Episode 109: The Heart of Pharaoh  ## Metadata - Author: [[Data Over Dogma]] - Full Title: Episode 109: The Heart of Pharaoh - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/2e3abb9f-d9fd-4656-b79a-43799baa9183 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Easter Date Standardized at Nicaea** - Easter's date was standardized at the Council of Nicaea to unify the church and remove dependence on Jewish Passover timing. - It is celebrated on the Sunday after the first full moon on or after March 21st, the ecclesiastically fixed equinox. Transcript: Dan Beecher All right. The issue at hand is the dating of Easter. And here's the thing about Easter, is that I remember as a kid being a little weirded out by Easter because I could never figure out when it was supposed to happen, and it always snuck up On me. Now, look, I was a kid with ADHD. Most things snuck up on me. Many times, I'd get to school, and they'd be like, you excited about the field trip? Dan McClellan And I'd be like, what? The what now? There's a what? Where are we going? I'm exactly like this. Like when I had when I had a nine to five and I had to go into an office and everything. My wife would be like, remember, Monday's a holiday, a federal holiday. You don't have to go into work on Monday. I'd be like, what holiday is it? Or she'd be like, we got something on Memorial Day. And I'm like, what month is that in? So, yeah. But Easter is especially tricky because it moves around. Dan Beecher It's like got a whole month that it could be anywhere in the middle of. And then add to that. Now, I didn't know this growing up, but there's two Easters in the world calculated differently. Although not this year. Dan McClellan I discovered this with my old nine to five when I was making plans to take my first trip to Athens to go start work on the translation of the Book of Mormon into modern Greek. And I was talking with some folks over there who were going to help me identify translators and reviewers and stuff like that. And I was like, well, what about this date? And they were like, well, that's the week of Easter. And I was like, no, it isn't. Idiot. Yes, it is. And they were like, you have to experience Easter in Greece, but don't come out here and expect us to work. So, yeah, I have not been out there during the week of Easter. But yeah, and I was like, oh, I didn't know that they did things differently out there. So there's an island that has a lot of Catholics in it. And the Catholics have been like, we will adopt the Orthodox date for Easter so we can all get along. Dan Beecher Just so we can all be friends. Yeah. All right. Well, I think that's fine. It doesn't seem like I'm sure that there are Catholics and or Eastern Orthodox Christians who would argue with me about this. But the date that you celebrate it doesn't feel like it should matter. It feels like the thing that's being celebrated should be the important thing. But no, the date is is very important so let's talk about like first of all should we talk about how it's calculated first or should we talk about why it is tricky to calculate well i want Dan McClellan To talk about how it has changed oh yeah so i'm going to go back to to the Council of Nicaea. Now, I am wont to get very upset when people say, this happened at the Council of Nicaea. Because, no, it didn't, almost every time. Right. This is one thing that did happen at the Council of Nicaea. They established a new mechanism for calculating the date of Easter. So before that, there were two main traditions for calculating the date of Easter, and one was based on the Jewish Passover. And they called these folks the Quarto Decimans, because they always celebrated Easter on the 14th of Nisan, which is the name of the Jewish month in which Passover is celebrated. Because Passover is closely connected with Jesus's resurrection, Easter is supposed to celebrate Jesus's resurrection, we're just going to celebrate it on the Passover, irrespective Of what day of the week it might fall on. So if it's on hump day, we're going to celebrate it on hump day. If it's on Friday Eve, we're going to celebrate it on Friday Eve. Doesn't matter. And then you had other folks who were like, no, it's got to be on the Lord's day, because he resurrected on a Sunday. Sunday is the Lord's Day. Sunday is the Christian Sabbath. We have to celebrate it on a Sunday, which means usually it would be the first Sunday after the 14th of Nisan. So after the Passover. So it was different for different people. And then you had people in different areas who would be like, we're going to do our own calculations. And particularly in places like Alexandria in Egypt