Heretic Happy Hour

New listener here. Was so confused at top of Gaza episode, when they mentioned that their listeners *ask* for ads… and then they launched into an ad for the Pastor’s Master’s and I cried laughing. I get it now.

I listen to many podcasts, and HHH is my hands down favorite. I am the OG, having listened since the old days of Matt, Keith, and Jamal. Every evolution of HHH has been great but the most recent is over the top. They are knocking it out of the park and I can’t wait for every new episode. The crew is doing an important work. Rock on!

You guys, love what you do, but with the latest episode you’re committing that cardinal “sin” of cherry-picking history. When you do this and also over-generalize, you’re flattening out some rather complex history and end up literally misinforming people. Please, please, please get an actual Assyriologist with a specialty in religion and maybe an Anthropologist who can speak on “tribes” on the pod. You can’t talk about tribes and city states without talking about the impact of agriculture and formation of larger and larger permanent settlements, the advent and impact of writing and bureaucracy and what that did to the hierarchy between different people and men/women; the increase in large scale conflict and violence (do you think all early city dwellers *wanted* to live there, let alone stay?), the progression from priest as supreme authority to the advent of actual kingship (religion has been entangled in politics since the literal start of written history, you can not separate the two), the mundanity and pervasiveness of slavery and casual cruelty towards both fellow humans and animals (go read some city laments, seriously.) You’re misrepresenting their actual worldview by noting their perception of nature as divine - that’s overly simplistic and it does not imply automatic altruism, empathy and respect toward flora & fauna. Sumerian people viewed themselves as tenants in and stewards of the land, which was the gods’ property (the landlord.) The whole point for humanity existing at all was to work the land in order to feed the gods (literally, go look at temple records), and when people died, they had a remarkably bleak view of the afterlife awaiting us. All of this, and “this” is *thousands* of years of history by the way, is the backdrop against which Judaism and then Christianity come out of. You shouldn’t just summarize it or refer to it in a cherry-picking kind of way if you want to be honest. The truth has always been grey, and we’ve always contained both positive and negative qualities, all of which - by the way - are 100% culturally defined (go read about their concepts of good, evil, justice - look before and after the famous Hammurabi) and have little to do, in terms of placing a positive/negative value on it at this point, with evolution. To marry references to psychology, philosophy, history, anthropology, sociology, religion in the way that you want and tried to do, you really, really, really need a solid grasp on the actual history first. Otherwise, where is the context for all of it? Pleaseeee, please do proper research on this topic. You risk maintaining a sort of rosy-glasses look-back at something that did just did NOT exist the way that you think. It’s not good or bad, it’s facts. PS I promise I love you, I just had to say something because Mesopotamia is fascinating, all important for western thought and history, and frequently misrepresented and understudied… Confusing and misinforming because so generalized. You’re mixing up physiology/phychology and evolution with value systems/philosophy in a way that’s too generalized. When you’re talking about tribes and city states, you’re omitting some pretty crucial and important things. Hierarchy still existed, slavery was absolutely normal. Social death was likened to actual death. That’s why hospitality is so important, anyone who can’t be assimilated that way into your group or rejects it, is deemed an outsider and even enemy. Cruelty towards animals and humans (woman and children) common, just go read some laments. Mythology contains knowledge, stories, philosophy, information about locations, etc. Specific to your interest in Christianity, you should really and truly do a deep dive into Mesopotamian history and the combo of agriculture and the first city states. Look at anthropology as well. Therein lie every single good and bad that we’ve inherited since. Nature is sacred and community and diversity is cherished? You’re anachronistic here, because this is not how the ancients looked at life and portrayi by it that way is fundamentally missing the point of their worldview. You need to look at their religion and cults and their views on the afterlife for more clues. Their views on good, evil, justice are not like ours either. Need to look at DOUBT, you’ll see examples again and again of how more diversity in a larger city leads simultaneously to more open mindedness AND more close mindedness or exclusivity/extremeism. Part of this has to do with politics as religion has been entangled in it since the VERY beginning. So it’s weird to isolate qualities like altruism etc and view these categories as if they’re independent or separate from each other, when in actual practical reality, their “borders” has always been porous, fluid and in many cases, nonexistent. Divinity is not what united us beyond tribe. King does.

Always a great, thought-provoking conversation. I look forward to the conversations each week!