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Tonight on The Bible Rules.

Child sacrifice was an essential part of ancient civilization.

We look at the dark powers ruling the lives of ancient people.

The gods would threaten all kinds of amazing sadistic punishments.

From witches and wizards to crime and punishment.

The entire village would gather to throw stones until he or she was dead.

What would the ancient world really like?

The answer may be hidden in thousands of rules and commandments in the Bible.

Some are shocking.

Some mysterious.

All reveal lost details about the world that was.

The past is now.

We all know the Ten Commandments, but look deeper and there are nearly 2 ,000

laws, rules, or commands in the Bible. All of them an unexpected portal to

understanding the ancient world.

From the clothes they wore, to the curses they spoke, to the gods they

all the answers of how ancient people lived and how they died can be found in

one place, the Bible.

What's family life like?

How are people interacting?

What's the social order?

Who is ruling?

How does the tribal entity work?

All those actually are reflected in the rules which govern that culture and that

society.

It's 2000 B .C.

The place, the Valley of Hinnom, near the city of Jerusalem.

Terrifying screams pierce the sky.

screams that still echo in this Bible rule from Leviticus.

Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Moloch.

Moloch, that's a name to send shivers up the spine. But who or what exactly

would demand the sacrifice of a child?

Moloch was a god of the underworld.

This pagan god was worshipped in about 2000 BC by a cult active across the

Middle East.

Child sacrifice was an essential part of ancient civilizations.

This idea that God needs blood to be appeased.

This cult believed that sacrificing their own children to mollusks was

a matter of life and death.

Burning a child as a burnt offering to a god is inconceivable in our world.

but was conceivable in the ancient world.

Maybe you could ward off death, satisfy death's terrible appetite, by giving

him one of your precious children.

There is hard physical evidence that this gruesome practice actually happened

the site of the ancient city of Carthage, now located in the African

Tunisia.

Hundreds and hundreds of urns were found full of the bones of young children

from newborns to two -year -olds, which scholars are more and more convinced

were actually sacrificed to some horribly demanding deity.

Sacrificing your child sounds like pure evil. But like all Bible rules, it

reveals something about the ancient world.

And not just that the ancient world had shocking customs or minor gods.

It turns out this Bible rule reveals something about life expectancy.

There were many, many ways to just suddenly die.

During this time, people died quickly from all kinds of incurable diseases.

Ancient cholera, typhoid, smallpox.

Life expectancy was short, and there was a belief that you could ward off early

death, not just for yourself, but for your family, if you're willing to

sacrifice someone of your own blood.

There's this assumption that we can only please God if every so often we kill

somebody. Sacrificing humans to obtain the favor of the gods was practiced

throughout the ancient world, not just by the Malik cult.

A thousand years ago, in Mexico, for instance, the Aztecs killed their own.

In fact, one of the earliest documented uses of a favorite dessert was

associated with this practice.

The Aztecs sacrificed humans on the top of the pyramids. The young man who was

going to be sacrificed, if he was losing courage, you would give him a drink of

the chocolate beverage that had some blood mixed in with it. And this would

blood from a previous sacrifice.

Around 2000 BC, when the Malak cult was active, the Israelites regarded

sacrifice as sinful. But that hadn't always been the case. In Exodus 22, God

actually commands, you shall give me your firstborn sons.

Full stop.

In other words, you owe me your sons. You owe me everything.

This passage is one of several places where child sacrifice appears in the Old

Testament.

But there's an even more famous story, arguably the most shocking account of

practice in the Bible.

And it may contain one final clue to how the ancient world regarded this

terrifying behavior.

It begins with a father and son.

We know them as Abraham and Isaac.

Right as Isaac comes of age, Abraham receives this.

Command from God to go sacrifice his son.

Climb a mountain, build an altar, sacrifice his son.

And God says, you take the fire upon which you are going to immolate your

And you should also take a sword with which you can actually kill your son.

can tell that Abraham is anguished over this. And he's raised his knife to

plunge in his son's chest.

And then an angel appears and says, don't do it.

There's a ram whose horns are caught in a thicket.

