← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
The Bible Says So: What We Get Right and Wrong About the Bible
00:46:58
Loading summary
Transcript40 lines
- [00:00]
A
Drama, romance, competition, Chaos. Welcome to Reality TV with Hulu on Disney featuring the hottest reality TV Every day turn on larger than life docusoaps like season four of the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives and the hit new series Love Thy Nadir featuring superstar model Brooks Nader and her sisters. Obsess over the seasons of iconic dating shows like Love Island UK and Farmer Wants a Wife. Get hooked on irresistible food competitions like MasterChef, dive into hit game shows like Celebrity Family Feud and revel in show stopping fashion competitions including the one and only Project Runway. It's the very best of reality tv. Every single day all in one place. Every tear, every triumph, every jaw dropping twist. This is where reality lives. This this is where Hulu gets real. Stream now on Hulu and Hulu on Disney for bundle subscribers terms apply.
- [01:02]
B
Seeing or hearing a Bible verse being pulled out of a hat to support someone's argument is a common experience for many people. Homosexuality is wrong because the Bible says so. Satan is the bad guy because the Bible says so. Women should wear modest clothing because the Bible says so. But does the Bible say so? My guest today, Dr. Dan McLellan, is no stranger to engaging in Biblical debates and is here to talk about how and why the Bible is used in this way and whether such arguments are ever valid or indeed useful. Welcome to Ms. Quoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. The only show where a six time New York Times best selling author and world renowned Bible scholar uncovers the many fascinating little known facts about the New Testament, the historical Jesus and the rise of Christianity. I'm your host Megan Lewis. Let's begin.
- [02:01]
C
Hey everyone, it's Chris Henley on the Bar army team and I've got two quick announcements before today's episode begins. First announcement as this episode drops on Tuesday, April 29th, we've got two days left in our April celebration of our new name Paths and Biblical Studies. This week our deals are 50% off on our brand new course Demons and Ghosts in the Bible and We've still got two days left to join Biblical Studies Academy or BSA for 40% off. You still get a free 14 day trial with that. So if you want to check into either of those, head over to pbscourses.com that's PBS as in past and biblical studies. So pbscourses.com second announcement is if you happen to be watching or listening to this episode today, April 29th, we've got a live recording of something we're going to call BSA yay or nay tonight at 7:00pm Eastern. If you've been hearing the buzz about BSA. You see all the courses that are available in there. You've been hearing about the community, the fantastic place that it is to interact with like minded bio enthusiasts. You want to join this to see if it's really for you or not. Maybe you've still got some questions. We're going to give you an insider's peek into the community. We're going to hear from some BSA members themselves. It's going to be a great time. You'll have an opportunity to ask any questions that you have. And since we've only got a couple days left here to get it at 40% off, now's the time to join that. So once again, that's going to be tonight, April 29th at 7pm Eastern. And all you have to do to go there is you go to bart ehrman.com bsarecording that's going to forward you to the live Zoom meeting. It's bartnerman.com vsarecording I hope to see you there and I hope you enjoyed the episode today.
- [03:49]
B
Hello and welcome back to Misquoting Jesus. Today I am joined by Dr. Dan McLellan. Dr. McClellan received his bachelor's Degree from Brigham Young University in Ancient Near Eastern Studies, completed a Master of Studies in Jewish Studies at the University of Oxford in July of 2010, and obtained a Master of Arts in biblical studies in 2013 at Trinity Western University, Canada. He received his PhD from the University of Exeter in 2020, where he wrote on the Cognitive Science of Religion and the Conceptualization of Deity and Divine Agency in the Hebrew Bible. He has worked as a Scripture Translation Supervisor for the Church of Latter Day Saints in Salt Lake City from 2013 to 2023 and has occasionally taught courses at Brigham Young University as an adjunct instructor. Dr. McClellan maintains an active social media presence on TikTok and YouTube, providing rebuttals and refutations to claims made about and he also hosts the popular podcast Data Over Dogma. He joins me today to discuss his new book, the Bible says what We Get Right and Wrong about Scripture's most controversial issues. April 29th is the release date for those who are interested in purchasing their own copy. Dr. McClelland, thank you so much for joining me today.
