September 24, 2025 • 40 mins
TJ and Kris continue in their series of episodes on Nimrod, looking at ancient near eastern stories and the way the biblical author contrasts Enoch and Nimrod. Then they address a question about the persistence of natural disasters despite the provisions of God’s covenant with Noah.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hi, everybody, it's me Cinderea Acts. I'm just listening to
the Fringe Radio Network while I clean these chimneys with
my gass livers. Anyway, so Chad White, the fringe chowboy,
I mean, he's like he took a leave of absence
or whatever, and so the guys asked me to do
(00:26):
the network ID. So you're listening to the Fringe Radio Network.
I know, I was gonna say it, Fringe Radio Network
dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
What oh chat?
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Oh yeah? Do you have the app? It's the best
way to listen to the fringe radio networks. I mean
it's so great. I mean it's clean and simple, and
you have all the shows, all the episodes, and you
have the live chat, and it's it's safe and it
don't hurt your phone, and it sounds beautiful and it
(01:05):
won't track you or trace you and you don't have
to log.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
In to use it.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
How do you get it fringeradionetwork dot com right at
the top of the page. So anyway, so we're just
gonna go back to cleaning these chimneys and listening to
the Fringe Radio Network. And so I guess you know,
I mean, I guess we're listening together, so I mean,
I know, I mean well, I mean, I guess you
(01:31):
might be listening to a different episode or whatever, or
or maybe maybe you're listening maybe you're listening to it,
like at a different time than we are. But I
mean well, I mean, if you accidentally just downloaded this, no,
I guess you'd be Okay, I'm rambling. Okay, Okay, you're
(01:51):
listening to the Fringe Radio Network fringeradionetwork dot com. There
are you happy? Okay, let's clean these journeys.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Gooday, folks, and welcome. I'm Chris Vader and I'm T. J.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Stateman, and you're listening to the Answers to Giant Questions podcast,
coming to you from sunny Western Australia. Good day, folks,
and welcome back to another episode of the Answers to
a Giant Questions Podcast, the show that tackles your questions
about the Biblical giants. For the last couple of episodes,
we've been talking about Nimrod, and since there it's still
(02:59):
so much more to say, you're going to keep on
doing it.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
Yeah, that's right, Chris.
Speaker 5 (03:04):
There is so much more to talk about unless we're
talking about the footy.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Don't want to talk about that, Yeah, Roger.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Let's well, let's not talk about Roger. Let's not talk
about the footy. Let's talk about your mod Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:13):
Good idea. Let's talk about Nimro.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Don't call me Roger, sorry about that. So what are
we look at it this week?
Speaker 5 (03:19):
Well, we've talked a bit about the structure of Genesis ten,
but we haven't talked a lot about the structure of
the Primeval history overall and the place of Genesis ten
within it. And when we do that, we're going to
learn some interesting stuff about the way that Nimrod is
presented here.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Okay, I'm listening.
Speaker 5 (03:35):
Last week I mentioned kiasm, that form of poetry that
uses a symmetrical pattern to lay out ideas around the
central point, which is the climax of the whole narrative.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Yeah, remember that. And we've talked about chiasm a lot.
Speaker 5 (03:47):
Right, Well, at risk of getting annoying with it, I've
got to mention another thing. The entire structure of the
Primeval history is itself one big chiasm. So what now, Yeah,
that's right, and it has smaller units of chiasm with
in it, and as you probably guess, the flood story
is right in the middle, and the center of the
entire piece is Genesis eight one, where God remembers Noah.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
So you're saying that if we took the flood story
and expanded that pattern even more broadly, order encompassed the
entire of Genesis one through to eleven.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
I think you're going to have to walk us through
this real Greek because I'm not sure that I can
see that.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
All right, man, here we go.
Speaker 5 (04:26):
We start with the tolerdote of the heavens and the earth,
or the establishment of divine order and presence in the world.
That's Genesis one. On the other side of this chiasm,
we're going to see that developed into the idea of
a people group through terror the father of Abraham, and
then Abraham will function as the vehicle for bringing divine
order and presence in the world. As we move into
(04:47):
Genesis two and three, we have the concept of sacred
space and divine presence developed and then disrupted by the
actions of mankind in Adam. This finds it's parallel at
the Tower of Babble, which is again about sacred space
and the disruption of divine order and presence. As a
result of the actions of mankind. You see how we're
working our way in toward the middle here from either side.
(05:08):
Then in chapters four and five, we have brothers representing
conflicting ways of living, divine approval or disapproval of those,
and we have genealogies or pseudo genealogies interspersed with some
interesting little inclusions in the story. And again that's reflected
in Genesis nine and ten as we've seen in recent episodes,
where we have different ways of living, blessings and curses,
(05:29):
and something presented as genealogy interspersed with micro narratives. Genesis
six and seven introduced the flood story. Chapter eight, Verse one,
as I mentioned, is the turning point, and the flood
story is resolved in the remainder of chapter eight. So
that's our overall structure of the Primeval History as a
single narrative piece working our way towards the center from
(05:49):
the outside. If you want to know more about that,
I'll recommend an article that are found online which is
really helpful for this does have some big words, but
you'll deal. It's called the Literary Shapes of the Primeval History.
A case for kiasm in Genesis one to eleven. It's
written by Josh Spoelstra and this was in twenty twenty two,
so it's fairly recent. The Journal of Northwest Semitic.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Languages, that's my favorite journal.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
There you go again.
Speaker 5 (06:15):
This is the paper that was published after my book
was written, although I was already on track with this.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
So that's definitely worth read. And he does go into
a little more detail in the article.
Speaker 5 (06:24):
Obviously, what I presented just now is grossly oversimplified, and
there is far more detail and nuance that can be
put into that structure. As a matter of fact, I
think there's some detail it could be brought into this
which scholars haven't picked up on yet as far as
I know. And that's where Nimrod comes in, because when
we look at Nimrod within the structure of this overarching kiasm,
we find that he has a corollary on the other
side of the flood, and that's Enoch.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
You know, I cat on which knock though the bad
one in chapter four or the good one in chapter five.
Speaker 5 (06:53):
I'm talking about the good guy, the one who gets
to be with God and doesn't die like everyone else.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Okay, but what does that have to do with this.
Speaker 5 (07:01):
Well, the two of them function as opposites. One shows
the result of taking the way of righteousness and the
other shows the result of pride, self determination and hubris.
You're only going to see that if you see the
structure of the primeval history as a whole, because on
the one hand, the way of righteousness is made plain
by the example of Enoch, whereas the story of Nimrod
is much more obscure. You need an awful lot of
(07:23):
context to be able to fill in the blanks. And
that's fine if you're part of the first audience who
knows all the stories and doesn't need it explained to them.
Unfortunately for us, we're not in that position.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
By the way, for those.
Speaker 5 (07:34):
Who came in late, we've got plenty of material on
Enoch back in season five. Now in recent episodes, we've
already been through a couple of stories concerning the historical
figure behind the man we know as Nimrod, And as
we discussed, that's a guy known as n Mercar. That
name means lord king hunter, and he has come to
be associated with a god from the ancient world known
(07:54):
as Niuta. The Bible calls him the Assyrian, which is
made plain when you read the King SAME's version if
you don't have access to the Hebrew. And those stories
that we were looking at before gave us a bit
of background concerning Nimrod, roughly when and where he lived,
where he reigned as king, and what he did. And
we saw those associations that he had with both the
(08:15):
spirit guide from the time before the flood known as Adapa,
as well as the god and Inertas. So those are
two separate entities that we see in connection with Nimrod
Aka and Makar. What I want to do now is
bring you another story from the ancient Near East.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Ooh goody. I do like stories.
Speaker 5 (08:32):
It is a goodie, and this one is mythological in
that it's a story about the gods and it's not
written about human persons, although I think you'll see that
there may be a human person related to.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
This story, which makes this myth more like a parable.
Speaker 5 (08:44):
I have mentioned this story in a previous episode, but
never really talked about it in depth. For those who
came in late. The podcast episode I'm referring to was.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
Way back in our first season.
Speaker 5 (08:53):
It was episode eight and it was called Dry Places
in the Q and a On that episode, I addressed
a question about a connection between Egyptian hieroglyphics and the nepheline.
That one is definitely worth listening to again if you
want to get up to speed on this long story
short In that episode, I talked about the origins of
the terminology around the anachem and we trace those connections
(09:14):
back to the ancient Greeks, who used the term anaks
to refer to great kings after their death, and before
that to the ancient Egyptians, who use the word ank
represented by a hieroglyph which looks like the Christian cross,
but with a loop on the top, in order to
symbolize the ascent to divinity. Before that, in ancient Mesopotamia,
the Anzu bird represented the effort to grasp the power
(09:35):
of the divine. And it's the story of the Aarnzu
bird that I want to bring to you today. It's
a great little story about this conflict between the gods,
which is why I say it's mythological. We have to
remember that the term mythological doesn't necessarily mean that it's
not true, but it does mean that it's a story
about the gods. So I'm going to read the translation,
and after that we'll talk about what it means. The
(09:56):
story is actually called Inerta and the Turtle. Lucky, you
have most of this story preserved quite well, but as usual,
the parts that are missing are at the beginning and
the end of the story due to damage and missing
parts of the original clay tablets.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Wait a minute, a turtle, I thought you said this
was about a dirt.
Speaker 4 (10:12):
I'll explain later.