And Abram realizes that God has provided an animal sacrifice so he doesn't have

to do a human sacrifice.

What a gruesome thing for God to put someone through. For God to tell a

to kill his child, if that can happen, it seems that almost anything can

God may ask you to do the untenable.

God may ask you to do the horrible.

And because you love God, you've got to do it.

Yet that's not the lesson of this story.

Abraham doesn't go through with it. God stops him.

In that moment, are we witnessing a turning point in how the ancient world

regarded this savage practice?

Here's a story to say, nope. In our new understanding of the God of Abraham and

Isaac and Jacob, we don't do that anymore.

We do not sacrifice children to God.

That's not the kind of God we serve. They've advanced beyond that, and this

seems barbaric to go back to it.

Child sacrifice became less accepted, but it was still sometimes practiced by

the Israelites, and some believed it could be used to win battles.

There's a story where the Israelites are beating the king of Moab, and then it

says he went and sacrificed his son, then the Israelites lost.

End of the story.

gaining military advantage. That was the way that you are going to marshal God

to your side.

So could this Bible rule be seen as a counter -strike? An attempt to dismantle

and defuse the mystical weapon that was child sacrifice?

If so, it was mostly effective, though in a few places the practice persists

even to this day.

In certain parts of Africa, for instance, child ritual murder cases are

occasionally reported.

Are they echoes of an ancient time when a child's blood was viewed as

protection?

Malik is just one rule on this journey to decode the ancient world.

But what do these rules tell us about the reality of the world thousands of

years ago?

When it comes to the rules of parenting, for instance.

Whoever curses father or mother shall be put to death.

In other words, if you wish ill on either of your parents, you die.

We're talking about a tribal society.

And the idea of turning against a parent is just unthinkable.

We're in an ancient world where survival depends on certain social arrangements.

The relationship between parents and children is one of the essential ones to

preserve society, to keep the thing going.

How different is that from today?

Recent studies show that children today are swearing more and younger than they

did even 10 years ago, picking up the practice around the ages of three and

four, often directing choice words at their parents.

In the ancient world, did vile language carry a death penalty?

It's probably not about a child who says to his dad or mother, I hate you, dad.

I hate you, mom. This is much different. So what is this law about?

To answer that question we first have to figure out what is meant in this rule

by the word curse.

Is it maybe about much more than dirty words?

It must be something much more serious.

It must be calling down either divine punishment or the punishment of some

powerful force on the parents to do them irreparable harm.

Cursed be the one who stole my money. Cursed be the one who would ever do this

to me. Those words are so powerful that if anybody were ever to do it...

The curse is understood to come upon them. The law, in effect, is the

side of the commandment which says, honor your father and your mother.

A curse, for instance, could include the invocation of terrifying powers of

darkness.

Which means, I invoke you, O gods of the night.

With you, I invoke night, the veiled bride.

Another rule is about to decode the ancient past in a way that might shed

light on how we live today.

The rules of the Bible form a portal to the ancient world, shining a light on

everything from child sacrifice to parenting 3 ,000 years ago.

Whoever curses father or mother shall be put to death.

This Bible rule delivers harsh judgment on kids who curse their parents.

Today, studies show more and more children using obscenities at younger

but no one's getting executed.

So what's going on? The portal to the ancient world is opening again,

a secret about the spoken word. Was its power infinitely more dangerous 3 ,000

years ago?

Curses really were used at all levels of society. Even international politics

used a significant element of curses. So treaties between two nations would be

guaranteed by the gods, and the gods would threaten all kinds of amazing

sadistic punishments if the treaty was broken.

Clearly this Bible rule is about more than bad words. It's cursing as in

down dark powers.

But did people really do this?

The answers are found in temples and graves scattered throughout the Middle

and the Mediterranean.

Actual curses written on clay tablets and left by the ancient world for us to

find. These tablets don't just tell us about the curse. They tell us about

procedure. If you wanted to curse someone effectively, you had to follow

specific guidelines.

So what you want to do with a curse is you want to put it in some sacred place

so that it's as close to the gods as it can get, and they'll listen to it and

hear it, read it, understand what it is you want.

