What Is The Bible?

Most people who talk about the Bible are pretty sure they know what it is they're talking about. But do they? Do you? How sure are you that when you say "the Bible" you're talking about the same thing as the person next to you? Today, we're diving into the surprisingly broad category of books that all bear the name "Bible". We'll explore who believes which canon, and why certain texts made certain cuts, while others were excluded. You'll never look at your Bible the same! Then... Woof. When Trump's Department of Homeland Security decides to quote Jesus in a recruitment video, you KNOW we're going to talk about it! And when they quote the Beatitudes? Something is seriously out of whack. Maybe DHS is taking on a new role, really trying to promote peace? But let's face it: probably not. ---- For early access to an ad-free version of every episode of Data Over Dogma, exclusive content, and the opportunity to support our work, please consider becoming a monthly patron at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/DataOverDogma⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow us on the various social media places: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/DataOverDogmaPod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.twitter.com/data_over_dogma⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Have you ordered Dan McClellan's New York Times bestselling book ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Bible Says So⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ yet??? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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• 1:40Speaker 00

  There are an awful lot of people on social media who just lap that up. They just suckle that garbage from the fetid and swollen teat of this fascist regime because it makes them feel good about being on the right team.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:56Speaker 00

  And I think the point of the beatitudes is what the world imagines to be the right team and the team that's gonna win is the wrong team.

• 2:12Speaker 00

  Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

• 2:14Speaker 01

  And I'm Dan Beecher.

• 2:15Speaker 00

  And this is Data Over Dogma, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things today, Dan?

• 2:25Speaker 01

  Things are good.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  I'm looking forward to this one. We got a lot with it's, it's, it's fun stuff that we're going to be discussing today. We're going to be challenging some people. We're, matter of fact, we're going full combat mode in terms of the misinformation out there. You always talk about us combating. Yes, we're going to get our battle rattle on and really get out into it because very least in the second half of the show, we got to go up against the Department of Homeland Security. So that's going to be, that's going to be some rough stuff. That'll be a lot of fun.

• 3:03Speaker 00

  The Department of War, if you're nasty.

• 3:06Speaker 01

  And they are.

• 3:08Speaker 00

  And they are very.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  But no, we're, this is just DHS mostly. Anyway, we'll, we'll get to it. Before that, though, we're, we're going to do a what's that? And it's sort of maybe the biggest what's that we have.

• 3:23Speaker 00

  It's a doozy.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  For this show, because it's going to be, what's that? The Bible.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  So that's a big one. So maybe we should just dive right in to what's that?

• 3:42Speaker 01

  So, Dan, what is that? The Bible.

• 3:48Speaker 00

  The Bible, yes, this is the big one. It's and, and kind of the, the thesis statement of this, what is that? Is that there is no such thing as the Bible.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  I, how dare you, sir?

• 4:03Speaker 00

  I dare.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  This coming from a guy who wrote a book called The Bible Says So.

• 4:09Speaker 00

  Yes, and where I went in and said, first, there's no such thing in the Bible. And second, there's no such thing as the Bible saying anything at all. And I was like, look, I didn't come up with the title. The publisher said.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  I've disproved my own theory, you may stop reading now.

• 4:23Speaker 00

  Yes. Um, no, and I actually talk about this in after the introduction, the first chapter, I talk about the fact that, look, just like, and I go off on, don't get me started on the dictionary, because there's no such thing as the dictionary. There are dictionaries, but there's no the dictionary. People speak about it as if we have all agreed on one universally authoritative, consistent dictionary.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:52Speaker 00

  And that's just not true. And

• 4:54Speaker 01

  Merriam and Webster and Johnson and every big dictionary writer has all agreed on everything that's in all of them. Oxford

• 5:04Speaker 00

  Big dictionary is such an infelicitous phrase, but big dictionary energy, I think ought to be.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:13Speaker 00

  Yeah. Anyway, we are, um, just like there's no such thing as the dictionary, there's no such thing as the Bible. And I want to talk about three different judgments that you have to make before you can even get to what you think is the Bible. And, and I want to start with the canon, because we frequently talk about the Bible as if we all agree on what books are in the Bible. And the reality is that we can find collections of texts that constitute what we would call a Bible that don't agree with what Christians today think of as the canon.

• 5:55Speaker 00

  We can find canons among Christian groups that differ. We can find canons within Jewish groups that differ. In fact, you know, the, probably the smallest biblical canon is, uh, is that of the Samaritans, which is just the five books of Moses, and that's it. And, and this is related to, uh, the Sadducees from the New Testament, which rejected the scriptures after the, uh, the Pentateuch, the first five books of Moses. So that's, that's a Bible, and none of us can say, well, that's not the Bible, that's, that's, or none of us can say,

• 6:36Speaker 00

  That's the wrong Bible.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  That's definitively.

• 6:39Speaker 00

  They have, yes, authoritatively.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  I love the idea that, that none of us can say, cause boy, lots of us do say.

• 6:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  That they know what is definitively and authoritatively the Bible.

• 6:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  Whether it be their, you know, their Protestant Bible with however many books and their, or their, you know, I think Old Testament.

• 7:02Speaker 00

  The Catholic Bible.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. You ju- yeah. You jump to Catholic, you go up a bunch of books. You go to Eastern Orthodox, you go up a bunch more books. You go to Ethiopian Orthodox and I don't think it's done. I think it's, there's still more coming every week.

• 7:16Speaker 00

  There's, yeah, orders of magnitude larger. You've got, I, I think the most expansive is the Ethiopian Orthodox Tawakato Church's uh, canon, which has significantly more books than, than the Armenian, than the Ether Eastern Orthodox, than the, the Catholic, than the, uh, the Protestant. And yeah, so nobody can authoritatively say this one's the real one and the other one is not. Now, when you're speaking for your group, yeah, you can say, this is what we like.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:47Speaker 00

  We don't like the other one, but you're just speaking for your group. This is our Bible. Uh, it's not the Bible. And so the first question I think that you gotta answer is related to canon. How many books are in your Bible? Which are those books? And we've talked about the canon before, the development of the canon, a very slow process that was done rather arbitrarily, based on a lot of factors, some, a lot of them ad hoc. People will talk about how, well, these were the criteria that a book had to meet in order to make it into the Bible. And if you look at the his, history of this, it's not what happened. What happened is they said, these are our books. And then people came in later and said,

• 8:30Speaker 00

  what criteria can we use to rationalize why these are the ones we landed on?

