66 Books, 40 Authors, 1,500 Years: Does the Bible Hold Up?

Dan McClellan Hey, everybody. I'm Dan McClellan. And

Dan Beecher I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan 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, Dan?

Dan Beecher I'm doing well, and, uh, I'm glad to have you back. Yeah,

Dan McClellan been a minute. That's, uh...

Dan Beecher Yeah. I mean, it hasn't been for our viewers. They're all-

Dan McClellan No ... th- th- this

Dan Beecher has continued relatively un- interrupted, hopefully, for them.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But-

Dan McClellan Through the, the magic of other people doing stuff- Yeah ... uh, for us.

Dan Beecher And, and us, and, and digital recording of things.

Dan McClellan Planning ahead, yes.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Um, which is-

Dan Beecher Which is not our strong suit.

Dan McClellan It's a technology-

Dan Beecher But we made it ...

Dan McClellan we're still working on. But yeah, we, we-

Dan Beecher The planning ahead thing, we, uh, we, we did it. Hooray. So that's, that's good. Uh, today we're gonna be doing a fun one. We're gonna be, uh, taking issue with, uh, an apologetic, question mark. I don't even know if it's a... Is it an apolo- Yeah, I guess it is.

Dan McClellan I, I think it is apologetic, yeah.

Dan Beecher Uh, and, and this one's, this one's a weird one. Uh, it's basically if... I've seen it all over the internet recently.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And I don't know who's popularizing this. I don't know. I... Is it, you know, did, did all of the pastors go to a, a camp together and decide on that this was the one that they were gonna start using a lot- Yeah ... in their, in their thing or whatever? But yes, if you've heard that the Bible is 66 books written by 40 different people, blah, blah, blah, we're gonna, we're gonna do it. Well, I'll say it in a second, but, uh, if you've heard that, if that sounds at all familiar, uh, you can join us in Taking Issue. Okay, so the thing we're taking issue with, I'll, I'll just read the whole thing. Uh, this- Okay ... this is a quote, uh, or a partial quote, uh, from something that was posted on a thread of mine. So it, it came into my backyard. Uh, and, uh... But I've seen it a lot, uh, on social media and everywhere.

Dan McClellan And we know how, how NIMBY you can get.

Dan Beecher Yeah, exactly. It's true. Uh, and this is the claim that, "The Bible is 66 books written by 40 different people throughout 1,500 years on three different continents all saying the same thing."

Dan McClellan Dun, dun, dun. Yes.

Dan Beecher And that, uh, first of all, th- they seem to think that that is a very impressive, uh, thing. Like how- Yes ... could they possibly all say the same thing?

Dan McClellan Yeah, so, so impressive it must be supernatural.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Humans could not accomplish this thing.

Dan Beecher Yeah, that does seem to be the claim. The claim is that, like, there's no way that could happen. Uh- ... and I think we need to go through piece by piece- Yes ... and just talk about each of... 'Cause this is a series of claims.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher And the first time I saw it, before I'd ever seen you tackle any of these things. Well, I mean, you've tackled bits and bobs of this. We've talked about- Mm-hmm ... s- a lot of this sort of peripheral claims, uh, that relate to this on the show plenty. But I looked at it and I was just like, "Is any of that correct?" So let's just start with this 66 books idea. I... You know, you and I have talked a lot about how th- there's, there's no one canon of the Bible. Yeah.

Dan McClellan There are, there are multiple different canons. When we determine what Bible we're looking at, that's based on, uh, answers that we're providing to questions that don't really have objective, uh, empirically decidable, uh, answers. These are- No ... these are preferences more than anything else, and they're, they're preferences of different groups of different sizes. So, you know, there are groups that have more adherents that say one thing, and groups that have m- fewer adherents that say others. But 66 books is clearly a modern Protestant canon 'cause- Right ... if you went back to the King James Version, or even Martin Luther, like, they might say different numbers.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Um, so it's a modern Protestant concept of the canon. If you go to the Catholic Church, you have more.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Um, and if you go to, uh, there are, uh, Eastern Orthodox. You've got Greek Orthodox. You've got Russian Orthodox. You've got Georgian Orthodox. They each have different, uh, ideas of the extent and the contours of the canon. And then we could get into the Armenian Apostolic, uh, Canon. The, um, Ethiopian Orthodox- Yeah, don't- ... Tohedo Canon is the biggest. That's like 88 books or something like that.