Sometimes they have magical expressions on them, what we would call abracadabra

words. Sometimes they are accompanied with a doll or a part of the body that

supposed to represent where you want to hurt the other guy.

And sometimes you really want to hurt the other guy.

One curse states, may your penis hurt when you make love.

This one was specifically addressed to a chap's penis. I think that may be the

one, you know.

How can I put it? They knew how to hurt a guy.

And if you really wanted to make that curse stick, you smash something.

A bowl, for instance.

But why?

From ancient Egypt, we have what are called execration texts, literally

texts. The name is written on a ceramic figure or a bowl.

Then it is pronounced.

And then you would smash the bowl.

And the earliest mention of Jerusalem is from one of these very texts that the

Pharaoh is using to pronounce curses on his enemy.

So that almost in a kind of voodoo -like way, he would inflict harm on those

whose names were written on that bowl.

So the bowl was a kind of stand -in for the person, like a voodoo doll. But the

ancients didn't believe the person doing the curse had magical power.

Instead, they believed that person was in essence placing an order to a higher

being. and that being would carry the curse out.

Gods and demons and devils had immense power, and that power could be used to

harm others.

So you could call down an evil power on a person, and that evil power

would respond if you used the right formula, if you had the magic

the abracadabra.

Just as the ancients believed hell was a physical place, they believed utterly

that a curse could hurt them.

Close your ears now if you don't want to hear a real ancient curse from around

700 BC, which sounded something like this.

Which means, roughly translated, I invoke you, O gods of the

night. With you, I invoke night, the veiled bride.

So the Bible rule that a child who curses a parent must die begins to make

in the context of the time.

The ancients so believed in curses that they had actual processes for carrying

them out. A parent could believe that a child who cursed them was trying to kill

them. And that means keeping your cursing children in line.

So many of these commands and curses in the Bible, a lot of these are survival

-based. The ancient world was a patriarchal world.

A powerful man meant safety for everyone under his care.

And in a world where powerful men were warring against each other all the time,

then each powerful man needed to know he had the loyalty of all those under his

protection and care.

In the ancient world, words had a mighty power.

One example is the curse.

Another is the spell.

Thousands of years ago, there were people who used magical spells to change

course of events.

And the Bible also has a rule about them.

A man or a woman who is a medium or a wizard shall be put to death.

A wizard in Leviticus is probably not, you know, a Harry Potter character with

big hat and a long beard.

They may not have the hat and the beard, but according to the writers of the

Bible rule, Their powers do work, and those powers served a concrete purpose

a world far more unpredictable than the one we inhabit today.

They didn't have weather maps. They didn't know about earthquakes, why the

shakes. So you would like to gain a bit of control, any kind of control. Like

control over what happens to our bodies.

If you get hurt, you get sick, and you didn't do anything, someone must be

responsible.

So people would assign responsibility to a witch or sorcerer.

Belief in sorcery and witchcraft spanned the ancient world, and rules against it

can be found in one of the most important of all ancient texts, the Code

Hammurabi. Welcome to Mesopotamia, the year 1772 BC.

One of the first laws in this Babylonian legal code states... If a man accuses

another man of witchcraft and he can't prove it, the accused will be subject to

the river ordeal, which seems to mean you throw them in the river and see if

they drown.

And if you survive, then the accuser is killed.

If the river takes him, then he must have been guilty.

In the ancient world, supernatural power was a given, just as science is today.

Mesopotamian priests were believed to possess supernatural powers, and even

Hebrew prophets are depicted as performing miracles in the name of God.

that's the case, why is the Bible especially hard on the power of witches

wizards? What makes them different?

The problem was that it didn't go through the official channels. And if

wanted to communicate with you, he would do so through a prophet who he called

for the purpose of delivering messages to the people.

Today, far from having laws against witchcraft, the United States government

given some approval to the practice.

In 1996, the Department of Defense officially recognized modern witches

Wiccans. as a religion for any soldier that might practice it. And today, there

are five established military congregations. In 2007, the DoD even

Wiccan pentacles to be carved into military gravestones.

Yet at the same time, ancient fears of witches also survive.

The idea that certain people have powers that we don't understand is

always unsettling.