Speaker 5 (10:14):
Where the story picks up is after the Amzu bird
has stolen the Tablet of Destinies from the god Enki,
and Enki wants it back because the Tablet of Destinies
gives him the power to rule the underworld and that's
controlled the cosmos. But he needs somebody to go and
get it back because the Armsu bird has taken it
up a mountain far away. To this end, he recruits
his nephew Ninerta, the son of en Li'le, to get
(10:35):
it back. Remember that Nuta is a god of hunting
and of war. Inerta tracks down the Anzu bird and
shoots him with an arrow. We pick up the story
with the Anzu bird talking to Ninuta, having dropped the
Tablet of Destinies also called the mes into the Abyss,
which means that Enki has his tablet back. I guess
I should explain that the me or plural mes is
(10:57):
kind of like an object that possesses the divine prince
of order and civilization in the world.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
The gods used the mes to rule the world.
Speaker 5 (11:05):
In this story, they're represented by this tablet of destinies,
but in other stories they take other forms.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
So when you say me, you don't mean you, you
mean me, And by me, I mean not me but
that thing called me. Yes.
Speaker 5 (11:20):
Anyway, here's the quote. This is Nuta and the turtle
at his command. Your weapon struck me evilly. As I
let the me go out of my hand, these mes
returned to the Abzu. As I let the divine plan
go out of my hand, This divine plan returned to
the Abzu. This tablet of destinies returned to the Abzu.
(11:41):
I was stripped of the me. Inerta was stunned at
these words of the Anzu. Burd Nin Miena gave out
a whale, and what about me? These mes have not
fallen into my hand. I shall not exercise their lordship.
I shall not live like him in the shrine in
the Absu. Father Enki in the Absu knew what had been,
and said.
Speaker 4 (12:01):
The bird Anzu took the Hero Inerta by.
Speaker 5 (12:03):
His hand and drew near with him to Enki's place
the Abzu. The bird Anzu returned uta Ulu to the Abzu.
The lord was delighted with the hero. Father Enki was
delighted with the heron Inerta. The Lord Nadimad honored him duly. Hero,
no god among your brother gods could have acted so
(12:23):
as for the bird, which your mighty weapon captured. From
now to eternity, you will keep your foot placed on
its neck. May the great gods give your heroic strength
its due. May your father Enlil do whatever you command.
May nin Mina not fashion your equal. May no one
be as awesome as you, and no god extend an
upraised hand before you.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
Monthly.
Speaker 5 (12:45):
May your house regularly receive tributes in the shrine in
the Abzu. May an proclaim your name in the seat
of honor. The hero secretly was not happy with these promises.
Where he stood, he darkened and flashed like a floodston
He contemplated great deeds, and inwardly he was rebellious. He
uttered a word, The hero Inerta set his sights on
(13:08):
the whole world. He told no one. The Great Lord
Enki intuitively grasped the substance of the plan in the
shrine in the Abzu. He stirred up a dark floodstorm
by the house the minister Isimud opposed Ninurta. The hero
Inuta refused to come out and raised his hand against
(13:28):
the Minister Isimud. Against Ninerta, Enki fashioned a turtle from
the clay of the Abzu against him. He stationed the
turtle at an opening at the gate of the Abzu.
Enki talked to him near the place of the ambush
and brought him to the place where the turtle was.
The turtle was able to grab Ninurta's tendon from behind.
(13:51):
The hero Inerta managed to turn back its feet. Enki,
as if perplexed, said what is this? He had the
turtle scraped the ground with its claws. Had it dig
an evil pit? The hero and Inerta fell into it
with the turtle. The hero did not know how to
get out. The turtle kept on gnawing his feet with
its claws. The Great Lord Enki said to him, you
(14:14):
who set your mind to kill me who makes big
claims I cut down, I raise up you who set
your sights on me like this? What has your position
sees for you? Where has your strength fled? Where is
your heroism? In the great mountains? You caused destruction?
Speaker 4 (14:29):
But how will you get out?
Speaker 5 (14:30):
Now? And that's the end of the text as we
have it. It's not the end of the story, but
it's all we have now. You might think you have
a bit of an idea where this is going in
terms of what the story means for our rebel miss
the Nimrod, But I think it really only becomes clear
after we contrast this story with another one.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Ooh goody. I like stories.
Speaker 5 (14:48):
I thought you might say that this is another story
about somebody going down into a deep place, but it
has nothing to do with Nimrod or his god Inerta.
And this story is a lot more famous. This one's
about a goddess whose name is is Inana, and it's
about her descent.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
To the underworld.
Speaker 5 (15:04):
This is the Sumerian version of the story, as opposed
to the Acadian version, in which the main character is
called Ishtar. Now, this story is a lot longer and
more complete than the one we were just reading, and
it also features an awful lot of repetition. So rather
than read the whole thing, I'm going to give you
a bit.
Speaker 4 (15:17):
Of a summary.
Speaker 5 (15:19):
Inana is the daughter of one of the great gods
who lives in the heavens, but she's decided that she
wants to go into the underworld. When she gets questioned
about this, she says that she wants to attend the
funeral of her sister's spouse. Her sister is Rashkegal, the
queen of the Dead and ruler of the underworld. What's
more likely is that Inana wants to go there and
take over. Inana abandons the seven temples that she has
(15:42):
in southern Mesopotamia in order to be able to go
to the underworld, and she takes with her those things
that we were talking about earlier, the seven Mes that
give her the power to rule the world. In this story,
we don't have a tablet of destinies. Instead, the seven
mes are articles of clothing that Inana wears in the
seven means, and accompanied by her faithful servant, she goes
(16:03):
down to the entrance to the underworld. Inana says to
her servant, look, if I don't come back. I want
you to go into mourning for me. Go to the
temples of the high gods and plead for them to
help me. If one of them won't help them, go
to the next temple, go to Enlil, go to Nana,
go to Aenke. At least one of them will help me.
So she sends the servant on her way and continues
to the gates of the underworld.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
This is starting to sound a bit scary.
Speaker 5 (16:27):
It's definitely a creepy story. The gatekeeper of the underworld
answers the door and basically says, who are you and
what do you want? And Inanna says, I'm Inana, the
Queen of Heaven. I've come to attend the funeral of
my brother in law. So the gatekeeper goes to see
Inana's sister, Rishkigal, the queen of the underworld, and basically says, hey, Nanasya,
what do I do? And She's like, oh, crap, let
me think of something I know. Tell us she can
(16:49):
come in. But every time she comes through one of
the seven gates, she has to take off one of
her items of clothing. That's what she does. He goes
to Inana and says, you say, this is going to
let you in, but yet take off one item of
clothing at the gate. Inanna agrees, but when she asks
why this is necessary, the gate keeper just says, look,
this is how it works.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
The gay just don't ask questions.
Speaker 5 (17:09):
But then, of course they get to a second gate,
and the third gate and so on, and this keeps happening,
and every time she asks why she has to take
her for another item of clothing, the answer is the same.
Eventually she gets to the last gate and she gets
through nothing on take it.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
She wouldn't have been any good at strip paker.
Speaker 5 (17:23):
Yeah, you gotta be smart for a game by that.
Now you have to remember what those items of clothing were.
Those were the mees, the sacred items that gave her
the powder all the world, and she has fourfeited all
of them in order to gain access to the underworld.
So she finally gets into the throne room of her
sister rescue Gal, standing there naked and defenseless, and that's
when the Anunaki turn up. In this story, they're the
(17:45):
judges of the underworld, and they pronounced the judgment against Inana.
Because no one who goes in can never come out
of the underworld. The rescue gal kills Inana and hangs
her lifeless body on a hook on the wall to rot.
So we fast forward to a few days later and
Inana's servant realizes that she's not coming back, so she
(18:06):
sets out dutifully to make her appeal to the gods
to rescue Inana. She goes to see Enlil and he's
just angry that Nana abandoned her place to go into
the underworld. Basically says, well, she wanted to go there,
she can stay there. So the servant goes to the
temple of Nana and appeals to him. She gets the
same response. Finally, she goes to the temple of Enki
and Nanke shows some concern and he's troubled. He agrees
(18:26):
to help. He takes some dirt from under his fingernails
and he makes some living creatures to send into the underworld.
He gives them the food and water of life and
sends them to the underworld because they can sneak in
through the closed doors. He tells the two creatures to
go and sympathize with the Queen of the underworld while
she is writhing in pain, and when she offers them
a gift in return for their sympathies. They have to
(18:48):
ask for the body of Inana. So they carry out
this plan and they receive from Erescaghal the body of Inana.
Then they put the food and water of life on
her corpse and Inana comes to life. But then the
anunarchy get involved again and they're like, nobody gets out
of her life, so if you're coming out, then we're
going to take somebody else in your place. And Inana
(19:10):
comes up from the underworld accompanied by a horde of demons,
and they're looking for someone to take into the underworld
in place of Nana. They go to each of the
seven cities in which Inana has a temple, and in
each place she also has friends and relatives, and the
demons keep saying, can we take this one?
Speaker 4 (19:26):
But when Inana.
Speaker 5 (19:27):
Sees how much they were mourning over her death, she
won't let the demons take them. However, when they get
to the city where her husband lives, she finds him
not bothered at all that his wife is dead. She's furious,
so she says the demons can take him, and that's
what they do. So that's the end of the story,
or at least that's all we have of it. And
this story has come to be regarded as the ultimate
(19:48):
descent narrative about someone going into the underworld and getting
out alive. But instead of a glowing tale of conquest,
it's a harrowing story about the cost of trying to
cheat death. Inanda tried to conquer the underworld, allfed a
dominion over heaven and earth and came out humiliated with
nothing to show for it. It cost her everything.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Yeah, that's a pretty dark story, that sure is.
Speaker 5 (20:08):
People in ancient Mesopotamia certainly did not have a view
of the underworld that offered any hope for the future.
