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Video Description
Why are Jewish people so wildly creative? Professor Jiang traces the answer to the Bible’s very first author. The Yahwist, he argues, wasn’t just writing royal spin — she built a library of stories designed for argument and self-reflection. Where Greek gods punished, this forgiving God invites debate; where others demanded obedience, this text demands questions. That habit of wrestling with the story, he says, became the engine of an entire civilization.
Full Video Transcript
today we do the bible the most influential book in human history and we’ll discuss why the jewish
people are so creative today the most creative people in the world are jews in the past 20 years
there have been three extremely influential individuals Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Albert
einstein they’re all jews so why are jews so creative and the answer is the bible okay so um
let me provide some background as to how israel the nation of israel was first formed so remember
um the bronze age the middle east was the center of the world okay so you had egypt then you had
the levant up north is anatolia across the asian is mycenaean greece and this is mesopotamia if
you look at this map the center of the world really is the levant and at this time in history
the levant is really a colony of egypt okay this place is called canine now um the thing about the
egyptians is they didn’t like to go outside of egypt so in order to control this colony the
levant which is strategically very important they use greek mercenaries okay mercenaries from abroad
many were greek but there’s some other countries as well also at this time in history there’s a
lot of religious strife in egypt and a lot of the priests who lost out in this struggle they were
exiled to the levant okay so you also had some egyptian priests in the levant you also had the
hill people of canine okay hill people they lived in the hills they farmed you also had um nomadic
pastoralists nomads because this place was a center of trade so you had bandits you had people
who traded and you also have people who raise livestock so i know we’re saying this is the
levant it is a multicultural melting pot lots of different groups of people and at this time in
history there’s no concept of nation or race or ethnicity it was very common for people to just
you know mix together okay but then what happened of course was the bronze age collapse and what
And what that meant was that now you have this surge of refugees coming through from
North Europe and from Western Europe and overwhelm the former empires.
So Marseille in Greece is destroyed.
The high tide empire of Anatolia is destroyed.
And the Sea Peoples are attacking Egypt.
But Egypt is pretty strong, so it’s able to resist the attack.
And what the Egyptians say to the Sea Peoples is, listen, don’t attack us, we’ll settle
you somewhere else, we’ll give you land somewhere else.
And so they were put in the Levant, okay?
And these people are called the Philistines, and they’re in the Bible.
The problem is that there’s already people in the Levant, and so they are a threat.
And so these people now, the mercenaries, the Egyptian priests, the hill people, the
nomads, they’re forced to come together as a new alliance to fend off against the Philistines.
okay and this grouping of people will give us a new nation called israel and um at first they’re
they have to elect a king in order to unite them against the philistines and they elect a king
called saul so saul is the first king of israel he has a mercenary named david and remember what’s
very common in history is for mercenaries to rebel against their king and become a king himself
that’s what david did but now that david is now king he has three major problems the first problem
is legitimacy why are you king we elected so as king but you stole the phone from him so why are
you king so the first big problem that david faces is one of legitimacy second is the problem of
unity because remember israel at this time it’s a diverse coalition so how do you unite these people
together okay and the third problem is differentiation why are we different from
the egyptians the anatolians uh the mesopotamians the philistines okay so to solve these problems
what david did was three major innovations that would forever change forever change human history
the first is introduction of a patron god named yahweh okay so what david says like yahweh is
our god and our god is better than the other gods okay so in the what about trying to do is trying
to explain who yahweh is and try to explain everyone that yahweh is a better god a superior
god than every other god that came before him okay that’s number one number two is the centralization
of religion for a temple so what david says is okay if yahweh is our god and he’s the best god
we need a house for him so what we’re going to do is we’re going to build a temple in jerusalem
and that’s where he will live from now on and by doing this what david’s really doing is
centralizing the religion when you do that you give jobs to egyptian priests who will now be
your main political ally okay all right and the third thing that he did that’s very important of
course is sponsor initiate the bible all right okay so that’s where the bible comes from the
The Bible comes from the fact that the Israelite people need to create mythology that explains why they are one family
and why they’re different from others and why they’re actually better than other people, okay?
So, what is amazing about the Bible is that it does succeed.
It succeeds because of the great storytelling within the Bible, okay?
