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- [00:00]
A
A scholar is defined as a specialist in a particular branch of study, especially the humanities, or a distinguished academic. And no one fits that bill more than my most requested guest here on flipping tables, Dr. Dan McClellan. Dan is a public scholar of the Bible and religion. He received his Ph.D. in theology and religion from the University of Exeter where he wrote his dissertation on the conceptualization of deity and divine images in the Hebrew Bible. Now Since March of 2021 he's been confronting misinformation on social media related to the academic study of the Bible and religion. He has been dedicating full time, working full time to combat this misinformation and increase public access to scholarship around the Bible and religion, which is now includes offering online classes in things like Biblical Hebrew. His recent book the Bible says so became an instant bestseller and is so approachable with modern current event issues and what the Bible as actually says. It's maybe in the top five books that I would recommend every single person have. And Dan's mission of Data Over Dogma is so, so important. What's the truth versus what serves powerful people and demonizes others. And also I just want to say that when you meet someone who is this qualified and this intelligent, even if you're deconstructing or even if you've researched, you learn something new. And it's great to learn something new and realize oh I thought it was this way and that was wrong and I can course correct because that's what scholarship is. And I love his message I his mission. I'm so deeply honored to have him on the podcast today. The author of the book the Bible says so host of Data Over Dogma with Dan Beecher. My most requested interview this the TikTok Scholar Award winning on YouTube and TikTok trying to fight the good fight here in 2025. Today on Flipping Tables with Dr. Dan McClellan. Hello and welcome back to Flipping Tables. I am your host Monte Mater. Most of you know that already. I'm very excited for today's interview. I just have a couple quick announcements. The Patreon gift boxes should be arriving this week. To those patron members that are qualified for that. I'm very excited. Just a little goodie bag, some thank yous from me, some very exclusive merch that will not be released on the website. And also in October you can anticipate we're doing a large merchandise drop, a couple collaborations because October is my favorite month. It's my birthday and my favorite holiday which is Halloween. So keep an eye on Instagram. I'm releasing A special Halloween soap. I'm doing protest jewelry, custom merchandise that's really geared around Halloween just to celebrate of all the types of art and things that I love, as well as maybe some updates on both the book and some new music. Just wanted to release that little message. Make sure that you check out Patreon. We are continuing our Bible studies bi weekly over on Crowdcast and those replays are available on Patreon. It's just a great resource and that's where I post some of my extra content, written content updates, as well as discount codes for the merch. But let's dive into this interview. All right, Dan, welcome to Flipping Tables. Thank you so much for being here. I told you, you are my most requested interview. And I'm very excited to have today happen.
- [03:14]
B
Well, I'm honored to be here. Thank you for having me.
- [03:16]
A
And what I. You're so busy and doing so much. But what I want to kind of start with before we get into topics is how did this all begin for you? So how did TikTok happen? You know, on the front of your book, it says award winning, you know, biblical historian for TikTok. How did TikTok happen?
- [03:35]
B
Kind of accidentally. I was spending a lot of time on social media during the pandemic as. As one does.
- [03:43]
A
As one does.
- [03:44]
B
I saw people posting videos from TikTok on. On Instagram, on Facebook, on Twitter that were relevant to my expertise that were about the Bible and religion. And I thought TikTok was just for dancing and for Korean teenagers to disrupt Republican presidential campaigns. And. And I was happy to let him have it. And. But I was curious about the fact that I was seeing people sharing videos about religion and the Bible and not particularly well informed videos. And so I was kind of like, who's in charge over there? And speak to the manager. Yeah, Went to lurk on TikTok, if the. If the kids are still calling it that, I don't know. But I noticed that there was quite a vibrant set of communities and quite a lot of discourse going on on TikTok related to the Bible and religion. But I didn't see any credentialed experts. I saw a lot of folks who were, for lack of a better word, hobbyists and, you know, apologists and stuff like that. And I could see there were different kind of clicks, there were different groups. You had your apologists, you had your. Your conspiracy theorists, you had your deconstructionists, you had your militant atheists, you had all kinds of different groups. So I thought, I've been Arguing about the Bible on the Internet for 20 years. I might as well just try out this platform as well. Normally, there's not a lot of interest in someone who's coming in, blowing a whistle, saying, I'm going to be a referee or an umpire. I'm going to call balls and strikes. I'm not hitting for any team. And that's how I have frequently tried to position myself. And to my surprise, there was an awful lot of interest in a credentialed expert who could come in and say, here's what the consensus is. Here's what the data indicate. And so it just kind of took off from there.
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A
Yeah. A million followers later on TikTok.
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B
Yeah. Which is bizarre, but amazing. Never worked on Twitter or Facebook or on the blogs or the chat rooms way back in the day. But TikTok is a unique. It's a different animal. And for whatever reason, it allowed me to get a message out to an awful lot of people who have been looking for exactly that kind of content.
- [06:06]
A
Yeah. It's amazing how much hunger there is for that information without. I mean. And your tagline is perfect data over dogma, because so many people want the truth, not the dogma that comes with it. And I was gonna ask you this question in a couple minutes, but you mentioned the word. I'd love to break down for our listeners before we dive into this. The difference between an apologist, a theologian, and a scholar.
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B
Okay. Yeah, that's. I get. I'm called a theologian quite frequently.
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A
I accidentally did it once to you, and you were like, oh, no.
- [06:36]
B
And I was like, oh, old habits die hard.
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A
Old habits die hard.
- [06:40]
B
Yeah. So usually I. You know, there are a lot of different ways that people can describe and define these. These categories, but usually a theologian is someone who's engaging with the Bible for its normative claims. What does this tell us about God? How should we be understanding this? It is someone who's trying to share with others and how they should think about God because of the Bible. An apologist is someone who's there to try to defend their. Their belief system, their identity related to the Bible. So, you know, you have Catholic apologists, you have evangelical apologists. You. And they fight a lot.
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A
I used to be one.
- [07:24]
B
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I was. And. And then I call myself a scholar, and specifically a critical scholar, because while I comment on other people's theology, and particularly the theology of the biblical authors and, you know, the people of ancient Israel and the followers of Jesus, I'm not saying. And therefore we should be doing that. I'm trying to step outside of the practice of theology to analyze, critique, interrogate that practice as it goes on in the Bible as well as on the part of the people who are interpreting the Bible. And so I distinguish myself from a theologian because you'll never hear me say, this is how you're supposed to think about God, or this is how God is. I will advocate for certain moral positions based on a more secular approach to morality, but never on the basis that it's what the Bible says or what it's what God demands. And so for that reason, I, I distinguish myself from theologians and, and while I am frequently accused of being an apologist for Mormonism, I am the furthest thing.
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A
Oh, I've seen the Mormons in your comments. I don't think that you're defending the Mormon Church at all. But like, what are. Again, I've seen your credentials because I've been following you on, I think on TikTok for, I want to say, three years. It's been a while and, but you know, it pops up, pops up periodically. Give us your credentials so that people who don't know who you are, know what you're, why you have all this knowledge.
