404 - Fr. Stephen De Young - How to Read Extra-Biblical Texts Like Jubilees (and Why It Matters) - The Symbolic World

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
These sort of elaborations are essentially a way of doing commentary, yeah,
of fleshing out the story to sort of interpret and
apply it. And they weren't worried about this. You'll find
what are basically anachronisms. Right, So we're talking about a
story about Abraham that happened in circa two thousand BC,

(00:22):
and the added details are clearly stuffed from say the
third or fourth century PC, which is when around the
time the text is written. And scholars treat this like, oh,
they let slip when this was written. See, they're trying
to convince us that Moses wrote this. But look here
they messed up, right, not at all. That was not

(00:46):
only not a mistake or not a problem. That was
kind of deliberate.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
Yea.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
They were taking that story and bringing it into their
own time.

Speaker 3 (01:05):
This is Jonathan Pejo, Welcome to the Symbolic World. Hello everyone,
I'm here with a character.

Speaker 4 (01:22):
That is quite known to all of us. Father Stephen
de Youong is with us again today. This is great.

Speaker 3 (01:28):
We are offering a new class for symbolic worlds, the
first time that Father Stephen will be giving a class
for symbolic world It is going to be on the
Nephelim and Jubilees. But today what we want to do
is to give a little bit of a framing for
why it matters, like why this this? Why looking at
these old kind of Second Temple texts and these strange

(01:49):
stories that are added to the Bible. Why why it's
not just about fascinating stories to discover, but why in
some ways it's a it's a kind of theology in
storytelling and the theology and liturgy. So, Father Stephen, thanks
for talking to me.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Absolutely, it's good to be here.

Speaker 3 (02:05):
So tell us a little bit first about about what's
the what's the idea of the class, and then and
then frames this discussion for us.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
Yeah, so, uh, the class is really going to be
about the Book of Jubilees, which is a piece of
Second Teple Jewish literature. Uh, it's one of the most
important ones. Probably the first one people think of, maybe
the Book of nich or first Nick, but Jubileese has
had an ongoing relevance.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
It's a little more subarosa.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
You don't find people debating it as openly or that
kind of thing. You're not going to find as many
quote patristic quotes of people talking about the Book of
Nick and who wrote it in that kind of thing.
But Jubilees is the very rare second teple Jewish text
that you'll still find, for example, linked on Jewish websites,

(02:56):
m even Rabbitic Judaism, although they have a weird relationship
with it.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
But it has kind of lingered around and it has.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
An after life into the medieval period in terms of
elements of it, So that makes it in particular kind
of important. And it does deal with the origins of
the Nephilim, and people get excited when I talk about giants,
so we went ahead and put that in the title
to provide people that that's going to be we will

(03:28):
be talking about. They were, yeah, so get excited. But
so it's going to be about the text. And what
Jubilees really is is it's sort of an expanded retelling
of the Book of Genesis and the first part of
the Book of Exodus. So it's framed as here is

(03:49):
the vision that Moses had and the experience that Moses
has when he's on Mount Sinai for the forty days
from which he is going to compose Genesis, and the
part of Exod is leading up to him being there.
So it includes, you know, the basic framework of the

(04:11):
biblical stories of Genesis, but then also includes sort of
expanded details even whole other story elements and narrative elements
that aren't there in the received text of Genesis.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
So that's really what it is, and that's what we're
gonna be covering.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
We'll be going to be discussing not just the tradition
surrounding the Nephelim, but those and then also these other
traditions surrounding the patriarchal narratives about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob
and Joseph, creation, the Fall, all of those things, and
even with the frame story and some of the the

(05:00):
latter part of the text, some traditions about Moses himself.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
And his prophetic role and experience.

Speaker 3 (05:08):
So why does that why does that matter? In some
ways it's bringing us to our discussion today. Why would
we want why would we care about these stories?

Speaker 1 (05:16):
Yeah, so this is this isn't just sort of the
subject of aniquarian interest, right, Yeah, we're just kind of
interested in that kind of you know, this is the
kind of thing you'll like if you like this sort
of thing. But this is an example and hopefully. One
of the main things I want to bring out over
the course of the course is I want to sort

(05:37):
of help teach people to understand a different way of
doing theology than the modern way. We're all used to
the modern way, right, which is sort of and by
modern I don't even mean all modern theology. I mean
sort of academic modern theology, right, where people do papers

(05:58):
and present papers and you citations of you know, this
is that Bible verse this and that, or Trather this
and that other theologian. That's not how they did theology
in Second Temple Judaism, including the New Testament, right, And
that's not how the Fathers did theology. That's certainly not
how people the ancient ear East even before that, did theology.

(06:22):
The theological texts we find, whether we're talking about Jewish texts,
whether we're talking about Pagan texts, whether we're talking about
later Christian texts, they're explicitly Christian, take a variety of
different forms in different genres. You get narrative texts. You
get ritual texts that described the practices of the people.

Speaker 2 (06:41):
The way they're living.

Speaker 1 (06:43):
You get poetic texts like the Psalms, the most quoted
book in the New Testament of the Old Testament is
the Psalms. So the New Testament is deriving most of
its Old Testament theology from poems, hymns and so, right,
not from some kind of statement arguments and statements. And

(07:06):
so there's there's this vast variety of texts. And I
think one of the things that's afflicting the modern American
and I'm using America broadly to include our Canadian friends.