• 8:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:35Speaker 00

  And they come up with criteria and there are exceptions to all the criteria that they come up with, but.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  And the criteria, the criteria that were used to exclude books. I mean, you know, you look, you look at Martin Luther and it was just like, nah. Like, a lot of his was just like, I don't like, that one's not, that one doesn't cut the mustard for me, so it's out.

• 8:58Speaker 00

  And, and even when we go to Martin Luther and, and the Protestant Reformation, like, he also cut out Hebrews and James and Revelation. And it wasn't just the Apocrypha that, that he said, we're going to put these in a separate section. That's what ultimately stuck, but not initially. And, and then all his other stuff about the other books from the New Testament, people were like, shut up, Martin, we're going, we're taking these back.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  We liked those ones. We're leaving them.

• 9:25Speaker 00

  And, and, and, and once you get to the, the Counter-Reformation and the formation of the Deuterocanon and the formalization of the canon within the Catholic Church, then you've got kind of a graded canon. But, but the, the point there is that you, this is a question you have to answer, and your answer cannot be authoritative universally. Your answer cannot be objectively correct. It's just what you prefer, or what your group prefers, or a rule that someone enforces. You, there's no objective, correct answer to that. So, right off the bat, you've got one question that's going to determine what you think

• 10:08Speaker 00

  the Bible is, and you cannot be objectively right about it.

• 10:13Speaker 00

  And then the next question that comes up is the manuscripts that you are going to use to cobble together your canon. Because, uh, you know, whether we're talking Christian, Jewish, the Samaritan, Ethiopian Orthodox, Tuatara Church, there are a lot of different manuscripts that are available for us to draw from in order to form our, our Bible. And so, even in English today, Protestant Bible, let's say we got our 66-book Protestant canon, uh, we have, you can look at the, um, you're going to look at a variety of different ways to cobble it together. Are you going to go from, for the Hebrew Bible, the Maseratic text?

• 10:56Speaker 00

  What New Testament critical texts are you going to use? Are you going to use? The USB four or five, I think they're coming out with, they got a six that just came out. The NA 28, I think they got a 29 that's about to come out. Are you going to go back to the Texas receptus? Which, which edition of the Texas receptus are you going to use? For the, for the Hebrew Bible, are you going to incorporate readings from the Dead Sea Scrolls? What about the Septuagint? The, the Jewish study Bible and the JPS Tanakh sticks a lot more dogmatically to the Leningrad Codex, which is kind of the representative manuscript of the Maseratic tradition.

• 11:37Speaker 00

  And they are a lot less willing to alter a reading based on a reading in the Septuagint or in the Dead Sea Scrolls that, that we like better. You can go to Greek Orthodox, they are going to use the Septuagint. Like I, I have a Bible that's just the, the Septuagint on one page and the facing page is modern Greek translation of the Septuagint. And so their Old Testament is going to be very different from the Old Testament of an English speaking Protestant. So the

• 12:11Speaker 01

  Sorry, I just wanted to touch just briefly on a thing that you said, because it's interesting that, of course you would need it because the, because they're not even the same language, but interesting that you would have a trend, a Greek translation of a Greek book. I love that.

• 12:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Well, and, and you can, I, I'm sure there are additions out there of like Beowulf or something like that, where it's the old English on one side. And then you've got a, a contemporary English translation on the other. Maybe there aren't additions like that. I don't know.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  I mean, there should be. Yeah. You get to like Chaucer or whatever. And it's like, and that's only a few hundred years ago. Or that's not, you know, that's not thousands of years of difference. So wow.

• 12:55Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so the manuscripts that you use, you, that's a question you have to answer. And, and once again, there's no way to say this is objectively the right answer. All you can say is this is what we prefer. And so you You are now two steps removed from being able to say, this is the Bible. And then the, a third question that you have to answer is what translation you're gonna go with? Cause while there are an awful lot of people who would say, well, let's, let's go back to the Hebrew for the Hebrew Bible. Let's use the Greek for the New Testament.

• 13:32Speaker 00

  The number of people who are actually consuming the Bible in the ancient Hebrew and the ancient Greek is vanishingly small.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:41Speaker 00

  The devotional readers of the text in those original languages who may be able to access the, you know, the, the manuscripts that they've chosen and the, the canon that they've chosen is a very, very small portion of all of the people who are reading the Bible devotionally, the overwhelming majority of people. And, and going back to the, the Septuagint, even people who have grown up their entire lives speaking Greek, and maybe they only speak Greek, they're consuming the Septuagint, if they're part of the Greek Orthodox tradition, in translation as well, most likely.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:21Speaker 00

  And so then you've got to decide, well, am I using the Katharebusa, uh, older Greek? Or am I using a new, uh, they usually call, uh, Demotic translation, a more modern Greek translation? Which, whose translation is it the Philospirus or, or is it another one? There, there are, even for someone who speaks the language in which it was originally written, the majority of those folks are going to be consuming it in translation and they have choices regarding which translation they're going to be using. And when it comes to English speakers, forget about it. There are tons and tons of different translations.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, dozens.

• 15:01Speaker 00

  You have people getting phenomenally dogmatic about which English translation is the right one or the best one.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  And the most dogmatic ones are the ones who are convinced that the worst translation is the right.

• 15:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. If the King James Version was good enough for Paul, it's good enough for me, is the, is the old joke.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  That, yeah. But the old joke that most people who are dogmatically, uh, holding on to the King James wouldn't understand. Like, if you're, if you're, if you're that, if, if you're that set on it has to be KJV, you, you don't get that joke.