- [09:04]
B
I feel like Beetlejuice. Well, two years at Juilliard. I. So I have a, I'll start with my vocational degree. I have a degree in massage therapy from the Utah College of Massage Therapy. I would say go mascot, but we didn't have a mascot. And then I went and I did a Bachelor of Arts in Ancient Near Eastern Studies with a minor in Classical Greek at Brigham Young University. And from there went off to the University of Oxford. I did a master's degree in Jewish studies there, where I wrote my thesis on anti anthropomorphism and textual criticism of the Septuagint. And that's a mouthful, I know, but it's basically, when they were translating the Hebrew Book of Exodus into Greek, did they alter, alter things if they felt like the text treated God like a, a corporeal being that existed in a specific time and place as a human sized and shaped entity? From there I went and I did another Master's degree, this time in Biblical Studies at Trinity Western University. And my thesis was on cognitive linguistics and the conceptualization of deity in the Hebrew Bible. So I was using cognitive linguistics to say when, to look at what authors were probably thinking, what they had in their minds when they talked about God in the Hebrew Bible and, and just deity in general. And then I did my PhD through the university of Exeter. My supervisor was the inimitable Dr. Francesca Stavrocapoulou. And my dissertation was on cognitive linguistics and the cognitive science of religion, looking at the conceptualization of deity and divine agency and divine images. So I was looking at, when talking about and using divine images like idols and other things that were functioning as divine images, how and why did those things represent God or God's presence or God's authority? And I talk about how ancient Judaism and then early Christianity is renegotiating what a divine image is throughout the Bible. So I have four degrees related to biblical study.
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A
It's a lot of time. What, what was the impetus to pursue biblical study to this degree for you?
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B
Well, it actually started as a missionary for the LDS Church. I joined the LDS Church in 2000 and a year later I left to serve a two year proselytizing mission. I went to Uruguay. And between getting baptized and leaving on my mission, I realized I'd never read the Bible, much less the uniquely LDS scripture. The Bible is scripture for Latter Day Saints as well as the Book of Mormon, the doctrine Covenants and the prolo. Great price. And I was going to go out and be around a bunch of other Latter Day Saints my age who had grown up in the faith. And so I decided I needed to read all of it before I left. So I spent that year furiously reading the entire Bible cover to cover, and then all the LDS scriptures and then got out there and, and was way ahead of them because none of them had ever read.
- [12:24]
A
Had actually read the whole thing. Yeah, imagine that.
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B
So but as I was out there, Latter Day Saint missionaries have a certain amount of time allotted every day to scripture study. So we're supposed to be reading the scriptures. And so I had an opportunity to continue to read quite a lot. And I just fell in love with being in that world and particularly the gospels. That's what I enjoyed the most. And I wanted to know more. I wanted to know about the history, I wanted to know about the geography, I wanted to know the languages, I wanted to know what literature they were reading, I wanted to know about the culture. And I found some very scarce resources that allowed me to do a bit of additional research. But the more I learned about those periods in that literature, and even I tried to teach myself Hebrew while I was out there, I just fell in love with it. And, and I found out while I was out there that there were people who made their living studying the Bible. And I thought, wow, that would be about the coolest thing in the world. And, and Even in that period, I wasn't concerned for trying to understand the Bible theologically as much as historically and literarily and culturally. I just enjoyed knowing I was living in another country. I was learning another language. I was meeting people from a different nation. I just loved learning that and being exposed to different people and. And places and languages. And so I wanted to extend that. That learning to what was going on in the Bible and came home and. And it took a while, but because I had already been kicked out of college once, I was the. The University of Northern Colorado in 1998, very kindly invited me not to come back after my first semester there. And that's. And that's a long story, but I managed to weasel my way into Brigham Young University to do that bachelor's degree in Ancient Near Eastern Studies. And immediately I was sold.
- [14:28]
A
You were on. You were on the road.
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B
I couldn't imagine myself doing anything else.
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A
That's amazing.
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B
For the rest of my life.
- [14:34]
A
That's amazing. That's a question that I haven't seen you comment on in the videos that I watch. So that was what I was really interested in, to see how you got on this path. And I have so much respect about the fact that before this mission, you were like, I'm actually gonna read it because, you know, and I tend to have more commentary in the news and deconstruction space. But you. You know, so many people come after me because I disagree with their belief system or have a different moral stance on the LGBTQ community, and when I ask them, have you read the Bible? The answer has never been yes. The answer so far has never been, I've read the whole thing. So I have a lot of respect for that. But I want to kind of start with some fun questions, really, specializing in history, especially in the Old Testament, and then maybe talk about some current events and some topics from your book. So one of the things that I loved that you talked about, and this was a while ago, was the plural gods in the Council of Genesis. And I would love the breakdown of Let us. And when you talk about Elohim not necessarily being a solo divine entity, kind of break that down for us.
- [15:45]
B
Yeah. Well, it starts with the word Elohim itself, which is grammatically plural in Hebrew. Now, a lot of people think that means you can just render it in the plural anytime you see it in the Hebrew, and that's not the case. It can be used as a singular or a plural, but it means deity or deities, or it can be used adjectively to mean divine. But we have, in Genesis 1:26, it says, Vayamir Elohim na Se. And. And this is Elohim said. And the verb there is singular. So it is one deity said, let us make. And this is what's called a cohortative, a first person plural command. And this is about making humanity in our image according to our likeness. Who's us? That is a question that has bothered an awful lot of people. But when you look throughout Genesis 1 through 11, what scholars refer to as the primeval history, you have a number of other gods being referenced in a handful of places. Because in Genesis 3, you have the serpent saying to Eve, you will surely not die. You will become like the gods, knowing good and evil. And then in verse 22, God sees that they have eaten the fruit, and God says, they've become like one of us. And so the us in this sense likely refers to other gods. And in. In Genesis 6, we have a reference to the Bene Elohim, the children of God, which would be other gods. And then also in Genesis 11, with the tower of Babel, you have another cohorted of, let us go down. And what this seems to be a reference to, according to the majority view of scholars, is the other deities of the divine council, which would have been the deliberative body of governing deities. And they would be responsible for the functioning of the universe and. And the Earth, for maintaining cosmic stability and order and all this kind of stuff, and overseeing the humans on Earth. And so each member of the divine council would have been a patron deity over a different nation of the Earth. And we see this in Deuteronomy 32, 8 and 9, where we have Elyon the Most High, distributing the nations according to the number of the children of God, the Bene Elohim. And we know from a number of different passages that they had a conventionalized notion that there were 70 nations on the Earth, and so that would correspond to the 70 children of God. And we have other ancient Semitic literature that is more mythological, that is not from Israel and Judah, that talks about the 70 sons of El and sons of Asherah. And so this corresponds with the pantheon of other nations around ancient Israel and Judah. And so the idea is basically that God is. Is standing among the divine council and telling them, let us make the human, humanity, mankind in our image and in our likeness. Now it's God. It's the singular God that actually goes down and then makes humanity. And there's only one God involved in the actual process. But there seems to be this vestigial reference to the divine council. And this divine council pops up in a number of other places, is even explicitly mentioned in Psalm 82, where the Psalm starts by saying Elohim, God takes his stand in the midst of the gods, or in the divine council, the. The ADAT L&JUDGES among the gods. And so that's another reference to the same idea of the pantheon being made up of patron deities and the different nations of the earth that sit on this governing body. And in Psalm 82, they're then being deposed, they've done wrong, and God condemns them to mortality. And then the psalmist in the last verse calls on Elohim, which scholars unilaterally agree this is a reference to Adonai. The God of Israel calls on Adonai to inherit all nations. Basically, the gods of the nations have all been deposed from their seats on the divine council. You're going to take over their positions. You're going to take over direct rule of all the nations of the earth. It's the universalization of Adonai's sovereignty and power and authority that allows Adonai to be worshiped in any nation of the earth. So there's, there's a worldview, an ancient worldview that is very different from how we have traditionally interpreted the Bible, that saw the entire world as replete with gods. And the other nations had their own gods over them. And the God of Israel was just the God of that one nation and that one people in the earliest periods, prior to their rhetorical elevation over all the other gods of the earth and ultimately their dispatching of the other gods of the earth to take over rule of the nation. So it's, it's, it's quite soap opera. Yeah.
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A
You know, you can God drama and like, of course my God is going to be the best God. So as time goes on, I'm going to put my God above all these other gods. So is the scholarly consensus that ancient Israel, like other nations, were polytheistic?
