The Bible and Western Culture - Part 1 - Isaiah: Turning Swords into Plowshares 

It's unbelievable to witness man like Prof Michael Sugrue.

I love that Prof Sugrue is able to make extremely complex and challenging writings more understandable and digestible even for a fool like me. This is the sign of a very good teacher and someone that fully understands the material they are speaking on. It also makes re-reading the books on which he speaks more enjoyable than the first mystifying go round.

After finishing Dr.Robert Sapolsky's lectures, next is Michael Sugrue's. Watching all these videos makes me realize and comprehend the timeline of human decision-making. so Vast.

This a fountain of knowledge waiting for someone to come by with an empty cup. thank you!

Sugrue's breadth of knowledge is impressive. Not only is he well versed with Philosophy, he also has a good grasp of biblical history.

One of the best lectures of the decade. History makes a lot more sense in this framework, including the fall of the Romans.

0:28 🏈 1:08 Caught between Empires, “Caught between a Rock and a Hard Place.” 2:30 Freedom From Pharoah 4:34 Give Us A King Northern Judah - Taken over by Assyrians Southern Israel 🇮🇱 Divided Kingdoms 7:00 Assyrians: War’s Power 8:49 Prophets 9:19 Chosen People’s Chosen Man, calling for Repentance 10:20 No Shortage of Sin 11:17 They Emerge All The Time 11:45 Palestine is a “Playground for Invading Armies.” 12:39 Dislocated People 13:47 Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Isaiah

You are a gift to humanity.. Thank you Michael Sugrue

The best speaker I’ve ever had the pleasure of listening to.

In addition to all praises so justified in a case of dr. Sugrue I want to add the rare ability to summarize and end his lectures just so beautifully!

Greetings from west africa

Cannot thank you enough, professor Sugrue.

Extremely captivating lectures!

Brilliant lecture. I learned so much. Inspiring and beautifully composed erudition. I sent to friends and family.

Nietzsche was accurate in his prognostication of the morality of Judaism as well as an appropriate amount of respect for the cultural success of Jewish people.

just an amazing man-what a treasure trove of enlightened thought

Greetings from Singapore!

Excellent lecture sir, thanks.

this is such a treat!

Thank you Dr.

Thank you!

Fun fact: the political system of rule by judges is known as "kritarchy" or "kritocracy"

Watching from Jerusalem ;)

Thank you

So nice. 🌹

Fantastic content

fantastic lecture

Having attended religious schooling, this should be required listening

It's the opposite the northern is Israel and Southern is Judah, it's actually important biblically, the view on prophets is very simplistic, if you read the book of Jeremiah, that whole book was written before the events happen and at the end of the book you realize the events that were depicted haven't happened yet, and they're starting to happen and Jeremiah is to bring the book to Babylon to give him the warnings

What an intellect!

Our existence is mind blowing

To be honest, this is beautiful

I'm trying to be sparing in which one of these videos I add to my Favourites playlist, but I can't help adding them all

epic.

the best america has to offer

Correction-Judah is the southern kingdom and Israel is the northern kingdom

I'm always looking for new interesting lectures on Psychology/Philosophy, please let me know if you guys have any recommendations, would be highly appreciated

When he commented on the state of the Hebrews during the weakness of Egypt he really should've capitalized on the pun by saying that they were between "Iraq" and a hard place 6:10

This would make great content for an aspiring animator. Or an AI in 2024.

Morality was the weapon of the ancient Jew against the military might of the ancient world, 2021 Judea won. Nietzsche really understood history and human psychology.

Jordan Peterson definitely borrowed from Michael Sugrue's work.

Amen

Phew...this is complex...or rather it's quite a lot to take in. Will have re-listen to it later.