• 15:42Speaker 00

  And, and I've recently, uh, talked about some of the ways that you can tell if your translation is, is being dogmatic. Like, for instance, I, I, we, um, you know, our policy on the data over dogma show is that, uh, we use the NRSVUE, the updated edition of the new revised standard version. At least unless I'm in, or until, uh, a better translation comes out. But you've got a lot of folks who like, uh, there are three translations that I see an awful lot in my engagement with, with evangelical content creators and, and scholars. The ESV, the NIV, and the LSB. Have you ever heard of the LSB?

• 16:22Speaker 01

  No.

• 16:24Speaker 00

  Okay, that is the Legacy Standard Bible.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 16:28Speaker 00

  And it's, it's MacArthur's revision of the New American Standard Bible. So the NASB is the translation. And then, um, John MacArthur facilitated this revision that they now call the Legacy Standard Bible, the LSB. And, um, weeks ago, I made a, a video where I talked about one way to tell if your Bible translation is, is being dogmatic. It, it can't tell you, you have a good translation, but there's one verse you can look at to tell you if you have a bad translation.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 17:00Speaker 00

  And I think we, we've probably touched upon it at least once on the show at some point in the past, but, but Genesis 2:19, you have the creation account in Genesis 2, uh, where God creates the human, God, uh, puts the human in the garden, God scratches their head and says, hmm, it's not good that the, the human is alone. Uh, I will make a, uh, and then we've got our, um, Ezra Kenechtow, uh, a suitable companion or a helpmeet or whatever for him. And then in verse 19, it says, And God formed from the dust of the earth, the animals of the field and blah, blah, blah,

• 17:39Speaker 00

  blah, blah, blah, and on and on. But the problem with this is that it's kind of screws up the order of creation because according to Genesis one, the animals were all formed before the human. And so what they do is they go in and they say, okay, it's not that God formed from the dust of the earth, the animals, God had formed. So they translate this verb as a pluperfect or a past perfect. And that way they can say, oh, they had already been created. We're just, we're just kind of catching you back up on what happened previously in the narrative. And the NIV, the ESV, and the LSB all translate it that way. And so I basically

• 18:22Speaker 00

  say, look, if your translation uses the pluperfect at the beginning of Genesis 219, uh, well, there's your problem. You gotta, you gotta, you got a dogmatic translation. It can't tell you, you have, you know, if it doesn't say that, it doesn't mean you have a good translation. But if it does say that, you got a bad translation.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:41Speaker 00

  And, and

• 18:41Speaker 01

  Or at very least, a translation that is, that has an agenda and that agenda overrides better translation.

• 18:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And what's funny is the LSB, that Legacy Standard Bible, it's a revision of the NASB. The NASB doesn't use the pluperfect. So when they revised this, we're like, uh, we're gonna, we're gonna add the pluperfect here. We're gonna make this translation worse. But it's basically them saying, yeah, we have imposed this dogma of univocality. We're not, the text is not allowed to disagree. We're going to alter the text in translation to force it to agree, whether it likes it or not. And it doesn't. So you've got choices to make about the translation as well. And so once you've, you know, you, and, and most

• 19:33Speaker 00

  people, most traditions, they're not involved in these decisions. There, a lot of people don't even know that they're happening.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  Right. Of course. I think most people that read the Bible have no idea that there's like, Infighting essentially among different translations, among different versions.

• 19:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think the most folks in the Christian tradition, in the US anyway, they're aware there are different translations out there. And they're probably aware that there is disagreement about what, which translations are good, which translations are bad. I see folks on social media, evangelical influencers, say, "Here are the translations that I use." And what's funny is they usually recommend multiple translations. And it's usually in an attempt to try to kind of give you this notion that you get to kind of negotiate yourself between the translations to figure out which reading you like the best.

• 20:34Speaker 00

  Even if you have zero qualification to assess the quality of any given translation compared to another translation, it's just, "Well, which one sets off the tuning fork in your loins?" So I think the translation question is one that people are aware of. And most of them are aware of the canon question as well. But the canon is something that's kind of already done and dusted for most traditions. You don't really have a say in that. You can't really go into a church and be like, "Well, I like these two canons." And I would just go back and forth between them. Like, you know, on your own dime, maybe that works. But if you try to stand up at the pulpit and say that, in most traditions, you're not going to be long for that pulpit.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, you end up pulling out "Bell and the Dragon" in an Anglican church and see what happens.

• 21:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're gonna ride the lightning, that's for sure.

• 21:35Speaker 00

  So Dan, you've heard me talk ad nauseam about the fact that we've got construction going on at the house.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  I've heard the construction.

• 21:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, you've heard the construction too. We're finishing our basement, we're actually adding on to the house. We're doing some stuff in the backyard. And I was thinking the other day about how How nice it was to be able to do this because we, I wanted to get a new car and I wanted to do these, these improvements to the house, but we had to pay off our, our old car and that took actual planning, which you know, I hate. Um, and so I really had to shift my thinking quite a bit when it came to my finances and we had to set dates and we had to create a budget and it was so satisfying to actually make a plan. And then even though it took some discipline and there

• 22:27Speaker 00

  were some bumps in the road, we actually succeeded and we're able to pay off a car, got a brand new car and it feels so relieving to know that if we actually set these goals and plan for them and stick to them, it goes from, oh, this will never end, actually feeling like you have control over stuff. And that has made a huge difference to me and to my family.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  Well, you know, you can try to do that on your own, or you can use a phenomenally useful tool like Monarch to do something like that. Uh, Monarch is set up exactly for that kind of financial planning. They have things like their debt pay down simulator and visualizer to help you track your progress, which I, this is brilliant. I, the, the fact of the matter is that all of these concepts are so ethereal, it's hard to sort of wrap your head around it a lot of the time. And with this visualizer, you can see how that debt is going to go down. You can actually simulate your freedom occurring in front of your very eyes. And I think that is

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  an amazing thing. Monarch has other things like, uh, you can watch your timeline move, you can play out the options, you can choose the fastest way to alleviate your debt. Most apps just tell you what you've spent and how much debt you're in, not Monarch. Monarch even has an AI assistant that will tell you, help you with anything to do with your finances. You can ask, how much did I spend on travel last summer? Or can I afford the vacation that I want to do? And it'll walk you through it all. It's super easy. It's super useful. I love it.