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B
Yes.
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A
And with the. I know in Genesis, so you have like the three primary manuscripts. Yahwist, Elohist, priest, if I remember correctly, the Yah. I might be saying that wrong, but Yahwist was written in the 9th or 10th centuries. Is that kind of when, like this oldest chapter we believe was written? And did that change with those other scripts that make up Genesis?
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B
So there are, there's an. One theory of Pentateuchal composition where there are four sources.
- [21:39]
A
Okay.
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B
Yahwist, the yellowist, the priestly source, and then Deuteronomy or D. Okay. Now there are a lot of scholars today, and I'm among this other group of scholars that thinks that the Eloist and the Yahwist are not identifiable as discrete, independent documentary sources. And so a lot of scholars will only talk about the priestly source, Deuteronomy and non P. Okay. Which is a way to refer to everything else.
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A
Everything else. And. And P. Priestly was written 5th century.
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B
6Th. 5th century BCE D was probably started toward the end of the 7th century, but continued to accrete new layers into the 6th and down into the 5th centuries BCE and then there would be pre P and post P fragments that correspond to what scholars identify as J and E. And some of those would be very old, go back to Perhaps the late 9th century BCE I don't think we can go back to the 10th century unless we're talking just about some poetic fragments, like maybe the Song of the sea in Exodus 15 or the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32. Seems to have been borrowed from earlier literature. But you don't really have historical narrative prose in Hebrew until the late 9th century at the earliest. So if you've got historical narrative prose as your documentary source, I don't think we can say it's any earlier than the very end of the 9th century BCE so I would normally say 8th century is probably where a lot of this is first being committed to text.
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A
Okay.
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B
Now, a lot of it is probably based on oral tradition and narratives and, and poetry being passed down from earlier periods. But once it's committed to text, I think probably the majority of the earliest stuff is 8th century.
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A
And how do you think that, like, this understanding of Genesis affects, you know, one. You have, like, biblical literalism that says creation literally happened in exactly this way. And you also have the Adam and Eve story that has been used to really demonize and subjugate women. This whole idea of, well, she sinned first, the snake deceived her. So when you're, when you're looking at it from the scope of ancient history, how does that change how you interpret the text and how you see these current event issues taken from this text?
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B
Well, one of the biggest things is a historical critical approach that is trying to situate these texts within their ancient context and understand them historically does away with a presupposition that I refer to as the presupposition of univocality. And this is the idea that it's all speaking from one single unified and consistent perspective, and one with one single unified and consistent Voice so this is the idea that the Bible never contradicts itself. That's out the window in a historical critical approach. And one of the things that. That allows you to see is the ways that these texts are in conflict with each other and are challenging each other. Because the Adam and Eve story, according to the majority of historical critical scholars, is a different creation account from what we have in Genesis 1. And I think it's an earlier creation account where God is more anthropomorphic. They are creating by directly manipulating the raw materials of creation. They form. And the verb. There is the verb used to refer to the creation of pottery. They form the human. And then you have the later priestly creation account that says, no, no, no. This is this transcendent deity who creates by divine fiat. They speak things and they are formed.
- [25:33]
A
And so Genesis 1 is the later account. Genesis 2 is the earlier account.
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B
Right. And Genesis 1 seems to be trying to find, fix, and update and supersede the Adam and Eve story, because the creation of humanity is quite different. In the Adam and Eve story, God creates Adam and then is like, something's not right. And you have the. The literal statement, it is not good that the man should be alone. And so they try to create a suitable companion and fail the first time around, because the first try is, let's make animals. That doesn't work out. Back to the drawing board. Okay, we're going to take. We're going to split off a. A part of Adam's side and we're going to create the woman. And that's finally successful. And in Genesis 1, God sees immediately upon creation that everything was good.
- [26:27]
A
Yes.
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B
And then in verses 26 and 27, they create male and female in their own image, just like that, just together all at once. And it was very good. And so if we look at these two creation accounts, and particularly the notion that, you know, we see in Genesis 3, your desire will be to your husband, but he will rule over you. You have that kind of complementarian worldview. If you look at it historically, that was rejected by the authors of Genesis 1. They said, no, we don't like that creation account. We're going to do it in an entirely different one.
- [27:06]
A
And.
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B
And they have the male and female of the human race created for all intents and purposes at the same time, and they never hierarchize them. So you could say that Genesis 1 is rejecting the complementarian worldview that is expressed in Genesis 3. And this kind of frustrates people who want the text to be univocal. Apologists to say, well, I'm going to pit one biblical author against the other biblical authority. And what you're doing is you're saying, no, no, no, I want the other one. I disagree with this one here. But they won't, they can't admit that these are authors who disagree with each other, so that's normal.
- [27:46]
A
And that how in the world, over the course of a thousand years could all these authors be on the same page?
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B
Yeah. And you see this on Twitter all the time. They're like, oh, 66 books and 1500 years and 40 something authors and zero contradictions.
- [28:02]
A
It's like Genesis 1 and 2, man.
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B
Yeah, that, that would be miraculous if it were even remotely true. But it's not because there are very clearly numerous contradictions. And I love that, you know, people would like, name one and, you know, you can point to a bunch of them and I have. And then they go, well, it's possible that this happened. It's like, so you're, you're. What your claim is is not that there are zero contradictions. Your claim is that it's not impossible that there are zero contradictions. That's a very different claim. And of course they will never acknowledge that that's what they're doing. But when they make these arguments, they have to retreat to just making up scenarios that are not in evidence and suggesting it's not impossible that this all could have happened at the same time. But yeah, fundamentally those two creation accounts just flatly contradict each other.
- [28:57]
A
And one more kind of Old Testament topic, because I love this one, before we jump into current events, because I know you cover these current events so many times, but it's so good every time. But I want to talk about God's wife.
- [29:10]
B
Yeah.
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A
And why we don't know more about her, in your opinion, like throughout the established church. Because I didn't find out about Asherah until maybe three, four years into deconstructing and trying to get a better understanding of church history. So I would love some history about her and why we don't see her.
- [29:31]
B
Well, the, the main reason we don't see her is because most Christians would find the idea abhorrent and, and anathema. And they don't want to think about one God being a sexual being. Even though they, it's very important to them that God be male. It's also very important to them that God not be male. It's pretty silly. And then they don't want to accept that there was another deity that not only existed, but that was worshiped alongside the God of Israel. But when we look back at that ancient literature that informs our understanding of how the pantheon is working in the Bible, there's a female deity who is at the top with the most high. So in Deuteronomy 32, 8 and 9, it says it refers to the second tier deities as the Bene Elohim, the children of God. Well, how were they born? How were they made? We don't have the kind of euphemisms and metaphors that we use today. In the ancient world, if there was a deity that was born or was a son of another deity, there had to be some female deity involved. And we've discovered inscriptions that refer to Adonai, the God of Israel, and his Asherah. Or perhaps it should be interpreted as just and Asherah. They're a divine pair. And we even have a drawing that was discovered on a pithos, which is a large storage pot in a place called Kuntila Dajrud that has a male deity and a female deity. And they're interlocking arms, and they're very clearly male and female. And centered over the headdress of the male deities, an inscription by some dude named Uriyahu who pronounces blessings by Adonai of Shomron, which is Samaria, and by his Asherah. And so we have ancient Hebrew inscriptions that were written by ancient Judahites and perhaps Israelites that are referring to Adonai and his Asherah, his wife, the female deity. And initially this would have been the, the consort, the wife, the. The partner of the high deity El. And it originally, Adonai would have been a second tier deity, one of the, One of the children of El, one of the offspring of El. Adonai is most closely related to baal, the Northwest Semitic storm deity. But the two deities would have been conflated at one point early in Israelite history. So Adonai and El would become one and the same, and therefore El's wife would then become Adonai's wife and Asherah. You can read about Asherah in Ugaritic literature, in some Phoenician literature, she was a warrior. She was also associated not with just with fertility, but childbirth, child rearing, things like that. And in the, around 7th century BCE, I, I think the majority of scholars who studied this issue specifically would say you had a campaign to demonize Asherah that was probably introduced by King Josiah.