1. Prophet is basic culture of monotheism, Yahweh 2. Imanual mean God related 3. Rebuiding Jerusalem is project of western religion Grateful ❤

I love these lectures, but around the 5:00 mark Dr. Sugrue says Judah is the northern kingdom with 10 tribes and Israel is the southern kingdom with 2 tribes. It's the other way around. Judah is the southern kingdom, which (importantly!) contained Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

Suspenseful, mysterious, horrific, cautionary--just like a really good thriller. Truth? Nah. Just a good sci-fi story. (Nevertheless, a beautifully presented lecture--bravo for that, Professor!)

🙏🏻💎✨️

Thanks very much... concerned however that you kept saying Judah/Jerusalem was in the north? Israel was the 10 northern tribes, Judah was southern...

I live in a hostel and it is a microcosm of the Universe. So was Rome, a macrocosm, even more so. What is the binary you use, Jerusalem or Athens? I think it helps with understanding if we interpret the opposites. Like for example it's not hard to know whose Jurisdiction Africa and in particular Egypt falls under.

Level of inadequacy is astonishing. It's the northern kingdom which was Israel and southern kingdom was created later and called eventually Judea where Jerusalem lies. The Israel was defeated first. Then Babilonians defeated and deported people of Judea.

Are all lectures titled Part 1? I don't see other parts...

For instance the prophet Jonah “called for repentance”, while wishing that repentance would never happen to Nineveh.

Now...

I've been watching a lot of Dr Sugrue's lectures and I can't help but wonder what he calls himself, like what sort philosophical, religious or intellectual labels he claims; is he a Christian, a Marxist, an Nihilist, a Kantian or something else? Please honour me with a response.

6:23 with Mesopotamia on one side and Egypt on the other, Palestine is between Iraq and a hard place. 😂

34:30 michael heiser Deuteronomy 32 world view and psalm 82.

God did initialy not want them to have kings -- he glossed this point. Southern tribes / Jerusalem is Judah, Northern tribes are Israel (Ephraim) -- he got this backwards.

The fact that there’s a separation of a god covenant and a human covenant implies that humans have some sort of power of will independent of gods power/knowing. Seems contradictory to the idea of omnipotence and omniscience lol. Guess this is why they say don’t question god and that logic/ hubris is the product of Satan. Riddled with contradictions which takes away much if not all of the gravitas that was intended for these stories. In my opinion.

6:20 “Between Iraq and a hard place.” I see what you did there Mr. Sugrue. Well played. 😉👉

24:13

wow. as long as you follow God's law you are in Jerusalem

Isaiah Thomas was the 1st Isaiah of Basketball.

The map always shows Judah in the south, but great lecture nonetheless.

Cats and dogs, sheep and goats.......but if Reason can be used to get the orchestra of the mind to play in harmony at an individual level, the same applies for the collective. Reason and an organising idea. All agree on a common goal and let all our actions be directed towards that. Of course that's a bit off, because even though the orchestra plays in harmony we still have to be subject to temptation, otherwise there is no free will. What did Hume say? There is no freedom of choice if there is no freedom to refuse. That sounds a little democratic and how can we really have a democracy when people are motivated by their desires and aversions. But we can have ideological segregation , basically a goat herd as opposed to a Shepard and lead by example. No force or coercion, a Republic across borders in which people can be a part of their own volition. But obviously no sheep. Only those that exist as things in themselves.

I thought this would be more of a critical analysis as opposed to simple telling of the all too familiar story

Between "Iraq" and a hard place! Nice.

Hmmm there is a little overdub there, I think... right? 5:40

Unbelievably he reverses the two kingdoms. Israel is northern kingdom, Judah the south.

נייס!

This is lecture 5 of part 1

The funeral director of philosophy.

I really enjoy your lectures Sir. However you made a mistake. Israel was the north, and Judah was the south. Still love the lecture and all the other ones I’ve seen on your channel 🫡

The unexamined life is not worth living.

