Stephen: Right, and you especially dont need to bring any livestock to the church. So it had this prominence beyond those other books. Fr. And that can lead to a lot of despair. Andrew: Yeah, like the altar has be reconciled to God? Stephen De Young, goes back to what I explained earlier: our understanding of the Judaism of Jesus day has been tinctured by Rabbinic Judaism, which we anachronistically assume reflects the tradition of the Pharisees. Andrew: Yeah, and thenand heres the part that everyones waiting forthe goats. Stephen: But due to the frequency of the show, is it not actually Goat Fortnight? Fr. Andrew: It was. If it read that way, then youre asking the natural question, which is what mediates between? Andrew: Yeah, which were actually about to show you how its the opposite. Consequently, Christianity has more continuity with the religion practiced by the Pharisees than what we know of today as Judaism.. And who or what is atoned for? Orthodox Christian priests Fr. They have also referenced three human falls which Fr. Okay, sono, its good. March 12, 2021 The definition is not as simple as it may seem, since some may employ it metaphorically such as referring to a giant of industry. Fr. Fr. Stephen: The corruption of the earth, of the whole world. As modern Americans, these are important questions. One of them Im going to sacrifice, so that one we go and we lay hands on it to say: This is the sheep that were going to offer to God. Stephen: [Laughter] I thank you for the courtesy laugh, for the golf-clap of laughter. Andrew: Yeah, like when were serving liturgy, we turn the page in the book. And that is so so heart-rendingly beautiful. And again, this is all about not dying. I will not. Fr. Mahaksapatalika (Isaacs Jr.). But the Bible indicates that the Nephilim reappeared after presumably being killed off in the Flood. So this is sometimes expressed as there were arguments about them; in reality it was just some communities had them and used them and some other ones didnt have them and therefore didnt. That was bad for you! [Laughter] Yeah, so Azazel is caught up in all this. Stephen holds a Ph.D. in Biblical Studies from Amridge University. Stephen: But so if we go back, then, to the Semitic root thats behind all this, you end up with what are called kefir verbs. Fr. Stephen: Yeah, so this gets sort of double interesting, because not only do we have the made-up English word that is primarily reflecting, as you just described, an English concept than it is trying to reflect an original word The reason for that is the Greek word, ilasterion, doesnt occur anywhere that we still possess until Jewish folks start using it, meaning the Greek Old Testament and then works like Philo, Josephus, etc. The book is deeply scholarly and deeply spiritual at the same time. Fr. God bless you. Im like, its: You have two goats And now theres going to be all these rumors: See? [Laughter]. [Laughter] So, yeah, thats the word itself. Journal for The Study of The Pseudepigrapha, Online Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet, Corrupting the Image 2: Hybrids, Hades, and the Mt Hermon Connection, Corrupting the Image vol 2: Hybrids, Hades, and the Mt Hermon Connection, Lamhfada: An Online Magazine of Myth and Story. Fr. Heres the thing, though. For those of us in the Byzantine rite of the Orthodox Church, which is most Orthodox Christians, this last Sunday was the Sunday of the Last Judgment, in which we heard Matthew 25, where we heard that sheep go to heaven and goats go to hell. Stephen: Right, its a practicality. Islam, in: Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (EBR), vol. Is it because its being offered to God? Stephen De Young, have been podcasting together recently and shared about these five-ish angelic falls. Stephen: Yes, involving metallurgy for weapons of war and those kind of things. Stephen De Young. Send it out. Fr. So to prepare for that, he has to offer a special sin-offering for himself, because he needs to be, because hes going to go all the way in, he has to be at this state of purity and holiness that is unsurpassed. Stephen: And now Ive pre-empted the Where can I read more about this? messages we get after most episodes. Athanasius the Great, St. Athanasius of Alexandriain his work, On the Incarnation. Stephen: Right, and this is the only sacrificial ritual of any kind in the Torah in which sins are placed on an animal. You can download the paper by clicking the button above. Amen. Which is kind of a weird way to end the gospel. They meant, at the time, was putting man and God together at one. That was the intention. It is very common for all kinds of, shall we say, advanced theological ideas, that have come into being over time, through a long history of development, to all be read back into usually the Greek word in the New Testament. And then as you go out to the holy place and then to where the Levites are dwellingthe Levites and the priests have to maintain this higher level of discipline and holinessand then you get to the Israelites, who have to do this even higher level than the nations. Andrew: There you go: the Day of the Covering. ,The Whole Counsel of God: An Introduction to Your Bible Stephen: [Laughter] Right. But the much simpler