- [05:01]
D
Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
- [05:03]
B
Oh, it's going to be fun. Now, in the introduction of the book, which I have been lucky enough to read, you talk about the importance of putting data that that is what the Bible actually says over Dogma, which is what people believe it Says, what are some of the dogmatic beliefs that you run across when you talk about the Bible online?
- [05:22]
D
I think probably one of the most pervasive ones that I see presupposed, not just in arguments from apologists and Bible believers, but as well as from critics of the Bible, is the dogma of univocality, the notion that the Bible speaks with one unified and consistent voice and from one single, unified, consistent perspective. And so this contributes to the idea that the Bible never disagrees with itself. And so you'll see both apologists as well as critics trying to kind of triangulate these complex constellations of passages to generate specific principles that they want to extract from the Bible, either in support of or against the inspiration or the significance or authority of the Bible. And. And I think that probably is based on the dog the more I think fundamental dogmas of inspiration and inerrancy, the notion that it is all God's word, derives directly from the same source and because of that is free from error, whether it's free from any kind of error or just free from error in matters pertaining to salvation or things like that. I think those three, as well as historicity. So those four are probably the ones that I encounter every single day.
- [06:41]
B
Do we have a sense of when these ideas of inerrancy, infallibility and univocality started to become important for Christians? Because from talking to Barthes, this wasn't present, or doesn't seem to have been presence in Christianity's very earliest days?
- [06:58]
D
I would say initially the message was the most important thing. And so from a textual point of view, it wasn't that the text itself was inviolable and inspired. It was mainly the message, which I think probably had pretty fuzz boundaries. So as, as long as the heart of it, the main idea was communicated accurately, yeah, they, they probably didn't have a sense of the inviolability of the text or the inerrancy or the univocality of the text. And we have early Christians talking about how, you know, the gospel authors disagreed here and there, but that's no big deal because it doesn't really impact salvation. And so for them, while they, we may be able to talk about a degree of inerrancy related to matters pertaining to salvation, the kind of inerrancy that most evangelicals assert today is something really only become embedded within their dogmatic foundations in the last couple of centuries. I think the 19th century is probably when they really started to firm up a formal and official notion of inerrancy at least for the. The original documents as they were originally written. And that has, and it's still changing down to today. You have the Chicago statement on inerrancy from a handful of decades ago. That was its own kind of renegotiation of what evangelicals should understand as inerrancy. So I think it es and flows with the social circumstances and context and the needs of the groups that are deploying these ideologies. And, and, yeah, I don't think you see anything remotely as, as systematized and as sophisticated as what we have today anywhere within early Christianity. But, but I think there is a degree of inspiration attributed to a lot of the texts. By the time we get to the first century, you have this, this Greek word enthus, which is used to refer to inspiration. And, and Scripture is what is inspired. And then in later centuries, inspired Scripture becomes, you know, the criterion for formalizing a canon. And so it does play a type of role within early Christianity and early Judaism, but it's very different from what we mean when we talk about these things today.
- [09:08]
B
Thank you. Now, I want to make it really clear before we get much further that everybody has these kind of dogmatic beliefs. Everyone has biases. It's absolutely impossible to get rid of them. As a researcher, really the best you can do is be aware of your own and try and mitigate for them. So I wanted to ask, before we get into kind of the meat of the book, how do you go about trying to ensure that your own biases don't unduly influence your work?