so this in the beginning we have the origins of Yahweh and the Bible begins with Genesis
the first book of the Bible is called Genesis which just means birth or the beginning okay
and in the beginning God creates the universe and he discovers that he’s lonely there’s no one to
talk to it’s not very interesting so he creates man Adam but then he thinks that Adam might be
loneliness well so he creates Eve okay and that’s the beginning so then the
Lord God formed men from the dust of the ground okay dust so man is made of dust
and breathed in his nostrils the breath of life and then man became a living
being okay so God’s essence is in Adam and the Lord God planted a garden Eden
in the east and there he put the men whom had formed of the ground the Lord
god made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food the tree of life also
in the midst of the garden and the tree of knowledge of good and evil so this is garden
paradise called eden and man was created in order to farm it to take care of it okay he’s basically
a servant a slave and in the center of the garden are two trees the tree of life the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil the tree of life as you can imagine grants immortality right
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil grants the ability to learn okay so let me explain
let’s imagine that there’s a war in front of me okay so i walk oh i hit the wall it hurts right
but i don’t know that hurting is bad so i keep on oh i keep on hitting the wall and i keep on
hurting myself okay because i don’t know what’s good and what’s bad but now if i know what is
good and what is bad i know okay i should not hit the wall okay i now have the capacity to learn
and over a lifetime i will learn a lot this is the secret of creativity right what’s really
important about this idea is that you need to make a mistake for you to know what is good and evil
okay so that’s why school is stupid because school we tell you there’s a wall don’t touch it because
you will hurt yourself and you don’t touch it you don’t hurt yourself but you never learn for
yourself because when you hit the wall you now are able to reflect and understand how the world works
okay so the secret to creativity is trying for yourself and learning for yourself what is good
and evil and what this is also saying is that these two things together creativity plus immortality
allows you to become God okay does that make sense because if you can live
forever but you’re always learning eventually you will absorb all the
knowledge of the universe which is what God is okay God knows everything in the
universe and you can also argue that’s why he created us because once you’re
our perfection once you learn everything you’re no longer capable of making
mistakes of learning for yourself what you so what you do is you teach students or you get students
to learn for themselves and that way your knowledge expands okay so it’s a really important idea is
that men and women were created to be part of the creative process okay that’s why god created us
the lord god took the man and put in the garden of eden to till it and keep it okay so again
the man now is basically a servant or slave and the lord god commanded the man you may freely
okay you can do whatever you want okay this idea of free choice so if you want
people to be creative you have to give people free choice okay you have to give
people the capacity to make mistakes for themselves otherwise don’t ever learn
from themselves but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not
eat from the day that you eat of it you shall die okay now what’s amazing about
the bible is that it is poetry like all poetry its meaning is very complicated okay there’s multiple
layers to the meaning here so you shall die could mean okay the food is poisonous okay don’t eat the
apple sorry don’t it’s not the apple it’s don’t eat the fruit because you’ll eat it it’ll be
poisonous and then you’ll die okay but it’s also it could be interpreted as a punishment right if
you eat it i will have to kill you okay all right so what so this is a very ambiguous story and
that’s what makes the story so amazing because it is uncertain to us what the true meaning of the
bible is and therefore we have to keep on thinking about it discussing it and finding out for
ourselves and at different stages of our lives our understanding may be different okay what’s also
interesting is that god draws attention to one tree but not the other that’s kind of weird right
there are two trees the tree of immortality and tree of learning but god only says hey there’s
a tree of learning don’t touch that which means that now that our attention is how focused on this
one tree right so think of a metaphor let’s just say that we go to the amusement park okay you’re
my kids and i say to you you can have you can ride any ride you want in this amusement park
but there’s a ride called the dragon roller coaster do not ride that or you will die what do
you do you ride that stupid thing okay so it’s a really strange setup where god knows everything
but he draws our attention to the one thing that he’s afraid of and it’s
almost like he’s pushing us towards that tree okay because again you know if you
talk to children you know that if you if you warn them not to do something they’ll
go and do it okay so what’s going on here well again the nature of God is up
debate you can say that a god is uh being truthful and little and says that if you touch that tree
you will die okay so he’s being dishonest basically okay that’s one possibility another possibility
is that he’s just stupid he doesn’t really understand how humans work he created humans
but he doesn’t really understand what it means to be human and he gave it and he gave us free
choice so he doesn’t really appreciate that we would disobey him okay that’s another possibility
now another another possibility okay which can also be true is that it’s all part of his plan
right he truly wants us to understand free choice he truly wants us to be creative then he needs to
allow us to make our mistake and so therefore he’s sort of like setting us up okay he’s sort
of like sort of like provoking us into making a mistake all right doesn’t make sense so as
you can see how it’s only a few words but it’s so complex it’s an entire universe onto itself
all right okay all right now um this is story of god creating woman okay eve so lord god caused a
deep sleep to fall upon the man the man is lonely he wants a female companion okay and he slept then
he took one of his ribs and closed up his place with flesh the rib like the lord god had taken
from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man the man said this at last is bone my
bones and flesh of my flesh this one should be called woman for out of men this one was taken
okay now you can make the argument that um man is superior because man came first but you can also
make the argument that woman is superior because woman is made of higher quality woman is made of
flesh right man is made out of dust so this is almost revolutionary the concept conception
because you would think that in this world men are at the top but this bible is telling us no
women are made of higher quality material they made actual flesh right and that’s why we think