way to read it is it just means cover. Just in case anyone wonders, I have not seen the film Fallen. So, yeah, its literally the Day of AtoCovering. Instagram, RSS & iTunes Fr. Stephen: This is like 25 pages of dissertation; I could just refer you back thereno. Not so great for the goat, but it keeps that from happening, which would be a very awkward moment. Fr. Fr. How do you put sins on a goat? They see this as a kind or type of atonement. Stephen: Let me throw you one quick correction here. Stephen? Fr. Andrew: Like a lid, yeah, or the top. I think sometimes people take 1, 2, and 3 John as being like these little bonus bits toward the end of the New Testament before we get to the big, crazy dream-vision at the end. Fr. Stephen: Right, so this purification has happened, so those animals are no longer unclean from outside the camp, and therefore, not metaphorically but literally, Cornelius, this Roman, is now also clean, just as clean as any Judean, and therefore able to receive the Holy Spirit as he does after St. Peter preaches the Gospel to him. I know weve said this several times already, but when atonement is talked about in the New Testament, its not referring to some abstract theological idea of atonement; its referring to what happened on the Day of Atonement and comparing, specifically, as were going to see, what Christ does, to that. Thank you very much for listening, everybody. Our sins came back to us!. Stephen: Yeah, it was Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Andrew: I feel like that could be on a t-shirt. Okay, perfect example; this is probably the classic example: Matthew 27:25, where the people say in response to Pilate, His blood be upon us and upon our children. Now, given everything we just said about the blood of the goat, and given everything you should know if youre a Christian about what the blood of Christ does, if his blood is upon you, thats actually good. There are sort of a handful, I think four or five, uses of it in the first century AD and later, and like half of those are by Plutarch, by one author. What we reliably know about them is, "Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came into the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. I mean, obviously he has to touch it, but theres not this ritualized laying-on of hands thats going on that Im seeing here, unless Im just missing it, Father; I dont know. [Laughter] Go back where you came from. Fr. Stephen De Young Easily the most important work in Pauline Studies, and likely in Biblical Studies as a whole, of the current decade is Matthew Thomas' published Oxford dissertation, Paul's "Works of the Law" in the Perspective of Second Century Reception. Stephen offers a firm, yet never harsh or condescending, corrective to any interpretation of the Old Testament that seeks either to allegorize or demythologize . Andrew: Yeah, and most Semitic languages work this way, so if any of our listeners are Arabic-speakers, which I know some are, its again those three consonants make up pretty much every word in Arabic. Fr. So they rededicate the Temple, and although it didnt happen that time, when the tabernacle is dedicated, when the Temple was dedicated by Solomon, after everything is dedicated, after the blood is used to purify everything and consecrate everything, then the presence of God enters in as this fiery cloud. So you see, for example, the teaching of the works of Azazel. Fr. We understand your hunger and your thirst to know more, and we appreciate and laud that. Fr. Fr. So, speaking of that ritual context, then, the rest of what were going to be talking about is the ritual of atonement, the Day of Atonement. This is before Christs birth, an awareness that were managing the problem, were dealing with the problem, but were not solving the problem. Andrew: Thats interesting, which is funny, because you wouldnt think of Like, at what point do we see Cain teaching something? So, okay, Christ is both goats. And so I think its really critical that we understand that atonement, as the Scripture depicts it, is not some kind of system, where this is how you get saved, and it works like this: sins get for instance, in one version: sins get transferred from you to Christ! Fr. Stephen: Right, thats not actually in there, no. I mean, is is a good goat and a bad goat? Fr. Fr. So how could the Jews who did not convert to Christianity still practice their faith? He heals them, and thats how Matthew interprets that passage from Isaiah 53. Andrew: Yeah, I know. Stephen: Because of how its conjugated. Thank you. That doesnt make it not historical. Okay, by all means. Andrew Stephen Damick and Fr. Fr. Can you hear me? Theyre cursing him; hes taking away their sins. It has this sort of importance as a major battle site. Andrew: Now everyones going to want to read it! Fr. Its sort of like death stuff. So you use life stuff to purify from death stuff.. While underscoring the continued need to take into account the historical context that forms the background to the New Testament (at least I got that right), Fr. Yeah, so why? Fr. I hear you. Yeah, and then again Hebrews 10: How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of Godand heres the important part here, for our purposesand