- [09:34]
D
That's kind of an ongoing process that, that I'm always trying to improve, and I, and I rely on the criticism I receive online to help refine that process. So I, I tend to talk about how I, I don't read the comments, and I ignore a lot of criticisms, but that's usually when I know it's not coming from a place of good faith. But I will take the opportunity to take seriously the criticisms I've received, particularly from peers and colleagues and things like that, you know, in order to help me. But, yeah, I think the best we can do is look at the work we've produced and try to interrogate it to the best of our ability, with awareness of our positionality, with awareness of our background and awareness of our conditioning, our socialization, all those kinds of things, so that we can identify those places where we're more likely to be engaged in something dogmatic. And this is actually something I recognized in my own work before I even Got into graduate school. You know, my bachelor's is from Brigham Young University. Not an institution particularly well known for critical thought and a non dogmatic approach, particularly to things like studying the Scriptures. And so it was when I started looking at graduate programs and particularly the University of Oxford and other graduate programs that were either evangelically affiliated or, or secular. And I started wondering what of my work would kind of rub some of those folks the wrong way. What am I going to get criticized for if I take the approach that I learned at Brigham Young University to these other places? And so when I got into graduate school at Oxford, I was at the Oxford center for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. I was in a Jewish space. And I was being exposed to a lot of folks who, for the first time I was being exposed to a lot of folks who did not approach these questions the same way I always had, always had. And I made the decision in that first graduate degree that I was going to do my best to ensure that my scholarship was robust and valid and legitimate in any space that it was found that it was not just me trying to speak to co religionists and people who are like minded so that we can kind of generate that collective effervescence of agreements within our own dogmas. And so through a decade of being in graduate school in one form or another, I've worked very, very hard to recognize how my own religious tradition and my background influences my work and try to be upfront about that and also work to try to filter out the places where that background and conditioning might influence the, the conclusions I arrive at on it. And I think I do a good job of that. And one of, one of, I think the pieces of evidence that I'm doing a good job of that is that I get just as much criticism from within my faith tradition as I do from without my faith tradition. So I'm, I think that's a sweet spot that I'm, I'm trying to stay in. But, but yeah, it's always a work in progress. It's never something we can perfect. And so I'm always on the lookout for good faith, legitimate criticisms that might help me sharpen my tools just a little bit more.
- [12:57]
B
Thank you. And I think that's when you're working in an academic space, that's one of the very valuable things about something like peer review, which is when you write a piece of work and then it goes out to other people who are trained similarly to you, they don't usually know who you are, you don't know who they are. And they read through your work and then you get comments back, kind of like getting your grade back from your teacher. But one of the things that that can do is really highlight where you might have inadmittently, inadvertently let a bias slip, slip underneath the gates, as it were. It's tricky though.
- [13:35]
D
And I think every piece of scholarship that we produce also adds another layer to our biases because once we've committed to an academic position, we're kind of invested in it. And so that's an additional dimension of the biases that influence us. And so that's one of the reasons it's, it's an ever changing, ongoing process. But yeah, and, and I think some people think that the way I talk about dogmas, data over dogma and all that, that I think I've perfected this and that I'm done and it's everybody else's problem. And I try to make clear as, as frequently as I can that I am under absolutely no such misapprehension whatsoever, very aware that, that no one can be perfect at this. I am just not so willing to take the word of flat earthers and anti vax people that the problem is my biases.
- [14:29]
B
I think that's, I think that's quite reasonable. Now, one of the other things that comes up early on in the book is this thing called scholarly consensus. You're very explicit about the fact that through most of the book, you, you are representing scholarly consensus. Could you just say a little bit about what that is for those who don't know and why it was important to you to stick to it as far as was possible?
- [14:54]
D
When I found out I was going to be a parent, I immediately felt a lot of anxiety and worry. So I went on to BetterHelp to try to look for a therapist to help me with that.
- [15:03]
B
My relationship with my family and with my boyfriend and with myself were suffering. I really needed help. I was ruminating a lot.
- [15:11]
D
Really getting those thoughts out to a
- [15:12]
B
therapist and getting feedback was just life changing. Discover what BetterHelp online therapy can do for you. Visit betterhelp.com today.