where, you know, that was a kind of hub of a lot of the Greco-Roman science at the time. Right. And so you had a lot of people who were into the astrology and stuff. So the Alexandrian church was, you know, they were the nerds when it came to how to do this. And this was a controversy because, you know, you might think, who cares? But it has a lot to do, well, in their mind, it had a lot to do with, you know, recognition of Jesus's resurrection. And, you know, some people were like, we shouldn't be celebrating the Passover. It's not about the Passover. It's about the resurrection. And then the other people would be like, but the resurrection happened on the Passover. So let's do it. And so it was a big fight. And then at Nicaea, Constantine came in and, you know, just locked the kids in the room and said, figure it out. And what they decided was, and there was ([Time 0:06:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bd2b2a16-1552-4bc7-b4fb-f5fd36d85b2e)) - **Calendar Reform Split Easter Dates** - Gregorian calendar reform corrected Julian calendar drift but the Eastern Orthodox retained Julian dating. - This caused differences in Easter dates between Western and Eastern churches, sometimes over a month apart. Transcript: Dan McClellan Do you recall the story? Dan Beecher Pope Gregory was like, I am getting really annoyed with the time slip that happens every four years. Got slippage. We're slipping. Jerry! Can't do with the slippage. It was something like that. They were discovering the problem of things not working out to exactly a number of days every year. So you were losing days or you were gaining days or whatever it is. Dan McClellan Because the Julian calendar counted exactly 364.25 days for the year and had a leap year every four years, no matter what. And the reality is that it's something like 364.2415 or something like that days in a year, which means you lose a day it is. Every, what is it? It's like four or five days every 400 years or something. I think today the difference between the Julian and the Gregorian calendars is 13 days. Okay. So things have kept on slipping, slipping, slipping, so that now there's... So the Julian calendar, people have kept following that. Dan Beecher That's still rolling. And then the Gregorian calendar, and since they started, and it was the same day, and now it's been long enough that they are 14 days different. Dan McClellan Yeah. So the Eastern Orthodox churches were like, we're not doing that silly Gregorian thing. We're sticking with the Julian calendar. I'm a Julian man. Right. So slowly the date of Easter has slipped away. Right. So that now it's like 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar. So I think 1582 is when that reform was instituted. Okay. And I think there might be a difference in when they identify. Well, because of that, the equinox is calculated to be on a different date. Dan Beecher Yeah. So what that means is that many times the Orthodox Easter and the Western Easter, the Catholic slash Protestant Easter fall on different days. Yes. Dan McClellan But not always, as we learned this year. Not always. But last year, you know how far apart they were? No, I don't. Over a month. Oh, wow. I'd have to look it up. But I think that in 2024, Orthodox Easter was on May 5th, and Western Easter was on March 31st. Wow. Dan Beecher So they were over a month apart because of that little difference. Read a thing that said that and I wish I had it pulled up but I don't but I read a thing that said that there will be you know in the next x number of years there will be two or three more occurrences Where they overlap where they're on the same day again and then it won't happen again for like a thousand years just as a quirk of like how things are slipping yeah yeah so that's interesting If they and but that's only if uh everybody sticks to their guns and stays on the calendar that they're currently going on there and there are um to reform the date of Easter. Dan McClellan And there are institutions who have been like, this is just, this aggression ([Time 0:15:33](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7661ab8c-f9ec-4ac5-bf4f-0df602d14b06)) - **Efforts to Unify Easter Date** - Attempts to unify Easter's date have repeatedly failed despite proposals from major churches. - An agreement on a universal date is anticipated around the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea in 2025, but challenges remain. Transcript: Dan McClellan Will not stand. We've got to fix this. In the United Kingdom, Parliament passed the Easter Act in 1928, says the date of Easter will be the first Sunday after the second Saturday in