that the person who wrote this was actually a woman and as you read the bible more and more
you will discover like this genius who wrote the bible who first wrote the bible was in fact a
woman and that’s revolutionary okay all right so um therefore a man leaves his father and his
mother and clings to his wife and they become one flesh and the man and his wife were both naked and
were not ashamed okay all right let’s let’s continue now the serpent was more crafty than
any other wild animal that the lord had made he said to a woman did god say you shall eat from
any tree in the garden the woman said to the serpent we may eat of the fruit of the trees in
the garden but god said you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the
garden nor shall you touch it or you shall die okay this is really strange okay because what you
you will notice is that the serpent chooses to talk to the woman but not to the man okay and
also what’s really interesting is that they’re having a debate but the first serpent said to
the woman you will not die for god knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be open and you’ll be
like god knowing good and evil so when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that was
light to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise she took of its fruit
and ate and she gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate and then the eyes of both were
open and they knew that they were naked and they sold fig leaves together and made loans clothes
for themselves okay this is really interesting because the woman is making this decision by
herself right the serpent says hey why don’t you judge for yourself whether whether food is good
not the woman looks at the princess i judge for myself it is good okay this is revolutionary
where the woman is making the decisions she like you would think that once she once the serpent
said this to her she would she would go to her husband said hey adam the servant said this what
do you think okay but the one’s like no i can see for myself what is true and then so she eats the
food by herself and then she tells her husband eat the food as well and the husband falls as well
so this tells us that the real hero of the story is actually the woman okay okay then they heard
the sound of the lord god walking the garden at the time of the evening breeze and the man and
his wife hid themselves in presence of the god among the trees of the garden okay so they know
they’re in trouble they know that god will discover that they ate from a fruit uh they ate
from the tree and they’re they’re scared okay the lord god called the man and said to him where are
you i he said i heard the sound of you in the garden i was afraid because i was naked and i
hid myself so he knows that being naked is wrong okay being naked is bad who told you that you were
naked have you eaten from the tree which of which i commanded you not to eat the man said the woman
whom you gave to me with me she gave me fruit from the tree and i ate okay so the man is blaming the
woman okay the man says it’s not my fault i’m just i’m i was just following her okay so again the
woman what’s amazing about this is the woman is the hero of the story then the lord god said to
the woman what is it that you have done the woman said the servant tricked me and i ate okay all
right so at this point in the story what can we expect we can expect that god will have no choice
but to kill adam and eve right because god’s words were if you eat from that fruit you will surely
die and so even though the food fruit wasn’t poisonous god still has a duty to kill adam and
eve and if we were in the iliad okay then surely adam and eve would have died because the gods in
the iliad the greek gods most gods are vengeful the raffle right but not this god okay yahweh
is different okay look what happens next is the man named his wife eve because she was the mother
of all living and the lord god made garments of skins for the man and his wife and clothed them
Instead of being angry at Adam and Eve, he offers them a present, okay?
The question then is, why?
Well, there are different possibilities, right?
The first possibility is that God himself recognizes that I made a mistake here.
I shouldn’t have drawn attention to this fruit, right?
Therefore, it’s my fault.
Therefore, this is a God that’s capable of self-reflection and forgiveness, okay?
This is revolutionary, guys, okay?
Because again, remember, gods at this time are vengeful, wrathful.
You must obey them or they will strike you down.
But this God is different.
This God is like, listen, you should not have eaten that fruit,
but it was my fault as well.
So I forgive you.
He’s capable of self-reflection, okay?
Another possibility is, again, this is what God wanted all along.
And we know this because the man named his wife Eve.
So the man honors his wife with a name.
And it’s the mother of all living.
okay you are the true goddess okay so um what happens next is god’s like okay well you still
disobey me so i want to punish you now okay so what he does is he punished a man by making him
now have to toil for food okay he has to be a farmer he punished a woman by making childbirth
painful he punished the serpent by making him slither on the ground okay so this is all good
right but now what god does is this he actually froze the adam and eve out of the garden okay
okay so why the lord god said see the man has become like one of us all right so eve did the
right thing knowing good and evil and now he might reach out his hand and also take from the tree of
life and eat and live forever okay so that’s what godhood is god is the capacity to learn for
yourself as well as to live forever so god’s afraid hey if adam and eve eat that tree of life
he’ll become like god as well therefore the god sent him forth from the garden eden to till the
ground from which he was taken he drove out the man and at east of the garden of eden he placed
a share of him an angel a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life
and so this is our banishment from the garden of eden now um most people think that this is a bad
thing okay but you can also interpret this as a good thing so god chose us to make us creative
without the possibility of living forever why because if you think about it creativity
is death well the concept of death you cannot be truly creative okay first of all if you think i’m
gonna live forever you’re not actually motivated to do anything right you’re not motivated to make
the most of your life but actually making the most of your life you can’t be creative also if you
live forever your children cannot be creative your grandchildren cannot be creative so for
humans to be creative as a species death must be an inevitability okay does that make sense
so you can you can say that okay god doesn’t really know what he’s doing it’s his first time
having children he’s making a lot of mistakes okay but you can also say that um it’s all part of his
plan his plan is to make us creative because that is what’s divine creativity is what’s truly divine
okay all right so we continue now that adam and eve are outside the garden eden they have children
named uh cain and abel okay now the man knew his wife eve and she conceived and bore cain saying