- [15:26]
D
Yeah, this is actually something that I've, I've tried to make my priority ever since I got on social media. In my understanding, people understand consensus in a few different ways. But my understanding is that a consensus is when a majority of the scholars who are specialists or who work in a specific area or on a specific research question agree that a specific conclusion is most likely more so than the other available conclusions that have been proffered by Other scholars, and some people want this to be, you know, northwards of 75%, it's got to be 80 or 90% to constitute a consensus. And, and other people think as long as it's 51%, it constitutes a consensus. But right now we don't really have the tools to be able to be so granular with our interrogation of what scholars think anyway. And so the best most scholars can do is read, read as widely as they can on a given research question and then get a sense for what position seems to be held by the majority of scholars. And so, for instance, I published a paper on Psalm 82 back in 2018, and I read well over 100 publications on Psalm 82, books, dissertations, papers, and I became quite acutely aware of where the scholarship seems to have settled on a number of research questions related to Psalm 82. And so I felt able to talk about what the consensus view seemed to be. And, and obviously I can't do that for every last research question that I'm ever going to address on social media or in a book. And so I think there, you know, you go to papers, there are certain journals that their primary purpose is to try to represent what the currents are in scholarship, or you can go to commentaries and they'll try to distill the discussion down to what the authors believe the, the consensuses are. And the reason that I highlight that is not because I think that the consensus is always right and because it's not even really the goal of my channel to say this is what is right and everything else is wrong regarding any given research question. It's the two goals of my channel are to increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and then combat the spread of misinformation about the same. And so basically what I'm trying to do is share the state of the field with the public as, as widely as I can. And in my opinion, the simplest, the most efficient, the most effective shorthand for the state of the field is what the current consensus happens to be. And that doesn't mean this has been proven definitively to be correct. It just means at any given point in time, the consensus would represent the conclusion that the majority of scholars believe is most likely correct. And, you know, that can change if we dig something up tomorrow or if somebody introduces a new theory or a new methodology or a new way of thinking about the problem and they come up with something that suddenly the scholars are all like, oh, well, let's, let's consider this now, you know, the the consensus can change. But I'm not doing the work of scholarship on TikTok. I'm kind of representing, I'm sharing what the state of the field is. And again, because I cannot be a specialist in all things and because we cannot drill down to the bedrock of every research question that would require 10 hour videos every single day, the best I think that we can do is say this is what the majority of scholars seem to agree on right now.
- [19:04]
B
Excellent, thank you. That's a fantastic explanation and very good reasoning, I think. Now to look at the book. Each chapter that you have in the book takes a specific statement about the Bible. The Bible says homosexuality is wrong. The Bible says Satan is God's enemy. I think those are the two I mentioned in my introduction as well. How did you go about selecting the topics you wanted to include in the book? And were there any that you wanted but just didn't have space for?
- [19:32]
D
Oh, there, there were a number. In fact, I, I have a list in case I come around and do a volume two at any point. There, there are quite a few, but the, the book basically came about through some discussions with a publisher. I had a different book proposal that my agent was discussing with publishers and, and one of them said, hey, let's have a meeting, let's talk about this. And they said this is, you know, this is a wonderful proposal. This would make a really cool book. But for your first trade book you really want to do something that is a little closer to what has gotten you your platform and your audience. And so they said could you do like a greatest hits of your TikTok videos? And I thought, well, I could frame something like that around this, this idea of the Bible says so and go and find what either the issues that I confront the most frequently or the issues that have gotten the most attention. And so that was, that was basically the, the foundation of the chapters that I discussed in the book. But yeah, there were a number that I didn't have an opportunity to include. The, the two or three weeks after I submitted the manuscript, I was just kicking myself about. I wish I could have included this. I wish I could have included that. And I came up with several more. So I would, I would love to talk about what the Bible says about women in ecclesiastical leadership. I think that is, is a big topic. I would love to address immigration. In fact, in the conclusion of the book I mentioned that I did not have the space to talk about immigration because that's such a big debate today. There are a lot of other issues related to creation, related to Jesus's mission, related to the relationship of the Hebrew Bible to the New Testament. There are a bunch of things that at some point I would love to be able to discuss in a, in a volume two, but, but yeah, the publisher hasn't asked for that yet, so we'll see when that, when that happens.
- [21:27]
B
Well, maybe after April 19th, when. The 19th, 29th, when the book is out.
- [21:33]
D
Yeah.
- [21:33]
B
And they realize this is really. This is really selling. We should, we should get this guy to write another one. I'll come back now. We've, We've mentioned biblical inerrancy already in our conversation. It comes up very early on. It's. It's in your introduction and also mentioned in some of the subsequent chapters. Could you just take a minute to explain exactly what it is and the role that you see it playing in some of the issues that you address in the book?