- [32:58]
A
And why was that?
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B
So Josiah is coming to power at a time when Judah is trying to recover from an invasion by the Assyrian king. Sennacherib, which happened a few decades before, and the kings after Sennacherib and before Josiah. Sennacherib destroyed most of the cult sites in Israel and Judah. And really the Jerusalem Temple was the only one that was spared. And so this creates what's called a de facto cult centralization. If you want to worship, you have to go to the Jerusalem Temple now, because all the other ones are destroyed. And we've discovered probably two of those temples that were destroyed. And I think that the kings after Sennacherib and before Josiah were trying to rebuild some of these cult sites where Adonai and Asherah would have been worshiped, and perhaps even other deities as well. And I think Josiah was looking around and said, I kind of like it this way, with everybody having to come into Jerusalem, all of the sacrifices and offerings, all of the resources being brought to the Jerusalem Temple. And so what do you know in 2nd Kings 22, look, we discovered the Book of the Law in the temple. And what do you know? Suddenly this new Book of the Law is telling us you're not allowed to worship in any other temples. And it is the literature from this time period and after that suddenly doesn't like Asherah. And this is the historical period where you. Where the literature is talking about how there were Asherah poles, which would have been cult objects used to worship Asherah that were in the Jerusalem Temple. And Josiah's like, no, no, bring them all out, throw them in the Kidron Valley. We're going to burn them and stomp them to dust. Nobody seemed to care prior to Josiah. But suddenly Josiah is making it so there's only one deity that you're allowed to worship in one temple using one priesthood. And that is. Is kind of the thesis statement of the Book of Deuteronomy, which is probably what Josiah had ginned up so that he could wave it around and say, look, we found the Book of the Law in the Temple. So I And. And many other scholars think that Josiah and that earliest layer of the. The d. Stratum, the. The Book of Deuteronomy probably introduced this cult centralization, this. This prohibition on the worship of Asherah and the worship at other temples and things like that. And so I would say the. The end of the 7th century BCE is when you suddenly get everybody upset about Asherah and then it never gets restored after that.
- [35:46]
A
And again, it goes back to how convenient that I just so happened to find this new Bible scripture that says you have to bring all the resources, all the money to the God and The temple that I decide.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And it's extremely convenient.
- [36:01]
B
It's supposed to be the second telling of the law where Moses sits everybody down and goes, okay, I'm telling the story of everything that we just went through, you know, one more time. And they are not supposed to know where Jerusalem is. Jerusalem wasn't. Didn't become a part of their world until David conquered it generations later. And so the book has makes reference to the place where Adonai will choose to place his name. So it never says the Jerusalem Temple, but it all. It repeatedly refers to the place where Adonai will choose to place his name. Kind of winking at. We know what we're talking about, but we can't say it. So we're just going to say wherever God happens to choose, which just so happens that's the only place. Yes, Jerusalem.
- [36:53]
A
It's amazing to see how much humans change and don't change that we do a lot of the same things. We present information the same way, usually for someone's benefit. And even it's interesting to me that there's this pushback because I grew up in strict Christian fundamentalism, very far alt right, stockpiling arms against the government. And like one, seriously, we had like caches and I'm like, what are you going to do against a tank? I got in trouble for asking that question. But we also, like, it was this 100% biblical literalism. And so growing up, you know, you have questions. I remember being nine and being like, I don't understand this fish in the belly thing that seems like he would die. But this pushback for Christians to not accept history, not accept that ancient Israelites, like a lot of other cultures at the time, understood that gods procreated and that there were many gods and gods represented different things. And now the resistance has become even more and more blatant because now biblical literalism is being used to justify laws and to justify demonizing people. And it's just sad. But you listen to stories like Josiah and you're like, oh, humans are kind of the same as we've always been.
- [38:12]
B
Yeah, yeah. It's as the great poet once said in the Bible, there's nothing new under the sun. And, and odd that that the same group that was stockpiling weapons against the government is. I'm. I'm 99.9% sure is right now cheering on the governments, 100% unconstitutionally attacking people.
- [38:33]
A
We needed to fight if the government. And then when the government shows up, all these second amendment people are shockingly quiet.
- [38:40]
B
Suddenly, like, well, you should. You shouldn't have been brown.
- [38:43]
A
It's like, it's like you should have done. You shouldn't have been brown and poor. How dare you?
- [38:46]
B
Yeah, I love the, the meme where the guy's poking at the NRA logo.
- [38:52]
A
What are you doing?
- [38:53]
B
Yeah, you, you or no, the, the Onion article. Embarrassed. NRA acknowledges they forgot to resist tyranny.
- [39:01]
A
Okay. And the other thing. So I, I, I work with a band here in Nashville. I perform every week. We're writing an album, do hard rock and metal. And when we play as a cover band on Sundays, it is amazing to me the number of people with a certain type of political affiliation garb come up and ask me for Rage against the Machine. And I'm like, do have you hear what it's about? Killing in the name. Who do you think that they're. What forces do you think this song is talking about? And I will happily sing it for them. I'll play it for them, and I'll laugh the entire time because it's just like you guys, you guys watched Star wars and you read Marvel and Hunger Games. All these iconic stories of the little guy rising up against the evil empire and identifying with that person. And then when the evil empire got here, you joined the empire.
- [39:56]
B
Yeah, just.
- [39:59]
A
I have obviously been watching Star wars, so I want to dive into some hot topic current events because these are being so weaponized. And the de facto defense is, well, the Bible says, which I'm going to shamelessly plug Dan's book here, the Bible says. So if you're watching this on video, this maybe. I get a lot of requests for books. And if you're listening to this, this maybe is the best current events and biblical book you could possibly have in your shelf. I recommend it to everyone. One of the big ones, kind of the first one that really started in the late 70s after Jimmy Carter told Jerry Falwell he'd have to desegregate his schools. In Bob Jones, the claim that the Bible says abortion is murder, and now all evangelicals have to come out and oppose it.
- [40:48]
B
Yeah, that's. It's odd. In the early 70s, when Roe v. Wade was first decided, the Southwestern Baptist Convention actually published an endorsement several times, three times.
- [41:00]
A
And the Dallas Theological Seminary did, too.
- [41:02]
B
Yeah. And you had a lot of evangelical leaders saying, we don't have a problem with this. And, yeah, Jerry Falwell enlisted the help of Paul Weyrich, and they concocted this scheme to go on a nationwide campaign to get evangelicals outraged about Abortion so that they could gin up political support from the silent majority, the religious right. And initially the goal was to stop the government from forcing them to desegregate their universities. That didn't really work out, although it sounds like it's maybe going to work out now for them if they get their way. Now that we have people trying to start up whites only communities.
- [41:52]
A
Yeah. Two towns now, and school vouchers.