April. Oh. Although that legislation was never implemented. Dan Beecher Interesting. So that was just, we're going to just, we're just going to go completely rogue. Yeah. I guess Parliament was like, everybody listens to us. Dan McClellan We rule the world. So we'll just do this. And everybody was like, we're not. Dan Beecher I mean, you'd think in a country that has a state religion, they might be able to, they might, you know, it's plausible that they could have pulled it off, but apparently they weren't Able to. Hey friends, look, it's a busy season. You're out there, you're having fun, you're doing what you're gonna do, and you don't necessarily wanna have to stop and slow yourself down to have a wonderful meal. Well, guess what? That's where Factor comes in. Enjoy nutritious two-minute meals. Eating well has never been this easy. You just heat it up and enjoy giving you more time to do what you want to do. Factor meals arrive fresh, ready to eat, perfect for any active lifestyle. Dan McClellan You don't have to spend as much time inside prepping and cooking. You got two minutes in the microwave and then you're going to be able to get to spend a lot more time outside. You've got 45 weekly menu options. You can pick gourmet meals that fit your goals. Choose from CalorieSmart, Protein Plus, Keto, and many others. Yeah, we're not just messing around here, Dan. Dan Beecher You were literally just telling me how much you're enjoying factor. I am. Dan McClellan I was surprised by how much I enjoy these meals. I think I mentioned last time that after cooking one of them, I think it was a smoked Gouda chicken. Both my wife and my daughter, one after the other, came into the kitchen and went, what smells so good? And this is 100% true. I'm not even making this up. Yeah, exactly. Dan Beecher Get started at factormeals.com/dogma50off and use code dogma50off to get 50 off plus free shipping on your first box that's code dogma50 off at factormeals.com/dogma50 off for 50 Dan McClellan Off plus free shipping hey everybody summer is just around the corner a lot of us are going to work hard to get that summer bod uh not me. I maintain a healthy layer of insulation throughout the year. But if you do want to do that, you need some, you need to pay gym fees. You need to get that protein powder. You need to eat healthier, which tends to be a little more expensive. So if you want skimpy wireless bills to help you be able to allocate a little bit more to that summer bod, you need to check out Mint Mobile. Yeah. We've got premium wireless plans for just 15 bucks a month. You can have the summer bod and the skimpy wireless bills without breaking a sweat or the bank. Dan Beecher Yeah. Listen, you don't need overpriced wireless plans. You don't need them. Those bills coming in, you don't know what you're going to be paying, unexpected overages, all that sort of stuff. Mint Mobile's here to rescue you. All the plans come with high-speed data, unlimited talk and text. It's everything you need. It's exactly what you expect from a phone plan. It's delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You use your own phone. You can bring your own number over. All you have to do is just ditch those overpriced wireless plans and get three months of premium wireless service from Mint Mobile for $15 a month. Dan McClellan This year, skip breaking a sweat and breaking the bank. Get your summer savings and shop premium wireless plans at mintmobile.com/dogma. That's mintmobile.com/dogma. Let's see. There was a summit in Aleppo in Syria in 1997. The World Council of Churches proposed a reform, and the reform was proposed for implementation starting in 2001, but it was not adopted by any member body. I feel bad for whoever was so excited about getting their reform in front of the World Council of Churches and everybody was like, oh he. Yeah, no. No, thank you. In January 2016, Anglican Communion, Coptic Orthodox Church, Greek Orthodox Church, and Roman Catholic Church considered agreeing upon a universal date for Easter. That evidently fizzled. November 2022, the Patriarch of Constantinople said that they had been in conversation with the Roman Catholic Church and Orthodox churches to try again. And it says the agreement is expected to be reached for the 1700th. 1700th. You can see why I have, I ditch like a hundred takes for every TikTok video I put out. The agreement is expected to be reached for the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea in, what, 1700 years after 325? Yeah. 2025, this year. Yeah. Okay. So we may get a change. Year. Dan Beecher I mean, it's one of those things where, again, like to my mind, it shouldn't matter