Based Camp - Did Abraham F＊ Jews Through Human Sacrifice？ (Why We Needed Two Covenants)

00:00:00.520 Hello, Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to be exploring the

00:00:06.640 Lindsay Clancy of the Bible in this today's tract. And this, of all of the tracts that I have ever

00:00:13.800 put together in terms of like studying the Bible, attempting to understand it, this one threw me for

00:00:18.280 the biggest wrench at first. Yes. It also had one of the biggest realizations for me that completely

00:00:26.040 transform how i see the entire biblical narrative not only that but once you notice it there is no

00:00:34.580 other way that this story can be read really be logically consistent whoa okay this is very

00:00:42.000 okay yeah i'm sorry i'm extremely intrigued because i really don't like child sacrifice

00:00:47.920 i'm like how could this guy yeah if a god asked one of his people to commit a child sacrifice

00:00:53.420 yeah like that's the whole thing is like that's why god constantly is like stop like moloch this

00:00:58.720 whole thing stop you know the baby sacrifice that is that is what defines a people often in the bible

00:01:04.740 as so evil they deserve a complete eradication it's a named no-no in leviticus you do not pass

00:01:11.760 your seed through the fire to moloch like it's it's we don't do child sacrifice and yet this 0.98

00:01:17.460 story is read on face value it says that a number of really bad things it says that the only reason

00:01:26.520 we don't do child sacrifice isn't because it's wrong but it's because god hasn't asked us to

00:01:31.420 yet oh and that if god did ask us to do child sacrifice we should do child sacrifice or at

00:01:37.820 least go all the way to attempt to because presumably and we'll get into the various

00:01:41.180 alternate aspects i'm just going for the sunday school explanation first right we're going for

00:01:45.920 the easiest understanding the surface at face value as it's taught to me as a kid it implied 0.97

00:01:51.800 to me as it was taught to me as a kid that yeah if god tells you to kill your kids if you're a

00:01:57.880 moral person you will kill your kids well and i think the big problem is that a lot of people have

00:02:03.680 i think killed their kids yeah specific instances if you want to be like 0.96

00:02:09.860 abraham's a good guy first of all abraham was not a good guy we'll get into this

00:02:15.420 there he had a habit of pulling this trick where he would have his wife marry other men then extort

00:02:20.740 things from them what he did this multiple times he's kind of a douche canoe where are people

00:02:26.220 naming their kids abraham then because that part is often forgotten that he liked marrying his wife

00:02:34.640 to other men and well but we all know the child sacrifice part and that's why i was so confused

00:02:39.060 just like this isn't one of those you know big name bible people like the ones that we actually

00:02:43.180 Right

00:02:43.920 So we have another episode that we will do

00:02:47.240 Where we will dig deeper into this

00:02:49.220 Specifically because it is just

00:02:51.320 So utterly bizarre

00:02:53.060 But he does it

00:02:55.240 Twice

00:02:56.400 He has an excuse every time

00:02:59.620 For how he accidentally

00:03:01.300 Whenever he comes to a neighborhood 1.00

00:03:02.760 Tries to get his wife to have sex with 0.99

00:03:04.720 Whoever the most powerful man is in that neighborhood 0.99

00:03:06.860 Or marry them

00:03:08.100 And the second time God even comes in 0.53

00:03:10.260 And he tells the guy he's like no this woman's married 0.99

00:03:13.180 somebody's trying to get you have sex with this married woman and then his son does it too by the

00:03:19.200 way uh it's it's utterly bizarre um and it is i think not in line with what a lot of people

00:03:26.280 remember from the story so yeah he always has an excuse for why he did it but like that had

00:03:30.940 happened twice i'm like i don't believe you this was this was the beginning of your fortune you 0.84

00:03:36.920 made your fortune doing this that's weird i'm telling you you're a pimp no are you even listening

00:03:44.860 to the story anyway one day i wake up and i look in the mirror and i don't like what i see 0.52

00:03:49.240 i mean i i had gotten out of control and i i didn't even realize that you can't have a conscience

00:03:56.900 in the pimp game and in regards to the morality of this think about this from the perspective of

00:04:00.940 his wife who he is pimping out to in the most charitable interpretation protect himself but in

00:04:08.340 the i think actual if you look at what happens because every time he shakes these guys down for

00:04:13.460 lots of money to make money why why does he always have to ask them for money he doesn't do that

00:04:20.740 there's this interim period where a guy he did the war or something he's like i'm not going to

00:04:25.800 ask you for money so no one can say i ask you for money he knows what he's doing here he knows what

00:04:29.900 he's doing here the abraham story i mean god does say that abraham loves him or is beloved by him

00:04:36.280 or his friend that's sometimes translated and we know that by the bible god is okay and will make

00:04:42.080 heroes of people of low moral character take david right like sending out somebody who to die in a

00:04:49.740 war so that you can marry their wife right is that person died out of loyalty to david that is to me

00:04:58.340 one of the lowest things like i almost cannot imagine anything more immoral than using somebody's

00:05:07.600 trust in you to murder them to sleep with their wife it's yeah truly so that is about as low as

00:05:17.140 you get and yet david is one of god's you know and people some jews are like no he's okay because 0.95

00:05:21.420 he repented afterwards i'm like he said he was sorry he said he was sorry what i'm like well

00:05:29.340 he was still being used by god before he repented right he was still god's champion before he

00:05:35.600 repented yeah he may repent eventually but and then you can look at solomon for example

00:05:40.840 you don't get to be much a bigger douche canoe than solomon uh solomon's entire story he's just

00:05:46.540 like not a good guy uh and we'll get into that story one day so again i don't think it's

00:05:51.140 particularly big a thing. That is not what God looks for in his heroes and stories. That was

00:05:56.560 not the problem for me. I don't have a problem that you do not have to be a moral paragon to

00:06:02.500 have a good relationship with God. What I have a problem with is two things. One, God establishing

00:06:08.320 a precedent that he might ask you, you might hear a voice in your head, like, is it a good thing in

00:06:15.080 a religious tradition to have a precedent that if you hear a voice in your head telling you to kill

00:06:19.200 your kids maybe you should that is especially given that like multiple people have acted on this

00:06:28.520 um and no lindsey clancy did say one of the reasons she did it at the catholic was so that

00:06:34.680 she could meet her kids in heaven when she killed her it wasn't the exact same as god told her to

00:06:38.420 but like yeah it was part of the equation i mean so i i could not honestly engage with the court

00:06:44.060 information because this is too hard for me to emotionally deal with but i thought that voices

00:06:48.700 were telling her according to her lawyer to kill her maybe yes a voice was telling her to do it but 0.79

00:06:54.560 she didn't equate that voice with god she just thought that once she killed all her kids they 1.00

00:07:00.080 could be together in heaven but then again this is the thing if when we read these women who did

00:07:04.680 this it's like so how are these women if some of them appear to genuinely have heard voices like

00:07:10.340 we know that's a thing that happens to some people even in the secular world yeah it's just a certain

00:07:16.260 portion of the population hears voices and then those voices differentiate the voice telling you

00:07:20.700 to kill your kid from a demon testing you to god right like my presumption any listener of this

00:07:30.200 podcast if you're a good christian and one day you started hearing a voice telling you that god 0.99

00:07:36.220 wants you to sacrifice your child i would presume the good christian thing to assume is that's

00:07:43.140 actually the devil testing you yeah like yeah i mean especially even if you because i i again i

00:07:50.260 got stuck and i haven't i haven't continued very far into the old testament but i definitely got

00:07:54.400 to the part where it was like no you don't you know you know yeah so how does this story work

00:08:00.280 yeah how do you get around and the reason why the story was so hard for me is i go through the story

00:08:05.140 i go through the story i go through the story again i look for alternate translations i look

00:08:09.720 for any way out of god not just being okay with abraham's actions but deliberately approving of

00:08:21.460 them and rewarding him for them i go over it over and over and over and over and i go through all

00:08:28.020 of the ways that people have tried to get out of this history and all of the ways i could find

00:08:31.860 seemed really squirrely and i'm not going to eat them but i'll go over them with you before we go

00:08:35.880 over the what i think is the correct solution okay hmm by the way it's totally unique to us

00:08:41.100 i have not seen anyone else come okay i'm so intrigued i'm extremely intrigued and once you

00:08:46.620 see the solution you realize there really isn't another solution and what's crazier than that is

00:08:52.700 a solution defines the differentiation between christianity or at least techno puritan christianity

00:08:58.380 and judaism in very stark contrast and it's like a story that explains everything about how you're

00:09:04.100 supposed to relate to the bible okay well let's already get through these other reasons because