Dan Beecher Yeah, don't, don't get me started on that canon.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Um, Coptic Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox, Church of the East, and that's just Christian.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan 'Cause we can go to Jewish, and we can talk about the, the Jewish canon. We can even talk about the Samaritan Pentateuch- ... which is a different canon. Like, there are still Samaritans around as well-

Dan Beecher Right, and, and- ...

Dan McClellan who only hold the Pentateuch as the canon.

Dan Beecher And every one of those books has the word "the Bible" on the front of it. You know, it's just like may- may... Yeah, maybe not the Jewish ones. The Jewish ones- ... may not have the word Bible.

Dan McClellan Well, they, yeah, they generally call it Tanakh.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Uh, but they, but in English frequently you will have them refer to the Bible.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Uh, so, and, and also within the canons you can have different versions of these texts.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Uh, so it's... So right off the bat we're, we're not talking about something that is objectively the Bible, 'cause there's no such thing as the Bible. Right. There are Bibles, and this is just saying, "This is the, this is the version of the Bible I prefer." Yeah. But, you know, then you get into questions of, okay, well, what manuscripts are you using? Okay, what translation are you using? There are a lot of different ways this can go. Um, so, so right off the bat, the first claim, 66 books, eh. ... flag on the play.

Dan Beecher Yeah, yeah.

Dan McClellan That is, that is a preference, that is not a fact. Um, if you, and, and if you want to give the modern Protestant movement's priority of place, then great, that's your preference, but that's, uh, that's not a fact. And, um, I think this, the first time I heard it, I, I'm, I would like to track down where it originally came from.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But the first time I ever heard it was definitely, there was a comedian. I, the first time I ever saw it was somebody sharing a video of a sweaty comedian on a stage pacing back and forth saying this. And I looked it up, and his dude's name is Brad Stein.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And he's, um, there was a... He recorded this thing in 2012, uh, called, uh, God's Comic. So that was the name-

Dan Beecher Oh

Dan McClellan ... of his special, his stand-up special.

Dan Beecher Ooh.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So, uh, 14 years ago is, is the, the clip that I've seen shared the most, but it's been more widely shared ever since then, and I'm sure that he's not the first person to ever come up with that. But I think that clip is what has- ... kind of popularized it on social media.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Um, but I, I just saw it on, uh, I made a video last week when I was in San Diego responding to Wes Huff in his, in his new Peterson Academy-

Dan Beecher Oh

Dan McClellan ... um, class. Uh, he-

Dan Beecher Is that, is that the Peterson that I, uh, that I'm thinking it is? Is that-

Dan McClellan It is, yes.

Dan Beecher Oh, my gosh.

Dan McClellan Um, yes. Uh, so, uh, that's, that was something that he shared there, only he said 66 books by 40 different authors over a period of about 1,600 years. So the, the, the window, the chronological window can go from 1500 to 1600. And we'll get to that.

Dan Beecher We'll get to it.

Dan McClellan But yes. Um, but what, what's next on the list? 40 different people.

Dan Beecher Uh-

Dan McClellan 40 different people.

Dan Beecher Authorship, as we know from doing this show, is very easy to nail down, uh- ... when it comes to the Bible.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So we should easily be able to determine who wrote it and how many of those authors there are.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And th- this is the part of, this is why this claim is apologetics. Because, uh, if it's... And, and the claim sometimes is 40, sometimes it's 45, sometimes it's 46.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Sometimes it's about 40.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But that claim presupposes not only that every single word of the Bible is historical, but every single traditional assignment of authorship and dating is also traditional, or is also accurate.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Um, and so it's presupposing what it sets out to prove. 'Cause the whole point of this is to suggest, "Hey, this has gotta be true because of all these things."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But all these things presuppose that it's true.