Speaker 2 (07:22):
Inclusive there you go.

Speaker 1 (07:28):
Is or we can say modern Anglophone right, orthodoxy now
I'm excluding the French, but any uh. The is is
that we we sort of don't appreciate this variety of
ways of doing theology within our own orthodox tradition, and

(07:49):
that that modern academic way is really a small, recent minority.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
Of ways of writing and understanding and thinking theologically. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (08:00):
Yeah, and some with some people, they see theology really
related to certain theological controversies. And that's where a lot
of the theological thinking, or modern theological at least the
one that I see the argumentative type of theology comes from,
which is that you know, you take the conflict with
saying gregor Palamas, you take the conflict with the early councils,

(08:24):
and then you kind of you kind of build theology
around that. But there is a an aspect of living theology, right,
which is the aspect of participation that we are in,
and that is more in the liturgical text and and
the the images that are that are proposed in the icons.

(08:44):
You know, I was thinking about how in during Holy
Week they are all you know, especially in the funeral service,
there are all these beautiful exchanges like this. You have
the Mother of God, you know, telling asking for her
son and to resurrect, and there's all of these images
that are brought about and this discussion that's happening which

(09:04):
is not in the Bible, Like there's a there's a
discussion you know, happening between the Virgin and Christ in
our liturgical text which is added to the Bible. But
it's not there just to add details or to some
ways go against the Bible or to you know, this
kind of Protestant thing. But it is in some ways

(09:25):
to do a type of theology which is participative, you know.
And so maybe tell us a little bit about why,
like what that is and why that matters.

Speaker 2 (09:33):
Yeah, Well, and and.

Speaker 1 (09:37):
Someone getting into an argument about well did Christ of
the theotokos actually exchange those exact words would be completely
missing the point, Yes, exactly, it would be just right
like right over completely. But there's also there I want
to add, though, I think in a lot of cases

(09:57):
that's a very reductionistic way of viewing the.

Speaker 2 (10:00):
The Ecumenical Councils.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
For example, Yeah, right, when you actually read more about
the Economical Councils right preparing for the second Ecumenical Councils,
that Gregory that theologic is writing poetry about the Holy Trinity,
you know, and and a lot of the fathers. A
lot of what we have are homilies, and rhetoric is
an art, yeah, right, the the the art of oration.

(10:25):
And you read about the councils, they're singing hymns, they're
bringing in the relics of martyrs.

Speaker 2 (10:32):
Into their midst while they're having these deliberation.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
So it wasn't sort of this you know, academic debate
taking place between areas and rights opponents necessarily right, in
most cases you have to go a lot further forwarding it.
But but yeah, I think a lot of people now

(10:55):
are arriving at some fundamental misunderstandings. So I got asked
one of the One of the eighty three hats I
wear now is that I'm a Marvel Rivals twitch streamer.

Speaker 4 (11:07):
I've heard, I've heard about that. I've heard of them.

Speaker 1 (11:09):
So while I'm playing this video game, people come out
and ask me questions. And a lot of times the
questions I get asked because the sort of folks who
like watching people play video games on the Internet are
people who spend a lot of time on the Internet. Yes,
and so whatever, the sort of internet social media theological

(11:30):
controversy du jour is tends to come up, right, and
I get asked about it in these streams, And one
of those recently has been about the fate of unbaptized infants.

Speaker 2 (11:45):
Apparent. Okay, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:48):
And there are apparently some people who identify as Orthodox
you never know online, but who are trying to argue
for a certain Western view that even the Roman Catholic
tre doesn't hold anymore, right.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
Apparently, And.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
People are asking me and pointing out to me, like, well,
what about this Cenic Sarian statement on this day here
that's getting quoted, and what about this quote from this
local council in the seventeenth century over here?

Speaker 2 (12:28):
They seem to say maybe like.

Speaker 1 (12:31):
You know, and my response to them was, right, well,
hopefully you've never had to experience it, But why don't
you go read the funeral service for a child? Read
what we actually practice? What do we do when this happens?

Speaker 2 (12:49):
Right? And what are our practices? Right?

Speaker 1 (12:52):
I said, If you read that, I think you'll find
that they're very clearly teaching the opposite of what.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
These other people are saying.

Speaker 1 (13:01):
But notice I use the word teaching there, right, And
they're not teaching in this kind of didactic way.

Speaker 2 (13:08):
They're not laying out sort.

Speaker 1 (13:09):
Of these logical propositions. They're singing hymns because someone's child
has died, yeah, and and they're practicing certain things because
this horrible thing has happened in the life of the church.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
And so we have to kind of reorient our.

Speaker 1 (13:28):
Whole idea of theology. And it's not conducive to social
media debates.

Speaker 2 (13:35):
I don't think.

Speaker 1 (13:38):
I don't think people are going to be able to well, here,
here's an icon of this. Therefore you're wrong, right, so right,
because it's sort of a different way, right, right of thinking,
And what and what brought me to this is ultimately

(14:03):
have it, you know, getting a PhD. In biblical studies
and studying the Bible, right, at a certain point you
have to, I mean, what is the New Testament? The
first five books are a series of narratives, and then.

Speaker 2 (14:17):
The rest of it are letters.