- [22:03]
D
Inerrancy is something that I, that I think can take a variety of different forms and, and shapes. As I mentioned previously, for some folks, inerrancy is only related to matters pertaining to salvation. So when it comes to what we have to do, be, believe, think, say, or whatever in order to be saved, that's where the text is inerrant. And then on the other side of the spectrum, you have folks who suggest that every last syllable and every last sense is inerrant. So there are no errors of logic, there are no errors of falsehoods about history, about science, about physics, about math, about anything at all. And most Bible believers today fall somewhere between that spectrum. And, and there's also a difference between inerrancy as it relates to the autographs, which is a fancy way to say the original manuscript that was actually composed by the author versus the manuscripts that we have today. And there are other folks who would say that they. The manuscripts that we have today are themselves inerrant, or that the King James Version is the only actually inerrant translation of the Bible and only the 1611. Like there, there are a variety of different dimensions of inerrancy, but the idea is basically that the text is right. The text does not have errors. And this plays into inspiration, it plays into univocality, it plays into historicity. And one of the things that I think it facilitates is the malleability and the flexibility of the text. Because if we have two passages in the Bible that disagree with each other and we don't have inerrancy, we don't have univocality, we don't have historicity, then you know, you kind of just kind of arbitrarily decide what you're going to think about this. But when we impose those unifying frameworks and say it is all univocal, it is all historical, it is all inerrant, then that means there is a transcendent truth in there. And our, what we need to do, our mandate and our, excuse me, and our goal is to harmonize these passages so that we can arrive at that transcendent truth. But because that is something that can be done in a variety of different ways, it creates a flexibility that allows us to read our own ideologies and dogmas into this text. So if you have a passage that says Jesus is God and another passage that says Jesus is not God, you're going to be intuitively compelled, if you are a trinitarian Christian, to give priority to the passage that says Jesus is God. This is inerrant, this is the word of God, this is transcendent. And then you just have to reinterpret the other passage to make it agree with the first. And it kind of gives license, gives supernatural backing and approbation to, in my opinion, the dogmas that people bring to the text. And so they're not really, and this was one of the main points of my book, we're not really extracting meaning. We're in a process of negotiation to create meaning. And because of dogmas like inerrancy, once we arrive at that meaning, we can say, this is transcendent. This is not me speaking. This is not our social group speaking. This is God speaking directly to us. And so what we have arrived at is God's word is transcendent, has greater authority than any individual or combination of any individuals possibly can. And so it's, it's a, a phenomenally powerful rubber stamp on whatever ideologies a group generates in that process of negotiation with the Bible. And they can say, hey, this is inerrant. This is the word of God. You can't argue with this. And that kind of transcends human agency, human authority, and becomes, you know, as powerful a trump card as you can possibly generate.
- [25:54]
B
And of course, if you do, then argue with it, you are a heretic. You're not a real Christian. You're, you're just wrong. You don't understand the word of God. You don't have his spirit within you. And all this stuff that I'm sure many people who have engaged in, in combating apologetics online or in, in, in person will have, will have heard before.
- [26:15]
D
Yeah, absolutely. And it comes down to those boundaries. So much of this is about reifying and protecting and reinforcing boundaries that we create for our social identities. Because every, you know, every type of Christian has others that they disagree with and they, they want to eject from the, the Christian identity. And we, I think we see people tightening up those boundaries even more and more these days as, as Christianity becomes more deeply entangled with Christian nationalism and right wing authoritarianism. Which means, yeah, that people on the outside are more and more wrong and, and less and less Christian and, and sometimes even less and less human because they, they disagree about these things, which is phenomenally harmful.
- [27:01]
B
Now when you, when people read through the book, they will find that you don't only examine things that the Bible does not support or does support. You give a brief account of scholarly thinking on the topic in your effort to make sure people realize that you're representing consensus and to kind of explain how and why these things, this way of thinking arose within Christianity. I wanted to give the audience just an example so they get a feel for what they're in for when they read the book. So would you mind talking briefly about whether or not the Bible depicts God as having a wife?