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• 24:54Speaker 00

  And then the manuscript one, I think, is the one that the people are least aware of, least familiar with. I think the folks who are KJV only-ists, that like has to be part of their dogma.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:11Speaker 00

  Because, because one of the big differences is between the critical text and the textus receptus. And so I see a lot of folks on social media who are like, "The critical text is Alexandrian, dirty, dirty Alexandrians. We've got to, we've got to get back to the Byzantine tradition. The textus receptus is the true, you know, the true manuscript tradition." So there are certainly traditions where that sits a little closer to the surface. But I think for most evangelicals around the US today, they're most aware of and have the most say in the translation question. They are less aware of and have less say in the canon question.

• 25:54Speaker 00

  And then a lot of them are not even aware of and have little say in the manuscript question, even though all three of them are critical to what ends up giving them their Bible.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 26:07Speaker 00

  But like you can, you know, the NRSV, they have Catholic editions of the NRSV. And most of them have the Apocrypha in it already. The NRSV, I think.

• 26:19Speaker 00

  Maybe they published translations of the NRSVUE that don't have the apocrypha, but I, everyone I've ever seen has the apocrypha in it.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  Sure, because it makes sense. You, you, you want sort of one, that one's, that one's more universal. It's, you know, it's like blood types. This one can go to both Catholics and Protestants, and Protestants can just sort of like not use those ones, or whatever.

• 26:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, but, but you'll have some translations where they have an Orthodox edition, they have a Catholic edition, they have a Protestant edition. And so they're, they're trying to play the field a little bit as well with, with the canon question. But the, but, but the point is, there is no the Bible. There are, there are Bibles, and when you like a Bible, when you say, "This is my Bible," that's because either you have participated in, or you have just accepted the decisions of others who have participated in those three questions. What books are going to make up our Bible? What manuscripts of those books are we going to use to cobble together

• 27:23Speaker 00

  our Bible? And what translation are we going to prioritize? And there are an awful lot of translations out there, and some of them better than others, but an awful lot of them are, are quite dogmatic. And, and that's because I, I think they, they see the most wiggle room in how to kind of curate a Bible that best serves their interests. Translation is, is kind of the lowest hanging fruit when it comes to how we're going to manipulate this Bible into what we need it to be. And as we've seen with the, the one example of, of Genesis 2:19, you can just take the Bible and say, "You're not allowed to say that, Bible. I tell you what you're allowed

• 28:04Speaker 00

  to say." And, and so that, when it comes to the NIV, the ESV, the, the LSB, that's people telling the Bible what it's going to be. And, and, and I think there's a degree to which it's, it's their Bible in the sense that they have crafted it in their own image, rather than, you know, endorsed the Bible as it has come down to them. So I think the translation issue is, is the one where you see an awful lot of opportunity to manipulate and to, to curate precisely the kind of Bible that is going to help you. Do what you want to do, which unfortunately, far too often these days involves

• 28:46Speaker 00

  politics and the rights of others who are not a part of your tradition.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  Well, and the other thing that's, you know, you talk about the translation issues and the manuscript issues and whatever, but people don't even realize that the manuscript thing, before there were even translations that brought it into English or whatever, there were people handwriting this for thousands of years and inserting their own stuff and taking out their own stuff and like, those manuscripts don't match up with each other throughout the centuries. So you got, you got a translation of a manuscript that was a rewriting of another manuscript that somebody

• 29:32Speaker 01

  got a wild hair and decided to add something about a lady caught in adultery or whatever. And then,

• 29:38Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  Boom, you just, you're like, it's, yeah, it's not, it's not like God didn't reach down his hand and scribble all of these words in a way that would easily just be then transmitted perfectly to everybody else.

• 29:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, the, what the Bible is changes over time as well, depending on time, place, people, circumstance, all those things are changing what the Bible is. So it's a moving target as well. And, and it's interesting, and I don't know, we, I think we've mentioned it before. I don't think we've talked about it in any kind of depth. But my tradition, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, recently implemented a new Bible translation policy where, where they're now endorsing multiple translations. The, the KJV is still the official one, but they're now saying, hey, go wild. Here's what we like for different reading

• 30:38Speaker 00

  levels. And, and they have the NRSVUE on there and they have the NIV, which, you know, I, when I was running testing on English translations years ago as a scripture translation. Supervisor, I kind of had to plug my nose and, and write in a report that that's the one that, that everybody liked, even above the KJV when it came to, uh, language register and style and stuff like that. So, and, and I think that's interesting that we've moved from, well, the Latter Day Saints started off without any kind of,

• 31:12Speaker 00

  de jure translation that was correct.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:16Speaker 00

  You, you could use whatever translation you liked. The King James Version was kind of the de facto translation until that became a significant question when they were starting to publish new translations following the critical text. And then we kind of, we, we decided, no, we're, we're King James Version people. And, and now we're moving away from that and saying, hey, try other translations.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I gotta think you had some, uh, some influence on that decision.

• 31:40Speaker 00

  I had some influence on that decision for sure. Um, but a, a large part of it was the fact that we were trying to provide translations into other languages for folks who didn't speak English. And there's no, you know, a lot of people think, well, don't we just have the King James Version in our language? And it's like, I don't think you know what a Bible translation is. Uh, the King James Version is an English translation of the Bible. And there are, there are languages where they take the King James Version and just translate it into another language. But those are overwhelmingly, and very, very rare, but they are mainly, uh, like Creoles and pigeons and things like that.

• 32:18Speaker 01

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 32:19Speaker 00

  If, if it's, um,

• 32:21Speaker 01

  Creoles and pigeons of English.

• 32:23Speaker 00

  Of English, right. If it's, if it's not something that is already closely connected with English, it's phenomenally rare that they just translate from the King James Version. But when we were saying, okay, we'll go, you know, do the Almeda, do the Reina Valera, uh, do, uh, this, um, this Russian one.

