The Indiana Jones Episode!

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Dan McClellan (1:02)

Did the Red Hulk ever lift Thor's hammer? And I guess it was...

Dan Beecher (1:06)

Now we're crossing the streams. We're crossing the streams.

Dan McClellan (1:09)

And you know you can't cross streams. It's just, don't cross the streams. Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher (1:20)

And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan (1:21)

And you're listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, because why not? And we combat the spread of misinformation about the same, because we all know why. How are things today, Dan?

Dan Beecher (1:39)

Things are great. Today's going to be fun. We're going cinematic on this one. We are taking a trip down Indiana Way. We're going to go down the Indiana Jones Trail, if you will.

Dan McClellan (1:58)

Well, that was the name of the dog, not the road that he grew up on. I don't know. Anyway, moving on.

Dan Beecher (2:05)

Moving on. So we're going to start, as one does on one's Indiana Jones special.

With the Ark of the Covenant, the Ark of the Covenant. Yeah, we will. We will not be doing any raiding per se, but we will.

Dan McClellan (2:21)

That would be unethical of us, as Indiana Jones was frequently.

Dan Beecher (2:27)

Yeah, he oh yeah, he wasn't tremendously concerned about ethics unless he was. And then it was like, why are you even bothering with that? And then at the for our second thing, we're going to do we're going to do the Grail, the Holy Grail. A Grail?

Dan McClellan (2:46)

A Grail? We're going to skip right over the middle one, the one that my wife hates, but I was like, why did we pay for the three movie set if you refuse to have that movie on in this house?

Dan Beecher (2:58)

There's no temples of doom in the Bible. That is unrelated.

Dan McClellan (3:03)

We're going to omnomshibai right by that one.

Dan Beecher (3:08)

If we have time at the end, we'll talk about a Crystal Skull. We'll see. But for now, let's dive in with the Ark of the Covenant. All right. So we've all heard of the Ark of the Covenant.

Dan McClellan (3:26)

Yes.

Dan Beecher (3:27)

It is a very famous thing. But what the heck is it? It's funny because it is very much in pop culture, not just in Indiana Jones movies, but in other things. We all know that it is now resting comfortably in a US government warehouse.

Dan McClellan (3:47)

Yes. And it's evidently magnetic or something. I don't know. Burns holes and stuff. But yeah, what's funny is the Bible has two arcs. And this is two different Hebrew words. They're not the same word, but they get translated as arc.

Dan Beecher (4:08)

Okay, so one is a giant boat, an enormous, un-plausibly, un-plausibly, yes.

Dan McClellan (4:16)

Me fail English.

Dan Beecher (4:17)

Un-plausibly large boat. Me fail English. And then the other is a box.

Dan McClellan (4:24)

Yes, and they're both kind of box-ish. Like the Hebrew word for Noah's Ark is a chest, a casket, something like that. And the Hebrew word for the Ark of the Covenant, aron, is a, same thing, it just means a box.

Dan Beecher (4:38)

Okay.

Dan McClellan (4:39)

And this Hebrew word is used in places to refer to the sarcophagus into which Joseph's corpse was placed in Genesis. Jehoiada placed an aron next to the altar for the collection of money for the temple.

We have a few different uses of this. And then we also have the phrase, well, we have several phrases, there's several titles for this thing. We have Ark of the Testimony in Exodus 25 We have Ark of the Covenant in Joshua 3.6, Ark of Adonai in Joshua 3, Ark of the God, 1 Samuel 3 So it's got a bunch of different names, but-