- [41:55]
B
Yeah. And. And they really just needed an identity marker around which they could rally evangelicals. And it was so effective that it has become a real shibboleth test. Like I, I ran for my state legislature twice in Utah in a deep red district. I was really just trying to move the needle and also harass the incumbents. And I took 16 points off of each of them each time. But I was surprised by how many people I would stand on their doorstep and we talk about issues and they would say, I, I agree with you more than with the other guy, but I could never vote for a Democrat because they support abortion. And that, that makes it an identity marker where if you, you have to toe that line, you have to sign on that dotted line or you don't get to be one of us. That's what they ginned up. And that has turned the idea of opposition to abortion into this central thing that, as James Tallarico lamented, people find out you're Christian and they think, oh, you hate gay people in abortion 100%. And they appeal to the Bible, which just, I think it's so hilarious how misguided that is because the Bible never addresses abortion at all. But it does address some issues that are part of the abortion debate. For instance, in the Hebrew Bible, it addresses when a fetus becomes a person and when the destruction of a fetus becomes a capital offense. In other words, murder. And it's at birth. Because you have this piece of legislation in Exodus 21 where it talks about what to do if men who are fighting accidentally injure a pregnant woman. And there are two outcomes that are addressed. If the injury causes her to miscarry the child, then the husband imposes a fine. And there are, there's arbitration there to make sure that it's not exorbitant. If there is permanent injury to the woman and the other outcome is the woman dies, then it's eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, life for life. It's what's called talionic justice, retributive justice. What happens to the victim is done to the perpetrator. And that is a very clear indication that the woman is considered a full legal immoral person, at least when it comes to her injury. The fetus is considered property because its loss only incurs a fine and the loss of the mother would incur the death penalty. And we have the very clear and very close connection of the concept of human life and the concept of breath, two of the words that are frequently translated life. In Hebrew, nephesh and ruach mean breath. And you have the idea that, that Adam did not become a living soul until the breath of life was flowing through his nostrils. And so throughout the Hebrew Bible, personhood begins at birth. The fetus is not a person until birth. And you have no reference to ensoulment when a fetus becomes a person anywhere in the New Testament. But we do know that in this time period there were three different Greek philosophical schools of thought regarding when the soul entered the body. The Pythagorean and Epicurean idea was that it happened at conception. The Aristotelian idea was that it happened when the fetus was fully developed and then you had the quickening, which is when the fetus begins to move on its own in a way that the mother can feel. And then the Stoic view was that it happened when the baby was born and made contact with the outside air. And so you had debates among early Christians about which of these positions to endorse. And ultimately in the late 4th, early 5th century CE, you have Augustine, who establishes as the consensus view, the Aristotelian perspective that the fetus does not become a person, the soul does not enter the body until the fetus is fully developed and you have the quickening. And so even though all Christians disliked abortion at any stage, Augustine is the one who explains it. It does not become murder until the quickening. That's the point at which the, the soul enters the body. So, so Christians today who say, oh, it all happens at conception and, and even really before conception because they refuse to allow a woman to take a, any kind of abortifacion immediately after sex, even well before implantation, well before anything could happen. Yeah, but those folks are in disagreement with the long standing consensus view of Christianity that Augustine's view was the main view of Christians up until the 1800s.
- [47:05]
A
Because wasn't it, it was Pope Pius VI or seventh that eventually changed the Catholic position to conception.
- [47:12]
B
Yeah, that was in. Well, yeah, changed to the idea that the person existed immediately upon conception. And that was based on their Mariology, their ide about when Mary was a person. But yeah, that's in the 19th century. That that happens.
- [47:30]
A
Again if I'm remembering this correctly. Did Augustine because Aristotle had two different timelines for quickening between male and female, didn't he? Because he believed that the development of women took longer because we're deformed males according to Aristotle.
- [47:45]
B
Undercooked men.
- [47:46]
A
Undercooked men. Sorry guys, I didn't bake in the oven long enough. But what was August was Augustine did he adhere to like the 2024 weeks or did he have the differing view the same way Aristotle did?
- [47:59]
B
I think that they would have probably endorsed the the same view but I think for the that which was that the four women had happened I think 90 days later. Of course, something like that. Yeah but Augustine never really talks about a distinction and how long it takes but, but certainly would have endorsed the same view. Augustine was, was quite a misogynist.
- [48:24]
A
He was. I've been learning some about his background in his life and leaving his common law wife and his son to go be you know, super Christian and his mom arranged a marriage with a 10 year old which he thankfully did not marry. But still. And then all is. It's a lot. It's a lot.
- [48:42]
B
And yeah his he's got some interesting theories on enslavement as well.
- [48:47]
A
Oh these I haven't read yet.
- [48:48]
B
Oh, he's got a passage where he says you, you need to whip your slaves. God is angry with you if you don't whip your slaves. However, you cannot do it with anger in your heart. You have to do it in a spirit of love.
- [49:03]
A
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- [52:22]
B
Then that's what God expects you to do.
- [52:24]
A
Like James Dobson borrowed that to apply to children.
- [52:28]
B
Oh gosh yeah, and, and that's, that's. I got a chapter in the book on that as well.
- [52:34]
A
Yep, yep, we're going to talk about that too.
- [52:36]
B
Oh, awesome.
- [52:37]
A
And the second hot topic is homosexuality. Being a trans person, any member of the LGBTQ community is an abomination. And the Bible says so.
- [52:47]
B
Yeah, the, the Bible never addresses trans folks. The closest it gets is talking about eunuchs, which the Bible, while in the earliest layers, prohibits eunuchs from, from entering the temple. Once you get down into later parts of Isaiah, and after that, the eunuch is treated as, as a special category, and God is making space for the eunuch to, to achieve salvation. And by the time you get to Matthew 19, Jesus says there are those who are born eunuchs, there are those who are made eunuchs by men, and there are those who make themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of God. And he's, he's basically saying the real ones, the real pious ones are going to be celibate, are going to be asexual, and are going to make themselves eunuchs, whether or not you take that to mean actually castrating oneself. But, but that's the closest the Bible ever gets to addressing trans folks. But when it comes to homosexuality, they had no concept of homosexuality as a specific sexual orientation in the ancient world. They, they had a completely different understanding of how human sexuality worked. And so in, in Leviticus, you have a couple of passages that prohibit a man from taking the insertive role in an act of male same sex inter course. And what, I don't think that the author had consensual sexual relationships between men in mind. I don't think there's a case to make that they had any awareness of, of that kind of relationship. So I, I think most likely the author of Leviticus has in mind non consensual, abusive, probably not cultic, perhaps related to sex work. But the main idea is that this violates the social hierarchy of domination and penetration that had become conventionalized regarding who it is appropriate to penetrate and who it is appropriate to be penetrating. And so to penetrate a man sexually is to feminize him, is to subjugate him, to shame him. And that violated the categories that they thought needed to be maintained in order to maintain a high state of holiness so that the land would not kick them out, which is what is expressed in Leviticus 18 and 20. And then when you get down to Paul, there's only one passage in all the Bible, and, and this is something to point out about The Hebrew Bible, they never say anything about female same sex intercourse. They have the opportunity to. Yep.
- [55:29]
A
There's no deal with adultery and bestiality.
- [55:32]
B
Yeah. They say when it comes to bestiality, they specifically call out women and that's the only time they do. But not with same sex intercourse. And, and I think most likely the reason is because there's no penis involved and that's the only real active agent. And so it's not even really sex. And so they don't care. Yeah, that's not to say. That's not to say they would have been for it. I don't think they would have. I think some of them would have secretly been for it. But.
- [55:58]
A
But diaries like.
- [56:02]
B
But I don't think it, I don't think it represents a violation of what they're worried about. And then we get down to Paul. And Paul does, I think in Romans 1 condemn both female same sex intercourse and male same sex intercourse. And, and this is a, a silly diatribe Paul is, is going through in Romans 1, basically trying to say that Gentiles do this because they don't appropriately worship God. And so God has allowed their sexual desires to run wild and free. Has basically taken off the governor, the ceiling to sexual desire to allow it to go everywhere. And now cats and dogs living in sin, mass hysteria. But Paul is like the author of the Gospel of Matthew advocating for celibacy. Paul says, I wish that everyone were like me. And if you can't hack celibacy, then go ahead and get married so you can have occasional passionless prophylactic sex.
- [57:09]
A
Oh, that sounds so funny.
