yes of course right because once um jacob married leah then rachel could have just said screw this i'm gonna 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 leah probably said to rachel okay she was laughing at rachel just saying you see jacob doesn't really love you and um which i 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

humiliation in order to just be together okay it's a beautiful love story and this is a great thing about the bible the bible written by this person okay who's 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 can it 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 he has to wait all these seven years okay so economy but also irony irony just means it's funny guys okay i know that you're taught the bible as religious

text but when it was first conceived it was meant to be a funny story okay let's talk about the story again okay this is a story of two sisters who hate each other and competing for the same guy all right and this carolation continues when rachel saw that she bought 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 lee 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 hand it over to لاء have children through her so she gave him near she gave him her maid as a wife and Jacob went to her and Balaam

conceived and bore Jacob a son then Rachel said God has judged me and she has heard my voice and given me a son okay 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 um the baby comes out Rachel's like it's mine it's mine and she's going to go around and and cheer to to like um try to out -compete Leah okay this is a comedy then Jacob said God has judged me and has heard my voice and give me a son uh Rachel's maid conceived again and bore Jacob a second son 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 he's going to do is give her maid

to Jacob as well in order to continue the competition okay all right to try to out -compete uh 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 about what they're doing and what they're doing and what they're doing and they're doing and they're doing and what they're doing and they're doing and they're doing and they're doing 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 um complicated okay so in the bible what it tells us is that um god needs a king for the nation of israel and he sends a prophet named sam samuel to find a king and he goes to the house of jesse and in the house of jesse he finds david who's the young youngest boy he says you will not you in the future be the favorite king of israel okay and david in his early age does wonderful 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 kills saul and becomes king himself okay but now what the bible needs to do is legitimize david okay try to tell us that oh no no david is not ambitious he was not ruthless god willed him to be king okay and that's why the bible bible was written the way it was so this is written um by the court historian okay the person who wrote genesis is the is a person we call the yahweh is okay because for her the god is yahweh the yahweh is or jay 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 absorbs him of any crimes okay so so um where we on the story is that saul is dead but saul's family is still around and saul's family has a general named abner okay but after saul 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 i'm gonna say 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 okay so what am i saying is make me your general and i will give you israel david dismissed abner and went away in peace

then the servants of david arrived with job from array okay so job is david's general bringing much spoil with them but abner was not 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 job abner 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 abner 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 know about

this okay so job goes and kills abner okay now so if you read the story 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 who are you more afraid of are you afraid of abner or afraid of job you're afraid of job right because job has your army okay so there's no way that david will allow job to rebel against him so the only conclusion is that job acted with the permission of david so david knew about this okay all right 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 adam betrayed saul's family this is possibly abner 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 the 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 reconstruct in our heads okay and again this explain helps us explain why the jews are so creative people because they grew up in tradition as opposed to truths or sayings, okay? So they can constantly reimagine these stories for 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 really important to know is that even though Job disobeyed David and killed Abner, Job was never punished, okay? Okay, which tells us that Job was probably acting on the orders of David. They ravaged the Ammonites and besieged the rabbi, but David remained at Jerusalem, okay? So David's in Jerusalem while the army is fighting elsewhere. It happened late one afternoon when David rose from the 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 Bathsheba, okay? Daughter of Eliam. Daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite. So David sent messengers to get her and she came to him and he lay with her. Then she got pregnant, okay? Again, this is a very problematic story because first of all, a woman doesn't sleep with you just because you asked her to, okay?

And Bathsheba, remember, is married to Uriah the Hittite. Okay, so who is Uriah? Uriah is the best soldier in David's army. He's very popular with the men. So if you're David, who are you afraid of? You're afraid of Uriah, okay? Does that make sense? All right? Uriah is the person you're most afraid of, all right? So now he has a problem because Bathsheba is pregnant. And David's like, I need to fix the problem because if Uriah comes back and discovers that his wife got pregnant while he was away, he's going to know that I slept with her, okay? So he has to solve this problem. So David sent word to Job, send me Uriah the Hittite. And Job sent Uriah to David. Okay? So he sent word to him, David asked how it's going. And David says to Uriah, okay, you know what?

You're a great warrior. Why don't you go and see your wife? But then Uriah doesn't go see his wife because Uriah says to David, listen, your army is fighting for you. I cannot go sleep with my wife and feel good about 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 Job and tells Job, hey, go do this, okay? Set Uriah 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 Uriah. And Job tells David, your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead, okay? I have done what you've asked me to do, okay? So in the Bible, what it tells us is that David fell in love with Bathsheba and his heart took over him and that led him to go kill Uriah, okay?

But if you think about it, what probably happened was reverse where David becomes jealous of Uriah and he becomes fearful of Uriah because... because he's so popular with the soldiers, okay? Because that's how David got the throne, by betraying Saul. So he's afraid that Uriah will betray him as well, okay? So he probably ordered the assassination of Uriah 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, okay? So that's the real story, okay? The real story is that David felt that Uriah was being better than him. He got very jealous. And so he killed Uriah and married his wife to show, ha, I'm better than Uriah, okay?