Dan Beecher Right. Well, and, and not even stuff, like, like, these are not biblical claims, a lot of these-

Dan McClellan No, no

Dan Beecher ... authorship questions. They are claims that were made after the fact, long after the fact in many cases.

Dan McClellan Centuries after the fact. Frequently after the Bible was completed. Because it, it requires that only one person have written the entire Pentateuch, Moses.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Now, now you might say, "Well, maybe it's just one person, but it doesn't necessarily have to be Moses." Yes, it does, because the claim that it is 15 or 1,600 years, uh, of, of writing requires that it be written by Moses in the 15th-

Dan Beecher You're jumping claims. You're jumping claims.

Dan McClellan Okay. I'm, I've... There've gotta be- ... some points of contact here, but-

Dan Beecher There are points of, there are some, some very distinct points of contact. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Dan McClellan But there's, there's nothing in the Pentateuch that says Moses wrote all of this.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan There are a couple places where it says, "And Moses wrote down the law," or, "Moses wrote this down." But in every instance, what Moses wrote down is some discrete subsection of a single book within the Pentateuch.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Not even a whole book.

Dan Beecher Well, it-

Dan McClellan But just-

Dan Beecher ... it would be very weird for Moses to write down, "And Moses wrote down the law."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Like, that would be a very weird thing for a person to write.

Dan McClellan And then to narrate what happened after he died.

Dan Beecher Right, yeah. And then I-

Dan McClellan At the, at the end of the book of Deuteronomy.

Dan Beecher And then he, I, died. And here's what happened a little bit after that. Yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And, and when we look at the Pentateuch, like, it's very clear not only that it was not written by one person, because as we've discussed many times on this channel, it frequently contradicts itself and repeats itself because different versions of stories are being brought together.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Uh, sometimes they appear in separate chapters, sometimes they're right next to each other, sometimes they're interwoven. Uh, and yeah, it's just not plausible that there was one author. And also, all of the anachronisms. It was not written in the second millennium BCE. There are people groups that-

Dan Beecher How dare you?

Dan McClellan I, I dare. Um, there are people groups that weren't around until the first millennium BCE. There are... And you know, the, the text will frequently say, "Oh, such and such happened, and that place is still there down to this very day." It's like, that's not what you write when the thing just happened.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So, um, yeah, there, there are all kinds of indications that no, this was not written by one person, it was not written in the 15th century BCE, it was not written by Moses. But in order for it to be 40 to 46 authors, it has to have all been written by Moses. It just didn't happen.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And then when we get to some of the other texts, the Book of Joshua, they say, "Oh, well, that was, that was written by Joshua," except for the parts in that book that narrate what happened after his death.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Um, but, like, Judges, Samuel, Ruth, like, nothing says anything about authorship here, and so there are traditional assignments of authorship. Samuel, Nathan, and Gad are assigned authorship of Judges, Ruth, 1 and 2 Samuel. And then Jeremiah is traditionally assigned authorship of 1 and 2 Kings. Based on what? Absolutely nothing.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Just tradition. Um, and then we've got Ezra is assigned authorship of I and II Chronicles, the Book of Ezra, the Book of Nehemiah. Um, and then Esther, people say Mordecai wrote the Book of Esther. Except for the parts about his death and like-

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan These are, these are presuppositions that are not supported by any data whatsoever. Uh, and then we get to the Psalms. David didn't write any of the Psalms. David didn't write the Psalms? David didn't

Dan Beecher write the Psalms. Come on. Yeah.

Dan McClellan Um, and then the notion that Proverbs and Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon were all written by Solomon, no support for that, um, at all.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Uh, the, the Psalms, yeah. It, it-

Dan Beecher And I, I've, I've read some of this stuff. That- Mm-hmm ... they don't even sound the same. They don't even sound- No ... like, there's not, they're not even similar.

Dan McClellan No.