- [57:11]
B
Yeah. In order to tamp down the urges. And this like we have Greco Roman period Jewish writings where people are saying you're not even allowed to enjoy sex when you are allowed to have it. So even when you're married, your wife's, you know, not menstruating, all conditions are perfect. To quote Flight of the Concords.
- [57:36]
A
Even it's business time. I got business socks. Anyways, I'm listening to that on the way home.
- [57:49]
B
Yeah, I know what you're saying, but I am quite sleepy. Yeah. So even if all those conditions are perfect, sex is entirely and exclusively for procreation. And you're not allowed to enjoy it even when you're having it. And you have a whole spectrum of, of kind of strictness in Greco Roman period Judaism regarding when it's okay to have sex. But Paul is on the let's just do away with it.
- [58:17]
A
Like why do we need this? God's coming back. Don't do it.
- [58:19]
B
Yeah. And so it's for. For those Second Temple Jewish folks who were saying, it's only for procreation. Paul was like, eh, I don't care about procreation because there's no time for that. The time is short. Jesus is coming back. Yeah. Procreation, no. If you need to have sex to stop yourself from, you know, whatever pornia, whatever sexual immorality might overtake you, then get married so you can have that occasional passionless prophylactic sex. And I. What. What baffles me is we know that a homosexual orientation is the other side of the exact same coin of a heterosexual orientation. It's coming from the exact same place. Paul says, let's avoid sex. But I'm going to make an allowance for those of you who cannot keep your urges down so that you don't go and do inappropriate stuff. Why not make the allowance for folks who have a homosexual orientation who have overpowering sexual urges? I mean, logically, that should be just fine. The folks who insist that the Bible demands that we condemn homosexuality and homosexuals are not approaching this logically or critically. And they also reject the rest of Paul's sexual ethic anyway. This is the only part of his sexual ethic that they're like, oh, well, it says, so I guess my hands are tied when it comes to the celibacy part. They're like, screw Paul. I am definitely going out and having all kinds of wild.
- [59:56]
A
And I was like, yeah, just tell their wives, hey, it's only allowed to, like, do it to let the lid off and then nothing else. And that's whenever someone brings up First Corinthians, there's two things I asked them. I was like, well, do you follow, you know, Paul's celibacy sexual ethic? Because he spends a lot more time talking about that. And the answer is always no. But then also from that very same passage, it condemns slave traders. And I'm like, so you're gonna need to drop all that symbolism of the Confederacy if we're gonna be on board with just really following Paul's ethic here. And the answer is always pretty upset.
- [60:31]
B
Oh, they. They reject Paul at every turn unless it's something that serves their interest today.
- [60:37]
A
Unless it's against homosexuals or subjugating women.
- [60:40]
B
Yeah.
- [60:41]
A
Oh, like my favorite one, because you have this in the book too, the two that Paul. Paul says that women need to cover up and shut up.
- [60:49]
B
Yeah, yeah. Which is you. You. And this really is mainly in the pseudo Pauline stuff. It is in the Pastoral epistles which weren't written by Paul were written by somebody pretending to be Paul decades after his death.
- [61:02]
A
And I would love to expand just briefly on that. So this is first and second Timothy and Titus. Correct. And what are the reasons that we now know that those were not written by Paul?
- [61:12]
B
So there, there are a bunch of reasons externally, there are some manuscripts that don't have at least one of those, if not all three of those. Okay. We do have some, some early Christians who said, nah, these weren't written by Paul. They sound very different. The language is very, very different. In fact, if you isolate all of the non people in place names in the Pastoral epistles from all of the non person and place names in the genuine Pauline epistles, there are about, I want to say there, a third of the words in the Pastoral epistles are unique to the Pastoral epistles. They don't occur.
- [61:57]
A
That's huge. Like changing 30% of how you talk in a letter.
- [62:01]
B
Yeah, yeah. And the, some of the themes that do overlap are discussed in entirely different ways. Like the notion of being in Christ in the genuine Pauline epistles is like a kind of a mystical union. Yeah. And in the, in the Pastorals, it basically means a Christian. You're following Christ. The, the soma, the body is important to the genuine Pauline epistles is not discussed in the Pastoral epistles. What righteousness is, is discussed in very different ways. So they, they disagree on that as well. And. Oh, I, now I remember what the other part about the language, when you look at the one third of those words that are very different, they're also words that, if you have a timeline of how language is used, those words overwhelmingly are concentrated at the end of the first century ce, in the beginning of the second century ce. In other words, those words mostly were not used until after Paul's death. And then you also have to do.
- [63:05]
A
That when you're dead, you know.
- [63:06]
B
Yeah, it's, it's not common. And the, there's also seems to be a concern for a more developed church structure where you have offices and positions and congregations and all this kind of stuff. The Pastorals seem to be addressing a church that is far more developed than the church was when Paul was alive. So that and other more technical concerns have convinced the majority of scholars that the Pastoral epistles were not written by Paul. But, but there are a few references to women dressing modestly. And a lot of people understand that to be a reference to how much of a woman's body is covered by clothing. And it never once has reference to that because the author frequently gives examples when talking about immodest dress. And it has to do with braided hair and silver jewelry and gold jewelry and expensive clothing. So their idea of modest means not displaying signs of wealth, not dressing with ostentatious displays of wealth and status. And so when it says modest, it means socially, socioeconomically modest. It does not mean skin wise. You have zero passages anywhere in the Bible, the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament that actually tell women they have to cover any part of their bodies in order to prevent men from lusting after them.
- [64:41]
A
Well, and Jesus said to men, hey, if you lust, gouge your eye out. Which seems to me to indicate your lust is your problem.
- [64:49]
B
Yeah. Your responsibility, that's your doing. And you. Yeah, the. And the only response will be, well, there is the passage where Paul says in, in Romans that, you know, don't put a stumbling block in front of your brethren or something like this. And this is about eating food, sacrifice to idols. But your Theo bros today, we'll take.
- [65:15]
A
It right out of context. And it applies to women magically. I love that.
- [65:19]
B
Yes, yes. And you know, they sit around in their, in their man caves with their beards and, and you know, there's their $20 cups of coffee and stuff like that and pontificate about what's to be done with this Christian nationalism. And they don't have the first clue what they're talking about. They're, they're certainly not reading the text critically. They're just reading the text to, to defend and rationalize their own identity politics.
- [65:51]
A
Yeah. And even with. Because again, referencing James Dobson a little bit earlier, you have a chapter in your book as well about like the Bible commands that you should beat your kids. Which, I mean, I grew up with, I grew up with very vicious corporal punishment because my dad was a huge fan of James Dobson. And often I find that the Bible doesn't say one. The Bible doesn't say that either. But also the people that make this claim have absolutely no answer when you ask them. Well, where does it say that?
- [66:21]
B
Well, we've got. Yeah, the, the one part, there's a part in Proverbs where a lot of people are familiar with this, this little saying, spare the rod, spoil the child. Which actually doesn't. That particular wording is from a poem from the 1700s, I believe. So. And it's actually, it's actually a bit of an erotic poem. But. But it is, it is a paraphrase of something in, in Proverbs that says he who Spares the rod, hates his child. And, and this chapter of the book is one of the few chapters where I'm pointing out that what people say is in there is in there. And, and I'm criticizing actually someone who's trying to interpret it in a way that, that softens what's going on. Because you'll see a lot of people say, well, no, this is not about a rod of discipline. This is about a shepherd's crook. And the shepherd doesn't beat his sheep with the crook, he uses it to gently guide them, which is a renegotiation of what's going on in the text. And I think it's a well meaning one because it's an awful message that you should beat your kids.
- [67:33]
A
I've heard that for a long time.