• 32:43Speaker 00

  They're different. They differ. And so we found ourselves more and more frequently having to respond to issues where, well, we want to teach this thing in, in this general conference talk, or in this article for the magazine. But the other languages, their Bible says something different. So what do we do there? And, and you know, English speakers imagine that they're getting the experience in, in our church, but the reality is that it's been generations that folks who speak other languages have known that there are a lot of different ways this stuff gets translated. And the church has to kind of grapple with, with that. And, and they're aware that it's a lot fuzzier than we would

• 33:27Speaker 00

  like it to be. And so I think that's one of the things that forced the hand of the church to say, okay, even English speakers can, you know, play in that fuzziness. Go, you know, go use some other Bible translations. So it's, it's something that, that is undergirding everybody's experience of the Bible that most people have never even thought of.

• 33:49Speaker 01

  And I think it's so interesting, because the other thing that the Bible isn't, is a book. Like people, like it's, it is at best a compendium. It, you know, it's a library of books. And they're very, very different. And they're very different in their approach. And they're very different in what they're trying to accomplish. And they're, they're like, the idea, you know, I see all of these creators, these, these Christian creators online, who are, who talk about, you know, a thousand, you know, dozens of authors over a thou, over thousands of years, in multiple languages, blah, blah, blah. And, and they've never, and it never disagrees. And it's like,

• 34:34Speaker 00

  Have you read this thing?

• 34:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, you, you, you literally have to not read it to, to come to that conclusion.

• 34:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  Or, or just read it the way most people read it, which is just get through the words and understand a few of the stories and then just like the rest is just, I don't know.

• 34:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. If you, if you're just kind of passively, um, reading the text, you're, you're just going by your, your intuition.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:04Speaker 00

  You're, you, you have to actually think about who's writing this, to whom are they writing it? Why are they writing it? What are they trying to accomplish with it? What were the circumstances of this writing? Um, you know, and, and that is phenomenally hard. A lot of people don't have the time. A lot of people don't have the, uh,

• 35:21Speaker 01

  Nobody has the time. Like you, there's, there's, everybody that meets at the Society of Biblical Literature meeting, they have the time and the rest of us are just like, you know, it's that we're, we're just trying to keep our heads above water when we read that thing.

• 35:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And, and that all that does is your, is impose your own kind of intuitive lenses upon the text. You're just going to read it as if it was, um, something for you. And, and you know, the fact that we have a canon and we've kind of delineated this set of texts and then we've put it all within, um, a front and back cover and hopefully a spine, um, that makes it seem like a book, like a single book. And we've said, oh, God is the author. So now we have a single author and, and that flattens all of that and, and we read it as, as a single book. So, so to, to bring it back around, yeah, there's no

• 36:20Speaker 00

  Bible or there's no, excuse me. I just said that the wrong way. There's no the Bible. There's no such thing as the Bible.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 36:27Speaker 00

  Even though I introduce myself every single day on social media as a scholar of the Bible and, in fact, there was, there was one video where I introduced it. I said, there's no such thing as the Bible. Hi, everybody. I'm Dan McClellan. I'm a scholar of the Bible and religion.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 36:49Speaker 00

  But we just colloquially refer to it that way. But if, if we've got to drill down to what's going on there, yeah, there's, there's no such thing as the Bible. It's all contested.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  All right.

• 36:59Speaker 00

  It's all contested.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  I guess you can unsubscribe from the show because it's a show about nothing. It doesn't even, the thing it's about doesn't even exist. So there you go. All right. Well, that's crazy and fun, but let's move on to our next segment, taking issue.

• 37:20Speaker 01

  And the issue that we're taking is with this video that the Department of Homeland Security put out, uh, not too long ago, just a few weeks ago. And who daddy is it? Rough. First of all, when I went to look it up, uh, today, just to remind myself what it's, I had seen it before, but just to remind myself what it was.

• 37:45Speaker 01

  I went to several platforms where you couldn't hear it. You could see it.

• 37:49Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 37:50Speaker 01

  Hear it because, uh, they were using, um, Lord's, uh, version of everybody wants to rule the world.

• 38:00Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 38:00Speaker 01

  And they didn't have permission and so they shut that down. But reliably X as a platform still has it up because it's, uh, they, they'll just do whatever they want.

• 38:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:17Speaker 00

  Nobody, nobody tells the richest man on earth what to do.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  Right?

• 38:22Speaker 01

  He's above the law.

• 38:23Speaker 00

  Above the law. I am above the law.

• 38:26Speaker 01

  So.

• 38:26Speaker 00

  That was, that's an old South Park thing.

• 38:29Speaker 01

  We, we should, we should get quickly to the reason why a show about the Bible is talking about a video from the US Department of Homeland Security.

• 38:39Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  Which there should not be a reason for us to be discussing this.

• 38:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, most, most days there's not a lot of overlap. Well, let's say most, most administrations, there's not an awful lot of overlap between combating the spread of misinformation about the Bible and religion and the Department of Homeland Security or the Department of War, if you're nasty.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  Now they're two departments. They're two different departments. Is DHS, is DHS under Department of War?

• 39:10Speaker 00

  The, they changed their, well,

• 39:13Speaker 01

  No, that was the Department of Defense.

• 39:15Speaker 00

  Oh, Defense, that's right. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  That's okay. It's hard to keep track, man. There's no reason, like, first of all, DHS is fairly recent, at least, you know, it's in our lifetime that DHS just existed. That was after nine 11, George W. decided to make a whole new department for no good reason.

• 39:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. So there are separate cabinet level agencies.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:40Speaker 00

  So, no, they're not, they're not directly, uh, under one another. But this one is, um, the video, like, a similar video that was done, uh, a few months ago, includes a lot of footage of, you know, military style, kind of night vision goggle-esque, um, uh, flying around in helicopters and knocking down doors and raiding and,

• 40:05Speaker 01

  Rifles in their arms, you know, whatever.