Because it doesn't matter how ambitious you might be and
what price you might be prepared to pay, you're never
going to master the power of death.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
I think I can see where you're going with this.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Some of these stories about and Maka were along similar lines,
trying to venture into the realm of the dead, you know,
trying to gain some kind of power or wisdom, but
ultimately ending humiliasian and disgrace. And it was the same
when the first story we heard at the beginning of
this episode about an inerta and the turtle comes before
a fall.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 5 (20:40):
And speaking of that story, I bet when you think
about the kind of creatures that the gods of ancient
Mesopotamia could conjure, real or imagined to deal with the
threat of a rival god, the last thing would have
come to mind would be a turtle.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Yeah, I have to meet turtles? Where not top of
my listen, Ninja turtles maybe? So what's to deal with
the turtle anyway?
Speaker 5 (20:57):
Well, turtles in the ancient Near East were respected because
they live a long time, they move slowly, they look
really old, and they could survive a flood. So all
of that stuff lends itself to the idea of ancient wisdom.
The use of the turtle to defeat the impudent young
god Inerta showed the wisdom of Enki as superior to
the strength and ambition of the cunning young hunter.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
New Nerda tried to take over the world with nothing
more than pride and ambition, but it only resulted and
is doubtful because he lacks wisdom.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
And then the same thing happened to Nanna as she
tried to conquer the underworld. And it sounds like we
had the same situation with Emma car when he tried
to go down into that toomb underground. So all these
stories seem to have these things in common. Is this
a kind of genre of literature.
Speaker 4 (21:39):
Yeah, it is.
Speaker 5 (21:40):
We call these descent narratives, And there's also a corresponding
genre where things work out the other way, which we
call ascent narratives. An example of that would be one
that we've talked about in the past, which is called
Adapa and the South Wind. In that story, Adapa gets
summoned up to heaven and he's offered these glorious gifts,
but he's tricked into not accepting a gift that would
have given him immortality. Nevertheless, he comes back with great wisdom.
(22:04):
The biblical story of Enoch is kind of like one
of these assent narratives.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Ah, there it is. I I was wondering when you
were gonna come back to Enoch.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (22:13):
So on the one hand, Enoch, because of his righteousness,
gets called up to heaven to be with God and
he does not experience death.
Speaker 4 (22:20):
We talked about this back.
Speaker 5 (22:21):
In season five, in particular episode eleven, which was called
Introducing Enoch and the stories that arise about him in
the Second Temple period come out of the fine details
of that original story how Enoch walked with or pleased God,
and how he walked among the gods, elaborating on his
adventures and on his role as a messianic figure. In
those stories, Enoch imparts the messages of God to both
(22:41):
men and angels.
Speaker 4 (22:42):
On the other hand, when.
Speaker 5 (22:43):
We read Genesis ten, we have the story about Nimrod,
who begins amassing a great empire before something happens to him,
and the text doesn't say what it is, other than
to suggest that he became a giant. But the end
result is that Nimrod's name disappears, only to be replaced
with that of the Assyrih, who goes on to conquer
northern Mesopotamia. And while I believe that these two names
(23:05):
belong to the same person, there seems to be a
fundamental shifting identity on the other side of that missing
central core of the story. But the way that we
know what to make of the story of Nimrod and
how to interpret that comes from the premise that if
the whole Primeval history is one great, big chiastic structure,
then Enoch's ascent narrative has to have a counterpart on
(23:25):
the other side of the flood, in the spot occupied
by Nimrod. The stories from ancient Mesopotamian literature provide some
contexts and helped fill in the gaps as to how
to interpret it in terms of a descent narrative, but
they all full short of telling us exactly what happened.
What I think we know is that there was a
descent into the realm of the dead and encounter with
an ancient corpse, some kind of attempt at divination, something
(23:49):
something happens. Nimrod loses his identity and exits in disgrace,
possibly accompanied by a horde of demons, and an ancient
god known as the Assyrian comes out of southern Mesopotami
under the guise of Nimrod and starts heading toward the
Promised Land. And I think that's why Isaiah fourteen targets
the Assyrian.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
That's creepy, but it's also very interesting. You mentioned just
now and last week that the story of Nimrod had
a missing part that should have been in the middle,
and you were saying that the whole thing makes more
sense when the story is complete, But he didn't tell us, well,
I was missing. When are we going to find out.
Speaker 5 (24:26):
Well, for those people who've read my book, they already know.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
For everyone else, there's always hope.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Yes, and that website again to is our Giant Answers
dot Com. Anyway, that's all we've got time for because
now we've got.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
Q and A.
Speaker 5 (24:41):
Yeah, I might just say something before we move into
the Q and A. We've been doing a few episodes
now on Nimrod, and there's more to come. And for
some of you, maybe this is an uncomfortable place to
be because a lot of what I do usually revolves
around purely academic perspectives combined with historical Christian understandings of
the biblical texting question. In these recent episodes may seem
to have gone so far off track that it kind
(25:02):
of feels like this is all just made up nonsense.
I will admit that some of it is by necessity
highly speculative, because as I mentioned before, there are a
lot of missing pieces. It doesn't help my case that
every time we find a relevant ancient manuscript it has
holes or damage or missing bits right at the critical point.
And you might say, well, that's good enough reason to
just leave it alone and not speculate, and fair enough
(25:24):
If that's we land on things, that's fine. But I've
always believed that there are two kinds of people in
the world. There are those who are able to extrapolate
from incomplete data sets and then so yes, I will
admit that it's speculative thinking here, and maybe that puts
us on shaky ground. For that reason, I'm not encouraging
(25:46):
listeners to take this as gospel. But from where I stand,
it looks like the shoe fits, and we'll see what
happens as we continue to make new discoveries in the
field of ancient Near eastan and biblical scholarship. I'm happy
to stand corrected, but I'm going to need to see
something that's more coherent than what I've been now to
present here and takes into account all the data that
we have vailed. If anyone can do that, I really
want to hear what you have to say, and you
can reach me through the website if you want to.
Speaker 4 (26:08):
Anyway, that's all for this part of the show.
Speaker 5 (26:09):
When we come back next week, we'll be talking about
someone else who's probably quite wrong about Nimrod, so stay
tuned for that.
Speaker 4 (26:16):
Here's the Q and A.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
Indeed, I want to keep your giant questions.
Speaker 5 (26:20):
If you have a question about stuff you've heard on
the show or somewhere else, is something you've found in
your Bible.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
Or just some general feedback you'd like to tell us
out the.
Speaker 5 (26:27):
World at large. Here's how you do it. Compaed to
the website Giant Answers dot com.
Speaker 4 (26:31):
I personally received order all.
Speaker 5 (26:33):
Mail, and I will try to get to all of it.
Speaker 4 (26:35):
I love hearing from it, especially if you get answers
to your giant question.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
So our Valerie boast of this question in the chat
in the lovely New community we are part of ads
on this hyphen a rock dot com. What is really
bothering me is the Noaic. I don't know if I
said that right. As always, you'll correct your tent covenant
and the reason for the flood in the first place.
I've always assumed that it was God's way judging the
(27:00):
evil that the Watchers and Nephelim have produced upon the earth,
God even stating that he repented of creating man. Altogether
understandable is the abominations produced by the watcher human union,
whereas against his plant from mankind. What bothers me is
the geographical evidence of cyclic cataclysms like clockwork, apparently having
nothing to do with God judging sin or angelic overreach
(27:23):
into disobedience. There is proven evidence of a twenty five
thousand year recycling or reset, and we are preaching one now.
There is archaeological evidence of past structures dating to the
last cataclysm some eleven seven hundred years ago, Gebecley Tepe
for example, gray pyramid structures such as Teo Wanaka in
(27:45):
Bolivia and others worldwide. How do we reconcile these things?
It's like God programmed the Earth to reset, regardless of
if it's related to judgment or not. One more thought
the flood was going to happen, regardless if God hadn't
discovered No, it's just standing the Earth had reached a
point of reset. The Great Dowlage was the result of
something like a pole shift. God promised the next would
(28:07):
be by fire, and that is what we're seeing now.
Son is that its solar maximum, The magnetosphere is thinning
and radiation is a stronger on Earth now. A solar
plasma discharge is all takes it up into Earth once
again and set man back to the Stone Age again.
Secury thing is you can literally see it building. With
all the crazy weather. The volcano uptics worldwide at earthquakes,
(28:29):
floodings are out of control. I am trying to find
how this marries up with the Covenant Zanoah.
Speaker 5 (28:35):
Wow, Okay, well that is a great question.
Speaker 4 (28:40):
Thanks for asking, Valerie.
Speaker 5 (28:42):
Firstly, I think you're right about your understanding of the
reason for the flood. There can be little doubt that
the rationale for the flood was the violence both between
and against humanity created by the Watchers and their offspring.
But the real question is how to think about natural disasters.
There are a few different facts is that we'll have
to talk about here in order to arrive at some
(29:02):
meaningful conclusions. I guess the main thing is that we
don't really know whether something happens because God is passing
judgment or if it just happens because that's the way that.
Speaker 4 (29:12):
God made the world work.
Speaker 5 (29:14):
When we read the Bible with the benefit of hindsight,
because it was written after the fact, we get told
why God does things. But that's not the experience that
we have outside of biblical events. We have no clear
evidence that God is communicating with us through tornadoes or floods,
or wildfires or earthquakes. We would have to make our
own judgment as to whether or not such a thing
(29:35):
was deserved by a population if we were to consider
it some kind of punishment or judgment from God. I
don't think we're in a good position to do that.