- [67:35]
B
That's just demonstrably a phenomenally harmful thing that leads to all kinds of deleterious outcomes. But the text is saying precisely that, that you should beat your kids. And there are, there are eight. The word that folks want to say means a shepherd's crook. It's shevette in Hebrew, which means it can be a shepherd's crook, can be a rod of discipline, it can be any kind of stick. But you have eight total occurrences of the Hebrew word shevette in the Hebrew Bible. Every single one of them explicitly refers to a rod of discipline. Passages are like the, the, oh, I forget the first part of the couplet, but the second part of it is the, and the rod is for the back, the backs of fools. And then you have a, another part in the Proverbs where it uses it twice in two verses where it says if you beat your child with the shebet, you will not kill them. If you beat your child, you will save them from Sheol. And so it's endorsing this idea that you should be correcting your children by, by beating them with a rod. So, so that is something that the Bible endorses in the Book of Proverbs. And it's just wrong. Yeah, it is bad advice that you should not take it. But I also think you, you shouldn't try to misrepresent this passage as saying something that it's not saying. Because I, when you try to rehabilitate the passage, at some point somebody's going to find out that that's wrong.
- [69:08]
A
Yeah.
- [69:09]
B
And that's going to do a couple of things. It's going to, it might destroy their trust in you when they realize you were the person who said, oh, this just refers to a shepherd staff, not a rod of discipline. It might destroy their trust in that person. It might lessen their estimation of. Of their competence when it comes to. To reading the text. There. There are a lot of problems, in my opinion, with endorsing what I think are bad renegotiations of the text. Now, if somebody is transparently doing that saying, I recognize that this passage is saying, X. Yeah. And that's bad. And so I'm gonna repurpose it. I'm going to openly say, let's think of it a different way. I think that's a better approach than trying to say, no, no, it never meant that it actually says this.
- [70:03]
A
Well, and also, like, I think it's in. This is something I learn all the time, you know, because especially when you come out of. When you're deconstructing, in my case, and when you're going through coming out of biblical literalism and trying to understand is that, like, if you're going to honestly approach the text, because I struggle and still sometimes struggle with it, you have to let it be messy. You have to let it be. They were. There was no condemnation for Lot being willing to throw his virgin daughters out to be gang raped. There was no condemnation for assaulting a woman you could buy your rape victim. There was no condemnation of slavery. There was all these things. And you have to. If you want to be honest, you have to let the Bible be messy and say, okay, is there a better option now? Do we know better as a cultist and as a society and as a race? Because I'm not gonna take this ancient culture and just carte blanche, say, yep, we're gonna do everything. These people that didn't know what a microwave was like, make all the rules. Like, I'm not. And I think it is. That's something I continually have to learn and catch myself with, is that it's messy and it's a reflection of their culture and what they believed and the violence of it. And you have to acknowledge that the Bible does condone these things. Like, slave owners in the US Were not lying when they said that the Bible endorsed slavery.
- [71:21]
B
Yeah.
- [71:22]
A
You know what I mean? Like, that was an honest thing. And we now have to look and say, no, but we believe that owning and abusing human people is wrong. And we now have the psychology to say, hitting your kids when you get arrested for beating a dog is not good for them and it causes damage.
- [71:39]
B
Yeah. And that's. I think a lot of people find that once they can come to grips with that, find that quite liberating because it means that the Bible is not in charge.
- [71:50]
A
Yep.
- [71:51]
B
And, and I think a lot of, I've heard a lot of feedback from folks that the moment they, that dawned on them, the moment that they could accept that the Bible is not in charge, that changed everything. Because now it didn't matter that the Bible says, yep, this, that or the other. It didn't. Doesn't matter because the Bible's not in charge. And the reality is the Bible is not in charge for anybody. Even the strictest literalist rejects an awful lot of what the Bible says because it doesn't serve their interests. And a lot of that happens subconsciously. They're not aware that they're rejecting what the Bible says. But there's a ton in the Bible that, that your, your most ardent and strict literalist today just outright objects to and rejects and says, no, that's not, that's not the case. The Bible says that God repents, changes their mind, that God commands child sacrifice. These are things that, that were written in the Bible and folks today are just like, nope, not going to do.
- [72:50]
A
That, not going to do that. Because it really is, it's about, you know, is there a better way to explain this? Do we know better now? And that doesn't mean that the Bible having contradictions and supporting things that we know are evil and harmful doesn't mean that there's not use in it, doesn't mean there's not amazing things to learn from it. It doesn't take away the value that it holds as an ancient document that obviously has created so much influence, but it's just a lot more honest. And again, it means we don't have to take it carte blanche and demonize people into, you know, suicide, into hating themselves, into eating disorders and addiction. We don't have to do that.
- [73:32]
B
Yeah, if, I think if you have a reading of the Bible that compels children to take their own lives, that's wrong.
- [73:40]
A
Yeah.
- [73:41]
B
Change your reading or just, you know, have a Coke and a smile and sit a few plays out and find something else to read because that is phenomenally harmful. And if you worship a God, that, that is okay with driving children to take their own lives, then your God is pathetic and disgusting and find yourself a new God. So, yeah, and yeah, it's, it's frustrating, however, the degree to which people will bend over backwards to, to make the cognitive dissonance go away and to deny, deny, deny that this is the reality of the situation. But you can't approach the text from a critical point of view. And from an informed point of view and not acknowledge that it's full of contradiction and it's full of things that are immoral, things that are bad, things that are harmful, things that result in abuse and anxiety and trauma and death. And I think a more mature faith is going to. To recognize that. And if, if that faith wants to continue on in that tradition, it's going to need to reform that tradition to better fit with what we know is good and bad today. And that's happening one way or another. You're either aware that you're doing it or you're not aware that you're doing it. And if you're not aware you're doing it, it's probably leading to pretty bad stuff.
- [75:13]
A
Yeah. And then like, just the long term. I mean, even in my life, using. I can use myself as an example because I can share my own story. But you look at things like abuse and purity, culture and all of which I was part of, and the years and the thousands of dollars in therapy I've spent to try to learn how to be an adult that can communicate, how to be an adult that can be in a committed relationship. And especially relationships were so dysfunctional for me. And I struggled with eating disorders and I struggled with addiction, all reflected from this biblical literalism that I was taught. And it's so incredibly damaging. And I wish that. And it's unfortunate because we see Christian nationalism kind of in force right now. You know, I mean, you know, Doug Wilson with the Women can't vote, repeal the 19th thing. And, you know, and all this. I remember being taught all this when I was growing up, that women really shouldn't be able to vote. And that was a law that violated that America's a Christian nation, blah, blah, blah. But it's sad to see the Bible used to justify these things over and over and over. And like, in your opinion, you know, being someone who knows so much, how does the average person like me, and just like the. The country bumpkins, you will, that are trying to push back against this wave. What are the best ways we can do that? Because again, their default defense to everything they do is, well, the Bible says. And obviously reading your book is a huge help and studying what you can. But, you know, there's only so much beyond that that we have access to, you know.
- [76:48]
B
Yeah. And that is a shortcoming on, on our part, on the part of the academy, not making that stuff more available. But I think there are things are becoming more available. And so a couple of things that I always recommend for Folks who want to. Who want to be able to engage competently with the Bible and with the discourse on the Bible and its relation to contemporary culture. I would recommend a good study Bible, a wonderful translation, if you want both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament together. Together is the updated edition of the New Revised Standard Version. And an addition that I really like is the SBL Study Bible because it has wonderful introductions to each book, it has wonderful explanatory notes, it has little mini essay sidebars every now and then in the pages. I think that does a wonderful job. If somebody wants an edition of the Bible that they can turn to as a reference that will present it to them as critically as is available, I think that's one really good way to go. And another book that I usually recommend is a book by my Dr. Grosswater. So the, the dissertation supervisor of my dissertation supervisor, his name is John Barton. His book is called A History of the Bible is I think, the best presentation available today of where the Bible came from, how it came together, and then how it has historically been engaged by both Jewish folks and Christian folks. What kinds of hermeneutics and reading traditions are common to both traditions. I think that's a really good foundation, a really good start to being able to engage the Bible critically and understand where the scholarship is on this. And then from there, for, for more detailed stuff, I would recommend commentaries, the Hermenea commentary series, the anchor Yale Bible commentary series. Those are really good. If, if people want to really dig down into the minutia of the scholarship on, on any given passage or set of passages, the commentaries are really helpful for that.