i produced a man with the help of the lord next she bore his brother abel now abel is a keeper
of sheep and cain a tiller of the ground okay so cain is a farmer and abel uh a shepherd in the
course of time cain brought to the lord an offering of the fruit of the ground and abel for his part
brought of the firstlings of his flock their fat portions the lord had regard for abel and his
offering but for cain’s offering he had no regard okay this is a very common thing in this world
where you have to make sacrifices to the gods the gods will favor you the if the offerings are good
okay and so your god cain comes with some plants and then uh abel comes with some meat okay so
you’re like abel you’re a better person okay and this is a very common thing in this world
but cain gets very angry his face fell the lord said to cain why are you angry and why has your
countenance fallen if you do well will you not be accepted if you do not do well sin is looking at
the door it’s ours for you but you must master okay a very common thing in this world where the
gods are like this person sucks do better next time okay all right but cain gets really angry
and what he does is he kills his brother and then um the lord gets angry and says what have you done
your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground and now you’re cursed in the ground which
has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand when you till the ground
it will no longer yield to you its strength you’ll be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth okay so
at this time what god will could should do is just kill cain right an eye for an eye um but god
doesn’t do that all right god says that i banish you and then cain says if you do that my punishment
is greater than i can bear actually you have driven me from the soil and i shall be hidden
from your face i should be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth and anyone who meets me
may kill me okay so people will know that i’ve left my community i must have done something wrong
and therefore they may kill me and god says okay i’m gonna put a mark on you and this will protect
you so no one who came upon him would kill him then cain went away from the presence of the lord
and settled in the land of not east of eden okay so again this is a god of forgiveness of
reconciliation of compromise of debate cain says your punishment is unfair and then most
gods would be like screw you man i’m god i can do whatever you want but this guy’s like you know
what you make a good point look i have reflected and i recognize that i shouldn’t have said that
your brother is better than you okay i recognize that this is partly my fault so as a compromise
i protect you okay this is again a revolutionary idea this is within 3 000 years ago okay today
we think okay this is a very common concept but remember in the iliad the major problem is one of
forgiveness and in the bible this is a god of forgiveness okay he’s kind of silly but he’s
not perfect and what he’s telling us that perfection is not a possibility what is a
possibility what we should all try to do is try to reflect and improve ourselves okay this is a
theme throughout the bible so as humanity continues to develop god looks down and says you know what
these humans i designed to be creative to do wonderful things but they’re killing themselves
they’re enslaving each other explaining each other this is stupid i need to start over okay so he
creates a flood but there’s one person on the earth that he thinks is a noble person noah right
so he says noah build an ark and save yourself so noah builds an ark and he saves himself
and then after the flood recedes noah comes and rebuilds humanity and then god looks down to noah
and says you know what i will never again curse the ground because of humankind for the inclination
of the human heart is evil from you nor will i ever destroy every living creature as i’ve done
as long as the earth endures see time and harvest cold and heat summer and winter day and night
shall not cease this is god saying oops i made a mistake again okay i didn’t like the evil that
humans were creating on this earth and if i want to i want to wipe evil from this earth but you
know what if i give them free will if they have that fruit of from the tree knowledge from the
tree of knowledge of good and evil then yeah some of them are going to make mistakes okay and it’s
something that i’m going to have to put up with so he promised no one humanity i will never do
this again if you guys do evil well you’re gonna have to solve this problem yourself i’m not gonna
come and solve it for you all right it was a mis it was my mistake to make everyone suffer like
this i will never do this again right so humanity is rebuilt and of course humans go back to being
evil starting wars and sending each other explaining each other so then god’s like you
know what what i need to do is this i need to build a nation that is the best nation and which
will be a great example to everyone and this nation i will call israel okay so he looks around
on the earth he does give us a name named abraham and abraham is the patriarch of the nation of
israel but these are also the patriarch of the religions of christianity and uh islam okay so
judaism christianity and islam are considered the abrahamic faiths because they all think abraham is
their patriarch or their uh forefather and so um yahweh says to abraham i will make a covenant
with you i’ll make a contract with you where i will favor you but you must swear loyalty to me
you must you must promise me that your people will be uh loyal to me they will worship me only okay
and that’s a covenant the abrahamic covenant now what’s interesting is the relationship between
abraham and yahweh okay you would think that abraham would just be a slave and a servant to
yahweh but that’s not actually what happens okay so let’s read the story so what happens is this
god promised to not destroy the earth but then he’s like yeah but then there’s some places that
are so evil i need to destroy them to teach everyone a lesson okay so this place is called
sodom and gomorrah and someone gomorrah is known for its wickedness so um god sends men okay angels
to someone gomorrah to destroy it abraham is shocked by this jay brim’s like yeah but you
can’t destroy everyone okay so so what happens and this is really interesting is that abraham
and yahweh start having a debate and abraham pleads with yahweh to change his mind okay so
abraham says to yahweh will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked suppose there are
50 righteous within the city will you then sweep away the place not forgive it for the 50 righteous
who are in it far be it from you to such a thing to say the righteous with the wicked so the
righteous fair as the wicked okay he’s saying yahweh you’re making a mistake think about that
okay a mortal is telling a god you’re making mistake but not only that but yahweh is like
yeah i think you’re right okay so they agree so abraham says um if there’s 50 people who are
righteous you cannot destroy sodom and gomorrah and god says you’re right if i find 50 righteous
i will forgive everyone okay so yahweh agrees with abraham at this point you would think that