Then again, just as we don't know if a so
called natural disaster might actually be the judgment of God,
we also don't know if these things just happen without
any rhyme or reason or any divinely inspired meaning. Certainly
(29:56):
ancient people viewed these things as an act of God's phrase,
you're still here today. But you're right to say that
these things are happening all the time. And the question is,
just because we know stuff about it, does that mean
that God isn't behind the event, and that he doesn't
necessarily mean to communicate something through it as having scientific
knowledge silence the voice of God. I don't think that's
a good position to take either. I can see why
(30:19):
some people talk about issues like predestination in the face
of naturally occurring disasters seem to happen on a regular basis.
Perhaps it's just the case that these are the regular
interventions of God on a kind of divine timetable and
if you just happen to be around when the clock
runs out, then you cop it. But I don't know
that that's really keeping with the character of the god
of the Bible.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Yeah, I don't know about predestination. Sounds more like final destination.
Speaker 4 (30:44):
Death doesn't take no for an answer. I've got another alternative.
Speaker 5 (30:49):
Since the questions focused on the story of Noah and
the flood, and the Covenant comes after that and relates
directly to that flood, maybe we need to think of
a bit more about the nature of that flood. And
if you've been following this podcast over the last few seasons,
you know what I'm about to say. I don't think
that the event that the Bible describes in terms of
(31:10):
a flood necessarily had anything to do with water. I
think that the imagery of flood is used because it
provides a poetic way to talk about the destructive and
devastating effect of warfare. I think that the event that
Noah and his family survived was not actually a deluge
of water, but a large scale battle involving both human
and cosmic forces. And if you're curious about that, as
(31:31):
I mentioned, we've been talking about it on this podcast
in season six, so there's heaps of material to help
you get a grip on what I'm saying here. You
mentioned that big cataclysm eleven thousand years ago, and I'm
not saying that it didn't happen. All I'm saying is
that an event like that becomes a legendary story, and
a story like that becomes a great way to tell
about survival in the face of impossible odds and widespread destruction,
(31:53):
the kind of thing that happens in war. It was
just last week on the podcast that I mentioned that
the way the story of Noah gets told inim first
Zenok has nothing to do with the flood of water.
In fact, the wooden structure they build as a refuge
isn't even a boat, but they use the refuge to
escape the violence of the world around them, which devastates
the land like a flood. Look at the stories from
Mesopotamia we've been reading in these last episodes. We had
(32:15):
it just now in the story of Nuta and the Turtle,
when the gods fight each other, it is described as
a storm. So bringing that back to the covenant made
with Noah, if the flood was actually a huge battle
between divine and human forces and not a natural disaster.
Then it makes sense that God can promise that he's
not going to make that happen again. So it doesn't
matter how many floods or fires or earthquakes there are,
(32:35):
they're not related to the covenant that God made with Noah.
I'm not saying that natural disasters can't be God's way
of dealing with things. I just don't think that's what's
going on with the floodstory in Genesis, and one of
the primary things that motivated me to study that story
more closely was the inconsistency of having a covenant from
an all knowing God that gets broken every time we
get a lot of rain. That just doesn't make sense.
I think that a close reading of the text and
(32:56):
an accurate view of what the Bible is affirming the
flood story makes all the difference.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
It's definitely where it's going back over those previous episodes
of the podcast, if you're finding all this would be confusing.
Speaker 5 (33:05):
Absolutely. One last thing I've mentioned this before on the podcast.
For the sake of this question, i'll say it again.
The way that the Bible talks about the heavens and
the earth is not intended to describe necessarily the sky
and the land. Quite often that expression the heavens and
the earth gets used in a way that describes the
operation of things in the world in both divine and
(33:26):
human realms. It's talking about order and government and the
function of the world, the divine economy rather than rocks
beneath and air above. And the idea of making the
heavens and the earth pass away and bringing about a
new heavens and a new Earth can be understood as
God bringing about a reset not of the physical structure
of the planet, but the cosmic order and the way
(33:46):
of life for humans. So when we read in the
Second Peter chapter three about the heavens and the Earth
being reserved for fire, we need to read that in
its context and understand the application. This is talking about
the judgment and destruction of the ung God, not the
judgment and destruction of the planet. And we also need
to remember that fire is often used to talk about spirit.
(34:07):
What happened when the apostles receive the Holy Spirit in
the upper room of Pentecost fire and what was the result?
Lives were changed and transformed. That's the beginning. If the
heavens and the earth refer to world order and government.
Then it gets renewed when people submit to the new order,
the new government, the authority of Christ. I'm not saying
they won't be a future judgment. I'm just saying that
(34:27):
this is the start. It begins when people submit to
the lordship of Christ. As Jesus said, heaven and earth
will pass away, but my words will never pass away,
because when his words take root in your heart, the
new heavens and the new Earth are established in your life.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
That's good. Well, we are going to have to leave
it there because it's time for us to go. But
never fear.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
We will be back next week with even more fascinating
stuff about Nimrod and more answers to your giant questions.
Speaker 5 (34:54):
That's right, don't forget to send in your questions. Just
go to the website Giant Answers dot com. We'll catch
you next time.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
Bye bye.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
It's time to wrap up today's episode, But if you
want more, don't forget to get yourself a copy of
Answers to Giant Questions. We're asking readers to please leave
a review of the book on Amazon or good Reads
to help it become more visible in search results. Even
if you just give it stars, that will help out
a full review you certainly really appreciated. Please also leave
a review of this podcast wherever you found us, so
(35:23):
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This podcast comes out every week, but you want to
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on the Answers to Giant Questions podcast.
Speaker 5 (35:39):
Thank you for listening to the Answers to Giant Questions Podcast,
a production of the Raven Creek Social Clubs.
Speaker 4 (35:44):
If you like what you heard today, please take a
moment to rate for a review. The show music supplied.
Speaker 5 (35:48):
Under copyright by Rapeful Sacred Grateful Sacred dot com. You
can get the book Answers to Giant Questions by TJ.
Seedman on Amazon paperback sible format. Check out the other
podcast that lab Free Airthy've Got Common Giant Answers Got
on for more answers Just Giant Questions. Reread the blog
and catch us on the social don't forget to subscribe
until your friends are out the show. Send us your
(36:09):
giant questions and stay tuned with this podcast to get answers.
We'll see you next time.
Speaker 4 (36:14):
Until then, stay safe and godless.
Speaker 5 (36:16):
Last week I mentioned chiasm, that form of poetry that
uses a symmetrical pattern to lay out ideas around the
central point, which is the climax of the whole narrative.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Yeah, I do remember that, and we've talked about kaiabers.
Good day, folks, and welcome back to another episode of.
Speaker 4 (36:33):
The that thing we do?
Speaker 3 (36:38):
What's it called? Again?
Speaker 4 (36:40):
Okay, we are the two men?
Speaker 2 (36:44):
Yes, the earth had reached a point of am I
supposed to be really artist? Okay, that's still part of
the question. Okay, my eyes are having trouble adjusting to
the bold and the non bold.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
Okay, sorry, Valerie, Okay.
Speaker 4 (36:58):
You're on mute. I can't hear you. I still can't
hear you. Why can't I hear you?
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Okay, no, yes, yes, so odd. I was showing unmuted
both times. Okay, I just unplunked it making again.
Speaker 4 (37:10):
I didn't want to start talking really fast and just
starving enough.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
Yeah, yeah, yes, I'm going to go build a Lego set.
Speaker 4 (37:20):
You know I've got one for Father's Day? Is a
Formula one car.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
Oh nice, Yeah, that's the show it to me next week.
Speaker 5 (37:31):
Yeah yeah, just a relatively small one. It's not one
of those huge, you know, five hundred dollar things, but yeah,
it looks like it'll be fun.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Ah.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
Look at this t MCL.
Speaker 5 (37:41):
You might recognize me from such action figures.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
That comes with the juice loosener.
Speaker 4 (37:45):
Oh nice.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
All this and one bag of oranges it's required.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
Yeah, and it comes through the little glass like with
one drop of orange like that on the bottom.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
Oh so good.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
I've got this Great Commission strategic card game, so it's
it's basically what it says on the box. So I
haven't really played with it, but yeah, my church likes
all games and card games and stuff. So yeah, it
comes with all different guards and I'm looking forward to
giving that a go.
Speaker 4 (38:25):
No, very good. Do you get to play as Saints
or something?
Speaker 2 (38:29):
No?
Speaker 3 (38:29):
I think what is it?
Speaker 2 (38:32):
The Great Commission is a corp operative strategy game where
you take on the challenge of leading a church in
the tumultuous Roman era. The manager congregation full of diverse personalities,
each contributing their own unique talents and gifts, but also
bringing their struggles send conflict to even demonic opposition. That
sounds intenso yeah, it looks like it's there's like a
(38:53):
card for like artisan and philosopher and city clerk, nurse,
and then there's Priscilla and a quilla and illness.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
Yeah interesting.
Speaker 4 (39:05):
Can you get burned by the emperor?
Speaker 3 (39:06):
Yeah, they'll be depressing.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
But it doesn't say family friendly, so possibly there's not
another kickstarter which.
Speaker 5 (39:14):
Got that guy who was having an affair with his
step mom.
Speaker 3 (39:18):
Yeah, he's going to even throw in a free lolly.
Some that is Israeli something maybe you know.
Speaker 4 (39:30):
Who knows it's some biblical thing food before you put it.
Speaker 3 (39:38):
True, I just add a razor.
Speaker 4 (39:43):
Oh, it's the adhesive for the parts.
Speaker 3 (39:46):
Yeah, my game's faulty and chips followed apart. I'm sure
we set you the glue.