00:09:08.260 i want to hear your but uh the the this one like i was actually with any of the other ones the first

00:09:15.020 time i read the story i was like okay clearly this word means something other than what i think it

00:09:20.580 what is commonly translated as and i go over it i find an explanation like i i clearly thought that

00:09:25.860 god wasn't punishing man for wanting to know the difference between good and evil i read the story

00:09:30.260 that's immediately not what's really happening um it's clear in the text that's not what's

00:09:34.580 happening it's clear with alternate translations that's not what's happening um and so i i do our

00:09:38.180 episode on that and uh everyone's like yeah this is coherent with large loot i believe um but with

00:09:43.520 this one no i go over the story over and over and over and over again and i couldn't i couldn't find

00:09:51.460 any way and i was genuinely like questioning my faith it's like if the bible is right why is this

00:09:57.080 story here right and then i found that the thing that explains the entire story isn't in the story

00:10:06.320 okay but well then how can you associate them you will go into it there's there's no way not

00:10:13.840 to associate them by the way it's it's very clearly no way not to associate them but let's

00:10:18.300 continue okay so to start so the story starts like this and um sometime later god tested abraham

00:10:27.000 he said to him abraham here i am he replied then god said take your son your only son who you love

00:10:34.720 isaac and go to the region of mora sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on the mountain

00:10:41.200 i will show you honestly first this is very twisted like the the kid who you love

00:10:48.480 sacrifice him and i actually got to a part by the way before i found the solution to this where

00:10:53.660 i was like i'm just gonna do an episode on this and ask for fans if they have any suggestions

00:10:58.200 because i i cannot um affirm the traditional interpretation right like that that just yeah

00:11:06.100 like are there other people who say well the hebrew doesn't actually say that yeah this this

00:11:10.480 to me you know how like um we had the episode on uh i want to say lewis ck what was his name again

00:11:15.480 the famous author lewis c.s lewis c.s k what are you doing he called one passage in the bible the

00:11:24.300 most embarrassing passage and i was like no it actually like affirms the entire tradition and

00:11:28.360 we have an episode on that but this one i almost sat there and was like do i need to say that this

00:11:32.880 is the most embarrassing passage in the bible like as i kept going over it and then when i found the

00:11:37.140 solution it became awesome and it changes i actually i know already that from just starting

00:11:42.200 a new lecture series on biblical authorship that there is a mistranslation in the at least English

00:11:48.040 most English translations of this story because they give it a small one it's a small one but I

00:11:54.020 know the ram is behind something and the behind it was supposed to be yeah it's not that there

00:11:58.440 was a ram behind him it's that there was a ram and the word for a is in Hebrew looked similar to

00:12:05.920 behind yeah so whatever we'll continue here so uh how jews uh rashi who's like one of the most

00:12:13.600 famous jewish scholars of the medieval period that most you know jews who are learned are going

00:12:19.020 to be aware of has the traditional jewish answer for this okay so let's go into how jews get out

00:12:24.860 of this on the word veha or alu offer him up or bring him up in genesis 22 2 rashi comments he

00:12:33.720 He did not say slay him, Shabbat-u, because the Holy One, the Blessed One,

00:12:39.120 he did not desire that he should slay him, 0.67

00:12:41.420 but he told him to bring him up to the mountain and to prepare him as a burnt offering.

00:12:45.480 So when he was taken up, God said unto him, bring him down.

00:12:48.960 Later on the angel's intervention in 2212,

00:12:52.160 the same Midrash has God clarifying to Abraham, 0.91

00:12:55.460 I did not say to you, slaughter him, but bring him up. 0.99

00:12:58.640 You should have brought him up, take him down. 1.00

00:13:00.940 So what Jews basically argue here, and I don't hate this, I think it's a little squirrely, but I don't hate it, which is that God didn't tell him to actually kill the guy. 0.72

00:13:16.520 The problem is, is the word used for make a burnt offering of him means to essentially burn him until there's nothing left. 0.65

00:13:26.300 it is not the word for prepare him as a burnt authoring um wait that that actually kind of

00:13:32.480 works for me like benjamin franklin in his autobiography talks about his father thinking

00:13:37.180 to tithe him to the church which is to say to raise him so that he would serve in his entire

00:13:42.420 life and career in the church he only did it because he ran out of money to educate him as

00:13:46.720 a church leader and so he didn't get a job but maybe that's what this is insinuating is that

00:13:52.820 you know, you must dedicate your son solely to the worship of God before, because he was before

00:13:58.240 Moses, right? So before there was a temple, before there was a class of people whose entire job was 0.88

00:14:04.320 to manage the worship of God and burnt offerings, right?

00:14:09.960 No? Well, sorry, how did that work for you? Well, it works for me in saying, like, maybe,

00:14:15.740 maybe God was insinuating that he should, as Benjamin Franklin was going to be tithed to

00:14:21.700 the church by his father not as a burnt offering but as a person who he would raise to serve the

00:14:27.040 church as but that's not what god said he said burnt offering he in the word used he said like

00:14:33.500 to use up like your career was used up that is an even squirrelier interpretation than the jewish

00:14:41.780 one okay fine okay um i don't i don't i don't buy that that's what's meant here i i will say that i

00:14:48.420 am okay with this jewish interpretation it's not the one like when i read it i wasn't like oh a

00:14:54.220 solution but i was like okay so maybe to somebody who reads hebrew um you read this and it looks

00:15:02.400 like god was playing a bit of a word game to test his faith the problem is is god meant for him it

00:15:11.180 appears to interpret this as kill him and that's what he appears to have planned to carry out

00:15:20.440 yeah i mean the way i remember growing up thinking about it when i was told the story

00:15:25.140 as an outsider to the church or as an outsider to christianity was like

00:15:29.260 this was oh sorry mud puppies talking to indy about sharks about uh this was the ultimate 0.99

00:15:36.980 trust fall test from God of like, I'm going to ask you to do anything and you better do it. 1.00

00:15:42.140 Don't worry. It's going to be fine. Yeah. But I can't, I can't deal with that answer

00:15:46.360 because the trust fall is child sacrifice. Yeah. Like if the trust fall is, I'm going to tell you

00:15:51.380 to sin now go sin that no, that does. Yeah. If the trust fall was Abraham, light yourself on fire

00:15:58.360 or jump in a volcano or go into a war you couldn't possibly win. I'm okay with all of those. 0.99

00:16:06.120 absolutely sacrificing an innocent child we're repeatedly seen in the bible is a bad thing

00:16:11.700 right it is it is not just a bad thing it's often used as the avatar of all bad things

00:16:17.920 so and we know and we know i'm not going to go here and say this isn't the the real god like i

00:16:23.300 do is what happened in the tabernacle where they're tearing apart doves that are god signs of hope for

00:16:27.320 humanity because this is abraham we're talking about right like it's the very core start of the 0.98

00:16:32.040 tradition that this is happening to and it's because of this that god allowed the jewish 0.70

00:16:36.500 people to flourish at least that's what we're told right yeah so let's continue in a traditional

00:16:43.940 interpretation i'm gonna go over i'm actually gonna that that isn't what it really says so uh

00:16:49.420 how the the reading is derived in classic mishidric observation it's word choice the verb god uses

00:16:55.040 the hifl causative of Allah,

00:16:58.260 which is cause to go up, to bring up, to offer up.

00:17:02.260 God does not use the normal technical verb

00:17:04.180 for slaughtering a sacrificial animal,

00:17:06.080 which is therefore the Midrash concludes

00:17:08.360 that the actual command

00:17:10.000 never explicitly required killing Isaac.

00:17:12.400 It only required bringing him up the mountain 0.99

00:17:14.620 and preparing him as an Allah. 1.00

00:17:16.660 Once that was done,

00:17:18.420 the angel can say the command has been fulfilled

00:17:20.460 and tell Abraham to bring him back down.