If church was like this with actual historical and contextual explanations of the stories, I would go every Sunday. Instead it’s just dogmatic bullshit that tells people to stop thinking for themselves

22:43 Well, what do you make of Zizek’s reading of the lesson of Job here? He claims that the way the book tends to be interpreted is that God puts him in his place by underscoring Job’s cosmic insignificance: _’who are you to question me who created everything?’_ Rather, Zizek reads God’s reaction here as a revelation of lack: _”The key to Christ is provided by the figure of Job, whose suffering prefigures that of Christ. The almost unbearable impact of the ‘Book of Job’ resides not so much in its narrative frame (the Devil appears in it as a conversational partner of God, and the two engage in a rather cruel experiment in order to test Job's faith), but in its final outcome. Far from providing some kind of satisfactory account of Job's undeserved suffering, God's appearance at the end ultimately amounts to pure boasting, a horror show with elements of farcical spectacle-a pure argument of authority grounded in breathtaking display of power: ‘You see all what I can do? Can you do this? Who are you then to complain?’ So what we get is neither the good God letting Job know that his suffering is just an ordeal destined to test his faith, nor a dark God beyond Law, the God of pure caprice, but rather a God who acts as someone caught in the moment of impotence, weakness at least, and tries to escape his predicament by empty boasting. What we get at the end is a kind of cheap Hollywood horror show with lots of special effects [...] As such, the Book of Job provides what is perhaps the first exemplary case of the critique of ideology in the human history, laying bare the basic discursive strategies of legitimizing suffering: Job's properly ethical dignity resides in the way he persistently detects the notion that his suffering can have any meaning, either punishment for his past sins or the trial of his faith, against the three theologians who bombard him with possible meanings-and, surprisingly, God takes his side at the end, claiming that every word that Job spoke was true, while every word of the three theologians was false.”_ - *The Act and its Vicissitudes,* Lacan Online

Between iraq and a hard place

I like all of his lectures, but I should mention that few (if any) archaeologists now believe that the Hebrews were ever enslaved in Egypt. “Scholars have known these things for a long time, but we’ve broken the news very gently,” said William Dever, a professor of Near Eastern archeology and anthropology at the University of Arizona. Dever, a former Protestant minister who converted to Judaism 12 years ago, says he still gets “hissed and booed” when he speaks about the lack of evidence for the Exodus, and regularly receives letters and calls offering prayers or telling him he’s headed for hell.

Woah woah woah!! YHWH DEFINITELY has an issue with moving getting judges to kings. He is NOT ok with it. But he allows it. He warned the people of the consequences of such a shortsighted move but the people chose it anyway

What about the Abalonians? They enjoyed abalone.

The Assyrians were noble

what a sermon!

At 5 minutes. I thought the northern group of tribes are Israel and Southern Judah. Someone explain?

It saddens me to say this, but Sugrue displays an enormous ignorance on Isreali (if you will) history here. That he doesn't know which of the two, in fact, historical kingdoms of Israel and Judah is North and which is South unfortunately appears not as a misspeak but an instance of, again, ignorance. Additionally, it is quite strange how much of the purported Jewish history codified in the Bible is taken at face value (from the Exodus to judges and the unified kingdom and so on), although I don't know how much of today's research on the matter was available when these lectures were recorded.

The whole "Chosen People" referent is off-putting when you're telling this as an actual record of history, rather than a collection of literature.

Sugrue’s philosophy lectures are pretty solid, but this one has a lot of mistakes.

I believe a prophet is more acutely described as someone who was believed to “hear” God. It is noteworthy that good and bad prophets are described in the Old Testament.

Aincent Israel was between Iraq and a hard place.

The name Palestine first appeared in ancient Greek literature in the 5th century BCE. The name has long been associated with anti-Semitism since the ancient Philistines were conquered and forced into exile by the Assyrians in 722 BCE. The name was established by Emperor Hadrian in the 2nd century AD as a punitive measure following the Bar Kokhba revolt. It's worth noting that no nation or state called Palestine ever existed, and the modern-day Arabs have no connection to the ancient Philistines. Referring to the pre-5th century BCE land of Israel as Palestine is not only historically inaccurate but also carries a political bias.

The chosen people The promised land Ugh

I'm always looking for new interesting lectures on Psychology/Philosophy, please let me know if you guys have any recommendations, would be highly appreciated