Where Was Jacob Buried?  Let's talk about another contradiction in the Bible. Hey everybody, I'm Dan Mlelen. I'm a scholar of the Bible and religion and I want to talk about this passage in Acts 7:es 14- 16. And this is where Steven is before the Sanhedrin before getting stoned. And here he's reviewing Israel's history. And this portion is talking about the end of the book of Genesis. And verse 14 starts, then Joseph sent and invited his father Jacob and all his relatives to come to him, 75 in all. So Jacob went down to Egypt. He himself died there as well as our ancestors and their bodies were brought back to Sheckchham and laid in the tomb that Abraham had bought for a sum of silver from the sons of in Sheckchham. Okay. So let's take a look at when Abraham buys a tomb in the book of Genesis. And for this we're going to Genesis 23. Abraham listened to Ephrone and Abraham weighed out for Ephron the silver that he had named in the hearing of the Hittites 400 shekels of silver according to the weights current among the merchants. So the field of Ephron in Machella, which was to the east of Mamre, the field with the cave that was in it, and all the trees that were in the field throughout its whole area, was made over to Abraham as a possession in the presence of the Hittites before all who went in at the gate of his city. Now, wait a minute. This doesn't mention Hymor or his sons or Sheckchim. This talks about the cave at Machella, which Abraham purchased from Ephron the Hittite. Where do we get Sheckchham and the sons of Hore? Well, that's in Genesis 33. But it's not Abraham. It's Jacob. And Jacob came safely to the city of Sheckchham, which is in the land of Canaan on his way from Padanaram. And he camped before the city. And from the sons of Kaore, Sheckchham's father, he bought for a 100 pieces of money the piece of land on which he had pitched his tent. There he erected an altar and called it El Eloh Israel. So uh let's see who gets buried in these locations. If we go to Genesis 50, we're talking about Jacob. Thus his sons did for him as he had commanded them. For his sons carried him to the land of Canaan, and buried him in the cave of the field at Machella to the east of Mamray, which Abraham bought with the field from Ephron the Hittite to possess as a burying place. After he had buried his father, Joseph returned to Egypt with his brothers and all who had gone up with him to bury his father. So according to Genesis, Jacob is not buried in Sheckchham in the land that he purchased from the sons of Kore. Jacob is buried in the cave of Mach Pelah which Abraham purchased from Ephraim the Hittite who is buried in the land that was purchased from the sons of Hor and Sheckchim. For that we go to Joshua 24:32. As for the bones of Joseph, which the people of Israel brought up from Egypt, they buried them at Sheckchham in the piece of land that Jacob bought from the sons of Haymore, the father of Sheckchham, for a 100 pieces of money. It became an inheritance of the descendants of Joseph. So, it is Joseph's descendants who owned that property that was purchased by Jacob where Joseph was buried. But the property that Abraham purchased from Ephron the Hittite is where Jacob is buried. So if we go back to Acts 7:es 14-16 and specifically down in verse 16, their bodies were brought back to Sheckchham. This is Jacob and our ancestors and laid in the tomb that Abraham had bought for a sum of silver from the sons of Kore and Sheckchham. So we have two main problems here. One is that Jacob was not buried with all of Steven's ancestors in Sheckchham. Jacob was buried in the cave of Mach Pala. Joseph and his descendants were buried in Sheckchham. Two, Jacob was buried where Abraham had purchased property, but it was not from the sons of Kore and it was not in Sheckchham because that property was purchased by Jacob. So, the purchaser of the property, the location of the property, the location of Jacob's burial are all incorrect in Acts 7:16. This is not a contradiction that you can make go away. Now, folks who need it to go away because they are imposing upon the text the dogma of univocality. The text is not allowed to say what is in the text. They have to come up with some kind of excuse, but they're not trying to convince people who are putting data over dogma, people who are trying to think critically. They're trying to convince themselves and other people who agree with them. This is not about changing anyone's mind. This is about affirming people who already believe in this dogma. And so they are motivated thinkers. They already want to arrive at the desired conclusion. They just need an argument that they can get behind that they feel is not impossible. And so you'll hear things like that Steven was wrong. And the author of the book of Acts, whom they obviously presupposed to be Luke, decided to include it anyway, knowing that everybody was like, "Oh, well, we know what actually happened here. We're okay with this." uh but there's a problem with that because according to the narrative Steven is supposed to have done this under the influence of the spirit so should not have aired in this way. Uh there are other attempts to try to parse apart who was actually taken to uh sheim. So it says Jacob died and our ancestors and their bodies. Well, they say well maybe their bodies doesn't include Jacob. Maybe it just includes our ancestors, namely Joseph and his descendants. But that doesn't get around the problem of the fact that Abraham is not the one who purchased the property at Sheckchham. There are a bunch of ways to try to rationalize this away, but they're only convincing if you are already convinced and you just need the tiniest little sliver of not impossible to feel comfortable in being convinced. If you are not already convinced, if you are not dogmatically seeking an explanation that allows you to assuage that cognitive dissonance, this is very clearly a contradiction and there's just not a plausible way around that. And before I go, if you'd like to find more and other access to the work that I do or if you would like to support my work, there are a variety of different ways to do that. I have a Patreon at patreon.com/mlen spelled m a kle e l a n. You can find me on Tik Tok, on YouTube, on Instagram, on Twitter, on blue sky on threads. I also have a website mlelen.org where I sell online classes and I will be starting up my online introduction to biblical Hebrew class in a couple of weeks. If you've ever wanted to learn biblical Hebrew, this could be a wonderful opportunity. Uh, part one of the two-part course is $200. The required textbook and workbook are Lexom Press's Learning Biblical Hebrew, the textbook and the workbook. Uh, classes are held every Monday and Thursday evening from 7 to 8:00 p.m. Mountain time. They're all recorded. You can attend live or you can take the class asynchronously, and you don't have to know anything at all about biblical Hebrew to start. We are going to start by introducing you to the Hebrew alphabet on day one. And as usual, please check out my podcast, The Data Overdogma Podcast. Episodes drop every Monday and we are trying to grow our channel on YouTube as well. So you can find the data overdogma podcast on YouTube. But thank you so much everybody for watching and the fit for this video. It's been the uncanny X-Men 2011., Where Was Jacob Buried?, YouTube, 01kg2jrfza31gjcgxpgdrhvhmg.