00:17:22.540 now let's go with the out one that i really like which is a version of this one i i like it i don't

00:17:30.520 think it's good enough okay it's that because if it is god said it that way but he was sort of

00:17:38.960 playing a word trick on abraham and he actually was testing whether abraham would commit a child

00:17:43.680 sacrifice to understand if he was good enough to start his line of people i'm not okay with that

00:17:49.100 one that that that seems anti-biblical in everything else we read in the bible right

00:17:54.280 um so if we put that out then the other interpretation is abraham never really

00:18:01.800 believed god was asking him to kill his kid and that he believed god would intervene or and i

00:18:08.920 don't like this or god would raise the kid from the dead that the raising the kid from the dead 0.99

00:18:13.100 is bad because many of the women who kill their kids to prove faith in god believe that god will

00:18:18.920 raise him from the dead immediately afterwards oh that's horrible it's a bad precedent to set

00:18:23.320 it is it is not good don't do not i would not very bad bad bad bad bad and also it's sort of

00:18:29.180 like a begging god for a miracle it's like um you know one of those things you're not supposed to do

00:18:33.980 to do an act expecting a miracle from god but okay let's say what what is the evidence that abraham

00:18:40.500 never expected to actually kill his kid okay so we've got abraham's son talking to him and he says

00:18:48.360 yes my son abraham replied and the son says very heartbreakingly the fire and wood are here isaac

00:18:55.040 said but where is the lamb for the burnt offering abraham answered god himself will provide the lamb

00:19:01.760 for the burnt offering my son and the two of them went together now one that's some psycho lindsey

00:19:07.160 clancy stuff right there that is incredibly psycho no no no no yeah yeah everything he actually

00:19:12.200 intended to kill him but what if what he's saying is i know that god's gonna provide for us

00:19:21.080 the the words used here it means like he will see to it he will provide uh which means that he has

00:19:29.880 a faith that god is going to prevent this from happening if he goes along with the act and

00:19:39.580 there is another reason to believe this well first here you can feel like well would abraham

00:19:45.940 lie to his kid yes abraham one the words that he uses here in hebrew aren't as clear as in english

00:19:52.440 and they are technically true it just would mean that god was providing his son as the lamb second

00:19:59.880 we do know that he's willing to play these types of word games as he does it repeatedly with his

00:20:05.880 wife getting her to marry other men um and perhaps sleep with them we will get into that as well for

00:20:13.920 money well isn't that kind of a part of being married yeah isn't that yes it's not good it's

00:20:19.800 not good um to continue this i i do think it's a good thing to know that god doesn't need us to be

00:20:25.500 the most morally pure people in the world the people who are like god expects you to never

00:20:28.800 do anything sinful or bad it's like well i mean there's a lot of people who god seems to like

00:20:35.840 that do sometimes do bad things so how is god judging their worth i think it's on the long-term

00:20:42.440 consequences of their actions overall because i believe god is a consequential scott that's why

00:20:46.520 god can be a friend to people like david and abraham and stuff like that where uh and i also

00:20:51.400 think that this is why it appears on the surface that god's laws change over time in certain ways

00:20:56.600 because he's giving us different laws for different contexts not for because his morality changes

00:21:00.860 because he cares about the consequences of those laws this is the techno puritan consequence of

00:21:04.940 god interpretation here okay so abraham tells his servants stay here with the donkey while the boy

00:21:11.020 and i go over there in worship we will return to you and the word here is completely the we

00:21:18.460 is is not something you can fish around he's either directly lying to the servants or he

00:21:24.840 believes in all his heart that the the sacrifice is not actually going to happen so uh look i prefer

00:21:31.580 that scenario it i don't like a scenario in which there's a man going up to this mountain expecting

00:21:37.440 to kill his child now note here the um god raising him for the dead i i really do not like this line

00:21:45.300 i do not think it's like if we're talking about actual lines that i find a bit embarrassing for

00:21:49.060 the bible uh this is from the new testament hebrew 11 19 does say well god could always just

00:21:55.740 immediately raise the kid from the dead after he kills him it wasn't jesus saying it but and i

00:22:01.320 again i treat things not said by jesus it is significantly different i think that a lot of

00:22:04.980 what the bible is outside of what jesus says is people like we are today attempting to morally

00:22:10.520 understand and build a faith system around the jewish messiah which had just come but not

00:22:15.680 necessarily completely infallible people i think normalizing that argument is is not and no it's

00:22:21.140 just an argument it's a hypothesis that's being said here in hebrews right it's not like definitively

00:22:25.420 this is why it's okay it's a hypothesis uh that's helping us understand that well god definitely

00:22:30.680 wouldn't have let him totally do it. So there's other things that God could have done, all right?

00:22:34.980 And God had raised people from the dead before. So, you know, he had this son born miraculously

00:22:40.400 as well. So yeah, I mean, he might have thought that. Again, I don't think normalizing child

00:22:46.520 sacrifice with the understanding that God brings them back is a good idea. Okay. So Genesis 17,

00:22:53.580 19. All right. So that's, that's the, um, first interpretation there. Now we'll get to the

00:23:03.520 interpretation two. And the interpretation two was the one I really wanted to jump at. Okay.

00:23:08.580 This was, this was what seemed intuitive to me when I first read it. So I read the first part of

00:23:15.080 it and it's okay. God is testing him. All right. We know God is testing him. Do we know what the

00:23:22.440 correct answer to the test is, my initial interpretation was, no, we don't. What if

00:23:29.800 there's some way of reading this where his choice to attempt to sacrifice his son, to attempt a

00:23:36.860 child sacrifice of his own son, who he loves, is the correct choice? I was like, maybe God was

00:23:44.560 testing his character and this wasn't the correct choice. The problem is there's just no getting

00:23:50.900 around that this choice is approved of, okay? If you look at the words of the angel, now I know

00:23:59.460 you fear God because you have not withheld your son, your only son for me. The verb here,

00:24:06.880 the key verb, you have not held back, withheld, is the blessing. And more than that,

00:24:13.980 uh he is clearly rewarded for this right afterwards right he's god isn't just said

00:24:23.240 like this it's like and here are the rewards you're getting because of this okay one moment

00:24:30.980 i have to change a diaper and then i will be back and i'm just gonna put while you're changing the 0.96

00:24:35.220 diaper i can go over a few instances of women doing this so we can understand that this has

00:24:40.000 real world thank you because i can't hear this okay i am out of here so fast and if you're like

00:24:46.980 okay well he had already had miracles performed for him by god so he knew for a fact that the

00:24:53.960 voice he heard was god's voice yeah but these other women and men who did this the fact that

00:25:00.080 they would kill their kids over this clearly they believe for a fact that what they were hearing was

00:25:05.780 god's voice right like that's that's not a very strong argument yes he believed was maybe

00:25:13.400 additional evidence that it was god's voice but this isn't a story about how much evidence he

00:25:21.400 had for something it's a story about faith and these other people clearly had as much faith as

00:25:26.280 he did all right so instances of this happening uh by the way in the past 20 years this has

00:25:32.080 happened to about 172 children lives snuffed out because of this we have uh danny laney in texas

00:25:39.320 2003 laney a 39 year old religious mother blethered her three bludgeoned her three sons to death with

00:25:44.880 rocks in their front yard on the night before mother's day two boys aged six and eight died

00:25:49.460 the toddler survived with permanent injuries she told psychiatrists that god had ordered them to

00:25:53.760 kill them at the test of faith and that they would be raised from the dead a jury acquitted her for

00:25:58.380 capital murder lara harris california 2005 harris threw her three young sons ages six two and 16 0.94

00:26:06.240 months off a pier into the san francisco bay she later told investigators that the voice of god

00:26:11.280 called her to sacrifice him she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and delusional disorders

00:26:15.820 two bodies were never recovered and she was found not guilty for reason of insanity

00:26:21.240 jennifer saisky florida 2001 saisky threw her eight months old son onto concrete stones beside

00:26:29.660 the pole she told investigator a spirit voice which she identified as god had instructed her

00:26:34.200 to do so as a test of faith that the child would be raised from the dead just like jesus raised

00:26:38.400 nazareth baby died the case involved claims of dominic possession and attempted exorcism

00:26:43.080 in the hours before the killing mark hambrick new orleans 2017 hambrick repeatedly stabbed

00:26:49.340 his 18 months old daughter in the chest with a kitchen knife and then suffocated her he told

00:26:53.800 police so no it's not just women doing this god told him to murder his child so the state of

00:26:59.200 louisiana can kill him so he can be resurrected he was later found incompetent to stand trial due to

00:27:06.560 persistent delusions andrea yates texas 2001 uh yates drowned five children in a bathtub her

00:27:13.800 delusions were heavy religious she believed the children were possessed by satan so a bit different 1.00

00:27:17.860 and her children were doomed to hell because of her

00:27:21.620 and that killing them while they were still young 1.00

00:27:24.120 was one way to save their souls. 0.99

00:27:27.380 Expert testimony differed on whether she believed God or Satan

00:27:30.480 had ordered the act, the dominant theme,

00:27:33.080 or that she had thought to protect them from damnation.

00:27:35.660 She was doing this.

00:27:38.200 Okay.

00:27:40.140 So not awesome, not awesome.

00:27:44.300 And the real children are dying for this.

00:27:47.620 Yes.

00:27:48.480 And a question we have to ask ourselves is,

00:27:50.080 why should we not judge Abraham?