- [27:39]
D
Yes, that's, that's always a fascinating one because it's one, I think a lot of people, it just doesn't compute for them. And, but it's also, but it is also so fascinating. For the longest time, the only information that we had about the notion of, of God's wife is, is rather condemnatory passages within the Bible about the Queen of Heaven or about Asherah, who we see in the books of Kings and elsewhere is condemned. And you know, Josiah had the images of Asherah brought out into the Kidron Valley and smashed to dust. And, and this was an abomination. And, and then in the 60s and 70s, following the creation of the state of Israel and an awful lot of funding for archaeological research and things like that, we excavated all over Israel and began to find inscriptions and even iconography and additional temples that scholars agree were a part of the central administrative hierarchy in Jerusalem. At Arad, we, we've more recently found one at a place called Telmot Sa. These were contemporary with the first Temple. And we find references to Adonai, which means Lord, but I use as a substitution for the Tetragrammaton, the God of Israel and his Asherah. And I think the most fascinating archaeological datum is, is a drawing of a male and a female divine figure with arms interlocking. And someone has written an inscription right over the center of the headdress on the male figure that talks about blessings by Adonai of Shomron and by his Asherah. And I think scholars today for the most part agree that, that at least for whoever wrote that inscription, the two figures were understood to be the God of Israel and the wife, consort or partner of the God of Israel, Asherah. And with these discoveries there, a debate kind of sprung up regarding what this helps us understand about the nature of Asherah prior to the rise of Josiah and the Deuteronomist, Deuteronomistic history and all this stuff. And a lot of scholars suggest that when we look in the Bible at the rather negative comments about Asherah, they all seem to come from a literary layer that is either contemporary with or post dates the reign of Josiah and the institution of his project of, of cult centralization, which was basically the king's attempt to try to vilify everybody beyond Jerusalem and all the priesthoods outside of, of his Levitical priesthood and all the deities other than Adonai, the God of Israel, that were being worshiped all around. And a lot of scholars, myself included, would now suggest that the data indicate that nobody really seemed to have much of a problem with the worship of Asherah until we get down to around the reign of Josiah. And so scholars suggest these days that Asher was probably the consort, the wife, the partner of Adonai from the earliest periods of Israel's history. And then it wasn't until later on that people began to have concerns with this goddess being worshiped alongside Adonai. And so in the, the chapter in the book I'm I'm taught, the main question I'm addressing is whether or not God's wife was edited out of the Bible. That was a claim I address in the introduction of the chapter. And while that's debatable, some folks think there are some neutral or positive references to Asherah that have become obscured over time that can be restored through appeal to the Septuagint or textual criticism. I don't know. I wouldn't be as confident with those arguments. But what most scholars today agree on is that prior to the reign of Josiah and the development of the Deuteronomistic history, it seems that God did have a wife. And there does not seem to have been opposition, certainly not organized opposition to God having a wife, which, which would
- [31:58]
B
make sense for people who know anything about the religion of all the religions plural of that area. It was very common right for deities to have spouses and children. And one of the things that has always marked Yahweh out as being a little off for me as an historian is the fact that there isn't a wife or children or anything similar.
- [32:22]
D
Yeah, I think there's. For a long time, scholars have talked about how Adonai is so unique because they are trying to remember the exact terminology they use, but. But basically that they are not sexualized. They don't. Do not have a. A consort, they do not have children. And these days, I think most scholars would. Would say, on the contrary, when with the benefit of the Ugaritic literature, with the benefit of the archaeological discoveries, with the benefit of our better understanding of Northwest Semitic literature and all these things, scholars would say there does seem to be a sexualized deity in the Bible. There does seem to be a deity who is part of a larger family that has a wife. And in some iterations, in other iterations, the God of Israel seems to be the child of a higher deity and seems to be one of the B' nai Elohim, the children of God with brothers and perhaps sisters who are the patron deities of the other nations of the earth, more in line with the way we see the pantheon represented in the nations surrounding Israel.
- [33:30]
B
Now, I think people will be unsurprised to hear me say that many of the topics you address in the book, as I think the one we just spoke about, will have evoked strong feelings for people listening these topics. They get a reaction, especially in people who value the Bible as an item of faith. So I wanted to ask why you think it is that so many of these topics are so important to all kinds of different denominations of Christians?