In tribal societies to this day, people are afraid of witches.

There might be one living next to you or near you or something like that.

There was a woman in my building that I feel that way about.

Thousands of years ago, people actually believed the dark forces in the universe

had the power to destroy them. And as we're about to see, even the stones at

your feet could take your life.

of the bible are a portal to the ancient world and now the portal is opening

again a means to understand everything from the way people dressed to crime and

punishment one who blasphemes the name of the lord shall be put to death the

whole congregation shall stone the blasphemer stoning was the usual method

execution

for capital offenses in ancient Israel. It was a communal exercise in which the

entire village would gather to throw stones at the guilty party until he or

was dead.

It's an intimate form of punishment.

There's no sharpshooter stoners. You're not far away. You need to make sure that

it's a stone that's of significant weight and mass, and you need to be able

hurl it with some amount of force.

It's similar to a firing squad where you don't know which bullet took the life.

And the whole community is now visiting justice and upholding the righteousness

of the land together.

You knew this person and you knew their family, their parents, their

grandparents. And so this would have had to have been something pretty

significant for you to pick up a stone against your neighbor.

Stoning was the traditional execution method for the ancient world from

Macedonia to Arabia.

And it served as punishment for a wide variety of crimes, from adultery to

treason. So does the wording of the rule reveal details of the ancient world?

Why did the whole community take part?

One theory, stoning functions as a kind of loyalty test within the community.

If you refuse to throw a stone at your blaspheming neighbor...

You might also fail to protect your village from its enemies.

We're constantly needing to test one another's loyalty so we know that when

attackers come, we'll be there for each other.

No matter what the circumstance, a tribe must stick together.

Everyone needed to participate.

Other forms of execution included hanging and beheading, but stoning

with it a different meaning for the whole tribe.

To pick up a stone is to give your assent. You don't get to say, Well, some

stone and some don't.

Everyone's in on this. It sounds barbaric, but there's an accountability

here. We have all decided this is what we're doing.

And it wasn't just men being subjected to this punishment.

It's horrible. A lot of times the woman was buried up to her neck, and they

would just whack her with stones until her head was pretty much gone.

This ancient practice exists today and is known as lapidation. There are 15

countries that still authorize stoning as a form of corporal punishment, but

only three routinely use it. Iran, Pakistan, and Somalia.

This Bible rule says a lot about how an ancient community protected itself.

But before we pass judgment, we must consider the context in which this rule

practiced.

In the ancient world, everyone is living a lot closer to the cliff of survival

or non -survival. So if we just realize that most of the time we have this

incredible luxury of living with a greater degree of security, it might

to imagine what it was like to live in constant danger in the ancient world.

If we pay close attention...

The rules of the Bible can guide us to a new understanding of the way people

lived and even dressed.

Touch your shirt.

3 ,000 years ago, a Bible rule said the garment you might be wearing was

blasphemy.

Nor shall you put on a garment made of two different materials.

In other words, don't wear anything made of two different fabrics. It was a rule

directly from God, but what did it say about the times the ancients lived in?

The old adage that clothes make the man, that we are what we wear, the Bible

knew that.

Don't mix a fabric which is grown out of the ground with a fabric that comes

from an animal that lives on the earth.

You're not to mix things because a mixing implies impurity and it implies

uncleanness of some sort and inappropriate combinations.

In 450 BC, in the ancient Near East, where tribal identity was a matter of

and death, you needed to know by sight who was friend or foe. So maybe fabrics

were like flags or even gang colors today.

The clothing we wear and the foods we eat, we have to become obsessed with a

kind of purity.

We don't want there to be any people among us.

with divided loyalties for example if a man marries a woman from another tribe

and that other tribe comes in attacks her uncles might be coming in with

and spears we want to be sure that she'll stay loyal to us and not be loyal

her uncles who are coming today this rule of fashion is much more difficult

follow most fabrics these days are blended for practical reasons

A typical golf shirt, for instance, is made from a cotton and polyester blend

that makes it easier to swing a club.

In the ancient world, you might have to find a different way to improve your

game.