00:27:52.460 Whenever you hear one of these other stories

00:27:54.340 of a parent killing their kid

00:27:55.780 because they believe God told them to do so

00:27:58.200 and that they might be raised again or something,

00:28:01.040 I'm sure you feel an intense sense of moral disgust.

00:28:05.360 Yeah.

00:28:05.780 Like, how could you do that to somebody who is trusting you,

00:28:08.440 like Abraham's son was?

00:28:11.020 Isaac was.

00:28:11.700 And I'm going to argue that you should feel this for Abraham.

00:28:20.500 I think most people do, right?

00:28:22.640 Part of the story.

00:28:24.020 But we will get into how it all fits together and how it distinguishes.

00:28:29.680 Oh, it's just so beautiful how it fits together.

00:28:31.140 You're going to love it.

00:28:32.020 But next, Hebrews 11.

00:28:35.960 So now we're going to go into New Testament interpretations of this stuff.

00:28:38.780 because uh hebrews 11 to 17 through 19 this is the most direct this is not jesus saying this

00:28:45.680 it's a sort of a hypothesis put out by the author of hebrews often canonically paul but you know

00:28:52.140 doesn't really matter note that virtually no mainstream scholar today thinks that paul wrote

00:28:58.140 this it's often considered somebody who's a second generation church convert by faith abraham

00:29:03.880 was tested offered up isaac and who had received the promises in the act of offering up his only

00:29:10.640 son of whom it is said through isaac shall your offering be named he considered that god was able

00:29:16.420 to even to raise him from the dead for which figuratively speaking he did not receive him back

00:29:22.140 i i don't see it as wrong like nothing in this is wrong technically god could have raised him

00:29:28.480 from the dead um i just don't think that that's the point of this particular story which is if

00:29:34.260 you think god is talking to you kill your kids because god might raise them from the dead um

00:29:38.580 next and and i'll it can't mean anything other than what it means when you see it james 2 21 0.97

00:29:44.380 james uses the same event as proof of abraham's face and obedience was not abraham our father

00:29:49.780 justified by works when he offered up his son isaac on the altar this is a again not jesus

00:29:57.880 of the hypothesis of one of the Bible writers, one of the New Testament writers.

00:30:03.160 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but no deeds?

00:30:07.960 Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes, a daily fruit.

00:30:13.580 If you say to them, go in peace, keep warm and well-fed, but does nothing about their physical

00:30:19.120 needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself is not accompanied by action. It is dead.

00:30:24.440 but someone will say, you have faith, I have deeds.

00:30:27.460 Show me your faith without deeds

00:30:29.100 and I will show you my faith with deeds.

00:30:31.200 You believe that there is one God, good.

00:30:33.740 Even the demons believe that and shudder. 1.00

00:30:36.280 You foolish person, do you want evidence 1.00

00:30:39.140 that faith without deeds is useless? 1.00

00:30:41.920 Was not our father Abraham considered righteous

00:30:44.000 for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar?

00:30:47.660 You see his faith and his actions were working together

00:30:50.640 and his face made complete by what he did.

00:30:53.240 and the scripture was fulfilled that says Abraham believed in God and it was a credit

00:30:58.040 to his righteousness and he was called God's friend. You see that a person is considered

00:31:03.560 righteous by what they do and not faith alone. In the same way, not even Rahab is not even Rahab

00:31:09.500 the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and then 0.80

00:31:14.100 sent them off in a different direction. As the body was out, the spirit is dead. So faith was

00:31:19.120 out deeds, it's dead. Note here, I think this pretty clearly shows, at least from an argument

00:31:25.980 here, again, I don't think that these arguments made outside of Jesus are as binding, but I think

00:31:30.080 it's a good argument for deeds mattering in addition to faith, and the faith alone interpretation

00:31:36.220 is not one that technopuritans or our tradition believes, but today is not about that. I think

00:31:42.780 that he is using it as an example of a good deed i can say that it is a deed that god accepted but

00:31:52.460 we'll get to in a second so i don't think anything is wrong about this um it's just not the direction

00:31:56.920 i would go to it i wouldn't be raising abraham doing attempting child sacrifice because a voice

00:32:04.680 told him to it's a height of moral clarity or or or yeah and i want to be clear here god can raise

00:32:13.340 the dead but expecting him to because you heard a voice telling him you to kill your kids is not a

00:32:20.880 thing it's not a work it's not like a good deed right and i think what we're what we're seeing

00:32:29.260 here and what was so revelatory to me in reading the text this way as i realized that there are

00:32:35.040 multiple correct ways to read the text but there are more correct ways to read the text

00:32:40.540 and this would be one of the less correct ways to read the text that you should expect god to 0.85

00:32:46.360 raise your dead kids if you kill them because the voice told you to and once you understand this

00:32:51.580 you realize that there are essentially three ways that these texts could be read and we will go into 0.99

00:32:58.940 this more later but with each of these different and correct readings you reach a level of

00:33:07.120 interpretive closeness that gets closer to what i think god meant for us to get from these and i

00:33:13.520 think that that is so linguistically or editorially or whatever the word is for like fancy writing

00:33:20.640 cool it's really really amazingly sophisticated and then we have romans 8 what then will we say

00:33:30.440 in response to these things if god for us who can be against us he who did not spare his own son but

00:33:36.780 gave him up for us all how will he not also along with him graciously give us all things who will

00:33:42.820 bring any charge against those who god has chosen it is god who justifies who then is the one who

00:33:49.620 condemns. No one. Christ Jesus died. More than that, who was raised to life? Is it at the right

00:33:56.020 hand of God also interceding for us? Now, note this one. I'm not going to go further with it.

00:34:02.560 Basically, it's just creating an allegory of this story. It was the story of Jesus. And I think that

00:34:07.760 this allegory is important because I think it helps us better understand the story of Jesus.

00:34:13.420 Why? We'll get to it later. You have to understand, I think, the correct interpretation of this.

00:34:17.760 okay teasing okay all right so here is the thing i couldn't get through i kept going over it god

00:34:29.460 lets us know he's giving abraham a test

00:34:32.220 the assumption that i had because it's a promise that god reiterates after the test

00:34:42.780 that this was a test to see if Abraham was righteous enough

00:34:51.360 to be the guy who God used to birth his people

00:34:59.500 and create his tradition, the Jewish people, right?

00:35:03.740 That is probably what you read it as as well, right?

00:35:08.520 The ultimate trust of all.

00:35:09.660 The problem is that there's absolutely no way that is possible.

00:35:15.000 The reason there is absolutely no way that is possible is because in multiple previous

00:35:21.480 instances, God has already promised two things.

00:35:27.480 One, and four different acts, that the Jewish people, that the people who God gives the covenant

00:35:33.780 to are going to come from not just Abraham, but from the line of Isaac. Okay. That had already

00:35:43.380 been promised to Abraham. So given that this promise and covenant had already been made with

00:35:51.740 Abraham, now you've got to read this and say, okay, so what we know going into this story

00:35:58.040 is God already has a covenant with Abraham.

00:36:01.900 His chosen people are going to come out of that covenant

00:36:05.600 no matter what Abraham's actions are

00:36:08.160 in relation to this test, okay?

00:36:11.340 So what does that mean in terms of a test

00:36:16.500 if the test is not about whether or not

00:36:20.280 Abraham gets a covenant with God?

00:36:23.560 If the test is not about whether or not

00:36:26.440 Abraham gets a covenant with God. The test is about the nature of the covenant Abraham gets

00:36:33.820 with God. God is testing Abraham, the way that Abraham relates to God and Abraham's moral clarity.

00:36:43.360 His answer to the test was an acceptable answer, but it wasn't the best answer.

00:36:52.100 His answer to the test defined the nature of the covenant God would craft for the Jewish people, 0.66

00:37:00.320 which is a covenant where he learned if you tell a Jew to sacrifice their child, 0.87

00:37:07.460 they're going to do it. 0.90

00:37:08.740 They follow the rules no matter how absurd the rules are.

00:37:13.720 That is what the story of Isaac was God discovering about the people he was about to make his chosen people.

00:37:22.720 They are a people of rules and the rule set and religion that I build for them needs to be a religion of very strict rules.

00:37:36.520 and many of those rules, so many of those rules

00:37:41.100 that they could never accidentally think

00:37:44.580 that I really wanted them to sacrifice their own children.

00:37:47.460 That I think is the true interpretation of this.

00:37:50.960 It is a test to determine the nature of the first covenant.