• 40:08Speaker 00

  Yeah. And the only difference is, it, you know, it looks military. It looks 100% military, except that every now and then they cut to a guy and his, uh, bulletproof vest says the word, "Police" on it, which is weird. Yeah. And, uh, and then you've got to have, there's the obligatory Kristi Noem, uh, in a helicopter, fist bumping, uh, somebody who is, uh, cosplaying as, uh, a soldier. And, and then you have, you have Lord's version of, um, "Everybody Wants to Rule the World", and then you have, "Blessed are the peacemakers,

• 40:50Speaker 00

  for they will be called the sons of God."

• 40:54Speaker 01

  It says that in big, bold letters right across the screen.

• 40:58Speaker 00

  Yes. And, uh, and, uh, I, I made a video responding to this and, um, I can't even, I, there were so many people who were like, "That made me physically ill", like, uh, just deeply disturbed at the use of the beatitudes to try to romanticize and glorify, um, what is essentially,

• 41:25Speaker 00

  A goon squad.

• 41:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:27Speaker 00

  And this is prime, yeah, and I went, I went straight to the Greek and was like, I'm pretty sure, I'm pretty sure that they have, have to say in the Beatitudes does not support this notion of people who are ostensibly making peace through aggressive military action.

• 41:52Speaker 01

  Right, yeah. Authoritarian, like, power constraint as a, as a method of peacemaking.

• 42:00Speaker 00

  Yes, and, and so it seems a little too Pax Romana, which, which is the peace that you achieve through domination and through fear.

• 42:12Speaker 01

  And famously, Romana, referring to Rome, which the Beatitudes was talking about as the bad guys of this, and now they've flipped it and they're, they're making it, you know, the, the, the Romans are now the good guys, and that's who Jesus was referring to in the Beatitudes.

• 42:36Speaker 02

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• 43:07Speaker 03

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• 43:36Speaker 04

  There's all this tech shit going on right now. We have facial recognition. We have our Ring cameras giving data to police. We have the Flock safety cameras. We have Amazon Echo and all these devices that are constantly listening to us and using our data for one purpose or another. Hey, we have a national security problem. When a company like Flock turns it into this organized system that law enforcement can access.

• 43:58Speaker 05

  To hear more on why you should rethink every safe camera you drive past, check out episode 1308 of The Jordan Harbinger Show.

• 44:06Speaker 00

  Before we get to the Beatitudes themselves, the, I was trying to figure out what they were trying to say with the use of "everybody wants to rule the world." Were they trying to say, "We're here to stop the people who want to rule the world?" Or were they trying to say, "We're the ones who want to rule the world?"

• 44:25Speaker 01

  It's mystifying either way.

• 44:28Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and "we will make peace via ruling the world."

• 44:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:33Speaker 00

  But I, I looked up the song, um, just to get a little more context. And the original title, it was changed before it ever got published. But originally, the song was entitled "Everybody Wants to Go to War."

• 44:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:49Speaker 00

  So, yes. So whichever way they're doing it, I think they, they kind of have, um, shot themselves in the proverbial foot, uh, by presenting themselves as making peace when really what they're doing is glorifying war.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:04Speaker 00

  Uh, but the, the Greek word here is "irinopios," which, uh, is, is, is really, literally "peace make." And I looked up how it's used in a bunch of different contexts. And the idea is, to begin, BDAG, so that's a Greek English lexicon of the New Testament and other early Christian literature. It says it pertains to endeavor to reconcile persons who have disagreements. And so the idea is, it's, it's an interpersonal attempt to try to reconcile, to make things right.

• 45:44Speaker 01

  So almost, almost a mediator.

• 45:47Speaker 00

  Um, it, it can be like that, but I, I think the, I think the way it's used, it's usually talking about one party.

• 45:54Speaker 01

  One of the parties.

• 45:55Speaker 00

  Yes. Seeking to reconcile, seeking to make peace with the, uh, the other party, rather than, um...

• 46:06Speaker 00

  Rather than somebody mediating between two parties.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  Right, right, right.

• 46:10Speaker 00

  And, and you have in parts of the New Testament, references to God as the, using the verb, this verb, to, as God is the one who is doing this peacemaking by offering his son as a sacrifice to reconcile all the people to him. In other words, when God is the peacemaker, using the verbal root that, that is at the root of this noun, God is sacrificing his own son in order to reconcile the other party, humanity, to him. And, and other words, self-sacrifice is

• 46:49Speaker 00

  the mechanism for bringing about this reconciliation. It's not God saying, "Hey, I'm gonna kill you unless you, unless you stop being unpeaceful."

• 47:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:02Speaker 00

  And so I, I really don't think that's representing oneself as a peacemaker, because look at the cool helicopter that we fly around in and all the bullets that we're gonna fire at anybody who, who doesn't like what we're doing.

• 47:18Speaker 01

  Maybe Jesus was referencing, when he said, "Blessed are the peacemakers," maybe he was referencing a Colt 45. Do you think there's any, any chance that he was talking about a 45 caliber six shooter over in, in the Wild West?

• 47:34Speaker 00

  Yes. And when we sell this in, in this state, it's a peacemaker. In the other state, it's the widow maker. Yeah. And, and I think that we can drive the point home even more by kind of spreading the scope of our concern to the rest of the beatitudes to see if this style of peacemaking is consonant with the general message that the author of Matthew is putting into the mouth of Jesus. And, and we've reviewed this in the past.

• 48:07Speaker 01

  You say that, but I think you're gonna feel dumb, because I happen to know for a fact that verse five, "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth," is about being a monster.

• 48:20Speaker 00

  An absolute monster, yes.

• 48:22Speaker 01

  It's, it's about we, having a sword, but not using it, according to one Jordan Peterson.

• 48:31Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 48:31Speaker 01

  Ding dong of the first order.

• 48:35Speaker 00

  Yes, who, um, I, I have not heard any recent news about his health, but evidently, I don't know, wasn't clean in his room enough or something? And, um, you've heard about this, haven't you?

• 48:48Speaker 01

  No, I tried to avoid Jordan Peterson as much as possible.

• 48:52Speaker 00

  Well, I, I guess if you spend more time in Canada than most Americans and so.

• 48:56Speaker 01

  Well, that's true, that's true.

• 48:59Speaker 00

  Um, yeah, he's, uh, he's evidently been, uh, at death's door.