The Bible rules guide the beliefs of millions today, but this is an

investigation into what they tell us about civilizations long vanished. About

politics, for instance.

You shall not revile the God or curse a leader of your people.

You're never going to look at King David the same way again.

If you think the politics in our own time are extreme, check out the ancient

world where you weren't even allowed to curse your leader, something we, in the

present day, take for granted.

You shall not revile the god or curse a leader of your people.

Why so much censorship under our ancient rulers?

One possibility is in ancient times, leaders were themselves seen as godly.

our society, we try to draw a clear line between church and state. But there was

no such clear line in the ancient world in general or in ancient Israel in

particular. Cursing a leader is like cursing your parents or God, who all

authority together over the people.

When Israel was moving across the desert and needing to be led by Moses, the

elders, the rulers, the teachers had to be authorized to make a decision that

the people would follow.

You can't have rebellion in the desert. It's too dangerous. It's too wild.

These days, in democratic countries, we believe in protected speech. No one gets

arrested for cursing a leader.

We've evolved as a nation on that issue in the way we interpret the Bible.

We've said, God gives inalienable rights, and those rights

include life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, which includes the freedom to

against your political leaders and even the freedom to blaspheme God.

Between the lines of this Bible rule, it's possible to glimpse an ancient

structure.

Most citizens of the ancient world could be sure of two things.

The king was above them, and above the king sat a god.

So before we look at why people weren't supposed to curse their leaders, it's

first necessary to investigate what happens when a leader challenges his own

god. What happened then?

The time, 2000 BC.

The place, the long -lost empire of Akkad.

Located somewhere in the modern Persian Gulf, it's considered the world's first

empire, and a curse of staggering proportions is about to descend on it.

4 ,000 years ago, we had the Akkadian Empire, based at Akkad or Agade. And

when it collapsed, its loss was felt greatly.

Archaeologists have uncovered a poem written about a century after the

detailing just how the empire fell and the devastation this brought.

But what caused it?

The gods curse the city of Akkad because its king had built a

temple against divine wishes.

And the king tore down the old temple and the gods went into mourning and

Akkad. And power passed from Akkad to one of its neighboring cities.

Archaeologists believe the words of the curse point to a historical reality.

meaning this catastrophe may have actually occurred.

What's interesting about the curse of Akkad is that it seems to describe a

period of drought, almost a period of climate change.

There is archaeological evidence now for a drought at the end of the third

millennium, so it may be that in this curse we actually have a reflection of

historical reality.

So in the case of Akkad...

A king disobeys his God and an empire falls.

But what happens when a man obeys God but destroys the king to obtain power?

To answer that question, we must look at the career of the most famous king in

the Bible, King David, one of the most complicated and inspiring rulers of the

ancient world.

King David is usually thought to be the greatest of all the Israelite kings.

And I would say that most biblical scholars would now say that his

Story has been much polished that in actuality he was relatively nasty

character.

Historical evidence suggests that David was a real person, a leader who ruled

the Israelite kingdom 3 ,000 years ago, between 1010 and 970 BC.

But what kind of leader was this king, believed by Christians to be a direct

ancestor of Jesus Christ?

It's clear that David had real political talent.

He basically wants to marry Saul's daughter because it's the king's

It's not a deep love or anything like that. But how is he a virtual nobody?

is he going to marry the princess?

By any means necessary.

David's king is known as Saul.

And Saul recognizes David's ambitions. He gives him a task that is suspiciously

difficult, one that no normal man could ever accomplish.

Saul recognizes that with David there, his own power is in question. Thus, he

goes to extreme measures to get rid of David. Saul devises a plan. Go out and

bring me 100 Philistine foreskins. But why exactly foreskins?

Why not say hands?

What is all this foreskins business? It all goes back to the Egyptian practice

that had begun several hundred years ago of paying a financial reward to any

soldier who had slain an enemy and could prove he did so by chopping off his

penis. The Israelites had adopted the practice of circumcision from the

Egyptians. So you could be sure.

that the Israelite troops were circumcised, but the Philistines were

Saul's request requires an act of extreme violence.

It's very hard to get a man's foreskin if he's not interested in giving it to

you. So we know what he does. He kills many people.