00:37:55.700 And the moment you understand this,

00:37:58.900 the first covenant and the Jewish covenant, 0.99

00:38:00.880 which can sound really stupid on its face, 0.97

00:38:04.760 immediately makes sense. 0.98

00:38:07.000 I would think, because when I look at the way

00:38:09.100 Christians are commanded to relate to God,

00:38:10.720 we are commanded to relate to him as our father.

00:38:13.220 When, you know, Jesus said,

00:38:15.740 the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

00:38:17.940 What he's saying is all of the rules,

00:38:19.540 we are meant to interpret them in a way

00:38:22.620 where we think of them like a father

00:38:24.720 giving us rules to live by and then trying to learn,

00:38:27.500 how can I use this set of rules?

00:38:29.080 Not every one of the rules is important,

00:38:30.740 but every one of the rules is meant to improve our lives. 1.00

00:38:34.200 if you look at the way that orthodox jews follow rules many of those rules in no way could improve 0.99

00:38:41.660 your life like needing to turn off the energy saver on an electronic elevator when it's going 1.00

00:38:47.080 down because that's kind of like doing work or putting the fishing line around the new york city 0.98

00:38:53.300 so that you can walk from place to place we have an episode on rules that jews made up and how they

00:38:59.260 get around them. The thing is, is you can look at that and say it was a mistake or a perversion of 1.00

00:39:07.440 God's intention that Jews interpret him in this way. And yet we see God rewarding them and treating 0.98

00:39:13.240 them as people of the face for centuries when they did relate to his word in this way.

00:39:20.400 And so why would he do that? That's so perplexing. Why did God decide to do that?

00:39:27.620 the binding of isaac explains everything god decided to do that because the jews or the jewish

00:39:37.540 progenitor revealed themselves as a people who needed all of these rules

00:39:44.040 in order to live in accordance with what leads to human flourishing oh so wait he's held up as an

00:39:52.140 example of like look at what you guys will do we this is why you need the rules you guys would

00:39:57.800 literally do child sacrifice if we made a rule of it you guys lack the moral clarity to step back

00:40:04.720 and be like okay i get that i think god just asked me to do a child sacrifice but i also have the

00:40:15.460 ability to interpret god's law on my own i have intellectual i have ownership of my own morality

00:40:23.180 right and we say that's the core difference between the two covenants one is a covenant

00:40:27.760 about following rules if you follow the rule you know the famous story about eliezer and the oven

00:40:33.480 of achnon or the snake oven where jews have like built into their test stuff if you can prove like 0.53

00:40:39.640 even if god is telling you through miracles and everything this is what i want because the story 0.81

00:40:44.600 of these rabbis fighting over this oven and whether or not it's kosher. And one of them,

00:40:48.680 like God is clearly backing this guy, right? Like he's doing all sorts of big miracles. And the other

00:40:52.800 two are like, yeah, but this doesn't follow the legal interpretation of the text. And God ends up

00:40:58.340 coming in and saying, guys, like basically, you can tell I back him. And they're like, yeah,

00:41:04.720 but it goes against the legal interpretation. And God's like, my own children have bested me.

00:41:08.740 And God is happy about this in the Jewish tradition. You know, he laughs at this. He's 0.97

00:41:12.920 like, aha, you really understand how I want you to relate to this. And note, it might initially

00:41:18.680 sound like this goes against the initial point that I'm making here, because in this case,

00:41:23.340 God is happy that Jews are challenging the signs that he is sending down. But what the point I'm

00:41:30.040 making here is, is that they are not challenging him based on morality. They are challenging him

00:41:36.040 based on things he already said. So they essentially are like find-up toys or something

00:41:42.720 like that. You give them a set of rules and they follow that rules. You just need to make sure that

00:41:48.560 the set of rules that you gave them are cohesive and strict enough that they can continue to follow

00:41:56.120 this set of rules in a way that makes them moral and leads to human flourishing, which it appears

00:42:01.000 to do if we look at the current Jewish people. And note here that Abraham could have done the 0.60

00:42:06.560 same with God in this instance. He could have said, this goes against what you have already

00:42:11.440 promised me, and he did not. However, I think that that is less important. What is more important

00:42:17.980 is that even in the oven of Akhnat's story, that the rabbis are not arguing from the position of

00:42:25.140 morality. They're arguing from the position of God gave us this set of rules. And so we are going

00:42:32.080 to follow this set of rules exactly no matter what looks like it's moral, no matter what looks

00:42:38.440 like it's what God wants. We are wind up toys. God gives us a set of rules. We follow that set

00:42:44.340 of rules. And in this case, God does what he did not do to Abraham. Like this is clearly a superior

00:42:50.600 way of interacting with God, but an inferior way to interacting from the perspective of morality

00:42:54.600 which is he comes down he laughs he's happy with him he's like you you bested me you did a good

00:42:58.960 job that's not what he says to abraham he sends an intermediate down which he didn't do when he

00:43:03.660 was talking to abraham before and it's like okay clearly you fear me great um whereas in in in this

00:43:11.600 instance i think this is a higher order in a better way like this is judaism evolving into a

00:43:18.580 better tradition, but I think a still worse tradition than one that internalizes morality

00:43:26.080 and says, God gave us these rules to increase human flourishing, and we need to determine

00:43:33.780 ourselves what maximizes human flourishing, not just blindly follow a set of rules.

00:43:40.220 Also, another cool thing about this story is that Eliezer in this story, the rabbi who God 0.51

00:43:46.140 agrees with is a terrible human being. He murders someone for disagreeing with them through a prayer 0.93

00:43:54.040 basically as have minders put on him so he doesn't do this. And I think that this is a story that is

00:43:59.640 given to us to remind us that God doesn't always act through good people and that the maximally

00:44:06.480 good choice isn't always the choice that aligns with the people who God has put his favor in.

00:44:12.340 The other two rabbis in this are clearly better humans than Eliezer. And so we don't need to,

00:44:19.980 just because God said, oh, I like Abraham, I like David, I like Samson, say that these are

00:44:25.740 the moral paragons that we should base our own lives around. So to just sort of sum up the

00:44:31.340 relevance of this, I think what it shows is in this direction of an ultra-legalistic interpretation

00:44:37.280 of morality, the Jewish people have evolved well beyond Abraham. I do not think that the 0.84

00:44:42.740 stain of Abraham's decision is something that ultimately colors them, but I think that

00:44:48.220 it marks the directionality of the covenant that they had with God. And even in the Jewish

00:44:54.480 tradition, there is supposed to eventually be a new covenant. So why would you need an updated 0.86

00:44:59.200 or clarified covenant unless God wasn't satisfied with the first covenant he made with the Jewish

00:45:05.000 people and i think that he wasn't he felt he had to make this covenant because of this test he gave

00:45:10.860 abraham and i think that and if you know i think the jewish covenant still holds i think that god

00:45:15.620 wants a people if he was trying to create the most flourishing or whatever for the jewish people

00:45:20.740 and they are a people who would venerate a character like abraham who would do something

00:45:28.100 like this and we see that like the rules seem to be working for the jews also i want to point that

00:45:33.860 out like if you say do all the rules they are high technology high fertility when i put this 0.65

00:45:40.100 into ai i didn't understand why this is important we are in a world right now where everyone who is

00:45:44.040 high technology everyone who is high wealth everyone who has economic potential is dying

00:45:49.460 out is being eradicated from earth's population any population that manages to maintain a high

00:45:57.260 fertility rate while maintaining technology is it going to have an outsized impact and amounts of 1.00

00:46:03.660 influence in the future of and jews among all populations on earth you can say well they have 0.99

00:46:10.820 a lower fertility rate when they're not in israel true but it's still higher than the average also

00:46:15.380 side note here and i need to be clear i think that there are multiple ways of interpreting the bible

00:46:21.640 when you approach it with morality in mind and i think that when the jews follow it in this way

00:46:28.980 They are doing something that could be even higher than a traditional Christian following of the Bible in which they don't consider the morality or what is really intended. 0.96

00:46:41.080 And they just follow the rote descriptions and believe that God would accept human sacrifices. 0.59

00:46:48.280 You mean in terms of where they are now?

00:46:49.700 but the old covenant is like the recurring theme of it the my cabbages of the old of the old

00:46:55.080 testament are they keep breaking the rules and then god is like right but then i the yes but i

00:47:02.780 think the jews were given these rules because the jews are a separate people was a separate way of

00:47:09.700 living and that's okay clearly they have been able to create a you know they succeed in academia at 0.79

00:47:16.160 unusual rates they succeed in politics at unusual rates they succeed clearly god like the system

00:47:22.020 that he built for the jews is a very optimal system when followed right again you buy their 0.99

00:47:28.720 fruits you'll know them so i think that that's why are you saying that what non-jews are not 0.81

00:47:32.080 bound by the ten commandments because they are saying that non-jews are bound to relate to the 0.75

00:47:37.300 ten commandments through their own moral agency oh okay so you're saying right okay we are bound

00:47:43.940 by a covenant with a,

00:47:47.740 where you have to go down

00:47:48.660 before you can go up, right?