Speaker 1 (14:21):
Written from apostles to particular churches dealing with particular situations
that they're having in very particular ways, right, like Saint
Paul saying, hey, you know, return by cloak when I come, right,
like naming people specifically, you know, I'm glad I only
baptize these particular people.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
Well, oh yeah, these people, right, Like.

Speaker 1 (14:43):
It's this very particular thing about the particular lives of
particular people. And sometimes when I say that, people will say, well,
are you saying they're just irrelevant then to us today?
And I'm like, no, right, that doesn't follow. There's this
idea that unless it's just these timeless, logical propositions of truth,

(15:07):
that it's not relevant because we haven't learned how to
appreciate this wealth of of theology and theological experience, right,
and how to take that and interpret and apply it.

Speaker 3 (15:22):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And so how do you say, how
do you see? First of all, obviously I agree with you,
because I mean I think it would be obvious for
people to see that I agree with you, because my
whole world is that is not that world, Like my
whole world is the other world, which which I tend
to then want to formulate that there is a need

(15:43):
for some of it, like there's a need for some
of the kind of structured the theological uh, you know,
a little bit more debate type thing. But it definitely
is is because I see that because I don't.

Speaker 4 (15:55):
It's not my tenancy.

Speaker 3 (15:56):
My tendency is really to live in the more imagistic
aspect of the of the life of the church, you know,
But I but I think it is important to help
formulate that for people, Like why it is that these
are the types of this is the theology we live in,
Like the theology we live in is a theology of prayer,

(16:18):
Like it's the theology of of of encountering saints, encountering God,
encountering Christ through the stories, through through the through the
liturgical action. So maybe in terms of like the Book
of Jubilees, for example, without using examples from that book,
what why do we have these stories that pop up?

Speaker 4 (16:38):
Like what function do they play?

Speaker 3 (16:40):
What do these stories do to help us let's say,
how do they help us to live a fuller life
in Christ?

Speaker 2 (16:48):
Right.

Speaker 1 (16:48):
So, essentially what produces texts like the Book of Jubilees
in the Second Temple period.

Speaker 2 (17:00):
Is the same thing that.

Speaker 1 (17:03):
We're always doing with the Biblical text, which is we're
trying to interpret it and we're trying to apply it right.
We're trying to and interpretation is a step toward applying
it right. Meaning interpretation is not oh, there is some meaning.
This text has a meaning that is out there somewhere, right,

(17:26):
and we have to figure out the correct method to
derive it right, like analyzing the grammar, or a more
pious sounding version of this is, well, we need to
just find a holy person, because the Holy Spirit will
kind of whisper that secret meaning in their ear and
then they can tell us, you know.

Speaker 4 (17:47):
Means right acuman.

Speaker 1 (17:52):
But neither of those is really how this has this
has worked in the past, right. And so people are
hearing these stories in the Second Table period, they're primarily
hearing them in the context of the synagogue, and they're
asking questions and they're trying to understand these stories and

(18:14):
what they mean, and so the sort of elaborations and
they're sort of narrative elaborations, which is what throws us
a little as modern people. But these sort of elaborations
are essentially a way of doing commentary, yeah, of fleshing
out the story to sort of interpret and apply it.

(18:36):
And so sometimes, and they weren't worried about this, you'll
find what are basically anachronisms. Right, So we're talking about
a story about Abraham that happened in you know, circa
two thousand BC, and the added details are clearly stuffed
from say the third or fourth century PC, which is

(18:58):
when around the time the text is written. And scholars
treat this like, oh, they let slip when this was written. See,
they're trying to convince us that Moses wrote this. But
look here they messed up, right.

Speaker 2 (19:12):
Not at all.

Speaker 1 (19:13):
Right, that was not only not a mistake or not
a problem, that was kind of deliberate. They were taking
that story and bringing it into their own time.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
Right in a way that.

Speaker 1 (19:28):
Made it relevant to and spoke to the life they
were living, you know, in the in the Persian and
then Greek province of Judea, you know, in a very
different situation than Moses was in or Abraham was in,
and that that is is sort of learning to make

(19:50):
that move is a big part of what's required to
apply any to atterpret to reply any of.

Speaker 2 (19:59):
The t edition, any of our heritage.

Speaker 1 (20:02):
Yeah, as Orthodox Christians, whether it's the scriptures or the Fathers,
or the councils, or the hymns or the right.

Speaker 3 (20:10):
And people, it's it's it's important for people to understand
because it might seem harder to see at the outset.
You know that we actually in the Orthodox tradition, we
have several examples of that that come away after the
Book of Jubileese. Right, the Book of Jubilize is something
that was written before before Christianity appeared on the scene.
But we have versions of that, and I've pointed to

(20:32):
them often in terms of iconography, which is what I
know of the best.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
You know.

Speaker 3 (20:36):
A good example is, of course, the inclusion of Saint
Paul in the Ascension, or the inclusion of Saint Paul
at Pentecost. These the everybody knows that in the Bible,
Saint Paul is not there at the Ascension and is
not there at Pentecost. But this is a narrative detail
or an imagistic detail which is included in the tradition

(20:58):
in order to help you understands something that has theological significance,
which is that this is not just an event that
happened at this time.

Speaker 4 (21:05):
This is the church, right.