The ancient world is about to get very bloody.

In the ancient world, murder and violence were a means to power.

As we see with the rise of David, sometimes the violence could get

Saul recognizes that with David there, his own power is in question. Thus, he

goes to extreme measures to get rid of David. Saul devises a plan. Go out and

bring me 100 Philistine foreskin.

What is Saul's intent?

He wants David to die in the process of trying to collect 100 Philistine

foreskins. So what does David do? He goes out, he brings 200.

200 Philistine foreskins, leave them there at the bride fight.

And then he comes before Saul, and he counts them out.

You know, 101, 102, 103, you know.

Saul then knows, my fate is doomed.

Nothing can stop this guy.

By getting twice as many foreskins, David doubles down on this Bible rule

requires him to obey his king without question.

And in doing so, he paves the way for his own kingship.

Might makes right.

So many of the rules in the Bible are about power, to preserve the way things

are. And almost always in ancient civilizations as today,

That means a few people at the top and a whole lot of people at the bottom. And

the gods are always called in to justify that if you're down at the bottom, you

should be happy and stay there and don't shake things up.

So this Bible rule enshrines the powers that be, God and King, and makes clear

that you don't mess with the leader who may have overseen the writing of such

rules in the first place.

The Bible rules are an unexpected opportunity to explore the ancient

even have something to say about this commonplace modern hobby, getting a

tattoo.

You shall not make any cuts in your body for the dead, nor make any tattoo marks

on yourself.

So were tattoos forbidden because they were associated with pagan worship?

To answer that question, we have to look at the Canaanites.

neighbors of the ancient Israelites, and a group who considered body laceration

a religious practice.

We're told that the prophets of the Canaanite god Baal, in an effort to get

attention, cut themselves with their swords until the blood was dripping all

over them. That form of bodily mutilation may have been connected with

of ancestor worship.

In the ancient world, from Egypt to Crete, from Greece to Persia, tattoos

many functions.

rites of passage, decorations for bravery, and even as a sexual come -on.

But this rule strives to define ancient Israelites as an exception.

They are the people who refuse to mark their bodies like other people do.

You shouldn't change the way you are because God made you the way you are.

The body is the temple of God, the temple of the Holy Spirit. Do not do

that in any way impedes the body or disrespects the body or inflicts any

pain or suffering on the body. The Bible doesn't want any crooked lines tattooed

on your body.

But what does it mean when it forbids crooked speech?

Put away your crooked speech and put devious talk far from you.

Lying is a big problem in the ancient world. Lying is a big problem today.

And then there are gradations of lying where we find ways to use weaselly words

to cover up hidden intentions and to deceive other people. This is a deep

theme all through the Bible.

Does it also come to define how we first think and even talk?

The minute a little kid learns language, he learns how to alter the truth.

And it's one of the most basic things that we do with language.

We lie.

Today, we live in a society where words really mean nothing.

One can say one thing and mean another.

One can throw out words and say, oh, I didn't really mean it. But in the

world, that was not the case.

One was held to one's word.

Today we can go online and post what we want with no real repercussions. So what

was so different about speaking in the ancient world? Why did people fear what

would happen if they didn't follow through with their promises?

We live in a world that's full of laws and contracts and protocols.

Let's go back to a world where almost everyone is illiterate.

where if you're a nomadic people, you have no books at all. And in that world,

the verbal contract and the memory of what was said becomes the glue that

a society together.

Staying true to your word was a foundation of ancient society.

Outside of the Bible, there's an old Jewish parable which illustrates this

A man was spreading rumors about one of his neighbors.

And so the man went to the sage and explained that, yes, in a fit of anger,

had begun saying some terrible things about one of his friends.

And the sage looked at him and said, well, here's what I think you should do.

I want you to go home and get a feather pillow.

I want you to open that feather pillow up and scatter its contents to the wind.

And then I want you to go try and gather up those contents and put them back.

The man says.

It's not possible. I can never gather up all those feathers and get them back

into that case.

And the sage looked at him and said, Do you think it's any different with the

stories you've told about your neighbor?