Dan Beecher In the... I mean, and okay, sure, an author can write in different writing styles. I guess I can, I can get behind that idea, but come on. It's just, it's weird. Um, yeah. You know, one of the things that I thought was salient, uh, is that it... You know, I wanna... Sorry, I wanna go back to the Moses wrote the Torah thing.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Because, uh, what language was it written in? Isn't that a bit of an issue?

Dan McClellan Yeah, 'cause Hebrew didn't exist, uh, when a historical Moses would've existed.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Hebrew didn't exist, uh, until around the 11th century BCE at the very earliest, and that was a very rudimentary form of Hebrew. The Pentateuch is not written in a rudimentary form of Hebrew. It's wr- written in a very developed form of Hebrew, something that is, like, the second quarter of the first millennium BCE. So- Yeah ... between the eighth and the sixth centuries BCE. And that happens to be when these people groups that are named were around.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And that happens to be far enough away from the setting of the events for somebody to say, "And it's still there down to this very day." Like, all of the data point to a handful of centuries in the middle of the first millennium BCE, and there are no data that support the conclusion, uh, that it was written before the language it was written in even existed.

Dan Beecher Let's, because we, you just mentioned it, let's get to the 1500-year-

Dan McClellan Yes, yes ...

Dan Beecher question. Because, uh, 15, 1600 years, wh- why are they making that sta- that thing? Why is We- Wes Huff saying it's 1600 years? Yeah. I mean, you mentioned that it's, it's to do with Moses. Is that really the only thing that pushes it back that far, or, or do they- Yeah ... have more than that?

Dan McClellan No. Um, so the idea is that it was written between, if they say 1500 years, they're thinking 1400 BCE to 100 CE. And as Wes has stated, he believes that 99% of all biblical scholars believe the 27 books of the New Testament were completed by the end of the first century CE. Which is laughably untrue. But 1400 BCE to 100 CE, 1500 years. Now, there are early and late datings for a historical Moses. You have the crowd who thinks Moses lived in the 15th century and the Exodus happened, like, between 1460 and 1420 or something like that.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And so if, if Moses was writing around that time period, then it's more like 1500 or, yeah, 1560-ish years. So you say-

Dan Beecher Why do we- ...

Dan McClellan in the neighborhood of 1600.

Dan Beecher Why are people dating the Exodus to that time period?

Dan McClellan So, uh, when, when you read the Exodus and you try to figure out where it sits historically, the two places-

Dan Beecher And to be clear, we should mention- It

Dan McClellan didn't happen ...

Dan Beecher it is already the stated, the stated position of this podcast- Yes ... that there was no Exodus.

Dan McClellan Correct.

Dan Beecher There probably wasn't a Moses.

Dan McClellan Correct.

Dan Beecher None of, none of this is based on, like... Or it may be based on a very, very, look- Yeah ... incredibly loosely based on a similar interesting story.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But it did not happen as it is recorded in the Bible.

Dan McClellan Precisely. Uh-

Dan Beecher Okay. So- But- ... with that caveat in mind-

Dan McClellan Yes. We, we go looking through ancient Egyptian history to try to figure out when we can insert the events of the Exodus, and there's no place where it fits comfortably.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan But the place, there are two places where it is least uncomfortable.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Um, and that is not to say it's comfortable. It is still very uncomfortable.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But it is least uncomfortable if you're talking about, um, uh, the, toward the end of the 15th century or toward the end of the 13th century, so around the, the late 1200s BCE.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So that would be Ramses II, is around that time period. And, you know, you've got the, "Oh, they, they built Pi-Ramses. Okay, well, that must mean that this has something to do with Ramses. Okay, so me- that means we're looking at the, the late 1200s." And then you've got the other people who are like, "No, it's Amenhotep III," or, or whatever. And so they, they argue for the early date. And so you have different camps.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Uh, you have an earlier camp and a later camp, and the earlier camp is the one that gets you between 1500 and 1600 years. And ag- And, and the three continents thing depends on that.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Because it, because it is presupposing that the Pentateuch was written by Moses, at least partly in Egypt.