Speaker 3 (21:06):
This is an image of the relationship between the Church
and Christ, or the relationship between the Holy Spirit and
the development of the Church. That's a little example, but
in iconography there are plenty of examples. If you see,
for example, Christ standing on doors when he is in
being baptized with snakes coming from under the.

Speaker 4 (21:29):
Doors, you think.

Speaker 3 (21:31):
What is happening in that image, but you realize this
is a liturgical prayer from the blessing of the waters
that is brought into the image of the baptism of
Christ in order to help you understand what is happening
when Christ is being baptized. You know how Christ's baptism

(21:52):
is in some way the sanctification of all of creation
and the sanctification of all the water. So these are
a few examples of what of orthodox examples, these are
the ones that I know the best because they're from iconography,
But there are many many examples of extra biblical traditions
that are narrative or imagistic details added to the story

(22:16):
in order to make to help us participate better and
understand better what is going on in the original story.
So I don't know if there are some examples that
you know in the because I'm more imagistic, but there are,
I know, in the turgical prayers and things like that.

Speaker 4 (22:32):
There are plenty of versions of that.

Speaker 1 (22:34):
Oh yeah, yeah, well, and even so, the Saint Paul
is inclusion and in the senexus of the.

Speaker 2 (22:41):
Twelve Apostles, Saint Paul is there.

Speaker 1 (22:44):
Yeah, that's very important for how we interpret the.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
Book of Acts. For example.

Speaker 1 (22:50):
Yeah, because there's this whole episode at the beginning, remember
where Saint Peter kind of steps up and they cast lots.
So they choose Saint Matthiah, who this discussion is in
no way demeaning. He is an apostle of the seventy, right,
he's a saint. But the text, what possible way of

(23:12):
reading Acts is that that was actually an incorrect move. Huh,
And just think that it was actually Saint Paul who
Christ chose to replace Judas among the twelve. So somebody
proposes that and he said, well wait, but he doesn't
explicitly say that it acts right, just tells this story.

(23:35):
But then you look at the icon of the synaxis
of the Twelve Apostles, You look at who the twelve
Apostles are on an iconostasis. You look at Pentecost, you
look where Samathias was and Saint Paul wasn't and Samathias
is not in the icon, and on and on. All

(23:58):
of a sudden you see, well, that interpret right, it's
sort of encoded, is is born out here, right, That
interpretation of the Book of Acts, right, is born out
here in that iconaga graphic tradition, right in other hymnographic traditions.
One thing I noticed this year at Pentecost in our

(24:21):
liturgical triton that I had never noticed before, which amazed me,
and which I've never seen referenced in any of the
mostly bad discussions about this. So obviously there's every year
we get this raft of, oh, isn't it horrible that
the hymnography of Holy Week blames quote unquote the Jews

(24:47):
for being complicit in the death of Christ, right, for
handing Jesus over to the Romans to be crucified. And
I only noticed this year, and I don't know why
I'd ever noticed this before, but in the liturgics of Pentecost.
It explicitly says that when the Holy Spirit came upon Jerusalem,

(25:08):
the Holy Spirit purified the Jewish people at Jerusalem of
the sin of having been complicit in the death of Jesus. Really, yes,
so blood libel lasted fifty days according to our liturgical tradition.

Speaker 4 (25:25):
I guess I never noticed that, I mean, and it
was forgiven.

Speaker 1 (25:32):
But again, there's not sort of this statement, right, the
statement made it Holy Week, you know about the Jews
or well, we're just talking about the people in Jerusalem
and just at that time, there's none of that is
like spelled out, right, but neither is it all sort
of spelled out that way on Pentecost, right, Yeah, of

(25:53):
course it's just poetically described. The Holy Spirit comes, it
purifies the people of the blood of Christ, right, And
so yeah, I've never heard that brought up, right. I'm
of course going to start bringing it up when people
bring up the Holy Week thing, right. So it's this

(26:13):
one finite group of people for fifty days who had this,
you know. But obviously that's very that that's one hymn
in the Pentecost hymns. But that's pretty transformational.

Speaker 2 (26:29):
Right if we pay attention to it, right.

Speaker 1 (26:33):
Of of how we understand that earlier hymnography, which and
that earlier hymnography is part of how we understand the
biblical stories right of of Christ's death, and so there's
sort of a chain reaction, right, But the liturgics are
interpreting that and preserving this interpretation, this way of this

(26:57):
way of reading, right, which is which is why I
don't like sometimes when people talk about tradition, and they
talk about it is like oral tradition, Like it's, oh,
there's all this secret stuff that just like when they
make you a bishop, they take you into a back room.

Speaker 2 (27:11):
And they tell you all they.

Speaker 1 (27:13):
Know, all the stuff right that we don't write down,
that we don't tell anyone.

Speaker 2 (27:17):
Right, it's this oral.

Speaker 4 (27:21):
Content, you know, right, Yeah, it's just content.

Speaker 1 (27:25):
As opposed to just us having received a way of
reading and interpreting and applying and understanding right these texts.

Speaker 3 (27:34):
Yeah, yeah, and in some ways, you know, the the
example I mean to me, the example that's the most
crying and the most obvious is that, again I go
to the iconography because that's what I know. But it's
the cross at the skull of Adam, you know, at
the bottom of the of the cross, right, and so
you know this is not mentioned in the Bible, but

(27:57):
you know, the tradition from which it's taken helps you
understand everything about what salvation is. It helps you understand
what it is that Christ is doing on the cross.
It encompasses the descent into Hades in that little jet,
even in that gesture, right, just having the skull of
Christ or the blood of Christ kind of dripping onto
the skull, you know, it contains the anastosis in it.