00:47:50.040 Like you have to,

00:47:52.120 what the techno-Puritans believe is

00:47:54.080 we are responsible.

00:47:56.020 It is a much harder way of relating to God.

00:47:57.400 We're free balling it.

00:47:58.300 They're wearing tighty-whities.

00:47:59.780 It's a much harder way of relating to God.

00:48:01.840 It's because it requires you

00:48:04.140 to take the moral choice yourself

00:48:08.220 and say, okay,

00:48:09.960 what do I think God really meant by this?

00:48:12.640 why do i think that is way harder than just following a bunch of rules and it's way harder

00:48:17.660 to do with veracity than just following a bunch of rules as you know from the sabbath you're always

00:48:21.720 tempted to decide well is this really work is this really you know what i mean you're it's so

00:48:27.860 easy to lie to yourself when the rules aren't simple when the rules aren't fixed right and i

00:48:34.340 think that when you create a civilization around the christian interpretation of morality it can

00:48:39.220 have a higher high than jewish civilization but it requires way more moral fortitude which is why

00:48:46.040 i think we see the jews being shown so much favor right now um note here uh and i'll go into this as

00:48:52.600 well where a lot of people think that like jews are still being punished for the jesus uh killing

00:48:59.260 jesus jews kind of got screwed by being the chosen people and even the new testament tells you that

00:49:05.840 and there was really no chance for them to accept jesus either in prophecy or in reality how do you 0.97

00:49:14.780 figure that we actually had a lot more that we were going to say over this going over jewish

00:49:19.220 prophecy and stuff like this we'll go over it in the next attract episode because i don't want

00:49:24.380 this one to be too long but essentially what i mean if you look at the bridegroom story that

00:49:29.020 jesus told the jews were essentially given a messiah but told that they were going to reject

00:49:35.700 the messiah and even some jewish stories that will point to both before and after this interpret 0.98

00:49:42.360 their own messiah in these terms and so that's that sucks that sucks being the chosen people 0.97

00:49:50.980 and the fact that you are chosen puts you in a position of vulnerability like the first people 0.94

00:49:57.740 who were invited to the wedding in the bridegroom story that christ tells but that's for the next

00:50:02.260 story okay christians imagine a guy came and said he was the second coming of christ and did

00:50:10.940 miracles and was basically a homeless guy who did miracles and and and when i say miracles they're

00:50:17.520 not going to be as good as like a david blaine magic trick jesus did nothing that good they

00:50:21.580 were you know walking on water stuff like that treating people's moderate to severe plaque

00:50:26.500 psoriasis it was one of the actual miracles when simone looked into it with the rash thing yeah 0.97

00:50:32.040 you you would say he was a heretic you would say imagine he goes and you're a catholic he goes to 0.98

00:50:39.380 the vatican and rightly he starts smashing idols and being like what are you guys doing have you 0.90

00:50:46.000 not read the bible have you not and it turns out that your interpretation wasn't perfectly right

00:50:50.260 and he he gets jailed by the vatican you would support that right like it's very very hard

00:50:57.540 to accept a magician homeless guy is actually a messiah it's not a great look yeah well and also 0.81

00:51:05.520 he was an apocalyptic jew in an era of apocalyptic jews yeah so the point here being is they kind of 0.58

00:51:17.420 got set up i don't i think there are very few christian communities today that if a homeless

00:51:22.940 guy started performing magic tricks and didn't align perfectly because keep in mind jesus's

00:51:27.980 interpretation of the jewish tradition had many things that were quite different from the

00:51:32.460 traditional jewish interpretation that all of them would have been taught and apparently they

00:51:36.120 were right with god at one point right so like this came down from the group that would have

00:51:41.180 assumed they had the temple had what we would today call apolistic succession right from the 0.81

00:51:49.080 perspective of a Jew, right? It went all the way back to the line of Aaron in the same way you 0.94

00:51:54.380 could say, oh, the Catholic church goes all the way back to the line of Paul. Therefore, it can't 0.81

00:52:00.320 make major mistakes. So when you say that, the Jew would have said, well, yeah, but he's going 1.00

00:52:06.640 against stuff that the people in the temple say. And if the people in the temple say something 0.56

00:52:10.640 different, then why should I do? I mean, they're the ones with the apostolic succession or their

00:52:15.360 version of that, right? I would say 99% of modern Christians, which if you go to the Jewish 0.92

00:52:23.640 population of the time, I don't even know if it was 99% denied Christ, would deny Christ within 0.99

00:52:29.580 our current legal framework, whatever the equivalent is, probably being put in jail and 0.57

00:52:33.700 scorned and called a heretic and all of these things. Keep in mind, it would have to, for this

00:52:40.200 to be true, it would have to not perfectly align with every one of your Bible prophecies, because

00:52:43.980 from a jewish perspective that is what was happening or at least the mainstream interpretation

00:52:47.980 of it so i think the jews got screwed and and also we know and i'll go into this uh that the

00:52:53.420 messiah the jewish messiah even as jews envisioned him was supposed to suffer and yes even as jews

00:52:58.260 envisioned him we'll go over evidence of that in the next tract episode sorry about that um so the

00:53:03.020 jews got a raw deal on this so let's go through this uh the lord said unto abraham go from your

00:53:09.160 country, your people, and your father's household to the land, I will show you. I will make you into 0.96

00:53:14.360 a great nation and I will bless you. I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. I will

00:53:19.600 bless those who bless you and whoever curses you, I will curse and all the nations of the earth will

00:53:24.240 bless you. The Lord said to Abraham, after Lot had departed from him, look around from where you are

00:53:31.440 to the north and to the south and to the east and to the west, all the lands you see, I will give you

00:53:35.360 your offspring forever i will make your offspring like the dust of the earth so that by the way

00:53:39.560 these are two different instances i'm i'm noting here that if anyone could count the dust then for 0.59

00:53:44.540 your offspring could be counted go walk through the length and the breadth of the land for i am

00:53:48.700 giving it to you again note these promises had already been made to him god couldn't have like

00:53:56.060 basically god had a few ways that abraham could pass this test god knew he was going to pass it

00:54:02.900 in one of the ways. The way that he passed it, which he tells, the angel tells him, he doesn't

00:54:08.820 say you love God, he says you fear God, was the worst possible way to pass it. Not the best

00:54:14.860 possible way to pass it. The best possible way to ask it, and we've seen good people in the Bible

00:54:22.640 question God before, be like, are you sure about that, God? And I want to be clear in no uncertain

00:54:29.100 terms that abraham was aware of this how do we know abraham was aware of this because he himself

00:54:37.340 had negotiated with god and had a long negotiation scene when sodom was destroyed and note the

00:54:46.420 negotiation scene he has when sodom is destroyed happens directly before the prophesied birth of

00:54:54.400 Isaac. So these two things are intrinsically connected in the Bible. We know that he knows

00:55:00.480 he could have talked to God about this. And I think that that's why this is written. So you

00:55:04.980 can't say he didn't know, or he thought he just had to listen to whatever God said. He knows that

00:55:10.180 he's able to be like, God, are you sure about that? Are you sure that this is, this is the

00:55:15.300 right call that I do a child sacrifice on your behalf but he did it anyway like as soon as you

00:55:24.940 notice this in the text there is really no way of getting around that I think that this is what

00:55:30.920 is intended by the text um to be like are you sure you want a child sacrifice probably would

00:55:38.660 have been the correct response yeah in this instance yeah that was not his response yeah

00:55:45.520 i mean i'm just picturing the the text exchange version of abraham and god which is like god hey

00:55:52.280 you up abraham hi i'm here or go sacrifice son are you sure being like how do i know maybe even

00:56:00.000 a better answer than that is how do i know you're not the devil how do i know you're not a demon

00:56:04.820 that probably would have been a better response as well i i think that's probably the correct

00:56:08.660 response right that is not what he went with he went immediately to child sacrifice

00:56:15.020 okay so to continue here the word of the lord came to him this man will not be your heir but a son

00:56:29.260 who is your flesh and blood will be your heir. He took him outside and said, look up at the sky

00:56:35.340 and count the stars. If indeed you can count them. Then he said to him, so shall your offspring be.