what the actual date is. We don't know the ([Time 0:19:36](https://share.snipd.com/snip/690f9be8-3bf1-4a92-8585-4a7f8fce3252)) - **Simplify Easter Dating Approach** - To resolve Easter date disputes, consider scrapping old methods and picking a fixed, agreed Sunday. - This would avoid calendar complications and unify celebrations more simply. Transcript: Dan McClellan What would you do? Dan Beecher What's your proposal? The Dan McClellan official proposal for how you calculate Easter. Dan McClellan I would just pick a date. I would too. I feel like, yeah, April 6th is great. Whatever. Or just say the last Sunday in April or something like that. Right. Yeah. If you want to keep it a Sunday, that's fine. Yeah. I think everybody's moved past the other one was a little outdated. I think everybody's on Sunday now. Okay. Moving away from the Sunday might be a bridge too far. There you go. And the First Council of Nicaea convened on May 20th. Okay. And adjourned at the end of July, 325 CE. Dan Beecher So the theory is that these guys could do the same. They could be. Dan McClellan It could be, yeah, depending on when they decide they're going to celebrate the anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, Dan Brown. Somewhere ([Time 0:27:39](https://share.snipd.com/snip/59544cc0-2651-4153-aed8-a58478d1e30e)) - **Meaning of Hardening Pharaoh's Heart** - Scripture repeatedly states God "hardens Pharaoh's heart," implying divine sovereignty over Pharaoh's resistance. - The Hebrew term indicates a stubborn, unmovable heart, symbolizing Pharaoh's obstinacy as a key narrative element. Transcript: Dan McClellan So this is Moses. Dan Beecher He has left Egypt, and God is sending him back into Egypt to go and free his people from bondage under the Pharaoh. Dan McClellan So this is Mount Horeb. This is Burning Bush. This is I Am That I Am. Right. You know, the Val Kilmer flowing robes. Sure. Gracious. All that stuff. Get all of that in your head. Dan Beecher You're a Val Kilmer guy. I, of course, am a... Charlton Heston. Heston fella. Dan McClellan Who played God in that? Dan Beecher Was it also Charlton Heston? It might have been. It was just a voice. Dan McClellan Yeah, and that's what it is in... Yeah, anyway. That's what everything is in Prince of Eden. Yes, exactly. Dan Beecher Yeah, in animated films. It's all just... Anyway, so verse 21 in chapter 4 says, And the Lord said to Moses, When you go back to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders that I have put in your power. He gave him a whole bunch of tricks, a bag of tricks to go and do. A staff of tricks, you might say. Indeed. Including the one, my favorite of the tricks that he was like, okay, hey, put your hand in your robe. Okay, pull it out. Leprosy. He's like, ah, why did you do that? And he's like, okay, put it back in your robe. Now it's cured. That is not a good trick. Don't do that. Anyway, that was one of the tricks. Anyway, so he says, when you go back to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders that I have put in your power, but I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people Go. That is... Dan McClellan I think we've mentioned before that if you're Moses and God's like, so here's what you're going to do at great personal threat to your bodily safety. And I'm going to make it so it doesn't work. Yeah. And Moses is like, what? Yeah. Dan Beecher You know that you're all powerful, right? Why don't you do the opposite and make it work? Because I thought that was the goal. Yeah. It's like, I'm trying something. Dan McClellan Hang on a minute. I just want to see what happens. This is going to be funny. Yeah. You're supposed to know what happens. Dan Beecher So what's going on here? First of all, talk to me a bit about what the original Hebrew has to say. What are we reading here? Dan McClellan Yeah, so it says heart. And the first thing to keep in mind is that the heart was the seat of both emotion and intelligence and cognition in the Hebrew Bible. The brain was like there's no word in the Hebrew Bible for brain. Every time you see mind in a translation of the Old Testament, that's heart. Interesting. Like they located everything in the heart. And then your kidneys or your bowels were the seed of passions and fear and stuff like that. And then the verb is chazak, and it is probably the PL. So the PL would be to put in a state of being hard. So I will put his heart into a state of being hard. And the idea there, the imagery, is that he is not soft-hearted. He's hard-hearted. Dan Beecher In other words, he's obdurate. And he's probably hard in the sense of unmovable or a stubborn. Dan McClellan Not going