(28:19):
There's all of it's such a deep, deep image, and
you know, even for the most kind of biblical you
could say biblical purist, you know that what's being shown
there is the is the best vision of what it
is Christ is doing on the cross. Even for someone
who wouldn't like the fact that these traditions exist. It's like, theologically,

(28:40):
this is explaining to you what salvation is. And so
you know the fact that this is also encompassed in
the story as like this detail that isn't mentioned in scripture,
it's actually there to help you understand what's going on
when Christ is dying on that cross and.

Speaker 1 (28:55):
Before the iconography, because before Christ's death, right, those traditions
were preserved in some of these Second Temple narrative texts, right,
the Greek and Aramaic lives of Adam and Eve that
describe like Adam's repentance after he goes and he sits
on this hill opposite Paradise and they've placed sort of traditionally,

(29:16):
they've placed Paradise in Jerusale where Jerusalem is right, right,
And so he's on this hill outside Jerusalem, right, looking
back at what he's lost, right, and repenting, and that's
where he ends up being buried, right. And again this
is not sort of a free Christian was literally buried there.

Speaker 3 (29:39):
Wait, so what okay, so this is I didn't I
didn't know that this was actually there?

Speaker 2 (29:43):
What? What?

Speaker 4 (29:44):
When?

Speaker 2 (29:44):
Which?

Speaker 3 (29:44):
Actually this is the in the the Life of Adam
and Eve.

Speaker 1 (29:47):
The Greek there's a Greek life of Adam and even
an Aramaic life of Adam and Eve. They talk about this, Yeah,
stands the Jordan River for forty days.

Speaker 2 (29:58):
Uh huh. That's part of serpents because they've placed Paradise
where Jerusalem is. Right.

Speaker 1 (30:07):
He's looking at what he lost and you can see
the connection there because this is being written by people
who have kind of but not really fully returned from exile, right, yeah, right,
and so Jerusalem represents what they lost for their sin, right,
and so they're connecting that experience.

Speaker 2 (30:23):
So they placed Jerusalem there.

Speaker 3 (30:25):
Yeah yeah, right, I mean that happened Jerusalem, that some
of the people there explained that that this was part
of the tradition, that it was where the carnibine was.

Speaker 2 (30:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:34):
And then this hill outside is where Adam ends up
dying and being buried because it's as close as he
can get, right, right, and that's why it becomes known
as the place of the skull.

Speaker 2 (30:48):
It was his skull, that's right.

Speaker 3 (30:49):
But okay, so this is oh, yeah, you're blowing my
mind now because I thought, I mean I thought it
was called the place of the Skull and that there
was this this kind of tradition that came later that
this is where Adam was buried.

Speaker 4 (31:00):
But I didn't know that it was a pre Christian.

Speaker 2 (31:02):
No, that's a pre Christian. That's why it was called
the hill of a skull. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (31:06):
And so when they point out that that's where Jesus
is dying, right, that's connecting it to all those traditions.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
That's bringing to mind all of those traditions.

Speaker 4 (31:15):
Ah, that's wild in the narrative, that's amazing.

Speaker 3 (31:19):
Yeah, and then it also makes you realize that sometimes
like how can I say this, like you could say,
I mean, it's powerful. How you realize that some of
these traditions you also have to be careful to take them,
to take them too metaphorically like they sometimes they're actually
capturing something. It's hard to know how God reveals himself too,

(31:39):
right in terms of because when you go to Jerusalem,
you descend into the chapel, right, there's a chapel underneath
the cross, and there's there's this like opening there and
that's where they say, like that that's where Adam's skull was.
If you look at the opening, it actually has the
shape of the opening that you see in especially the
earlier icons where they show Christ on the cross with

(32:03):
Adam's skull. It has this it's kind of like it
has this this kind of shape.

Speaker 4 (32:07):
And so it's really.

Speaker 3 (32:08):
Fascinating to realize that how like sometimes you think you
know you you you see it more in a mid
rash way where it's like, okay, we're just kind of
I think sometimes it is like we're telling this this
detailed the story in a poetic way to help you
understand what it is. But then you know, I guess
sometimes it connects a lot, a lot more to the
actual way that things happen than we think.

Speaker 2 (32:29):
Well that well, and and that's part of.

Speaker 1 (32:33):
We've lost the ancient understanding of sacred geography. Yeah, yeah,
where we've turned geography just into this material, physical thing
and then sort of spiritual reality is this other thing.
But for example, the Acherusian lake lake aturis you find

(32:53):
all over Greek myth, you find in Greek philosopy, So
it's it's the that's formed by the river Styx and Hades,
and that water, of course causes you to forget everything
right in your life.

Speaker 2 (33:09):
It sort of represents oblivion, right. Plato sort of repurposes
it because Plato has this sort.