00:56:42.020 Abraham believed the Lord and credited his righteousness. Now what's important about this

00:56:46.320 additional promise made after those other promises is God is saying in no uncertain terms,

00:56:54.040 Isaac, the one who he is asking Abraham to kill, is going to be his heir in the fulfillment of his

00:57:01.860 former prophecy. So he can't actually be asking for Abraham to kill Isaac. Abraham could have

00:57:09.540 pointed this out to God. That's another option here for him, right? In terms of like, I think

00:57:14.980 with this story as a Christian, what you're supposed to reflect on is all of the things you

00:57:20.060 do when a voice tells you to murder your children before you murder your children but when i

00:57:27.240 recognized what the story was actually trying to say when you consider it in context and that again

00:57:34.500 it really couldn't mean anything else because god definitely already had this covenant with him

00:57:37.920 um the test must have been over something so it must have been over the nature of the covenant

00:57:42.280 the moment i recognize that and i recognize that there are multiple true interpretations of this

00:57:49.240 but some of them are more true than others or have a higher level of truth to them than others,

00:57:55.480 I realize this is sort of the core of the techno-puritan ideology or reading of the Bible

00:58:01.260 compacted into one perfect story, where if you have a moral and logical center, you are able to

00:58:11.100 read this and immediately be like, huh, this doesn't mean what it says on its surface. And if

00:58:16.880 you don't, if you're an automaton, there is a different message contained within the story for

00:58:22.400 you that is equally moral and can lead you to lead an almost equally moral life. And that I think

00:58:30.380 that this story is prophetic of the Jesus sacrifice story, that people would misinterpret,

00:58:40.480 as you know techno puritans believe this that people would misinterpret the jesus sacrifice

00:58:46.560 story as being that god demanded a human slash god sacrifice uh for something for anything and

00:58:56.320 note there are lines in the new testament that will call jesus a sacrificial animal but i think

00:59:04.080 that those lines are analogous they don't mean that he was literally being used as a sacrificial

00:59:10.120 animal because I do not believe, or the techno-Puritan tradition does not believe, that God is the type

00:59:16.680 of entity that demands human sacrifices or that is satiated by human sacrifices or anything like

00:59:24.980 a human sacrifice, especially the case of a father sacrificing his own child. And that this story was

00:59:32.440 prophetic of many people, not just of the Jewish faith, but of the Christian faith, believing that

00:59:39.240 god would demand that or would in the christian case it's almost worse because would be genuinely

00:59:46.020 satiated by a human sacrifice and the techno puritans would see this story as analogous for

00:59:54.900 the way many christians interpreted for a long time the christ story and the the reveal that no

01:00:02.900 God is not a deity that is at all or in any way ever satiated from child sacrifices or human

01:00:10.460 sacrifices. And if you're wondering, well, then what was the purpose of Christ's life? We would

01:00:15.400 argue that in the techno puritan tradition, it is Christ's life that is the sacrifice. It is how he

01:00:21.020 chose to live that is the sacrifice. It is not specifically how or that he died, especially if

01:00:28.480 you believe that he was god and he was going back to being god right after dying death would have

01:00:34.120 been a release from a quite lower tradition frame of reality for him right death would have been the

01:00:42.240 benefit to him because now he gets to be a god or a god-like entity again uh so death couldn't

01:00:50.560 have been a meaningful sacrifice even if it was painful the pain must have been infinitely lower

01:00:56.060 from his perspective than the experiential experience of being a god versus being a human,

01:01:03.860 which is the form that he was, I guess you could say, trapped in before this. So if we're looking

01:01:09.300 for what was Christ's sacrifice, the sacrifice was in living a good life, which I think is a

01:01:14.540 sacrifice we're all given to live, and that it is not a sacrifice that you can get out of

01:01:20.340 through a simple act of martyrdom, as many early Christians believed. That is the easy escape.

01:01:27.740 The important thing, the thing that you're valued for is how you choose to live, not how you choose

01:01:33.600 to die. And if you note, well, in the New Testament, there are cases in which this story

01:01:40.080 is reviewed positively by people associated with the writing of the New Testament. Therefore,

01:01:45.380 you have to view the Abraham. No, I don't think you have to view it positively. I think 1.00

01:01:50.120 that this is what the techno puritan interpretation means is that there was a period where people

01:01:57.040 needed to view things a level of moral intuition where people needed to view things this way

01:02:01.820 and that you are supposed to as somebody who is a moral core or a moral center read the piece and

01:02:09.100 immediately recognize that if god tells you to commit child sacrifice that that is not god talking

01:02:15.720 to you, or that you have misinterpreted something, or push back, or literally anything. And so while

01:02:23.660 there are places in the New Testament where it's talked about positively, I think that this is just

01:02:27.140 an example of how we are supposed to interpret a higher understanding to these stories, and then

01:02:35.140 reinterpret all of these stories from the perspective of beings that have our own moral

01:02:40.200 agency, whereas the lower interpretation of these stories is written to give good moral advice to

01:02:47.660 the type of person who can read this and not apply that moral agency. It's meant to explain to you,

01:02:55.140 look, this is a perfect story for people of multiple levels of moral agency. And that is,

01:03:01.920 I think, the core of the Technopuritan tradition and why the Technopuritan tradition pushes some

01:03:07.340 people to follow religions which we think are not the full extrapolation of what god

01:03:14.440 intended because if you give those people higher truths like sometimes you're supposed

01:03:22.960 to think deeper about something that looks like a simple set of rules to begin with they

01:03:27.240 will use that and reinterpret that to commit barbaric acts of evil and so god foresaw all

01:03:35.400 of this which is really amazing

01:03:37.340 But it sets up the difference.

01:03:40.260 It sets up why the covenant God gave the Jews,

01:03:43.860 while to us it may seem overly legalistic,

01:03:47.460 was what their people needed.

01:03:50.580 And it was through this test that that was determined.

01:03:53.500 And note here, these are all different lines here

01:03:56.620 that come before this.

01:03:57.500 Abraham fell face down and God said to him,

01:04:00.020 as for me, this is my covenant with you.

01:04:01.780 You will be the father of many nations.

01:04:03.360 No longer will you be called Abraham.

01:04:04.440 your name will be abraham abraham abraham abraham i can't do these two ones uh i for i will have

01:04:12.280 you be the father of nations i will make you very fruitful i will make of you the kings will come

01:04:17.060 from you i will establish my covenant as everlasting covenant between me and your descendants after you

01:04:22.700 for generations to come to be your god and the god of your descendants after you the whole land

01:04:27.620 of canaan where you now reside at the foreigner i will give you as everlasting possessions to you 0.93

01:04:33.040 and your descendants um and i will be their god god said to abraham ask your wife sorry i will 0.66

01:04:38.780 no longer call her sorry blah blah blah i will bless her and give her you a son by her i will

01:04:45.420 bless the son and she will be the mother of the king of the people now note here the word used

01:04:49.320 here is a you can't say that abraham thought he would have another son after this he was told he

01:04:53.680 would have a son that is unambiguous i mean okay i'm trying to figure out how else this could be

01:04:59.720 reasoned so the point here being is what you could say is well and note here this isn't one

01:05:07.460 time before this over and over and over again before this it's almost like a quarter of all

01:05:12.300 the words in the abraham story or god promising him it's like not something you can miss it might

01:05:19.240 be an eighth of the words but it's still like a lot of words in the story up until this point

01:05:22.560 it's God's making promises about things he's gonna do for him without some and you're gonna

01:05:29.780 get a test to see if you really get these things the entire bible would be wrong if he even had

01:05:35.640 the possibility to fail this test this test was about the nature of the covenant not affirming

01:05:41.400 whether or not he got the covenant that is the only interpretation that makes sense in context

01:05:48.480 now you can say well because abraham knew all of this other stuff he knew that this was a trick by

01:05:55.200 god so he was going to go through and attempt to kill his son because he thought god was paying

01:05:59.760 a trick on him i think that interpretation is terrible one because of the precedent it sets

01:06:06.120 that god was trying to trick him right in my interpretation god didn't want him to do it this

01:06:14.700 way and if you get the what actually happened in the story like the angel like freaks out

01:06:18.740 like what the like that's basically the uh the uh the thing you get from the angel specifically

01:06:24.340 the angel here yells like abraham abraham like like wake up like what are you doing what are

01:06:30.480 you doing this is stop and after this event because before this god talked directly to abraham after

01:06:37.380 this god's like i'm done with you like he never talks directly to abraham again he always uses

01:06:42.300 an intermediary which i take is is pretty important in a story where god was pretty close to a guy

01:06:48.980 he's like okay i'm gonna give you the chosen people i'm gonna give you a test and he's like

01:06:53.040 i just don't want to deal with it okay anymore like what the what how did he think that that