to show compassion. Right. In other words. And it quite explicitly says, I will harden his heart. Wow. And we're, yeah. Which is, and then when, when we get to chapter seven, which is when Moses finally is having to do all this crap that God told him to do, even though he also told him, and none of it's going To work. And I'm going to make sure of it. It kind of takes, I imagine it would take the wind out of your sails and Moses would just be like, let my people go. Please let them go. I knew that was going to happen. And then again, in Exodus 7, verse 3, and I love Exodus 7, verse 1, God tells Moses, I will make you a god to Pharaoh. Yeah. But I'm not going to let Pharaoh, let your people go. Dan Beecher And it's not very much of I will make you a god, because what he's about to do is the rod into a snake trick, which is a good trick. That's really awesome. But then like, yeah, Pharaoh's guys can do the same trick. Yeah. Dan McClellan So I don't know how God like Pharaoh sees him in that moment. Yeah. And God says again in verse three, I will harden Pharaoh's heart and I will multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt. And this is kind of the theme, is that God is like, wait, no, I'm doing something here. I want him to say no all these times so I can fiddle with all these signs and wonders. Dan Beecher So I can do more tricks. Yeah, I'm putting on a show. If he says yes at any time, then I don't get to do all of my whole... I got a whole list of things that I want to... Dan McClellan Prop comic. I got a whole bunch of props I work with. And, you know, this one's a frog. Look, it's a lice. Look at all the locusts. Ta-da! Got a whole set here, and it's ruined if Pharaoh is like, yeah, sure, whatever, go. Yeah, take it. It's fine. So really what's going on here is God wants to show off, because God wants this reputation that's going to spread around the world. Look what God did. And God is like, I have fixed the deck so that I get to show off. But after that, you get a couple of Exodus 7.13. It just said, and here's a peculiarity. It's just a call, and he hardened the heart of Pharaoh. And so maybe God is supposed to be the subject of that verb. But like the NRSVUE says, however, Pharaoh's heart was hardened. Right. Makes it passive, takes away the subject. Yeah. Doesn't ([Time 0:32:17](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8abce6d5-bb62-42b4-815f-a1e823de5508)) - **Dual Agency in Pharaoh's Hardening** - The Bible alternates between God hardening Pharaoh's heart and Pharaoh hardening his own. - This duality suggests a narrative tension balancing divine action and human responsibility. Transcript: Dan McClellan In verse 15, it says, when Pharaoh saw that there was a respite, he, well, there it says he made his heart heavy. You have the hithil, which is the causative of the verbal root kavad, which means to be heavy. So Pharaoh caused his own heart to be heavy and would not listen to them. Okay. And then in verse 32, we have, and does it again, and Pharaoh caused his heart to be heavy. Let me see if chazak is ever used with Pharaoh as the subject, because they're using different verbs here. I don't think I picked up on that previously. Dan Beecher What does chazak mean? Dan McClellan Chazak means to be strong or firm or something like that. It's frequently used to mean to grab hold of somebody or something or something like that. And here it can mean to be hard, to put in a state of being hard. Dan Beecher Yeah. Dan McClellan So it looks like when God is doing it, it's one verb. And at least so far, when it's Pharaoh doing it to himself, it's a different verb. Interesting. Yeah. It doesn't say whether he uses his left or right hand, but... Dan Beecher I was going to say, the jokes are all there we we hear it too we're just trying not to make the jokes we're gonna leave them on the table making himself hard we hear it don't worry about it Dan McClellan Uh it's his heart you guys grow up um yeah no so then we got in in chapter yeah so they're using two different verbs here. Sometimes it's God, sometimes it's Pharaoh. And I think that the idea here is probably to create some narrative tension and say, you know, it's a give and a take. God has their sovereignty, which they're going to exercise. They're going to get what they want. But it's also showing that Pharaoh is also taking action himself. Pharaoh is taking some responsibility himself for hardening his own heart. So it's not all God. Again, we're trying to square a circle here and have our eat our cake and have it, too. If you say have your ([Time 0:39:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/beba2243-0932-4cab-a4c4-b20a166cc340)) - **Narrative