Speaker 1 (33:16):
Of reincarnational view and he thinks that souls pass through
the Acherusian Lake and forget their former life before they
start a new one. Then this gets repurposed by Christians.
So in some early Christian apocryphal writings, they'll talk about

(33:37):
people in Hades who are saved through the prayers of
the saints get baptized in the Acherusian lake. Huh these stories, right,
but here's the thing. You could go on a cruise
of lake Actress's exactly. Yeah, you could go there right now, right,

(34:01):
And if you ask an ancient person you're like, wait,
this is the lake, they'd be like yes, they'd be like,
we're not in hades, We're alive.

Speaker 4 (34:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, right yeah.

Speaker 3 (34:13):
And it's so aman, it's so hard for for modern people,
like for me, even me, like I'm the mister symbolism.
You know, that breaks my It just breaks me when
I but I know, right, for example, like a simple
example of that is that you know the moon. The
moon is a good example, right, So it's like the
moon that you see, that's the moon that's described in

(34:35):
all the text, right, it's it's.

Speaker 4 (34:38):
The moon where the.

Speaker 3 (34:40):
Circle of the moon where above it, you know, all
things become kind of unchanging. It is that same moon.
But then there's also an there's also an aspect of
it which how can I say, there's an aspect of
it which you can break away from its meaning and
its mythological participation. And then if you you don't have

(35:00):
the eyes to see, right, it's just a it's just
a rock floating in space.

Speaker 4 (35:04):
That has it has nothing on it.

Speaker 3 (35:07):
Uh, And and I think that's the thing with how
how to find that connection there? You know, we talk
about enchantment or enchanted world. There seems like the saints
or the holy ones, they're able to to live in
that world where you know, you could imagine the story
of a saint, where there would be some encounter at
that lake, which would be mythological in scope. But for me,

(35:30):
I go there and I'm like, mah, you know, it's
like it's just a lake.

Speaker 1 (35:35):
Right, Well, that's that's true of sort of everything in everyone.

Speaker 4 (35:40):
Right, I agree, I agree, But it's still like I.

Speaker 1 (35:42):
When I walk down the street, right, most people don't
pay any attention to me, right like that, There's not
like they don't know who I am. They don't know
that I've written books. They don't they don't know who
my wife is and how she feels about me or
my family. And well, I was right that you just
encounter right things in the world. But there are all

(36:04):
these elements to the reality of what these things are,
and none of that's fake, right, None of that significance,
all that signiferences is real, is just as real as
the physical materiality of it, it's just not immediately available
to us most of the.

Speaker 3 (36:23):
Time, and it's not available to people who aren't participating.

Speaker 4 (36:28):
Also in the story, it seems something like that.

Speaker 1 (36:31):
They're gonna look at the Eucharist and see bread floating
and wine.

Speaker 4 (36:35):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right, that's right.

Speaker 1 (36:37):
And not see anything more than that, right, and not
experience anything more than that. So this is I mean,
this is part and parcel of the whole world being sacramental.
But the saints are are attuned to and able to
see the significance of people and things in a way
that most of the time we have shut off. Yeah, right,

(37:00):
And and that's that's part of And what that comes
down to ultimately is love. That's really part of what
love means.

Speaker 2 (37:09):
Right.

Speaker 1 (37:09):
The difference between the way I encounter most people I
encounter and actually loving them right is seeing who they
are and their significance and their importance, right, and their
relationship to God and to other people in a way that.

Speaker 2 (37:24):
I usually don't. And it's when I come to understand
and see and.

Speaker 1 (37:27):
Appreciate that that I can actually be said to be
loving them.

Speaker 2 (37:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (37:31):
I think the way that I remember getting to this
in a way that I tried to make as practical
as possible was the idea. I call it like my
grandmother's cup. Right, So it's like, imagine, my grandmother gave
me this cup right that befirst before she died, and
and it was passed on to her from her her
ancestors or whatever. And then I have this cup that

(37:52):
I use, right, I drink out of it, but I
put it in my cupboard, and in some ways I'm
the one who sees it. I see it like when
I open the cupboard, it jumps at me, it pops
out of me. A stranger would come into my house
and couldn't tell the difference between the cups.

Speaker 4 (38:08):
But to say that that there is no difference is wrong.
To say that the.

Speaker 3 (38:14):
Salience and the shining aspect of that cup, to say
that that doesn't exist is a lie, because that's how
everything exists, right. Everything that I reach out to use
in the particular moment is shining to me right towards
that purpose.

Speaker 4 (38:30):
But it's just sometimes it's harder sometimes.

Speaker 3 (38:31):
To extend it out right and to kind of understand
it on a cosmic level, or to understand it at
a larger level. It's it's more easy, it's easier to
be cynical about that.

Speaker 2 (38:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:43):
Well, I think I think in our modern age, we've
played this trick on ourselves. And this is I mean,
this is something I said way back when we were
first starting to do a lord of spirit. We made
a trade. We traded that. We traded that sort of

(39:07):
spiritual wisdom and way of viewing the world for a
much greater under scientific understanding of the material world.

Speaker 4 (39:15):
Yeah, for power, And we did get that.

Speaker 1 (39:18):
We do have a much better right. We have microwaves,
we have right, it does work. It is true that
science is bogus. Right, it's it's real. It works, right,
we're talking on the internet right now. Yeah, but we
gave up this other thing. Yeah, and having made that

(39:42):
trade makes that other thing hard to recover.

Speaker 2 (39:47):
Having seen the moon landing.

Speaker 1 (39:50):
Makes it harder to look at the moon and see
the moon the way ancient people saw it. That's why
people deny the moon landing.