The rules of the Bible emphasize the tremendous power of speech in the

world. But today, when words are cheap and we have a host of ways to

with each other, does this rule still speak to us?

Not everyone has cursed their parents or cursed God or, you know, not everybody

has murdered. Not everyone has committed adultery.

Everybody has lied.

There's hardly a law or a rule that could be more basic and more universal.

It hits everybody.

The harm done by words was considered even worse than the harm done by

someone financially.

Money taken can be repaid, but the damage caused by an ill word may never

repaired.

In other words, what you said mattered almost as much as what you did in the

ancient world, especially when those words promised something.

The Bible rules have a lot to say about doing what we say we'll do and the dire

consequences when we don't.

In that world, the words that are spoken have to be remembered and they have to

be followed through.

Otherwise, society begins to unravel and fall apart.

The rules of the Bible transport us back in time, taking us inside the minds of

ancient peoples, from the tattoos on their bodies to how they made and kept

their promises.

Whatever your lips utter, you must diligently perform.

Put simply, whatever you say, you have to do. Your word is your bond.

So what does this rule tell us about how the ancient world viewed a promise?

One clue can be found in the physical appearance of the gods themselves,

especially the Greek variety.

Herodotus, the Greek historian from the 5th century, says the Greeks got almost

all their gods from the Egyptians, except they changed the form. The Greeks

don't have animal -headed gods.

Think of the contrast with many of the Egyptian gods, which are precisely

-headed. So what's the objection to an animal -headed god?

Those animals don't talk. Only human beings had reason.

Because only human beings can speak.

So for Greeks, the act of speaking is so important, it is seen as the very thing

which connected them to the gods they worshipped. Maybe it's no surprise then

discover in the ancient world, the physical words that came out of your

carried a heavy sense of purpose.

Make promises at your peril. In a world where you don't have...

a court, in a world where you can't have a written contract, in a world where

there isn't a digital recording.

In that world, the words that are spoken have to be remembered and they have

to be followed through.

Otherwise... society begins to unravel and fall apart.

And if you ignored this Bible rule and didn't follow through, there were going

to be real consequences.

If an agreement is broken, tempers might flare and stones might fly and knives

might be pulled out and so on. So people staying alive depends on people

speaking the truth.

And not weaseling out of it later on.

Language is a powerful tool.

And like any powerful tool, it can be used for good or for bad. The old adage

that sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me is a

lie. That's not just a feature of the ancient world. Certain words today still

have immense power.

From racist epithets that are meant to insult and degrade.

to the word racist itself, which can irreparably harm a career or a life. And

doesn't stop there.

In some settings, to call somebody a liberal or a conservative, to call

a communist or a socialist, the word itself changes everything for that

once they're labeled.

3 ,000 years ago, the terms of abuse may have been different, but whether

promising or cursing, the ancient Hebrew language got right to the point.

Hebrew is a truly desert language.

And if you've ever been in the desert, a real desert, you know that you want to

conserve your energy because it is leeched away by the sun.

They don't use...

definite articles like the or uh if they can get away without them they don't

use two or four or any of those little words they're all missing the people who

wrote and spoke this language believed that staying true to your word was an

essential part of maintaining day -to -day life this new society was glued

together by words

The Word was so powerful that they understood creation itself in terms of

language. Nothing came into being without the Word.

God said, let there be light. God said, let there be living things.

God's Word spoke the creation into existence.

The Bible is the best -selling book of all time, a holy book for millions. In

are nearly 2 ,000 laws, rules, or commands.

An unexpected portal to the ancient world. In some ways, it's really nice

we can look back in history and see this wild assortment of rules that had a

purpose in their time, and now maybe that helps us look at whatever rules we

have at this moment and say, well, what purpose is this fulfilling in our time?

Can these rules written more than 2 ,000 years ago still inform our lives today?

If we can look at these...

biblical rules as a snapshot.

It's one frame in a larger film that's unfolding.

We have this book that right when we think we've mastered it and figured it

we realize there's so much more going on than we first understood.

And this is just the beginning of our investigation using the Bible rules to

plunge into the depths of the ancient world.

Soon enough, the portal will open again.