• 49:03Speaker 01

  Oh, my.

• 49:03Speaker 00

  Uh, because of, uh, an illness that seems to have been caused by some kind of exposure to mold or something like that.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  Um, well, I, I, I don't feel good about that way to make me feel bad about joking about it, but he was very wrong about the beatitudes. Uh, but it, but the, the, and we talked about this on an, on an episode a long time ago, but, uh, I think the reason I wanted to bring it up is because it's, it seems like his position was this, was coming from this same perspective of like, it can't possibly mean be meek, make peace, be gentle, be kind. It can't possibly mean that because that's not manly and strong. And I want manly, strong Jesus, so I, I gotta make it mean something else.

• 49:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm, I'm thinking of the, the painting of the big, uh, uh, bodybuilder Jesus who's snapping the arms of the cross off.

• 50:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:05Speaker 00

  Uh, which is.

• 50:07Speaker 01

  Which is amazing because it like. Yeah, kind of misses all of the points.

• 50:12Speaker 00

  Yes. Um, but if we start from the very beginning, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. This is the humble, the pure, pure, poor in spirit and, and there, I, I think you cannot ignore the socioeconomic dimension to this. And particularly if you bring Luke's version, the, the sermon on the plane into play, because in Luke, he just says, blessed are the poor, full stop.

• 50:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:38Speaker 00

  Um, so, so it there, I think there is a socioeconomic dimension and also in this time period, like. Who, the poorest in spirit were the poor.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:47Speaker 00

  Like, if you were wealthy, you were not poor in spirit. If you were poor, you were poor in spirit. So, so I think the socioeconomic dimension has to be there as well. And, yeah, the humble, the economically underprivileged, that does not describe the folks who run DHS.

• 51:07Speaker 01

  No.

• 51:07Speaker 00

  Right now. And, and doesn't, doesn't support the notion that they're out there being peacemakers. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Uh, you got a, you got an awful lot of people around the US who are mourning right now as a result of, uh, the agents of the Trump regime taking li- the lives and ruining the lives of, of folks who, uh, are poor in spirit. So for, you recall the...

• 51:36Speaker 01

  I was just gonna say, point of order. You could say that those, that the person who creates the mourners is creating people who are then blessed, for they will be comforted. So, uh, checkmate. McClellan.

• 51:52Speaker 00

  Well, I, I, either way, though, it's not these folks who are running around, um, jonesing to, uh, to start shooting people.

• 52:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:05Speaker 00

  You know, you've got, like, there's, um, I don't know if you noticed, but there was, there was a photo going around of, um, of either CBP or ICE agents, uh, who used a little five-year-old boy.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:18Speaker 00

  In, in his little blue hat to lure his mom out so they could arrest her. Uh, and he spent, uh, I don't know how much time in, um, a detention center. And now evidently, um, is phenomenally traumatized.

• 52:33Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 52:34Speaker 00

  And, uh, his health is failing and, and the family's like, it's not the same, it's not the same kid.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:39Speaker 00

  So there are a lot of people mourning who are being mocked by the folks who are championing the kind of stuff that Kristi Noem and DHS and the Trump regime are doing. So yeah, strike two. Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth. We've talked about this, the fact that that the word here for meek was used in classical Greek, not Koina Greek, but classical Greek, to refer to the breaking of a warhorse. And so the idea is that, oh, well, everything that goes along with that gets to be imported with any use of this word, even in later Koina Greek. That's, that's just garbage. That's not what meek here means. It means somebody who is gentle, somebody who is harmless, somebody who is

• 53:21Speaker 00

  meek. And it's overturning stuff. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they, theirs is the kingdom of heaven. They will own the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, they will inherit the earth. So those who are humble, those who are gentle, they will be in charge of the whole earth. So it entirely, it just nukes the whole kind of rhetorical function of the Beatitudes to say, no, it means you have, you get to be a monster, but you have to control it. And blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Yeah, trying to, yeah, this is not, this is not that. Blessed are the merciful.

• 54:06Speaker 01

  You don't feel a hunger and thirst for righteousness coming out of Kristi Noem's office?

• 54:12Speaker 00

  I see a hunger and a thirst for power, is what I see. And which, which stands in stark and open contrast to the ideologies of the Beatitudes. Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. I mean, folks who are like, you know, I want to kill you, give me an excuse, come over here. You know, a lot of, it seems like CBP and ICE, it seems like their missions these days. Are primarily to confront members of the public who are not immigrants.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  Well, and yes, and pepper spray first and ask questions later while you're laughing. It feels like the opposite of mercy. No one's looking for mercy to be merciful. Yeah. Among, among these agents.

• 55:04Speaker 00

  And, and there's a, um, oh, there's a passage in, uh, the Epistle of James that I think is, uh, is relevant here. And, uh, I'm trying to, I want to remember the exact words because the exact words are, are important. Okay. Uh, the one who said, you shall not commit adultery also said, you should not commit murder. Now, if you do not commit adultery, but you murder, you become a transgressor of the law. Verse 12, so speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. Verse 13 of James two, for judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy. And this is the part I love. Mercy triumphs over judgment.

• 55:49Speaker 00

  Uh, I, I think that's something important to keep in mind. Blessed are the merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment. And what are the people all saying? Well, they gotta follow the law. They gotta follow the law, except for the agents of the law who get to break the law.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 56:05Speaker 00

  Um, yeah, it's, it's just bafflingly stupid. Uh, and then we get blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God. Uh, these folks are not pure in heart. Uh, then we get to our peacemakers for they will be called the children of God. And then I, the, the last two that I, verses that I want to talk about, I think are, um, are particularly poignant. Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness. For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Uh, these folks flying around in helicopters. Uh, and, uh, you know, illegally using other people's, uh, intellectual property in propaganda ads.

• 56:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:43Speaker 00

  Uh, they are the ones doing the persecuting. They are not being persecuted for the sake of righteousness.

• 56:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:53Speaker 00

  Blessed are, are you, go ahead.