Speaker 4 (39:57):
Right, No, I told you that.

Speaker 3 (39:58):
That's also part of in some ways why now there's
an awkward there's an awkward resistance that's happening kind of
a narrative form. Like I've talked about how the flat
earth stuff is part of that too, when in some
ways there is an intuitive return to the narrative part
of reality, but it's it's kind of it's still mixed

(40:20):
with the scientific meaning of the scientific understanding, and so
it's kind of confused, but it is pointing in some
ways to people's desire to recapture the the mythological landscape
or the sacred landscape once again.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
Right, yeah, young Earth creationism, same thing. Now you'll get
the comments, right, right, But so young Earth creationists like
ken Ham I'm talking about like that. That's yeah, yeah,
that level not just someone who thinks the Earth isn't
that old, That's not what I'm talking about.

Speaker 2 (40:49):
I'm talking about like soon like ken Ham.

Speaker 1 (40:53):
Right, Their response to well, science has proven that this
Genesis story is nonsense is not to say, well, no,
you're reading it wrong, and here's what it's really saying,
and here's the real significance.

Speaker 2 (41:07):
It's to say, no, it doesn't. Science pruves it's true.

Speaker 3 (41:12):
Right, and also like it is a scientific text, like
it's literally describing like scientific categories, but which is such
a diminishment of that text, my god.

Speaker 1 (41:23):
Right, and so you don't recapture that ancient wisdom, right,
you're just doing it now, a deformed, incorrect version of science. Right,
So you're losing the good, the good parts of science, right,
and not gaining the other. So it's sort of the
worst of all possible worlds, right to be to be

(41:45):
caught in that.

Speaker 4 (41:47):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.

Speaker 3 (41:48):
And so I I don't know why I'm tempted to
ask you because I never heard you talk about this,
but like this is I think I think, I think
I've never heard talk about this, But what what do
you think this is? Because I think this is all related.
I think that what's going on with the UFO thing
is is related to this, Like there is in some ways,
a there's a kind of sacred landscape or a weirdly

(42:10):
distorted version of sacred landscape that is pushing itself back
into our perception and it's being it's being interpreted, or
it's being kind of assimilated in all kinds of strange
and strange ways that are still kind of hybrid scientific
and all this stuff.

Speaker 2 (42:25):
Right, Yeah, Well, and I think that's that's going on.

Speaker 1 (42:28):
With the use of psychedelics, right, They're not going back
to the pagan use of psychedelics right to have divine
visions right there, try and trying to interpret those experiences scientifically, right.

Speaker 2 (42:45):
And yeah, I mean I think I've.

Speaker 1 (42:47):
Heard atheists say, right, like, well, aliens putting life here,
that would be believable because that could be explained scientifically,
like so promethea sure, but like God, that's ridiculous. Right. Yeah,
it's a way of quasi scientizing spiritual experiences. And that's

(43:12):
why you get a lot of the use UFO stuff
is on this fringy new age spirituality, right, It's it's
trying to to acknowledge the validity of those sorts of
experiences without deviating from the the realm of science. I
think conspiracy theories ultimately come from the same thing, right now,

(43:37):
Obviously people conspire, like groups of people get together and
decide to do things and keep it a secret, right,
Like that happens.

Speaker 2 (43:45):
So I'm not saying, like all conspiracy theories are false,
but in a lot.

Speaker 1 (43:49):
Of cases, people encounter evil in the world that is
clearly beyond just oh, a group of humans all made
the same bad choice the same time, Right, it's clearly
an evil at a level higher than the human But
if you don't have any spiritual sense of evil. If

(44:11):
you think the idea of a demon is ridiculous and silly, then.

Speaker 2 (44:17):
What do you have.

Speaker 1 (44:18):
Well, this must be you know, some larger you know,
there's people getting together in Europe and you know, or
the Bilderbergs or whoever, right, and they're all doing this
behind the scenes and right, rather than just saying well, no,
they're there are demons influencing people, right and influencing masses

(44:41):
of people to do table things, you know.

Speaker 3 (44:43):
Yeah, And I mean obviously, like you said, there there
there can be. There can be a mix of both
to some extent, but in some ways, especially to understand
some world events and some of some things that are
going on, the only really way to truly understand it
is to understand that there are of higher than human intelligence.

Speaker 4 (45:02):
That are acting on us because.

Speaker 3 (45:05):
Especially because of how interestingly how coherent some of the
mythological images that are appearing through these through these stories.
So if you look at, you know, some of the UFO.
That's why, I mean, one of the reasons why it's
been important to talk about the Book of Enoch is
because how a lot of the UFO phenomena connects with

(45:28):
some of the images and some of the ways of
the Book of Enoch talks about technology, talks about I
heard Jane Pisulka recently with the doubt that, you know,
the New York Times guy Katholic guy, where she was
saying he asked him what are the UFOs?

Speaker 4 (45:42):
What are they?

Speaker 3 (45:43):
And she said, well, they're probably a bunch of things,
because on the one hand, there's this spiritual aspect of
encountering these these beings that don't seem to be totally human,
and on the other hand, there's this technology which seems
to be real and seems to be very powerful. And
I was thinking, don't you know that there's a connection
between those two, And that connection is a very old one,
like there's always been this old connection that in some

(46:05):
ways technological progress has always, not always, but has often
been seen as related to some kind of spiritual influence
on the world.