- [78:52]
A
That's amazing. That's amazing. I have one more question. Just a, just a funsies one. This is another one I get a lot of questions on, and I've never answered it because I don't know enough. Lilith in the Alphabet of Ben Surah. Who is she and what does she represent in the context of that documentation?
- [79:12]
B
So the representation of Lilith in chapter, I believe it's 70 or 72 of the Alphabet of Ben Sira. That is building on an earlier Jewish tradition that tried to harmonize the first two creation accounts in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. And one of the ways to harmonize that is to understand that there were two different times that humanity was created, that there was a pair that was created. And then the Adam and Eve story is a later recreation kind of. And if you harmonize the two texts that way, who was the first woman? They're gone by the time you get to Adam. Being formed from the dust of the earth and then Eve being split off from him. So there was a tradition that there was a first wife in the Garden of Eden prior to Eve. And so centuries down the road, the Alphabet of Ben Sira says, what if that was Lilith? So that is Adam's first wife in the Garden of Eden who says, I want to be on top. And sometimes translations will say, I'm going to be in charge, or something like that. Nunu. It is about sex. She says, dominant position. I want to be on top. And Adam says, you're not fit to be on top. Only I am fit to be on top. And she storms out of the Garden of Eden in protest. And then God sends the three angels after her. Senoi sense. So Noy and Samangal off to bring her back. She says, no, I'm not coming back. I'm gonna go be a succubus. I'm gonna afflict men in the night. I'm gonna kill newborn babies. And. But I will have no power over babies if they have an amulet with your three angelic names on it. So. So that is a way that Jewish tradition harmonized the two creation accounts, which left them with a remainder. We've got an extra woman prior to the creation of Eve. Who is that? Later on they said, that's Lilith. And then we have a story for how Lilith leaves the Garden of Eden so that Eve can then be created.
- [81:21]
A
And that's an interesting kind of insight into what we talked about with homosexuality in Leviticus and the fact that this was really about sexual dominance, that what they were worried about was dominance. And the male always had to be dominant. If he was submissive, I would assume that they thought this has to be abusive. It's not a consensual type of thing. And it would have been, you know, disgraceful to the receiver versus the person who's taking that dominant role.
- [81:50]
B
Right. He would have been emasculating and feminizing the. The person taking the receptive role.
- [81:56]
A
Interesting.
- [81:57]
B
And this is why in the ancient world, it was seen as unseemly for a man to be on the bottom during sex with his own wife. This is why Adam says, only I am fit to be on top. And you've. And I talk in the book about an ancient Mesopotamian sex omen that says if. If a man I forgot about that is on the bottom, then he loses his personal God for a month, which is supposed to mean his. His vigor, vitality, his manliness. And then there's a. There's A medieval Jewish text that says if a man is on the bottom, he will be stricken with delaria, which scholars think refers to diarrhea.
- [82:34]
A
So, yeah, you can't be under your wife. Amazing.
- [82:38]
B
How.
- [82:39]
A
How widespread was the belief that Lilith was this person in Genesis 1?
- [82:44]
B
I. I think it probably was somewhat limited. I don't think it would have influenced the. The hierarchy of. Of Christianity or the more powerful folks within Judaism. I think it certainly would have been pretty popular along the outskirts and, and along among some of the common folk. But. But I don't think it probably ever became a majority position among Jewish folks or Christian folks.
- [83:13]
A
It is, it is a little. There's like a little inspiration in it though, of like the woman resisting.
- [83:18]
B
Yeah.
- [83:18]
A
She has become like this symbol of, you know, sexual freedom and, you know.
- [83:23]
B
Independence and some great music from the 90s.
- [83:27]
A
So much good music.
- [83:29]
B
Yeah. I still have Sarah McLachlan on. On one of my workout playlists, so.
- [83:35]
A
You work out to Sarah McLaughlin?
- [83:38]
B
Yes, occasionally. Yeah. It's when I'm kind of in a groove rather than needing to exert myself.
- [83:47]
A
That's when I turn on a podcast. That's what I do. I turn on podcasts. Otherwise, it's heavy metal typically, or I have been in a 90s alternative rut for a while, so that's.
- [83:58]
B
Well, yeah, you gotta.
- [84:00]
A
It's my favorite decade of music. I know that's great. But 90s is just.
- [84:04]
B
Yeah. And that doesn't leave you.
- [84:08]
A
So everybody, I want to remind you, the Bible says So by Dan McClellan is maybe one of the top five books I could recommend about these issues. It's really approachable, really informative, especially as we deal with these current events and hot topics. And his podcast with Dan Beecher, Data over Dogma. Dan, what else is going on in your world? Where are you going to be headed? You got new projects coming out. Where can people find you?
- [84:31]
B
I have to finish up my proposal for book number two, which I owe to the publisher, which I'm looking forward to being able to announce as soon as we've got that contract signed. I'm going to be popping up in a handful of places over the next little while. I'm going to be in Cincinnati next week. I'm going to be in Kalamazoo beginning of October. I'm going to be at Farum College in Virginia the beginning of November. And yeah, I go by at McClellan M A K L E L A n on, on TikTok, on Instagram, on Twitter, on. On YouTube and@mcclellan.org. i have online classes. I've got two parts of a two part introduction to Biblical Hebrew class that is available there as well. And yeah, and I'm probably going to be redoing that though starting next year. I'll probably start promoting registration for that class in the next few weeks. But yeah, I'm around. You can always find me on perpetually online.
- [85:33]
A
It's like this is where I live now.
- [85:35]
B
Yeah, this is my full time job.
- [85:38]
A
That's how I'm feeling. I'm entering that space and it's weird and exciting. But I just want to say thanks again for coming on the show again. You were the number one requested person, but I appreciate your work. I learned so much from you and I appreciate you're one of the first people I've seen who makes a living talking about the Bible without indoctrination or demonizing. And that has been so healing for me as a person, even in this stage of my journey to see that interaction with the text. And I'm sure that I'm not the only person that has told you that. And I just want you to know that I really, really appreciate the work that you do and all the effort that you've put into telling the truth about this topic.
- [86:19]
B
Well, that, that means an awful lot. I appreciate you saying that. Thank you, money and thank you for having me. I appreciate being here.
- [86:25]
A
And what is the fit of the day?
- [86:27]
B
Oh, I've got.
- [86:30]
A
It's Wolverine.
- [86:32]
B
It's Wolverine. Yeah, with the, the Metallica font. Wolverine. I, I, somebody told me that this is the, the stance is an homage to something, but I don't know.
- [86:43]
A
I don't know. I didn't grow up with comics, so I know nothing about comics. So that is another thing. I'm like, I don't know anything. I'm still catching up on music and movies because I wasn't able to watch or listen to anything growing up. Oh, gosh. But I will say, being an adult and hearing Dirt for the first time, the whole album.
- [87:01]
B
Oh yeah.
- [87:02]
A
10 out of 10. 10 out of 10. So thank you so much. Hope to have you on again sometime. And everyone, please go follow Dan. Learn from him. He knows so much more than basically anyone I know in real life. And I will see you next week on Flipping Tables.