• 56:56Speaker 01

  Well, I was, I, I, I picked up on something earlier when you were talking and I didn't know the right moment to get to it. But I, I do want to get to, uh,

• 57:08Speaker 01

  And I didn't let you finish all of the blessings, so maybe I should have done that. I thought we were done with the persecuted.

• 57:15Speaker 00

  There's just one last one.

• 57:16Speaker 01

  There's one last one, so go for it and then we'll get back to it.

• 57:19Speaker 00

  Blessed are you and people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. There are an awful lot of people out there who are standing up for their neighbors and for their communities and for the safety of some of the folks among them who are vulnerable, either because they are undocumented immigrants or because they're documented immigrants, or they're US citizens, or they're refugees. And there is no legal justification for harassing them, arresting them, beating them, trying to deport them. And there are folks who are standing up for them precisely because they believe they have been called to do so by their faith,

• 58:00Speaker 00

  by their belief in the fact that mercy triumphs over judgment and the fact that...

• 58:07Speaker 01

  And they're frequently being slandered for it, like, you know, the Department of Homeland Security, every press conference that you see someone from DHS talking, they are slandering some protester as being, you know, a violent terrorist group or whatever, you know, and they're constantly saying that. So, yeah, uttering all kinds of evil against them falsely.

• 58:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, calling people, like, both Rene Good and Alex Preddy were immediately labeled domestic terrorists.

• 58:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 58:47Speaker 00

  And there are an awful lot of people on social media who just lap that up. They just suckle that garbage from the fetid and swollen teat of this fascist regime because it makes them feel good about being on the right team.

• 59:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 59:04Speaker 00

  And I think the point of the beatitudes is what the world imagines to be the right team and the team that's gonna win is the wrong team.

• 59:14Speaker 01

  And also, don't be a team. Don't worry about the team. Be you and be the best you you can be. And, you know, be a meek and peaceful and peacemaking you. And don't worry about what team you're on. Mind your business. Go after your stuff. The thing that I wanted to dive into just briefly, it's not a big thing, but it's to do with the peacemakers. It's to do with this video that we saw. Because they specifically in this video, and I hadn't picked up on it until you quoted it. But in the video, it says blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called the sons of God.

• 59:57Speaker 01

  And you know, the I've got NRSVUE up and it says children of God. And maybe you can help me out with that and lend some.

• 1:00:06Speaker 00

  Well, one of the things that the the NRSVUE did, one of the reasons there was an updated addition. And and this was partly done in the regular NRSV, but using less gendered language is part of it. And so the Greek there is huie, which is the plural of huios, which would be son. So so using children there is is one of the ways that the NRSVUE is kind of taking the gendered part of that out and there and you know, you see a lot in particularly Paul's letters, brothers and sisters, even though in the Greek, it will just say, it will be just brothers.

• 1:00:51Speaker 01

  And so is in KJV, does it say sons? Is that what it says? Ah, no, even KJV, it says they should be called the children of God.

• 1:01:04Speaker 00

  So they probably would, that's the ESV, you'll recall recently in a segment, we talked about how garbage the ESV is, says sons of God. I let me, I'm curious what the NET says, the NET says children of God.

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:01:21Speaker 00

  I bet the I bet the NIV says.

• 1:01:26Speaker 01

  Says sons?

• 1:01:27Speaker 00

  Sons, because well, no, the the NIV probably, it might not, I don't know if I have NIV in my in my accordance, but the the whole reason the ESV exists is because a bunch of evangelical white men got together in Colorado Springs and decided that they needed a translation that was not as gender neutral in in translating pronouns and and things like that. So, yeah, so I maybe they were, they went, they intentionally went with the ESV.

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  Uh, let's see, hang on. I got NIV right here. That's the one that we were asking about, right? No, children.

• 1:02:06Speaker 00

  Children. Yep.

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  So, I mean, it seems to me that that is a distinctly, that is a purposeful choice on their part, because even though you could totally be an officer of Homeland Security as a woman.

• 1:02:25Speaker 01

  Again, they're just being jerks. They don't want women. They want macho masculine. They're, they're specifically recruiting men. They're on purpose. They are going after men with, you know.

• 1:02:38Speaker 00

  Even though Kristi Noem is, is in charge of them all.

• 1:02:41Speaker 01

  She may not be by the time this comes out. I don't know. Well, like, we're saying that, but she's definitely on the ropes right now and we'll see.

• 1:02:50Speaker 00

  So the other, I, I mentioned the NIV, the ESV and the LSB as the, the translations that, that are very dogmatic. Um, the LSB also has sons of God.

• 1:03:01Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:03:01Speaker 00

  But that, but I also mentioned that that is a revision of the NASB and the NASB also has sons of God. So, so there's a, there's a clear, there's a clear trajectory.

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, there you go. Uh, I'm, I'm, I've decided I'm not a fan of Homeland Security, just sort of as a department. Uh, you may be shocked to learn this. I, I, I mean, it's so funny because we didn't need it. And then, uh, nine 11 happened and suddenly we did? Question mark? No, get rid of it. Uh, the whole thing. We don't need ICE. We don't need.

• 1:03:41Speaker 00

  It's become, it's become a goon squad and, uh, and it's literally murdering civilians in the street and then lying about it.

• 1:03:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:51Speaker 00

  So.

• 1:03:52Speaker 01

  And then using the Bible to recruit. So that's great. Uh, a lot of fun happening out there in the world. Uh, don't, don't join the, the Department of Homeland Security and huh, try to keep yourself safe out there, kids. It's, uh, it's hairy. Yeah, for sure. All right. Well, that's it for today. Thank you so much for joining us. If you'd like to become a part of keeping this show rocking and rolling, you can go over to patreon.com slash data over dogma, where you can give us as much or as little as, as

• 1:04:30Speaker 01

  you can afford and you can get access to early ad free versions of every show and the bonus content that we do every week and our internal gratitude you will have access to there as well. So we encourage that. Thanks so much to Roger Gowdy for editing and thanks to all of you for tuning in. We'll see you next time.

• 1:04:55Speaker 00

  Bye, everybody.

• 1:05:01Speaker 06

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