has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and has outraged the spirit of grace. So, again, the blood of the covenant does this sanctification. Stephen: This idea of, Hey, maybe the serpent in Eden was telling the truth. Fr. Stephen: Right, and this goat is so unclean, by the way, that the goat would be led out by a designated person and tied to a bush or a shrub out in the wilderness, and the person who did that was rendered unclean by it, from just like being around that goat, the sin-goat. Andrew: Yeah, right, and it probably should be noted that that doesnt contradict what came before. Fr. Stephen: The high priest would place his hands on the goat, on its head, to designate it for this purpose, and he would What is says is he would recite the sins of Israel. Stephen: Yeah, and a solid 80% of kidding aside, the point you made about it being references to the Day of Atonement is again important. The Bible refers to people who are (generically) tall, (generically) very tall, or (generically) of great stature. Andrew: Yeah! Fr. Andrew: Yeah, thats cool. Facebook This goat, we dont know nothing. Fr. Stephen: Right, so this then plays out through the early chapters of the book of Acts, the idea that everything has now been cleansed. Andrew: Yeah, I mean, how do they fish him out? It is being explicitly pitched as a defense of Eastern Orthodoxy as such. Ive seen that myself. So thats what were going to do now. So when Peter is called to go see Cornelius the centurion whos a Roman, whos a Gentile, whos from one of the pagan nations, he sees this vision of the animals, the formerly unclean animals, being lowered in this cloth. Andrew: Cool. Stephen: Az is a goat. Stephen: Thats the crucial battle where the Judean army, led by the Maccabee brothers, defeated the Greek forces, at the Battle of Emmaus. So, yeah, but that understanding of it is responsible for a lot of Western Christianity. So lets talk about what St. John says about this. This is a giant exercise of throwing the baby out with the bathwater combined with an historical amnesia propagated by lazy anti-intellectualism. Stephen: the altar, the ark of the covenant, the other fixtures of the tabernacle in order to purify them, in order to remove that taint thats been left there, thats gathered there because of the sins of the people, because of the sins of the community over the course of the year, to purify it again. Stephen: Because that kind of response kind of begs the question, where its sort of like: Well, okay, what is St. Matthew talking about? How are you doing? Fr. The reality is more like what we were talking about tonight that we see unfold in the Scriptures with atonement and everything else, that there are these cosmic realities of spiritual warfare, of Christ defeating the powers of evil, of Christ setting us free and purifying us, making us holy and setting us apart and bringing us into his kingdom; that are cosmic realities that each of us has been given the gift of being able to participate in, in time. I mean, this is how granular this gets. Welcome to the second half of the show, here on Goat Week at The Lord of Spirits podcast. Sorry. It has become fashionable within American Eastern Orthodox convert culture to deny that the Orthodox believe in substitutionary atonement. Ill take it. Fr. Rev. Andrew: Leave reviews and ratings, but, most importantly, share this show with a friend whom you know is going to love it. Andrew: Yeah, which we talked about before, a few episodes back. Stephen: So he does this sin-offering, and then the sort of Day of Atonement ritual proper begins. Stephen: Right. Andrew Damick, Michael Landsman, and Ancient Faith Radio, Fr. Stephen DeYoung takes an axe to the root of the tree of Neo-Marcionite misreadings of the Old Testament prevalent in academic and popular-level biblical studies literature.Fr. But well get to that. Stephen: [Laughter] So well start with the good goat. Andrew: Yeah. The goat is not caused to suffer. Hey, its the sin-goat!, Fr. Stephen: Weve talked about that theres kind of an anti-theosis that happens. Fr. 1 John 2:1 talks about 1 John 2:1-2 is talking about the Day of Atonement. Fr. Stephen: Yeah, so I dont want to get too granular about this, because theres actually, when you get into literature about thisI did my dissertation related to this, so I read all the literature on this. Hes wrapped about with a scarlet, Fr. Fr. The idea of aliens, giants and mysterious monolithic structures has become popularized. Fr. Right. Fr. Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer. Stephen: [Laughter] So, yeah, how granular do I want to go? Stephen: Actually, it was sprinkled with the finger, so the high priest would have a bowl in which the blood was collected, and he smears it with his finger on pretty much everything but the ark. I know people are being moved to sympathy for the goat in all this. So probably the most famous Church Father to talk about this in terms of atonement specifically is St. AthanasiusSt. Fr. Were the Nephilim Genetically Psychopathic? He holds a PhD in Biblical Studies from Amridge University. Once again, I am delighted to announce that I was mistaken. And the ark he would dip his index finger in and then sort of whip it in order to sprinkle the blood onto the ark itself. There are many economic and health benefits to a love relationship, yet if a man holds his wifes hand merely to experience those benefits, then we rightly say this is perverse. Fr. Father Stephen De Young, creator of the popular The Whole Counsel of God podcast and blog, traces the lineage of Orthodox Christianity back to the faith and witness of the apostles, which was rooted in a first-century Jewish worldview.The Religion of the Apostles presents the Orthodox Christian Church of today as a continuation of the religious life of the apostles, which in turn was a . Fr. Fr. Andrew: And so he had to do some kind of ritual purification. Stephen has blogged about previously here as well. He is regarded by Josephus, for example, as the first heretic. Wow. Stephen: Yeah, youre rubbing it into a bunch of people. Fr. Fr. 1 John 2:1 talks about Christ as the high priest who intercedes in prayer, and then 2:2 says that Christ is the atonement, not only for our sins but also for the whole world. Fr. Youve got Jerusalem as an established city. Andrew: [Dramatic groan] Brutal! And so it intrudes into the camp or into Israel or into sort of a renewed anti-typal Eden. Fr. Mike Schmitz), The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. We just walked through the Day of Atonement ritual, the goat for Yahweh, the goat for Azazel, and what those things mean. And from that perspective, it just doesnt make sense. So Wycliffe, who translates the very earliest English Biblewell, I should say [Sigh] the very earliest complete English Bible, [Laughter] because, you know, tip of the hat to Alfred the Great for translating portions of the gospels into Old English. And then, so the Israelites are referred to as sheep sort of all through the Old Testament, and their leaders as shepherds, because theyre these sheep who are now set free from Egypt and brought out into this new pasture, all of that symbolism. And people may have heard of the mostly later tradition where theyd tie a rope to the person, to the high priest, in case he wasnt so pure and he dropped dead and they had to drag him out. Andrew: Exactly. Fr. Okay, but before we get to the New Testament, right? If you didnt get a chance to call in during the live broadcast, wed love to hear from you either via email at
[email protected], or you can message us at our Lord of Spirits podcast Facebook page. Fr. Well, weve looked at this one particular ritual, and now we know what it does, and it does the same thing in us, for us, around us, throughout the whole cosmos. Fr. Fr. Fr. Fr. I dont know. So some people will try to will want to translate Azazel, instead of seeing it as a name, as a proper name, will want to translate it as something like the goat who goes away. This is where scapegoat comes from, because scape- like escape. Escape is go away: the goat that goes away. Andrew: I suspectyeah, thats right. So, in fact, youll see someIm trying to remember if the King James does thisa lot of older English biblical translations, instead of saying, They will choose a goat for Azazel, says, Its one for Yahweh and one for a scapegoat. And this is what theyre doing; theyre translating it rather than taking it as a name. Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet, Rebuttal to Dr. Michael Heisers All I Want for Christmas is Another Flawed Nephilim Rebuttal, Ancient Tales of Giants from Qumran and Turfan Contexts, Traditions, and Infl uences, A Brief Survey of the Pre-flood and Post-flood Origins of the Nephilim, Ninurta-Nimrod, Son of Enlil-Satan, the First Post-Flood Hybrid, The Origin of Evil and the End of the World, Incidental Biblical Exegesis in the Qumran Scrolls and its Importance for Study of the Second Temple Period, Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, Of Demigods and the Deluge: Toward an Interpretation of Genesis 6:1-4. Fr. Andrew: The Savior, yes. You could just call your band Mercy Seat and be like, Were a cover band, just like the title says.. I know. Fr. When the book of Enoch lists what the different rebellious angelic beings taught to humans, what Azazel is listed as having taught are the same things that Tubal-cain in Genesis 4:2 because if theres anything people love more than Slavonic pseudepigrapha, its genealogies. Its also the Roman soldiers who are doing these Day of Atonement things in St. Matthews gospel. [Laughter]. Dr. Stephen De Young is Pastor of Archangel Gabriel Orthodox Church in Lafayette, Louisiana. We will find that the only reading of the Bible that results in tall tales about "giants" is not a literal one but one which I call a theo-sci-fi eisegetical (pseudo) hermeneutic. So the other goat is for Azazel. Theosisbecoming like Godis perhaps the best-known understanding of . Its never going to catch on. Fr. Dr. Stephen De Young, Orthodox priest and an expert in ancient languages and a scholar of Biblical theology joins me for an interview about his newest book. There is this battle thats fought. And this is very important, because, in our modern era, a lot of people will take these descriptions of what happens at Christs death, and the hymns about them that were going to sing in Holy Week in a few weeks, and label them as anti-Semitic.