abraham’s like yes okay and then he would run away but he doesn’t do that he keeps on arguing he says
yeah but let’s just say there’s 45 okay 45. suppose five of the 50 are lacking there’s only
45 we can’t find 50. don’t you think we should still forgive samsung and gamara and god’s like
you know that’s a good point yeah so you know 45 is good as well okay and he keeps on going on and
on until they get to 10. for the sake of 10 i will not destroy it okay this is what yahweh promises
abraham so in other words it’s not that yahweh and abraham it’s not like master servant it’s more like
friend friend because what a friend does is a friend is honest with you a friend tries you to
to tell the truth a friend tries to get to get you to be better okay so what i’m saying to yahweh is
like i know your virtue is gone but sometimes you make mistakes so it’s important for me to
argue with you okay and that’s why judaism is such a powerful religion because the basis
of judaism is debate and argument and questions okay debate and questions why are you so creative
it’s this simple guys jews are encouraged to debate each other to figure out what is truly
right there is no absolute truth it’s always a process of asking questions open debate and
self-reflection okay all right so eventually what happens is that um what will happen is that
abraham will give birth will have a son named isaac and isaac will have two sons esso and
uh jacob jacob’s name will eventually become israel so israel is founded by jacob what happened is
that um jacob is the younger son esso is the older son so you would think that esso would inherit
everything from isaac but jacob jacob and his mother rebecca schemes and steals from esso okay
they trick isaac and they steal the birthright from esso so now the esso is pissed off at jacob
so jacob has no choice but to run away okay he runs away and he meets a relative okay and what
follows next is the greatest love story in the bible you can also argue it’s the greatest love
story ever in human history okay and what’s amazing about the story is how simple it is
but once we start analyzing you will discover that it’s actually a very complex story all right
it’s a beautiful complex and sophisticated story all right laban who’s a relative says to jacob
you’re my kinsman um should you therefore serve me for nothing tell me what shall your wages be
okay so jacob’s um running away from his brother and he’s and he finds um safety with laban
and he offers to work for laban but laban said listen i can’t just um enslave you so you work
for me and i’ll give you whatever you want okay and then you take what says laban had two daughters
the name of the elder was leah and the younger was rachel leah’s eyes were lovely and rachel
was graceful and beautiful jacob loved rachel so he said i will serve you seven years for your
younger daughter rachel laban said it is better that i give her to you than i should give her to
anyone else so yeah i agree to this deal okay it’s a contract now all right jacob served seven years
for rachel and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her okay so he
loves her so much that seven years is nothing to him okay then jacob said to laban give me my wife
so that may go into her for my time is completed so lebanon gathered together all the people of
the place and made a feast but in the evening he took his daughter leah and brought her to jacob
and he went into her um when morning came it was leah and jacob said to leon what is it that you
have done to me did i not serve you for rachel why didn’t have you to see me lebanon said this
is not done in our country in the younger before the firstborn complete the week of this one and
and we will give you the other awesome return
for serving me another seven years.
Jacob did so and completed her week.
Then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel as a wife.
So Jacob went into Rachel,
and he loved Rachel more than Leah.
He served Laban for another seven years, okay?
This, again, is a beautiful love story,
and it doesn’t sound like it, okay?
But let’s go into the complexity of it, okay?
First of all, clearly, Laban deceived Jacob, right?
But did he mean to in the beginning?
The answer is no, okay?
The question then is, why did he do so?
And the answer is, Rachel and Leah are sisters, right?
And therefore, they probably hate each other.
They’re in competition with each other.
So when Jacob says to Laban, I love Rachel, but not Leah,
Leah now is pissed, right?
So what do you think she did for seven years?
For seven years, she just pestered her father and says,
hey, am I not your daughter?
Am I not your firstborn?
Will you let me be insulted and humiliated like this?
if jacob were to marry rachel who will ever want to marry me and laban’s a father okay and he doesn’t
want to deal with this crap so he’s like how do i get out of this mess well what i’ll do is i’ll
trick um jacob and first give him leah and then i’ll give him rachel and how does he know this
because he knows that jacob loves rachel right laban is able to like stand far away and look at
how Jacob and looks at Rachel so he knows that with Jacob will have to
endure okay he’ll do this but then the question then is does Rachel love Jacob
and the answer is yes of course right because once Jacob married Leah then
Rachel could have just said screw this I’m gonna marry someone else but she did
she had to wait seven years and you can imagine those seven years were the longest
seven years for both jacob and rachel in fact every leah probably said to rachel okay she was
laughing at rachel just saying you see jacob doesn’t really love you and um rachel had to
endure okay so that’s this is the power of love the way that jacob and rachel were able to endure
all the humiliation in order to just be together okay it’s a beautiful love story and this is a
a great thing about the Bible the Bible written by this person okay who’s who’s
clearly a woman right only a woman writes stories like this that’s both
economy and irony economy just means that she’s able to with very few words
convey deep meaning she’s able to in the story just a couple paragraphs can’t
create an entire universe we can see actually the movie play out okay it’s
14 years where in the first seven years Jacob was really happy but in the last
seven years every day he’s agonizing because he doesn’t want to be with leah he wants to be with
rachel but they can’t be together and he has to wait all these seven years okay so economy but
also irony irony just means it’s funny guys okay i know that you’re taught the bible as a religious
text but when it was first conceived it was meant to be a funny story okay this is a story of two
sisters who hate each other and they’re competing for the same guy all right and this competition
continues when rachel saw that she bore jacob no children she envy her sister and she said to jacob
give me children or i shall die okay you have to get me pregnant because lee is having a lot
of kids jacob became very angry with rachel and said am i the place of god who has withheld from
you the fruit of the womb then she said here is my maid go into her that she may bear upon my knees
and that i may have children through her so she gave him near she gave him her maid as a wife and
And Jacob went to her, and Balaam conceived and bore Jacob a son.