Purpose of Heart Hardening** - Initially Pharaoh hardens his own heart but later God hardens it, escalating the plagues' severity. - The narrative highlights God's power and the severity of consequences to emphasize identity and sacred memory. Transcript: Dan Beecher Plagues. Okay. And in the first, I think, five, the wording is that Pharaoh's heart became hard or hardened. He hardened his own heart, as you said, all of that sort of thing. And then we're back to, by plagueague 6, this is chapter 9, I think, the Lord hardens Pharaoh's heart. And then Pharaoh hardened his own heart. And then locusts, he hardened. So God announces that he hardened Pharaoh's heart. And then chapter 10, in the darkness, God hardened Pharaoh's heart. So we're getting back to God hardening Pharaoh's heart. Dan McClellan Yeah, and it looks like 934 is when the last time Pharaoh hardened his own heart. Dan Beecher And after that, it is God every time. Right. So I guess the question is, what are we to make of this? Like what's going on here? Yeah. Dan McClellan A lot of people don't like thinking of God as playing puppet master with the lives and the agency of their creation, but that's what the text is saying. And I think literarily, rhetorically, the idea seems to be to kind of play from both sides of the plate, to attribute this partially to Pharaoh, but also partially to God, because again, God's got signs and wonders that he's just burning to get out of him. And God wants the world to know about all of this. And so if that means livestock got to die, if that means firstborns got to go, this is not, this narrative has some things it's got to get to. It's got to achieve certain things. And so those have to be elements of the story. But I'm sure that whoever was writing this was like, well, let's have a little from God. Let's have a little from Pharaoh. And then we create some tension. We help people realize that it's a joint effort between deity and humanity to save the Hebrews from Egypt or to provide the resistance to the saving of the Hebrews from Egypt. Dan Beecher Sorry to interrupt um but it's starting to occur it suddenly occurs to me that maybe the the narrative structure here is that those first five plagues blood frogs gnats flies you can Kind of believe that like that's not enough to convince pharaoh on his own But then when you start to get to like all of the livestock dying, the boils, the hail, locusts, like when it starts To get like really nasty, God's like, oh, Pharaoh's losing his resolve. I got to get in there. Or at least the author is like, people are not going to believe that this guy was like, okay, like was still saying no to this. So they got to come up with a way to make it believable that Pharaoh is still not letting these people go, even though like seriously insane stuff is happening. Dan McClellan Yeah. And I'm sure that plays into it. I'm sure there's a lesson about obstinacy and a lesson about obedience, where Moses is doing everything God says to do, and Pharaoh is the one who is not, even though sometimes it's someone Else pulling the strings, namely God. But it is troubling for a contemporary reader of this text, someone who thinks of God a certain way, as a respecter of agency, and as someone who would not toy with people's lives and just Arbitrarily destroy them just for the sake of showing off or showing off the, you know, the actual taking of, of the lives. Yeah. Because the signs and wonders are all the things I'm destroying and the firstborn children. Dan Beecher Yeah. That culminating in that firstborn, firstborn children thing, like that's horrific. Yeah. So it does seem like it'd be a lot nicer if God softened Pharaoh's heart, went the other direction, and Pharaoh just, after the first trick, Pharaoh's just like, oh, yeah, you better Dan McClellan Take these people. Skadoodle. I got more sense than that. And then you get the institution of the Passover where it's like, remember all this happened. And from a mortal perspective, it's like, okay, we're remembering that things sucked and we were delivered. But if you're thinking of this from God's perspective, he's like, I want you to remember when I did all this cool stuff. Remember the show I put on when I had all those kids killed? Which I think makes it clear that this is a narrative that was constructed to serve certain rhetorical purposes associated with identity markers and a sacred past that we've got to Keep in mind in order to construct and curate our boundaries today and keep in mind we are and all that kind of stuff. ([Time 0:49:14](https://share.snipd.com/snip/359e8d96-78b6-46cd-8485-e0f3dd601897))