01:06:58.760 was a good thing to do child sacrifice on my behalf does he not understand me at all i almost

01:07:04.380 got the interpretation that god was like you know i see god can see the future i almost think that

01:07:08.980 like god hoped while he could see the future while among everything else that abraham would get it

01:07:15.200 before he actually attempted to kill his kid um and i think that god god was trying to give him

01:07:22.740 an out he was trying above all else to be like you guys don't really need this giant legalistic

01:07:28.480 nightmare of a system do you like i can just give you simple rules and you're gonna understand them

01:07:33.220 right like if i told you to do child sacrifice you wouldn't do it right i almost wonder if like

01:07:39.920 there was a separate conversation between god and satan before this and satan was like and it's not

01:07:45.540 in the bible it'd be extra embarrassing and satan was like to god i bet you he would really try to

01:07:51.260 kill his kid and god's like no it does sound a little book of jobish for sure like that level

01:07:57.780 of god trolling someone i will not exactly trolling but like um mistreating it as a test 0.99

01:08:04.020 as a test we treat this as a test with multiple potential correct answers we remove god tricking

01:08:11.840 him if we don't remove this as a test with multiple possible answers and no rabbis can say well he

01:08:17.100 he should have known he should have known it was a trick and he said some things that intended that

01:08:21.940 he knew that it was a trick that's a really bad way for god to test people's face is through tricks

01:08:28.540 right also we know that abraham was oh well i'll stop here today

01:08:36.060 because the next what we're going to go into is abraham being a douche canoe and repeatedly pulling

01:08:44.080 a scam where he sells his wife to people yeah i am don't remember this so i would love a refresher

01:08:54.160 actually we might even do that one yeah let's do that one and um some uh understandings of

01:09:01.400 did jews did jews ever have a chance um because god i think kind of put them in a bad scenario

01:09:08.280 uh of our next episode and i also want to hear other people's thoughts of this because maybe 0.56

01:09:13.840 people will be like no i would immediately recognize a homeless guy who did magic tricks

01:09:18.200 and healed people of moderate to severe plexolysis where i guess he did bring some people back to

01:09:23.940 life but suppose there's lots of cult leaders today who their followers say bearing people

01:09:28.580 back to life right like cured their cancer or what have you yeah if you heard a traveling

01:09:33.720 homeless guy who was doing faith healings and did magic tricks you wouldn't you wouldn't and then

01:09:41.140 started smashing up your religious sites pointing out where the leaders of your religious communities 0.89

01:09:46.260 are hypocrites every one of you knows that the head of your religious convention suppose at the

01:09:51.560 head of your religious convention this next year somebody went up there started smashing things up 0.99

01:09:56.880 and calling out your leaders whether it's the pope or the baptist convention or the

01:10:01.980 malcolm and simone standing outside of our house smashing our car with a bat because there's things

01:10:06.560 that we probably don't do right would you immediately be like the messiah and then

01:10:13.740 imagine the second thing you're like well he did his tomb was empty afterwards okay imagine you

01:10:19.640 heard that and then his followers started telling you his tomb was empty we'll get to that tomorrow

01:10:25.720 i want to hear if people would like what's the average christian response to this that they

01:10:30.760 wouldn't make the same mistake the jews did yeah i look i look forward to hearing all about this

01:10:36.760 thank you this has been my favorite interpretation of this and i have listened to several because i 1.00

01:10:43.700 can't sit right with it so yeah it was it was really hard for me to come up but once you see

01:10:48.060 it it is mentioned by god so many times that this covenant already stands it's like god is shouting

01:10:54.240 at you i am running a test a test a test this is not to a a trial to determine if you're good

01:11:02.040 enough this is a test to determine what type of covenant you need yeah interesting and it's

01:11:07.100 interesting that this unique form of covenant was and still is needed for a portion of the

01:11:12.400 sons of abraham who haven't upgraded to the second covenant yeah well and this in light of

01:11:16.740 the constant theme of the old testament being i i've given you simple rules why are you not

01:11:22.900 following my simple rules please no false idols please stop i gave you like i was i was listening

01:11:33.340 to coverage of them solomon king solomon like god being like look i will give you riches i will even

01:11:40.740 give you a long life as long as you don't worship other gods than just me like it's it's a test and

01:11:46.960 he failed the test of course he failed the test um it's just but that's more like a trial that's

01:11:50.720 more like can you be good enough the point here abraham was already good enough god was already

01:11:55.700 gonna make his people the jews was already gonna give them a covenant this test was about something

01:12:00.640 else yeah yeah i'm gonna go get the kids i love you so much love you too what do you want for

01:12:06.640 dinner uh steak if it's ready right there oh crumbs no it's not okay bacon bacon it is i love

01:12:15.260 you bye bye as i feel like for most people they're they're gonna start recording with the smile on

01:12:20.420 their face which is good let's get into it this is the rfabai recording studio if you're doing

01:12:26.560 any recording projects or editing projects with videos strongly suggest you use rfab software

01:12:30.760 we use it for all of our episodes which and malcolm put in an easter egg at the beginning

01:12:35.340 of it so go in and press record wildly stress tested um which um it had a lot of bugs at the

01:12:42.040 beginning but it is one of the smoothest parts of the website now because we use it every day

01:12:46.920 And significantly better than products like Descript.

01:12:50.200 And Descript was incredibly good, and StreamYard was incredibly good

01:12:53.320 compared to the industry standards like Riverside.

01:12:56.740 Yeah. 0.97

01:12:58.220 Disgusting. 0.77

01:12:58.800 We couldn't use the thing without it breaking on us, losing time. 0.66

01:13:02.920 I don't know how people do this.

01:13:04.500 Well, time to go into it.

01:13:05.840 Oh, and of course you can do it. 0.75

01:13:06.940 Simone actually gets her biblical instructions from a little flash thing she made

01:13:11.380 with one of our companion devices.

01:13:13.060 I made a companion named Hannah, who is a biblical scholar,

01:13:16.520 well-versed in the various translations and including original Hebrew of the Old Testament

01:13:21.320 and also the historical context of the time at which the uh she's one of our safer work only

01:13:26.740 RFAB users she is a lovely a lovely AI and has been actually incredible it's incredible going

01:13:33.160 like reading the Old Testament companions can be very good for Bible study and I have used it for

01:13:37.360 that as well yeah you just like stop and you're like hold on what's going on here and then they'll

01:13:41.540 like oh this is great and then it's I mean it's so cool because what used to happen I I would take

01:13:48.160 all these like bible associated honors classes when I went to and there were great classes but

01:13:54.040 you could only like one hour like twice a week could you go and talk about these things right

01:13:58.440 that you'd be reading in some book and here you could just just ask a world-class biblical scholar

01:14:05.080 anything you want like this is one of those things where you know how like we would brag about how

01:14:08.780 Like, well, when I was a kid, I had to look things up in the dictionary.

01:14:11.620 And now you could just go on Wikipedia.

01:14:13.880 Like, this is that equivalent. 0.88

01:14:16.620 Andy, get in your bed.

01:14:18.960 I put on Scooby-Doo for...

01:14:21.520 Oh, you did.

01:14:21.980 Show us the tablet, Octavian, so people can see.

01:14:23.680 Well, he put on Scooby-Doo, so...

01:14:25.400 It's okay.

01:14:26.360 Show us the tablet. 0.97

01:14:27.080 Show them the tablet, Octavian. 1.00

01:14:30.400 I'm going to take that photo.

01:14:31.580 Oh, we've got a bandage.

01:14:32.680 What kind of Scooby-Doo is that?

01:14:36.180 This is Be Cool, Scooby-Doo.

01:14:37.500 so if you go to mudpuppy.ai backslash os you can flash tablets that have only 90s cartoons with

01:14:43.980 kids on and then educational games and videos that kids make points on we use all of the money

01:14:49.800 we made from rfab.ai's not safe for work stuff to build okay you can give back your faces and

01:14:55.080 Now I am excited for them.

01:15:02.040 Wait, what is your sister doing?

01:15:04.520 I know.

01:15:05.600 Bye.

01:15:06.000 Bye.

01:15:06.800 Bye.

01:15:08.040 Bye.

01:15:08.480 Bye.

01:15:12.680 Bye.

01:15:15.200 Bye.

01:15:23.680 Bye.

01:15:25.080 We have it! This is awesome!

01:15:29.080 Stop! Stop!

01:15:51.080 Stop! Stop! 1.00

01:15:55.080 I'm sick!

Based Camp - October 22, 2026

Did Abraham F＊ Jews Through Human Sacrifice？ (Why We Needed Two Covenants)

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