Then Rachel said, God has judged me, and she has heard my voice and given me a son, okay?
This is a comedy where she’s in competition with Leah.
Leah has a lot of kids, so Rachel’s going to cheat and give her maid to Jacob.
And whenever a baby comes out, Rachel’s like, it’s mine, it’s mine.
And she’s going to go around and cheer to try to out-compete Leah, okay?
This is a comedy.
Then Jacob said, God has judged me and has heard my voice and given me a son.
Rachel’s maid conceived again and bore Jacob a second son.
Then Rachel said, With mighty wrestlings I have wrestled with my sister and have prevailed,
so she named him Naphtali.
Okay?
Alright?
Okay, so does that make sense?
And now what he’s going to do is give her maid to Jacob as well in order to continue
the competition.
Alright?
To try to out-compete Rachel.
Okay?
So this is all just a comedy.
Okay?
it’s meant to be beautiful stories that force you that provoke you into deep reflection right
and this is why the jews are so creative if you look at the media if you look at hollywood if you
look at academia the jews dominate okay because from the moment they’re born they’re born with
these stories that force them to think deeply deeply about who they are what it means to be
human and what life is about okay and as you can understand you can just have multiple interpretations
of what’s going on but they force you to think very deeply about life to have an inner debate
with yourself okay all right okay so now we go on to david okay the story of david it’s very very
um complicated okay so in the bible what it tells us is that um god needs a king
for the nation of israel and he sends a prophet named sam samuel to find a king and he goes to
the house of jesse and in the house of jesse he finds david who’s the youngest boy he says you
will not you in the future be the favorite king of israel okay and david in his early age does
wonderful things for example he defeats goliath okay so you’ve heard the story of david and goliath
right but after he kills goliath the king saul becomes envious jealous of david and that forces
david to run away eventually saul is killed and david comes back and becomes king okay that’s
the story in the bible guys as you learn in this class this is all propaganda okay what really
happened is that saul is king david is the mercenary and he’s a very good and popular
mercenary he has a lot of soldiers who follow him and therefore he heals saul and becomes king
himself okay but now what the bible needs to do is let’s just legitimize david okay try to tell us
that oh no no david is not ambitious he was not ruthless god willed him to be king okay and that’s
why the bible bible was written the way it was so this is written um by the court historian okay the
person who wrote genesis is a person we call the yahweh is okay because for her the god is yahweh
the yahweh is or jay this person is a court historian so his job is to clean up the image
of david to tell the story of david again but in a much more clean way that absorbs him of any crimes
okay so so um where we on the story is that saul is dead but saul’s family is still around
and Saul’s family has a general named Abner okay but after Saul is dead Abner feels slighted by
the family so Abner’s like screw this I’m gonna go and support David and David of course is very
happy okay all right Abner came with 20 men to David at Hebron David made a feast for Abner
and the men who were with him Abner said to David let me go and rally all Israel to you in order
that you may take a covenant with me and you may reign over all that your heart desires okay
So what Abner is saying is make me your general and I will give you Israel.
David dismissed Abner and went away in peace.
Then the servants of David arrived with Job from Arad.
Okay, so Job is David’s general.
Bring much spoil with them.
But Abner was not with David at Hebron, for David had dismissed him and he had gone away in peace.
When Job and all the army that was with him came, it was told Job,
Abner came to the king and he has dismissed him and has gone away in peace.
now job and abner have a conflict because abner killed one of job’s brothers so job wants to kill
abner okay what have you done abner came to you why did you dismiss him so that he got away you
know that abner came to deceive you and to learn your comings and goings and to learn all that you
are doing job came out from david’s presence he sent messengers after abner they brought him back
from the christian of sarah but david know about this okay so job goes and kills abner okay now
Now, so if you read the story, you think that David did nothing wrong, okay?
But if you think about it, there are lots of problems with this story.
The first problem is that Job, the general, is rebelling against David, right?
If you’re David, who are you more afraid of?
Are you afraid of Abner or are you afraid of Job?
You’re afraid of Job, right?
Because Job has your army, okay?
So there’s no way that David would allow Job to rebel against him.
So the only conclusion is that Job acted with the permission of David.
So David knew about this, okay?
This is a lie.
David knew about this.
In fact, David probably ordered Job to kill Abner.
Then the question is why?
Well, if you’re a king, you’re most concerned about loyalty, right?
If Abner betrayed Saul’s family,
there’s a possibility Abner will come and betray you as well, okay?