Speaker 4 (39:55):
Never never want to explain some things.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
I live on soup now, but the game's really good.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
I
Hi, everybody, it's me Cinderea Acts. I'm just listening to
the Fringe Radio Network while I clean these chimneys with
my gass livers. Anyway, so Chad White, the fringe chowboy,
I mean, he's like he took a leave of absence
or whatever, and so the guys asked me to do
(00:26):
the network ID. So you're listening to the Fringe Radio Network.
I know, I was gonna say it, Fringe Radio Network
dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
What oh chat?
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Oh yeah? Do you have the app? It's the best
way to listen to the fringe radio networks. I mean
it's so great. I mean it's clean and simple, and
you have all the shows, all the episodes, and you
have the live chat, and it's it's safe and it
don't hurt your phone, and it sounds beautiful and it
(01:05):
won't track you or trace you and you don't have
to log.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
In to use it.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
How do you get it fringeradionetwork dot com right at
the top of the page. So anyway, so we're just
gonna go back to cleaning these chimneys and listening to
the Fringe Radio Network. And so I guess you know,
I mean, I guess we're listening together, so I mean,
I know, I mean well, I mean, I guess you
(01:31):
might be listening to a different episode or whatever, or
or maybe maybe you're listening maybe you're listening to it,
like at a different time than we are. But I
mean well, I mean, if you accidentally just downloaded this, no,
I guess you'd be Okay, I'm rambling. Okay, Okay, you're
(01:51):
listening to the Fringe Radio Network fringeradionetwork dot com. There
are you happy? Okay, let's clean these journeys.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Gooday, folks, and welcome. I'm Chris Vader and I'm T. J.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Stateman, and you're listening to the Answers to Giant Questions podcast,
coming to you from sunny Western Australia. Good day, folks,
and welcome back to another episode of the Answers to
a Giant Questions Podcast, the show that tackles your questions
about the Biblical giants. For the last couple of episodes,
we've been talking about Nimrod, and since there it's still
(02:59):
so much more to say, you're going to keep on
doing it.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
Yeah, that's right, Chris.
Speaker 5 (03:04):
There is so much more to talk about unless we're
talking about the footy.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Don't want to talk about that, Yeah, Roger.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Let's well, let's not talk about Roger. Let's not talk
about the footy. Let's talk about your mod Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:13):
Good idea. Let's talk about Nimro.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Don't call me Roger, sorry about that. So what are
we look at it this week?
Speaker 5 (03:19):
Well, we've talked a bit about the structure of Genesis ten,
but we haven't talked a lot about the structure of
the Primeval history overall and the place of Genesis ten
within it. And when we do that, we're going to
learn some interesting stuff about the way that Nimrod is
presented here.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Okay, I'm listening.
Speaker 5 (03:35):
Last week I mentioned kiasm, that form of poetry that
uses a symmetrical pattern to lay out ideas around the
central point, which is the climax of the whole narrative.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Yeah, remember that. And we've talked about chiasm a lot.
Speaker 5 (03:47):
Right, Well, at risk of getting annoying with it, I've
got to mention another thing. The entire structure of the
Primeval history is itself one big chiasm. So what now, Yeah,
that's right, and it has smaller units of chiasm with
in it, and as you probably guess, the flood story
is right in the middle, and the center of the
entire piece is Genesis eight one, where God remembers Noah.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
So you're saying that if we took the flood story
and expanded that pattern even more broadly, order encompassed the
entire of Genesis one through to eleven.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
I think you're going to have to walk us through
this real Greek because I'm not sure that I can
see that.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
All right, man, here we go.
Speaker 5 (04:26):
We start with the tolerdote of the heavens and the earth,
or the establishment of divine order and presence in the world.
That's Genesis one. On the other side of this chiasm,
we're going to see that developed into the idea of
a people group through terror the father of Abraham, and
then Abraham will function as the vehicle for bringing divine
order and presence in the world. As we move into
(04:47):
Genesis two and three, we have the concept of sacred
space and divine presence developed and then disrupted by the
actions of mankind in Adam. This finds it's parallel at
the Tower of Babble, which is again about sacred space
and the disruption of divine order and presence. As a
result of the actions of mankind. You see how we're
working our way in toward the middle here from either side.
(05:08):
Then in chapters four and five, we have brothers representing
conflicting ways of living, divine approval or disapproval of those,
and we have genealogies or pseudo genealogies interspersed with some
interesting little inclusions in the story. And again that's reflected
in Genesis nine and ten as we've seen in recent episodes,
where we have different ways of living, blessings and curses,
(05:29):
and something presented as genealogy interspersed with micro narratives. Genesis
six and seven introduced the flood story. Chapter eight, Verse one,
as I mentioned, is the turning point, and the flood
story is resolved in the remainder of chapter eight. So
that's our overall structure of the Primeval History as a
single narrative piece working our way towards the center from
(05:49):
the outside. If you want to know more about that,
I'll recommend an article that are found online which is
really helpful for this does have some big words, but
you'll deal. It's called the Literary Shapes of the Primeval History.
A case for kiasm in Genesis one to eleven. It's
written by Josh Spoelstra and this was in twenty twenty two,
so it's fairly recent. The Journal of Northwest Semitic.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Languages, that's my favorite journal.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
There you go again.
Speaker 5 (06:15):
This is the paper that was published after my book
was written, although I was already on track with this.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
So that's definitely worth read. And he does go into
a little more detail in the article.
Speaker 5 (06:24):
Obviously, what I presented just now is grossly oversimplified, and
there is far more detail and nuance that can be
put into that structure. As a matter of fact, I
think there's some detail it could be brought into this
which scholars haven't picked up on yet as far as
I know. And that's where Nimrod comes in, because when
we look at Nimrod within the structure of this overarching kiasm,
we find that he has a corollary on the other
side of the flood, and that's Enoch.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
You know, I cat on which knock though the bad
one in chapter four or the good one in chapter five.
Speaker 5 (06:53):
I'm talking about the good guy, the one who gets
to be with God and doesn't die like everyone else.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Okay, but what does that have to do with this.
Speaker 5 (07:01):
Well, the two of them function as opposites. One shows
the result of taking the way of righteousness and the
other shows the result of pride, self determination and hubris.
You're only going to see that if you see the
structure of the primeval history as a whole, because on
the one hand, the way of righteousness is made plain
by the example of Enoch, whereas the story of Nimrod
is much more obscure. You need an awful lot of
(07:23):
context to be able to fill in the blanks. And
that's fine if you're part of the first audience who
knows all the stories and doesn't need it explained to them.
Unfortunately for us, we're not in that position.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
By the way, for those.
Speaker 5 (07:34):
Who came in late, we've got plenty of material on
Enoch back in season five. Now in recent episodes, we've
already been through a couple of stories concerning the historical
figure behind the man we know as Nimrod, And as
we discussed, that's a guy known as n Mercar. That
name means lord king hunter, and he has come to
be associated with a god from the ancient world known
(07:54):
as Niuta. The Bible calls him the Assyrian, which is
made plain when you read the King SAME's version if
you don't have access to the Hebrew. And those stories
that we were looking at before gave us a bit
of background concerning Nimrod, roughly when and where he lived,
where he reigned as king, and what he did. And
we saw those associations that he had with both the
(08:15):
spirit guide from the time before the flood known as Adapa,
as well as the god and Inertas. So those are
two separate entities that we see in connection with Nimrod
Aka and Makar. What I want to do now is
bring you another story from the ancient Near East.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Ooh goody. I do like stories.
Speaker 5 (08:32):
It is a goodie, and this one is mythological in
that it's a story about the gods and it's not
written about human persons, although I think you'll see that
there may be a human person related to.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
This story, which makes this myth more like a parable.
Speaker 5 (08:44):
I have mentioned this story in a previous episode, but
never really talked about it in depth. For those who
came in late. The podcast episode I'm referring to was.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
Way back in our first season.
Speaker 5 (08:53):
It was episode eight and it was called Dry Places
in the Q and a On that episode, I addressed
a question about a connection between Egyptian hieroglyphics and the nepheline.
That one is definitely worth listening to again if you
want to get up to speed on this long story
short In that episode, I talked about the origins of
the terminology around the anachem and we trace those connections
(09:14):
back to the ancient Greeks, who used the term anaks
to refer to great kings after their death, and before
that to the ancient Egyptians, who use the word ank
represented by a hieroglyph which looks like the Christian cross,
but with a loop on the top, in order to
symbolize the ascent to divinity. Before that, in ancient Mesopotamia,
the Anzu bird represented the effort to grasp the power
(09:35):
of the divine. And it's the story of the Aarnzu
bird that I want to bring to you today. It's
a great little story about this conflict between the gods,
which is why I say it's mythological. We have to
remember that the term mythological doesn't necessarily mean that it's
not true, but it does mean that it's a story
about the gods. So I'm going to read the translation,
and after that we'll talk about what it means. The
(09:56):
story is actually called Inerta and the Turtle. Lucky, you
have most of this story preserved quite well, but as usual,
the parts that are missing are at the beginning and
the end of the story due to damage and missing
parts of the original clay tablets.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Wait a minute, a turtle, I thought you said this
was about a dirt.
Speaker 4 (10:12):
I'll explain later.
Speaker 5 (10:14):
Where the story picks up is after the Amzu bird
has stolen the Tablet of Destinies from the god Enki,
and Enki wants it back because the Tablet of Destinies
gives him the power to rule the underworld and that's
controlled the cosmos. But he needs somebody to go and
get it back because the Armsu bird has taken it
up a mountain far away. To this end, he recruits
his nephew Ninerta, the son of en Li'le, to get
(10:35):
it back. Remember that Nuta is a god of hunting
and of war. Inerta tracks down the Anzu bird and
shoots him with an arrow. We pick up the story
with the Anzu bird talking to Ninuta, having dropped the
Tablet of Destinies also called the mes into the Abyss,
which means that Enki has his tablet back. I guess
I should explain that the me or plural mes is
(10:57):
kind of like an object that possesses the divine prince
of order and civilization in the world.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
The gods used the mes to rule the world.