Speaker 2 (46:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (46:15):
Yeah, And that pattern that humanity gets knowledge, technological knowledge
before we're ready for it, and the first use we
always put it to is evil because we lack the
spiritual wisdom to use it correctly.

Speaker 2 (46:29):
It's just born out.

Speaker 1 (46:30):
And the example I give is, you know, the US
splits the atom, right, Hey, carbon neutral power, endless supply
of electricity for everyone, right, Like, this would be great,
but no, not only do we turn it into a weapon,

(46:51):
but we drop that weapon on a city that kills
the numerical majority of the Christians in Japan. Yeah, we
drop it on the most Christian city.

Speaker 2 (47:04):
There's something going on there, right.

Speaker 4 (47:06):
Something else going on there.

Speaker 2 (47:08):
It's not just a question of right.

Speaker 1 (47:10):
You'll get the folks who are like, well, no, they
dropped it there because there weren't any prison camps with
US soldiers near there. It's like, yeah, that's because that's
where the Christians were. The Japanese imperial government didn't trust
the Christians. So but yeah, So that's just a very
modern example. Right when we get technology, we instantly do

(47:35):
the wrong thing with it, and it's worse today because
they should pass. There was a possibility eventually we developed
some spiritual wisdom and now as we're just talking about,
that's much more difficult for.

Speaker 2 (47:49):
Us to do. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (47:51):
Yeah, And so maybe to kind of to kind of
close us off, give us a sense, maybe help people
understand why. For example, I reading the Book of Jubilees,
you know, looking at these old texts, looking at these
old extra biblical traditions. What is it that they can
offer us as modern people, Like, how can they help

(48:11):
us regain this this more wisdom focused vision of the world.

Speaker 2 (48:17):
Ye.

Speaker 1 (48:18):
Well, as we've been talking about at one level sort
of methodologically studying Jubilees. If you take this class, for example,
one of the goals is we're going to help you
learn how to read this kind of text, Learn how
to read and interpret and apply this kind of text.

(48:39):
How these kind of texts are structured, how they work,
how they teach us theology that kind of thing, which
will then equip you for other texts right to do
the same thing. And Jubilees in particular has a lot
to say about the patterns of life on earth. It's

(48:59):
called the Book of Jubilees because it's structured around the
Jewish calendar, so the sacred calendar, so understandings of how
time is made, sacred, understandings of you know, why is
the calendar important at all?

Speaker 2 (49:16):
You know, why are.

Speaker 1 (49:16):
Orthodox people still fighting about the calendar today?

Speaker 2 (49:19):
Right? Like?

Speaker 1 (49:21):
Is it that just you know, whatever, issues of the nephilm,
issues of how evil manifests itself in the world and
why and how that relates to God. A big part
of what's going on with the nephilin with the giants
and Jubilees is actually a kind of the odyssey, yeah,
a kind of ancient the odyssey of why does God

(49:42):
allow these spirits to operate in the world. There are
a number of particular things in the Book of Jubilees
that make it particularly relevant, particularly interesting, But I'm hoping
that on the whole it will also give some tools
to people, like we've been talking about that all help
them read other parts of the traditional liturgical tradition, other

(50:03):
kinds of texts like these and get the value out
of them and greater understanding. They try to recapture, actually
recapture some of that spiritual wisdom rather than just going
into science denial and constructing our own pseudoscience right off
to the side.

Speaker 2 (50:23):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (50:24):
And so everybody, I am looking forward myself. I am
going to take this class, and then on the last class,
Father Stephen and I are going to have a discussion
about the things that he taught, and so I will
be following very carefully, and I'll be following the class.
I can't wait to see because I've read Jubilee I
read it a long time ago. I read Jubilees like
twenty years ago, and so I am excited to go

(50:46):
back into that text and to also see it's how
it's relevant, especially like you said, in terms of everything
that's going on. You know, when Saint Peter says as
in the time of Noah, it feels like, you know,
we are a lot of things happening in our society
today are as in the time of know And so
it is it is incumbent on us to understand what

(51:08):
that means when Saint Peter says that, what it is
that he's talking about, and how how it's applicable to
our world today. So Father Stephen, thanks for everything you do.
You know, I always feel like we're partners in in
in interesting ways where we kind of on these these
parallel tracks where things where You're doing all these things,
I'm doing all these things, and I can see how
they cross over.

Speaker 4 (51:28):
And sometimes I'm always I'm like, like.

Speaker 3 (51:31):
Like the thing you told me about, go go to
I'm like, wow, I need to listen to your podcast
more because that's amazing.

Speaker 2 (51:38):
Well, thank god, thank you, Jolah.

Speaker 3 (51:40):
All right, everyone, so sign up for the class, and
uh and I will I'll see you there during the class.

Speaker 4 (51:46):
Thanks father.

Speaker 3 (51:47):
If you enjoy these videos and podcasts, please go to
the symbolic world dot com website and see how you
can support what we're doing. There are multiple subscriber tiers
with perks. There are apparel in books to purchase. So
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404 - Fr. Stephen De Young - How to Read Extra-Biblical Texts Like Jubilees (and Why It Matters)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}404 - Fr. Stephen De Young - How to Read Extra-Biblical Texts Like Jubilees (and Why It Matters)