That's the real story. But you can... And you can see how the Bible framed the story in a different way. In other words, the Bible's 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 they David is fallible but what David does that's really important is that he admits 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 Uriah Bathsheba he she hears that her husband is dead and she cries and then when after after her morning is over David and Bathsheba 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 this one okay so the rich had many sheep and the poor had this 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 that's wrong okay I will find this man and I will kill him okay and I will give the poor four lambs instead of one instead of one and then Nathan says to David David you 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 are that rich man okay so what Nathan is saying to David is your crime is you stole Bathsheba guys that's not David's crime okay David's crime is he killed stole Bathsheba guys that's not David's crime okay David's crime is he killed Uriah all right so this is what we call gaslighting you see how clever this is Uriah 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 Uriah all right so this is what we call gaslighting you see how clever this is Uriah all right so this is what we call gaslighting you forget that David's crime is 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 what's special about issue 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 all right and this is why again the Jews are so literally so so literary and so creative they're not great warriors but they are tremendous intellectuals this has been true throughout their history they capable of deep reflection open debate

and argumentation okay and this is and this is why the Jews are so creative okay any questions guys

I don't know much about Bible so Bible is a collection of different stories and poem right 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 okay so that's a good question okay so let's go over to

some basic introduction to the Bible okay okay so the Bible it's a library okay Bible means sorry Bible means books in Greek so the library and it's composed of three major parts the first is what's called the Tanakh sorry it's like it's a Torah okay so it's the first five books of the Bible okay second is the historical books history and then you have the writings okay which include poetry so the Promo Bible is that it was actually constructed much later than the time of David okay so David was David was about 1000 BC around this time okay in the Bible we think was concerned about 400 BC around this time okay so there's a 60 year difference so the Bible that we have was very very different from the Bible than in the Bible in the later divine 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, okay? Remember, Israel is a fake nation. It's a collection of different tribes, different peoples, and they need to make it as though 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 ordering of events, or a fake history, all right? And what this is doing is this. It's combining all the different tribes and groups of Israel together into one family history. Okay, so remember, you have the Egyptian priests, you have the missionaries, 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 as though it's one nation together, okay? Okay? So now, rather than Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are different families, it's like, no, Isaac is the son of Jacob, and Jacob is the son of Isaac. Okay? Alright? So this is the original Bible. And then what happened later on was then they added other stuff as well. Okay? Poetry and rituals and all that. Okay? Over time. Does that make sense? Alright. 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, so the intention of the story about David is to use these stories to let the readers, the Israel people, to understand the story about David. To understand their culture? Or is this just...

Okay. Listen. Okay. So the Bible will change over time. Okay? This is really important to understand. What the Bible is changes over time because Israel becomes different over time. And we'll go over this next class. Sorry, next week. Not next class. Next week. Okay? So what's happening now is, okay, you're David and you're Solomon. Okay? So Solomon is the son of David who becomes king. Alright. And there are people around you. Okay? And they're gossiping. Okay? Gossiping. They know what happened with Bathsheba. They know what happened with Abner. They're all gossiping. And that causes problems for the king. Okay? 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. Okay? So the gossiping right now is that David, he is ruthless.

He killed Uriah because Uriah was a threat. Okay? Now, the problem with this, with this story is that if people believe this story to be true, one, it's possible that Uriah's friends will want revenge for what happened. Okay? It's also possible that a soldier tries to kill David. Okay? Because David is clearly ambitious. So, you change the gossip to like, oh, no, no, no, no. David was not ambitious. David is just a poet who fell in love with Bathsheba. Okay? Now people think that David is just irresponsible. Okay? 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? Do you understand what's happening? Okay? This is what's called spin. Before, it was like, he killed Uriah, and therefore, we should avenge Uriah. Or it's okay to be like that. Or it's okay to be violent. Now you switch the story to say, no, it was really about Bathsheba. And this is just really about, okay, you know what, people make mistakes, we should forgive him. Okay? And that's why the Bible was created in the way that it was. To change the gossip around so that it would be less harmful. They both suck, okay? But everyone knows you killed Uriah. Now the question is, why did you do so? You don't want people thinking that, hey, David killed Uriah because he saw you as a threat. Because then people will think, okay, then we know that David had to kill Saul as well.

Okay? That'd be a huge problem on your hands. So you switch it like, no, no, no, it was just Bathsheba. Okay? Does that make sense?

So the Bible is used like to manipulate David about it.

Okay. All right. Listen. All right. Very simple. Remember this one. Writing. What is writing? Writing does 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? Okay. That's what the Bible was constructed initially to do, but over time, its nature will change, and something we'll 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 opportunity to create beautiful stories that become living entities, living memories unto themselves, and they ignite the imagination of the Jewish people. And that's why the Jewish people are so creative. All right? All right? So, okay, 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.