Speaker 5 (11:05):
In this story, they're represented by this tablet of destinies,
but in other stories they take other forms.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
So when you say me, you don't mean you, you
mean me, And by me, I mean not me but
that thing called me. Yes.
Speaker 5 (11:20):
Anyway, here's the quote. This is Nuta and the turtle
at his command. Your weapon struck me evilly. As I
let the me go out of my hand, these mes
returned to the Abzu. As I let the divine plan
go out of my hand, This divine plan returned to
the Abzu. This tablet of destinies returned to the Abzu.
(11:41):
I was stripped of the me. Inerta was stunned at
these words of the Anzu. Burd Nin Miena gave out
a whale, and what about me? These mes have not
fallen into my hand. I shall not exercise their lordship.
I shall not live like him in the shrine in
the Absu. Father Enki in the Absu knew what had been,
and said.
Speaker 4 (12:01):
The bird Anzu took the Hero Inerta by.
Speaker 5 (12:03):
His hand and drew near with him to Enki's place
the Abzu. The bird Anzu returned uta Ulu to the Abzu.
The lord was delighted with the hero. Father Enki was
delighted with the heron Inerta. The Lord Nadimad honored him duly. Hero,
no god among your brother gods could have acted so
(12:23):
as for the bird, which your mighty weapon captured. From
now to eternity, you will keep your foot placed on
its neck. May the great gods give your heroic strength
its due. May your father Enlil do whatever you command.
May nin Mina not fashion your equal. May no one
be as awesome as you, and no god extend an
upraised hand before you.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
Monthly.
Speaker 5 (12:45):
May your house regularly receive tributes in the shrine in
the Abzu. May an proclaim your name in the seat
of honor. The hero secretly was not happy with these promises.
Where he stood, he darkened and flashed like a floodston
He contemplated great deeds, and inwardly he was rebellious. He
uttered a word, The hero Inerta set his sights on
(13:08):
the whole world. He told no one. The Great Lord
Enki intuitively grasped the substance of the plan in the
shrine in the Abzu. He stirred up a dark floodstorm
by the house the minister Isimud opposed Ninurta. The hero
Inuta refused to come out and raised his hand against
(13:28):
the Minister Isimud. Against Ninerta, Enki fashioned a turtle from
the clay of the Abzu against him. He stationed the
turtle at an opening at the gate of the Abzu.
Enki talked to him near the place of the ambush
and brought him to the place where the turtle was.
The turtle was able to grab Ninurta's tendon from behind.
(13:51):
The hero Inerta managed to turn back its feet. Enki,
as if perplexed, said what is this? He had the
turtle scraped the ground with its claws. Had it dig
an evil pit? The hero and Inerta fell into it
with the turtle. The hero did not know how to
get out. The turtle kept on gnawing his feet with
its claws. The Great Lord Enki said to him, you
(14:14):
who set your mind to kill me who makes big
claims I cut down, I raise up you who set
your sights on me like this? What has your position
sees for you? Where has your strength fled? Where is
your heroism? In the great mountains? You caused destruction?
Speaker 4 (14:29):
But how will you get out?
Speaker 5 (14:30):
Now? And that's the end of the text as we
have it. It's not the end of the story, but
it's all we have now. You might think you have
a bit of an idea where this is going in
terms of what the story means for our rebel miss
the Nimrod, But I think it really only becomes clear
after we contrast this story with another one.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Ooh goody. I like stories.
Speaker 5 (14:48):
I thought you might say that this is another story
about somebody going down into a deep place, but it
has nothing to do with Nimrod or his god Inerta.
And this story is a lot more famous. This one's
about a goddess whose name is is Inana, and it's
about her descent.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
To the underworld.
Speaker 5 (15:04):
This is the Sumerian version of the story, as opposed
to the Acadian version, in which the main character is
called Ishtar. Now, this story is a lot longer and
more complete than the one we were just reading, and
it also features an awful lot of repetition. So rather
than read the whole thing, I'm going to give you
a bit.
Speaker 4 (15:17):
Of a summary.
Speaker 5 (15:19):
Inana is the daughter of one of the great gods
who lives in the heavens, but she's decided that she
wants to go into the underworld. When she gets questioned
about this, she says that she wants to attend the
funeral of her sister's spouse. Her sister is Rashkegal, the
queen of the Dead and ruler of the underworld. What's
more likely is that Inana wants to go there and
take over. Inana abandons the seven temples that she has
(15:42):
in southern Mesopotamia in order to be able to go
to the underworld, and she takes with her those things
that we were talking about earlier, the seven Mes that
give her the power to rule the world. In this story,
we don't have a tablet of destinies. Instead, the seven
mes are articles of clothing that Inana wears in the
seven means, and accompanied by her faithful servant, she goes
(16:03):
down to the entrance to the underworld. Inana says to
her servant, look, if I don't come back. I want
you to go into mourning for me. Go to the
temples of the high gods and plead for them to
help me. If one of them won't help them, go
to the next temple, go to Enlil, go to Nana,
go to Aenke. At least one of them will help me.
So she sends the servant on her way and continues
to the gates of the underworld.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
This is starting to sound a bit scary.
Speaker 5 (16:27):
It's definitely a creepy story. The gatekeeper of the underworld
answers the door and basically says, who are you and
what do you want? And Inanna says, I'm Inana, the
Queen of Heaven. I've come to attend the funeral of
my brother in law. So the gatekeeper goes to see
Inana's sister, Rishkigal, the queen of the underworld, and basically says, hey, Nanasya,
what do I do? And She's like, oh, crap, let
me think of something I know. Tell us she can
(16:49):
come in. But every time she comes through one of
the seven gates, she has to take off one of
her items of clothing. That's what she does. He goes
to Inana and says, you say, this is going to
let you in, but yet take off one item of
clothing at the gate. Inanna agrees, but when she asks
why this is necessary, the gate keeper just says, look,
this is how it works.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
The gay just don't ask questions.
Speaker 5 (17:09):
But then, of course they get to a second gate,
and the third gate and so on, and this keeps happening,
and every time she asks why she has to take
her for another item of clothing, the answer is the same.
Eventually she gets to the last gate and she gets
through nothing on take it.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
She wouldn't have been any good at strip paker.
Speaker 5 (17:23):
Yeah, you gotta be smart for a game by that.
Now you have to remember what those items of clothing were.
Those were the mees, the sacred items that gave her
the powder all the world, and she has fourfeited all
of them in order to gain access to the underworld.
So she finally gets into the throne room of her
sister rescue Gal, standing there naked and defenseless, and that's
when the Anunaki turn up. In this story, they're the
(17:45):
judges of the underworld, and they pronounced the judgment against Inana.
Because no one who goes in can never come out
of the underworld. The rescue gal kills Inana and hangs
her lifeless body on a hook on the wall to rot.
So we fast forward to a few days later and
Inana's servant realizes that she's not coming back, so she
(18:06):
sets out dutifully to make her appeal to the gods
to rescue Inana. She goes to see Enlil and he's
just angry that Nana abandoned her place to go into
the underworld. Basically says, well, she wanted to go there,
she can stay there. So the servant goes to the
temple of Nana and appeals to him. She gets the
same response. Finally, she goes to the temple of Enki
and Nanke shows some concern and he's troubled. He agrees
(18:26):
to help. He takes some dirt from under his fingernails
and he makes some living creatures to send into the underworld.
He gives them the food and water of life and
sends them to the underworld because they can sneak in
through the closed doors. He tells the two creatures to
go and sympathize with the Queen of the underworld while
she is writhing in pain, and when she offers them
a gift in return for their sympathies. They have to
(18:48):
ask for the body of Inana. So they carry out
this plan and they receive from Erescaghal the body of Inana.
Then they put the food and water of life on
her corpse and Inana comes to life. But then the
anunarchy get involved again and they're like, nobody gets out
of her life, so if you're coming out, then we're
going to take somebody else in your place. And Inana
(19:10):
comes up from the underworld accompanied by a horde of demons,
and they're looking for someone to take into the underworld
in place of Nana. They go to each of the
seven cities in which Inana has a temple, and in
each place she also has friends and relatives, and the
demons keep saying, can we take this one?
Speaker 4 (19:26):
But when Inana.
Speaker 5 (19:27):
Sees how much they were mourning over her death, she
won't let the demons take them. However, when they get
to the city where her husband lives, she finds him
not bothered at all that his wife is dead. She's furious,
so she says the demons can take him, and that's
what they do. So that's the end of the story,
or at least that's all we have of it. And
this story has come to be regarded as the ultimate
(19:48):
descent narrative about someone going into the underworld and getting
out alive. But instead of a glowing tale of conquest,
it's a harrowing story about the cost of trying to
cheat death. Inanda tried to conquer the underworld, allfed a
dominion over heaven and earth and came out humiliated with
nothing to show for it. It cost her everything.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Yeah, that's a pretty dark story, that sure is.
Speaker 5 (20:08):
People in ancient Mesopotamia certainly did not have a view
of the underworld that offered any hope for the future.