So this guy needs to be eliminated because he’s dangerous, okay?
and it makes sense because remember David betrayed Saul so he’s afraid that
others will betray him as well all right so this story even though it’s a lie it
gives it gives us enough clues to construct the truth for ourselves that’s
what makes a Bible different from other religious texts other religious texts
are sayings or truisms but these are stories and stories are living things
that we can reconstruct in our heads okay and again this explain helps us
explain why the jews are so creative people because they grew up in a tradition of stories
as opposed to truths or sayings okay so they can constantly reimagine these stories for themselves
all right so now we get to the most famous story of david all right so in the spring of the year
when the when kings go out to battle david sent job with his officers and all israel with him okay
so what’s really important to know is that even though job disobeyed david and killed abner job
was never punished okay which tells us that job was probably acting on the orders of david uh they
rather see ammonites and besiege rabbi but david remained at jerusalem okay so david’s in jerusalem
while the army is fighting elsewhere it happened late one afternoon when david rose from a couch
and was walking about on the roof of the king’s house that he saw from the roof a woman bathing
and the woman was very beautiful david sent someone to inquire about her it was reported
this is about sheba okay daughter of ilium the wife of urea the high tide so david sent messengers
to get her and she came to him and he lay with her um then she got pregnant okay again this is very
um problematic story because first of all a woman doesn’t sleep with you just because you asked her
to okay and Bathsheba remember is married to Uriah the high tide okay so who is Uriah Uriah
is the best soldier in David’s army he’s very popular with the man so if you’re David who are
you afraid of you’re afraid of Uriah okay it doesn’t make sense all right Uriah is the person
you’re most afraid of all right so now he has a problem because Bathsheba is pregnant and David’s
like i need to fix a problem because if Uriah comes back and discovers that his wife got pregnant
while he’s away he’s gonna know that i slept with her okay so he has to solve this problem
so david sent word to job send me urea the high tide and job sent aria to david when your came
to him david asked how it’s going and uh david says to urea okay you know what you you’re a
great warrior why don’t you go and see your wife but then urea doesn’t go see his wife
Because Uriah says to David, listen, your army is fighting for you.
I cannot go sit with my wife and feel good about myself while your men are dying.
I refuse to be with my wife if the men are outside, okay?
So now David has a huge problem.
So what David does is he writes a letter to Job and tells Job, hey, go do this, okay?
Set Luria in the forefront of the hardest fighting and then draw back from him
so that he may struck down and die so David orders the assassination of Uriah and Job tells David
your servant Uriah the high tide is dead okay so I’ve done what you’ve asked me to do okay so in
the Bible what it tells us is that David fell in love with Bathsheba and his heart took over him
and that led him to go kill Uriah okay but if you think about it what probably
happened was reverse where David becomes jealous of Uriah and he becomes
fearful of Uriah because he’s so popular with the soldiers okay because that’s
how David got the throne by betraying Saul so he’s afraid that Uriah will
betray him as well okay so he probably ordered the assassination of Uriah to
prevent this threat from arising and then what do you do with what do you do
to show that you’re better than your worst enemy if you have an enemy how do
you prove that you are better than he is you go marry his wife okay so that’s a
real story okay the real story is that David felt that Uriah was being better
than him he got very jealous and so he killed Uriah and married his wife to show
ha I’m better than Uriah okay that’s the real story but you can you can see how
the Bible frames a story in a different way so not so in other words the Bible
is written as an apology for David to disguise his crimes and the story of
Genesis was written to show that God favors David okay because if David is
fallible but what David does that’s really important is that he omits his
mistakes and he reflects and he improves that’s what God does as well okay so
david and god are the same people and that’s why yahweh favors david above everyone else
yahweh is looking for a friend david is his best friend because david is most like him okay all
right let’s continue okay so the wife of uriah of sheba he she hears that her husband is dead
and she cries and then when after after her morning is over david and bashiba marry and
have a son together okay then nathan the prophet goes david and says tells him a story there are
two men in a city and one is rich and the other is poor okay so there’s two
men one rich one poor the rich had many sheep and the poor had just one okay
then a traveler comes to the rich man and the rich man has to have a feast
for the traveler but he doesn’t want to use his sheep so he steals the poor
man’s sheep okay then David gets angry and says hey man that’s wrong okay I
I will find this man, and I will kill him, okay?
And I will give the poor four lambs instead of one.
And then Nathan says to David,
David, you are that rich man, okay?
So what Nathan is saying to David is,
your crime is you stole a pashiba.
Guys, that’s not David’s crime, okay?
David’s crime is he killed Uriah, right?
So this is what we call gaslighting.
You see how clever this is, where the Bible set up so that
you forget that David’s crime is killing Uriah,
okay you think that the real crime is david stealing but sheba no that’s not the real crime
the real crime is murder okay not adultery all right so in other words the bible is an apology
for david but because of the nature of israel society okay so what’s what’s special about
israel at this point in history is that it’s a very small community of people so david can’t be
like, I’m king. If you disobey me, I’ll kill you, okay? He has to get everyone to support him. So
they have to make up these stories to justify why David is a good person, okay? David cannot
say he didn’t do this because everyone knows he did this. So instead, they change the story. And
what they say instead is that what makes David special is not that he is infallible. What makes
special is that he’s a poet and he is capable of reflection and forgiveness which is what yahweh is
okay so yahweh support king and so is david all right and this is why again the jews are so
literally so so literary and so creative they’re not great warriors but they are tremendous
intellectuals this has been true throughout their history they’re capable of deep reflection
open debate and argumentation okay and this is and this is why the jews are so creative okay
any questions guys okay all right um i don’t know much about bible so bible is a collection
of different stories and poem right and so the common feature of these stories are
I can’t really tell the common feature between this story and the previous story about Rachel and Leah.
Okay, so that’s a great question.
Okay, so let’s go over some basic introduction to the Bible, okay?