- [34:03]
D
I think that's a. That's a wonderful question. And one of the things I. I talk about frequently on my channel is that religious ideologies and dogmas, they tend to have kind of a life cycle. But most of them begin in this process of negotiation between a specific social group, usually some kind of religious social group, the. The sacred past, what they have inherited from those who came before their social and historical circumstances in the present and their goals for the future. And so when we look at the ideologies and the dogmas as they have bubbled to the surface throughout history, we do see kind of an ebb and a flow and an evolution as they are kind of massaged and manipulated and made malleable by changing circumstances. And so different perspectives and different ideas serve different rhetorical goals and different contexts. And what frequently happens is some of these ideologies will become identity markers. They will become means of Testing the fidelity of an individual to the group and their mores and their standards. So, for instance, one that I get asked about frequently, that is not discussed in the book is the Jehovah's Witnesses practice of avoiding the consumption of blood and blood transfusions. And this has become, you know, the, the exegetical process by which they arrived at this is not particularly critical. But what is critical is that this very quickly became an identity marker and it became a means of putting on display your fidelity to the group. And it is costly signaling. This is the, the cost that we incur to signal to others that we are part of the group, where we have, we don't really have any immediate payout other than the benefits of continued good standing within the group, whether that be, you know, avoiding certain language or using certain language or certain gestures, shaking hands, maintaining eye contact. There are a bunch of different ways that we've been socialized to show people we are interacting with that we are, we are part of the group and we're willing to incur those costs. And so for Jehovah's Witnesses, if somebody needs a blood transfusion, a child, for instance, and the parents don't allow it, even to the point that the child is allowed to pass away, that becomes a phenomenally costly way to show to the other members of the group. This is how much I believe, because these things are hard to fake. If you didn't really believe, why would you allow that to happen? And so that must demonstrate that you actually do sincerely believe. And so these identity markers become ways for people to demonstrate that faithfulness. But then they also become credibility enhancing displays. And so if you ratchet up the cost of an identity marker, you go above and beyond what is expected. And that kind of shows that you are even more committed than your average bear. So, for instance, folks who are opposed to the legality of abortion might go and protest at a clinic, or might go bomb a clinic or assault someone who works in, in that industry might have to go to jail and they'll know their name is going to be spread all over as someone who is willing to incur that cost in order to put on display how important that identity marker is to them. And that is a way that these ideologies go from something that might bubble to the surface organically, might be rather natural, to something that is an identity marker and is held up and has a life of its own, and you serve its interests only because it is an identity marker. And we have an awful lot of that within Christianity as the world becomes more secularized as nations become more pluralistic, you're going to have a lot more engagement with people who are part of the out group. And so the reification of those boundaries and the demonstration of your fidelity to the group is going to have to sit closer to the surface, which means you're going to have to engage in a lot more costly signaling. Whether that is related to ideologies about gay marriage or abortion or immigration or even white supremacy. There's a degree to which white supremacy can function as an identity marker for certain Christian identities. And so I think it comes down to the boundaries of our groups and how we show other members of our group group that we belong and, and that we're one of the good ones. And unfortunately that turns things into dogmas that are not subjected to scrutiny, they're not critically interrogated, they're allowed to take on a life of their own because of their functionality as an identity marker. And I finished the book talking about homophobia and anti LGBTQ plus ideologies as an example of something that has become an identity marker and is going to be one until enough people decide that the well being and the very lives of men, women and children all around our nation, all around the world are worth more than the function of homophobia as an identity marker for the in group. I, I think there's no contest and what is more important in those two things, but for an awful lot of people, their ability to leverage that tool to show others that they belong and part of the in group and to improve their standing within the group is still more important. And I think that's a phenomenally damaging and harmful and deadly manifestation of the nature of these dogmas as identity markers.
- [40:02]
B
So if there is anyone listening who is a Christian and wants to try and use the Bible to guide their own modern life, but at the same time recognizes that these kinds of dogmatic beliefs can be damaging and often are very damaging. What are some of the pitfalls you think that they could be aware of to try and help them navigate this, this path?
- [40:29]
D
I get questions all the time about, well, what is the use of the Bible if, if it's not univocal, if it's not inspired, if it's not inerrant, if it's not historical. And I think there are, everybody has no other option but to negotiate with it. If they want it to be an authoritative text, if they want it to be something that guides their, their living, you have to negotiate with it. And so what I've said is that think hard, think critically about the goals of your negotiations. And if the goal is to shore up your own power, and particularly over and against marginalized, minoritized or oppressed groups, if you're just trying to increase your acc to power and resources, see whose interests are being subjugated and subordinated, and if that's what's going on, I would say that's a harmful, problematic use of the Bible as an authoritative text. If you are engaged in that process of negotiation with a goal of trying to reduce harm, with a goal of trying to increase equity, equality, with a goal of trying to increase the scope of your empathy and the scope of your, you know, the, the definition of your neighbor, if you're trying to do that, I think that's a more productive, useful process of negotiation with the Bible. And so what I would recommend is when folks go through and they are reading the Bible, try to figure out why they're doing it, try to figure out whose interests are being prioritized and really think hard about the rhetorical goals of, of what you're doing. Because an awful lot of it is all about boundary maintenance, is all about identity politics. And those people have had thousands of years to refine and make more sophisticated their rationalization of rationalizations of the need for that. And so it's can be very difficult to disentangle those rhetorical goals. But, but think hard about it and see what you're trying to do. Are you trying to restrict the circle of people that you're required to love? Are you trying to make it so that the power is concentrated more closely to you? Are you trying to make it so other people are hurt or other people are robbed of their power and resources? And particularly if they're minoritized, marginalized or oppressed groups, I think, I think that's a problematic use of the Bible.