Because it doesn't matter how ambitious you might be and
what price you might be prepared to pay, you're never
going to master the power of death.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
I think I can see where you're going with this.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Some of these stories about and Maka were along similar lines,
trying to venture into the realm of the dead, you know,
trying to gain some kind of power or wisdom, but
ultimately ending humiliasian and disgrace. And it was the same
when the first story we heard at the beginning of
this episode about an inerta and the turtle comes before
a fall.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 5 (20:40):
And speaking of that story, I bet when you think
about the kind of creatures that the gods of ancient
Mesopotamia could conjure, real or imagined to deal with the
threat of a rival god, the last thing would have
come to mind would be a turtle.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Yeah, I have to meet turtles? Where not top of
my listen, Ninja turtles maybe? So what's to deal with
the turtle anyway?
Speaker 5 (20:57):
Well, turtles in the ancient Near East were respected because
they live a long time, they move slowly, they look
really old, and they could survive a flood. So all
of that stuff lends itself to the idea of ancient wisdom.
The use of the turtle to defeat the impudent young
god Inerta showed the wisdom of Enki as superior to
the strength and ambition of the cunning young hunter.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
New Nerda tried to take over the world with nothing
more than pride and ambition, but it only resulted and
is doubtful because he lacks wisdom.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
And then the same thing happened to Nanna as she
tried to conquer the underworld. And it sounds like we
had the same situation with Emma car when he tried
to go down into that toomb underground. So all these
stories seem to have these things in common. Is this
a kind of genre of literature.
Speaker 4 (21:39):
Yeah, it is.
Speaker 5 (21:40):
We call these descent narratives, And there's also a corresponding
genre where things work out the other way, which we
call ascent narratives. An example of that would be one
that we've talked about in the past, which is called
Adapa and the South Wind. In that story, Adapa gets
summoned up to heaven and he's offered these glorious gifts,
but he's tricked into not accepting a gift that would
have given him immortality. Nevertheless, he comes back with great wisdom.
(22:04):
The biblical story of Enoch is kind of like one
of these assent narratives.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Ah, there it is. I I was wondering when you
were gonna come back to Enoch.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (22:13):
So on the one hand, Enoch, because of his righteousness,
gets called up to heaven to be with God and
he does not experience death.
Speaker 4 (22:20):
We talked about this back.
Speaker 5 (22:21):
In season five, in particular episode eleven, which was called
Introducing Enoch and the stories that arise about him in
the Second Temple period come out of the fine details
of that original story how Enoch walked with or pleased God,
and how he walked among the gods, elaborating on his
adventures and on his role as a messianic figure. In
those stories, Enoch imparts the messages of God to both
(22:41):
men and angels.
Speaker 4 (22:42):
On the other hand, when.
Speaker 5 (22:43):
We read Genesis ten, we have the story about Nimrod,
who begins amassing a great empire before something happens to him,
and the text doesn't say what it is, other than
to suggest that he became a giant. But the end
result is that Nimrod's name disappears, only to be replaced
with that of the Assyrih, who goes on to conquer
northern Mesopotamia. And while I believe that these two names
(23:05):
belong to the same person, there seems to be a
fundamental shifting identity on the other side of that missing
central core of the story. But the way that we
know what to make of the story of Nimrod and
how to interpret that comes from the premise that if
the whole Primeval history is one great, big chiastic structure,
then Enoch's ascent narrative has to have a counterpart on
(23:25):
the other side of the flood, in the spot occupied
by Nimrod. The stories from ancient Mesopotamian literature provide some
contexts and helped fill in the gaps as to how
to interpret it in terms of a descent narrative, but
they all full short of telling us exactly what happened.
What I think we know is that there was a
descent into the realm of the dead and encounter with
an ancient corpse, some kind of attempt at divination, something
(23:49):
something happens. Nimrod loses his identity and exits in disgrace,
possibly accompanied by a horde of demons, and an ancient
god known as the Assyrian comes out of southern Mesopotami
under the guise of Nimrod and starts heading toward the
Promised Land. And I think that's why Isaiah fourteen targets
the Assyrian.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
That's creepy, but it's also very interesting. You mentioned just
now and last week that the story of Nimrod had
a missing part that should have been in the middle,
and you were saying that the whole thing makes more
sense when the story is complete, But he didn't tell us, well,
I was missing. When are we going to find out.
Speaker 5 (24:26):
Well, for those people who've read my book, they already know.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
For everyone else, there's always hope.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Yes, and that website again to is our Giant Answers
dot Com. Anyway, that's all we've got time for because
now we've got.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
Q and A.
Speaker 5 (24:41):
Yeah, I might just say something before we move into
the Q and A. We've been doing a few episodes
now on Nimrod, and there's more to come. And for
some of you, maybe this is an uncomfortable place to
be because a lot of what I do usually revolves
around purely academic perspectives combined with historical Christian understandings of
the biblical texting question. In these recent episodes may seem
to have gone so far off track that it kind
(25:02):
of feels like this is all just made up nonsense.
I will admit that some of it is by necessity
highly speculative, because as I mentioned before, there are a
lot of missing pieces. It doesn't help my case that
every time we find a relevant ancient manuscript it has
holes or damage or missing bits right at the critical point.
And you might say, well, that's good enough reason to
just leave it alone and not speculate, and fair enough
(25:24):
If that's we land on things, that's fine. But I've
always believed that there are two kinds of people in
the world. There are those who are able to extrapolate
from incomplete data sets and then so yes, I will
admit that it's speculative thinking here, and maybe that puts
us on shaky ground. For that reason, I'm not encouraging
(25:46):
listeners to take this as gospel. But from where I stand,
it looks like the shoe fits, and we'll see what
happens as we continue to make new discoveries in the
field of ancient Near eastan and biblical scholarship. I'm happy
to stand corrected, but I'm going to need to see
something that's more coherent than what I've been now to
present here and takes into account all the data that
we have vailed. If anyone can do that, I really
want to hear what you have to say, and you
can reach me through the website if you want to.
Speaker 4 (26:08):
Anyway, that's all for this part of the show.
Speaker 5 (26:09):
When we come back next week, we'll be talking about
someone else who's probably quite wrong about Nimrod, so stay
tuned for that.
Speaker 4 (26:16):
Here's the Q and A.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
Indeed, I want to keep your giant questions.
Speaker 5 (26:20):
If you have a question about stuff you've heard on
the show or somewhere else, is something you've found in
your Bible.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
Or just some general feedback you'd like to tell us
out the.
Speaker 5 (26:27):
World at large. Here's how you do it. Compaed to
the website Giant Answers dot com.
Speaker 4 (26:31):
I personally received order all.
Speaker 5 (26:33):
Mail, and I will try to get to all of it.
Speaker 4 (26:35):
I love hearing from it, especially if you get answers
to your giant question.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
So our Valerie boast of this question in the chat
in the lovely New community we are part of ads
on this hyphen a rock dot com. What is really
bothering me is the Noaic. I don't know if I
said that right. As always, you'll correct your tent covenant
and the reason for the flood in the first place.
I've always assumed that it was God's way judging the
(27:00):
evil that the Watchers and Nephelim have produced upon the earth,
God even stating that he repented of creating man. Altogether
understandable is the abominations produced by the watcher human union,
whereas against his plant from mankind. What bothers me is
the geographical evidence of cyclic cataclysms like clockwork, apparently having
nothing to do with God judging sin or angelic overreach
(27:23):
into disobedience. There is proven evidence of a twenty five
thousand year recycling or reset, and we are preaching one now.
There is archaeological evidence of past structures dating to the
last cataclysm some eleven seven hundred years ago, Gebecley Tepe
for example, gray pyramid structures such as Teo Wanaka in
(27:45):
Bolivia and others worldwide. How do we reconcile these things?
It's like God programmed the Earth to reset, regardless of
if it's related to judgment or not. One more thought
the flood was going to happen, regardless if God hadn't
discovered No, it's just standing the Earth had reached a
point of reset. The Great Dowlage was the result of
something like a pole shift. God promised the next would
(28:07):
be by fire, and that is what we're seeing now.
Son is that its solar maximum, The magnetosphere is thinning
and radiation is a stronger on Earth now. A solar
plasma discharge is all takes it up into Earth once
again and set man back to the Stone Age again.
Secury thing is you can literally see it building. With
all the crazy weather. The volcano uptics worldwide at earthquakes,
(28:29):
floodings are out of control. I am trying to find
how this marries up with the Covenant Zanoah.
Speaker 5 (28:35):
Wow, Okay, well that is a great question.
Speaker 4 (28:40):
Thanks for asking, Valerie.
Speaker 5 (28:42):
Firstly, I think you're right about your understanding of the
reason for the flood. There can be little doubt that
the rationale for the flood was the violence both between
and against humanity created by the Watchers and their offspring.
But the real question is how to think about natural disasters.
There are a few different facts is that we'll have
to talk about here in order to arrive at some
(29:02):
meaningful conclusions. I guess the main thing is that we
don't really know whether something happens because God is passing
judgment or if it just happens because that's the way that.
Speaker 4 (29:12):
God made the world work.
Speaker 5 (29:14):
When we read the Bible with the benefit of hindsight,
because it was written after the fact, we get told
why God does things. But that's not the experience that
we have outside of biblical events. We have no clear
evidence that God is communicating with us through tornadoes or floods,
or wildfires or earthquakes. We would have to make our
own judgment as to whether or not such a thing
(29:35):
was deserved by a population if we were to consider
it some kind of punishment or judgment from God. I
don't think we're in a good position to do that.