So the Bible, it’s a library, okay?
Bible means, sorry, Bible means books in Greek.
So it’s a library.
and it’s composed of um three major parts the first is what’s called the tanakh sorry it’s like
it’s a torah okay so it’s the first five books of the um bible okay second is the historical books
history and then you have the writings okay which include poetry so the problem of bible is that it
was actually constructed much later than the time of david okay so david was david was about 1000
in bc around this time okay and the bible we think was constructed about 400 um bc around this time
okay so there’s a 600 year difference so the bible that we have was very different from the bible
that uh was first conceived okay so what’s the structure of the bible the short of the bible
is this it’s a history of the people of israel okay remember israel is a fake nation it’s a
a collection of different tribes different peoples and they need to make it as so it’s one people so
they create a fake history all right so the fake history is um adam and eve then uh noah then
abraham then isaac then um jacob then moses then you get all the way to david okay all right so
this is a cosmology an ordering of events or a fake history all right and what this is doing is
this it’s combining all the different tribes and groups of israel together into one family history
okay so remember you have the egyptian priests you have the mercenaries you have the nomads you have
the hill people okay so egyptian priests get explained away by moses that’s why the israelites
go into egypt because um they have the egyptian influence okay then you have the hill people and
the people come from different families and what you do is you make them into one big family so
abraham isaac and jacob are all different part family and when you combine the nation together
you make it so it’s one nation together okay so now rather than abraham isaac and jacob are
different families it’s like no isaac the son of jacob and jacob is the son of isaac okay all right
so this is the original bible and then what happened later on was then they added other
stuff as well okay poetry and rituals and all that okay over time does that make sense all right good
great any more questions guys um i don’t understand like why does the bible kind of
trying to embellish like kind of trying to make people believe that david is a very successful
figure figure or something sorry what is the question uh so like uh um so the intention of
the story about david is to use these stories to let uh the readers uh the israel people to
understand um their their culture or or is this just okay um listen okay so the bible will change
over time okay this is really important to understand what the bible is changed over time
because israel becomes different over time and we’ll go over this next class oh sorry not next
week okay not next next week okay so what’s happening now is okay um you’re david and you’re
you’re Solomon, okay? So Solomon is the son of David who becomes king. All right. And there are
people around you, okay? And they’re gossiping, okay? Gossiping. They know what happened with
Bathsheba. They know what happened with Abner. They’re all gossiping. And that causes problems
for the king, okay? It’s like being in a village and everyone’s talking behind your back. So what
you do is you need to spin this, okay? Or what we call public relations or media. You need to tell
story in a different way that makes the gossiping less bad okay so the gossiping right now is that
david he is ruthless he killed urea because urea was a threat okay now the problem with this with
the story is that if people believe this story to be true one it’s possible that urea’s friends will
want revenge for what happened okay it’s also possible that a soldier tries to kill david okay
because david is clearly ambitious so you change the gossip to like no no no no david was not
ambitious david is just a poet who fell in love with for shiba okay now people think that david is
just irresponsible okay infallible but this is a lot better than people thinking that he’s a
ruthless killer because if people think that he’s a ruthless killer then i should be a ruthless
with this killer as well okay now people are like well you know david he’s king but he’s not perfect
and he made a mistake and we should forgive him because yahweh remember the story of yahweh is
that he makes mistakes too and we should forgive yahweh as well all right do you understand what’s
happening okay this is what called spin before it was like he killed uriah and therefore uh we
should avenge uriah or it’s okay to be violent now you switch the story to say no it was really
about a shiba and this is just really about okay you know what people make mistakes we should
forgive him okay and that’s why the bible was created in the way it was to change the gossip
around so that it would be less harmful they both suck okay but everyone knows you killed
uriah now the question is why did you do so okay you don’t have people thinking that hey david
killed uriah because he saw you as a threat because then people think okay then we know
that david had to kill saul as well okay maybe a huge problem on your hands so you switch it’s
like no no no it was just for shiba okay does that make sense so bible is used like manipulate
okay all right listen all right very simple we remember writing what if writing writing
those three things first is legitimacy okay to explain that this guy should be the king because
that’s the will of god second is unity we are one family guys we have the same values the third is
differentiation we’re different from other people okay all right differentiation is yahweh is a god
of forgiveness a god of in of fallibility with a god of reflection and debate and openness okay
so our god is different from other gods the greek gods is pure vengeance our god is one of
forgiveness okay he’s he’s good unity is we’re just one family with one history okay and legitimacy
is that david is a poet king which is just like yahweh okay that’s why yahweh favors him
does that make sense okay that’s what the bible was constructed or initially to do but over time
its nature will change and something we’ll discuss as we go along but when the bible was first
constructed it was constructed as propaganda but yahweh is okay the yahweh or the jay she uses
opportunity to create beautiful stories that become living entities living memories onto
themselves and they ignite the imagination of the jewish people and that’s why the jewish people are
so creative right right so okay and do you have any more questions okay great okay so we’ve done
the greeks we’ve done the jews next class we’ll do the persians okay and these are the three
most creative peoples of this period the jews the greeks and the persians
and you can argue that it is three people the jews the greeks and the persians
that have that are the pillars of western civilization okay so we will continue this next
class
Source: Predictive History