- [43:08]
B
Thank you. Now, final question for people coming to the Bible from the other side of the spectrum, those who are non specialists but are interested in trying to read the Bible for its or within its historical and cultural context. What are some ways that you think non academics can do that without tripping over misinformation or misleading data?
- [43:35]
D
That's a question I get quite frequently and I, I think there are easier and more complex ways to answer it. And it's not an easy process. But I would start out with thinking about the questions you're bringing to the text and the reasons you're engaging the text and thinking about when you're engaging the text. I think a place to start from. It's not the only place you should ever be. But I good place to start from is thinking about what the author is trying to do, what are their goals with the text, who are they talking to? What are the circumstances, what events or situations might they be responding to? Try to figure out how this might function within its original setting to the degree that you're able to reconstruct it, which is never perfect. But at least if we start with that framing in mind, I think that's a surer foundation on which to build a hermeneutic regarding the Bible. But that's a very, very difficult thing to do without any additional resources. And so I would I also recommend going to other resources. I would start with a very good study Bible, something that provides a lot of explanatory notes, something that provides introductions to books, that talks about authorship, that talks about dating, that talks about genre, that talks about rhetorical goals. And so the two I usually recommend are the SBL Study Bible, which is which is fairly new and incorporates the updated edition of the New Revised Standard Version, which I think for the the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament together is probably the most scholarly and up to date translation that's available. And the other is the New Oxford Annotated Bible, which the fifth edition is the most recent one, but it has not included the updated edition of the nrsv. But the sixth edition will be coming out within the next year or two and will incorporate the nrsvue. And a book that I have loved for a few years now is John Barton's book A History of the Bible. The book and its fades which goes into how the Bible was composed, how it came together, how it was canonized, and then how it has historically been interpreted by Jewish communities as well as Christian communities. And I think it does a phenomenal job of covering a lot of the main bases that from which we we get a lot of the questions that we do get about the nature and function and meaning of the Bible. And then for folks who want an even deeper dive than that, I usually recommend Commentary series like my the the four that I always recommend. I Hermaneia is still my favorite. The anchor Yale Bible Dictionary I love. And now that Candida Moss has taken over as the editor in chief, I think it's only going to get better. Then there's the Old Testament Library and the New Testament Library I think are very good and the International Critical Commentary Series. And then there of course are our wonderful introductions to the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament. The the Intro to the Hebrew Bible by John Collins. I think is wonderful. And then the new edition of Bart's Introduction of the New Testament that Hugo Mendez was a part of of, I think is, is also a phenomenal introduction to the New Testament. And that will help people get those resources, will help people get oriented to where the scholarship stands on different research questions and will allow them to look up certain passages and get a sense for how those are interpreted by scholars. And, and I think that will go a long way to helping them have the resources available to be able to better situate the text of the Bible in their proper context so that they can get more out of them.
- [47:16]
B
Thank you. Very fantastically thorough answer with some really great book recommendations. No, I love it. People always want to know what books they can get, and being able to point them in the direction and say these are highly recommended is really, really useful. Now that was all of my questions for today. Dr. McClellan, thank you really so much for joining me. This was fascinating.
- [47:37]
D
Well, I, I had a great time. Thank you for having me.
- [47:40]
B
Absolutely. And audience, for those who are interested, the book, again is the Bible says so what do we get right and wrong about Scripture's most controversial issues? And that will be coming out on April 29th of this year. Thank you all for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show. Please remember to hit the subscribe button so you don't miss future episodes. Misquoting Jesus will be back next week. Make sure you join us then. This has been an episode of Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. We'll be back with a new episode next Tuesday, so please be sure to subscribe to our show for free on your favorite podcast listening app or on Bart Ehrman's YouTube channel so you don't miss out from Bart Ehrman and myself, Megan Lewis. Thank you for joining us.