Then again, just as we don't know if a so
called natural disaster might actually be the judgment of God,
we also don't know if these things just happen without
any rhyme or reason or any divinely inspired meaning. Certainly
(29:56):
ancient people viewed these things as an act of God's phrase,
you're still here today. But you're right to say that
these things are happening all the time. And the question is,
just because we know stuff about it, does that mean
that God isn't behind the event, and that he doesn't
necessarily mean to communicate something through it as having scientific
knowledge silence the voice of God. I don't think that's
a good position to take either. I can see why
(30:19):
some people talk about issues like predestination in the face
of naturally occurring disasters seem to happen on a regular basis.
Perhaps it's just the case that these are the regular
interventions of God on a kind of divine timetable and
if you just happen to be around when the clock
runs out, then you cop it. But I don't know
that that's really keeping with the character of the god
of the Bible.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Yeah, I don't know about predestination. Sounds more like final destination.
Speaker 4 (30:44):
Death doesn't take no for an answer. I've got another alternative.
Speaker 5 (30:49):
Since the questions focused on the story of Noah and
the flood, and the Covenant comes after that and relates
directly to that flood, maybe we need to think of
a bit more about the nature of that flood. And
if you've been following this podcast over the last few seasons,
you know what I'm about to say. I don't think
that the event that the Bible describes in terms of
(31:10):
a flood necessarily had anything to do with water. I
think that the imagery of flood is used because it
provides a poetic way to talk about the destructive and
devastating effect of warfare. I think that the event that
Noah and his family survived was not actually a deluge
of water, but a large scale battle involving both human
and cosmic forces. And if you're curious about that, as
(31:31):
I mentioned, we've been talking about it on this podcast
in season six, so there's heaps of material to help
you get a grip on what I'm saying here. You
mentioned that big cataclysm eleven thousand years ago, and I'm
not saying that it didn't happen. All I'm saying is
that an event like that becomes a legendary story, and
a story like that becomes a great way to tell
about survival in the face of impossible odds and widespread destruction,
(31:53):
the kind of thing that happens in war. It was
just last week on the podcast that I mentioned that
the way the story of Noah gets told inim first
Zenok has nothing to do with the flood of water.
In fact, the wooden structure they build as a refuge
isn't even a boat, but they use the refuge to
escape the violence of the world around them, which devastates
the land like a flood. Look at the stories from
Mesopotamia we've been reading in these last episodes. We had
(32:15):
it just now in the story of Nuta and the Turtle,
when the gods fight each other, it is described as
a storm. So bringing that back to the covenant made
with Noah, if the flood was actually a huge battle
between divine and human forces and not a natural disaster.
Then it makes sense that God can promise that he's
not going to make that happen again. So it doesn't
matter how many floods or fires or earthquakes there are,
(32:35):
they're not related to the covenant that God made with Noah.
I'm not saying that natural disasters can't be God's way
of dealing with things. I just don't think that's what's
going on with the floodstory in Genesis, and one of
the primary things that motivated me to study that story
more closely was the inconsistency of having a covenant from
an all knowing God that gets broken every time we
get a lot of rain. That just doesn't make sense.
I think that a close reading of the text and
(32:56):
an accurate view of what the Bible is affirming the
flood story makes all the difference.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
It's definitely where it's going back over those previous episodes
of the podcast, if you're finding all this would be confusing.
Speaker 5 (33:05):
Absolutely. One last thing I've mentioned this before on the podcast.
For the sake of this question, i'll say it again.
The way that the Bible talks about the heavens and
the earth is not intended to describe necessarily the sky
and the land. Quite often that expression the heavens and
the earth gets used in a way that describes the
operation of things in the world in both divine and
(33:26):
human realms. It's talking about order and government and the
function of the world, the divine economy rather than rocks
beneath and air above. And the idea of making the
heavens and the earth pass away and bringing about a
new heavens and a new Earth can be understood as
God bringing about a reset not of the physical structure
of the planet, but the cosmic order and the way
(33:46):
of life for humans. So when we read in the
Second Peter chapter three about the heavens and the Earth
being reserved for fire, we need to read that in
its context and understand the application. This is talking about
the judgment and destruction of the ung God, not the
judgment and destruction of the planet. And we also need
to remember that fire is often used to talk about spirit.
(34:07):
What happened when the apostles receive the Holy Spirit in
the upper room of Pentecost fire and what was the result?
Lives were changed and transformed. That's the beginning. If the
heavens and the earth refer to world order and government.
Then it gets renewed when people submit to the new order,
the new government, the authority of Christ. I'm not saying
they won't be a future judgment. I'm just saying that
(34:27):
this is the start. It begins when people submit to
the lordship of Christ. As Jesus said, heaven and earth
will pass away, but my words will never pass away,
because when his words take root in your heart, the
new heavens and the new Earth are established in your life.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
That's good. Well, we are going to have to leave
it there because it's time for us to go. But
never fear.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
We will be back next week with even more fascinating
stuff about Nimrod and more answers to your giant questions.
Speaker 5 (34:54):
That's right, don't forget to send in your questions. Just
go to the website Giant Answers dot com. We'll catch
you next time.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
Bye bye.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
It's time to wrap up today's episode, But if you
want more, don't forget to get yourself a copy of
Answers to Giant Questions. We're asking readers to please leave
a review of the book on Amazon or good Reads
to help it become more visible in search results. Even
if you just give it stars, that will help out
a full review you certainly really appreciated. Please also leave
a review of this podcast wherever you found us, so
(35:23):
that new listeners can find us here on the show.
This podcast comes out every week, but you want to
make sure you never miss an episode, so if you
haven't already subscribed, do that now and you'll get notified
when each new episode drops. We'll catch you next time
on the Answers to Giant Questions podcast.
Speaker 5 (35:39):
Thank you for listening to the Answers to Giant Questions Podcast,
a production of the Raven Creek Social Clubs.
Speaker 4 (35:44):
If you like what you heard today, please take a
moment to rate for a review. The show music supplied.
Speaker 5 (35:48):
Under copyright by Rapeful Sacred Grateful Sacred dot com. You
can get the book Answers to Giant Questions by TJ.
Seedman on Amazon paperback sible format. Check out the other
podcast that lab Free Airthy've Got Common Giant Answers Got
on for more answers Just Giant Questions. Reread the blog
and catch us on the social don't forget to subscribe
until your friends are out the show. Send us your
(36:09):
giant questions and stay tuned with this podcast to get answers.
We'll see you next time.
Speaker 4 (36:14):
Until then, stay safe and godless.
Speaker 5 (36:16):
Last week I mentioned chiasm, that form of poetry that
uses a symmetrical pattern to lay out ideas around the
central point, which is the climax of the whole narrative.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Yeah, I do remember that, and we've talked about kaiabers.
Good day, folks, and welcome back to another episode of.
Speaker 4 (36:33):
The that thing we do?
Speaker 3 (36:38):
What's it called? Again?
Speaker 4 (36:40):
Okay, we are the two men?
Speaker 2 (36:44):
Yes, the earth had reached a point of am I
supposed to be really artist? Okay, that's still part of
the question. Okay, my eyes are having trouble adjusting to
the bold and the non bold.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
Okay, sorry, Valerie, Okay.
Speaker 4 (36:58):
You're on mute. I can't hear you. I still can't
hear you. Why can't I hear you?
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Okay, no, yes, yes, so odd. I was showing unmuted
both times. Okay, I just unplunked it making again.
Speaker 4 (37:10):
I didn't want to start talking really fast and just
starving enough.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
Yeah, yeah, yes, I'm going to go build a Lego set.
Speaker 4 (37:20):
You know I've got one for Father's Day? Is a
Formula one car.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
Oh nice, Yeah, that's the show it to me next week.
Speaker 5 (37:31):
Yeah yeah, just a relatively small one. It's not one
of those huge, you know, five hundred dollar things, but yeah,
it looks like it'll be fun.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Ah.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
Look at this t MCL.
Speaker 5 (37:41):
You might recognize me from such action figures.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
That comes with the juice loosener.
Speaker 4 (37:45):
Oh nice.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
All this and one bag of oranges it's required.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
Yeah, and it comes through the little glass like with
one drop of orange like that on the bottom.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
Oh so good.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
I've got this Great Commission strategic card game, so it's
it's basically what it says on the box. So I
haven't really played with it, but yeah, my church likes
all games and card games and stuff. So yeah, it
comes with all different guards and I'm looking forward to
giving that a go.
Speaker 4 (38:25):
No, very good. Do you get to play as Saints
or something?
Speaker 2 (38:29):
No?
Speaker 3 (38:29):
I think what is it?
Speaker 2 (38:32):
The Great Commission is a corp operative strategy game where
you take on the challenge of leading a church in
the tumultuous Roman era. The manager congregation full of diverse personalities,
each contributing their own unique talents and gifts, but also
bringing their struggles send conflict to even demonic opposition. That
sounds intenso yeah, it looks like it's there's like a
(38:53):
card for like artisan and philosopher and city clerk, nurse,
and then there's Priscilla and a quilla and illness.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
Yeah interesting.
Speaker 4 (39:05):
Can you get burned by the emperor?
Speaker 3 (39:06):
Yeah, they'll be depressing.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
But it doesn't say family friendly, so possibly there's not
another kickstarter which.
Speaker 5 (39:14):
Got that guy who was having an affair with his
step mom.
Speaker 3 (39:18):
Yeah, he's going to even throw in a free lolly.
Some that is Israeli something maybe you know.
Speaker 4 (39:30):
Who knows it's some biblical thing food before you put it.
Speaker 3 (39:38):
True, I just add a razor.
Speaker 4 (39:43):
Oh, it's the adhesive for the parts.
Speaker 3 (39:46):
Yeah, my game's faulty and chips followed apart. I'm sure
we set you the glue.
Speaker 4 (39:55):
Never never want to explain some things.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
I live on soup now, but the game's really good.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
I
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