Dan Beecher Right. Which is also weird because he, wh- I, I mean, n- it's all in the past tense. Like, the way that it's telling it is all in the past tense.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It would-

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Like, why are we assuming that wr- Moses wrote any of it before he Exodus-ed?

Dan McClellan Well, the, the tradition is that the Book of Genesis was- Hey ... revealed to Moses- Hey ... or, or Moses was the one who went and, and collated the history and, and wrote it all down or something like that.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan In fact, when you get the beginning of what would become the documentary hypothesis, the notion that there are four different documentary sources, which, which is, um, you know- Which is not the dominant theory anymore. But, uh, the, the beginning of that theory probably goes back to a French dude named Jean Astruc in, like, the 1760s, I believe, where he was looking at the fact that you've got repetitions, you've got, um, what appear to be different sources for stuff-

Dan Beecher Hmm

Dan McClellan ... based on a few different observations, and he said, "Ah, well, Moses had four different sources for his history that he brought together. Moses is the redactor who brought together-

Dan Beecher Sure, right

Dan McClellan ... these different sources." And that's the beginning. That set the ball rolling on Pentateuchal source criticism. Uh, but it i- still identified Moses as the one who was ultimately responsible for bringing it all together, which we now know is just not plausible.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Um, and so, uh, the, the tradition is that Moses did all of this, either because it was revealed to him or because he went out and, and gathered all these traditions together and, and wrote them down. So the, the earliest author or editor of the Bible is Moses, uh, un- until you get to the Job crap. Um, the, the folks who are like, "Well, Job is the oldest book because that was, you know, written before Israel existed," and all that kind of stuff. I, I would have... You know, you'd have to ask Wes if he has Job in mind when he says 1,600 years, but-

Dan Beecher Yeah

Dan McClellan ... but I can't imagine he does. Uh-

Dan Beecher Uh, I don't think we're gonna be asking Wes anything. I don't think Wes is, uh, eager to come on the show anytime soon.

Dan McClellan But, uh, yeah, and, and Job was, was definitely not the, the oldest text of the Hebrew Bible. One of, one of the more recent. But also the, the New Testament, uh, has texts that were probably written in the second century CE, the, the early to mid-second century CE. Second Peter probably the last text of the New Testament written probably somewhere between 120 and 150. Um, if we t- are talking about the chronological window for the composition of the texts that we now have in the Bible, I think you probably got 1,100 to 1,200 years tops. And this is assuming that some of the poetic fragments embedded within larger poetic texts in places like Judges 5, Deuteronomy 32, Genesis 49, Exodus 15, Psalm 68. That's assuming those are phenomenally early poetic texts that go back to 1,000 BCE or maybe even a little earlier than that. So, so max, absolute max, is 1,200 years, uh, for, for writing the Bible. Uh, probably closer to 1,100 or even younger than that, but-

Dan Beecher Okay

Dan McClellan ... that, and that's if we're taking things seriously. If we're not taking anything seriously, sure, 1,500, 1,600 years. If you're just presupposing every word of it is historically accurate, and all of the traditional assignments of authorship that don't even come from the Bible are all true, then sure, 1,500 to 1,600 years.

Dan Beecher But, but, but the best scholarly guess as to the actual duration is closer to that.

Dan McClellan Yeah, yeah, 1,100-ish-

Dan Beecher Okay

Dan McClellan ... probably years. And in terms of authors, uh, authors and editors, 'cause editors are responsible for, for composing, uh, large chunks of this, I, I say it's, it's north of 100.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Um, so yeah. 'Cause there, you've got I don't know how many different authors. You, you've got probably at least four different main collections of texts throughout the Pentateuch, and those collections are probably the product of multiple different authors each and of themselves. And then the Psalms, who knows how many authors are responsible for writing-

Dan Beecher Yeah

Dan McClellan ... the Psalms. Uh, Isaiah, we've got at least three different main authors responsible for Isaiah, and who knows how many editors and redactors. Like, it, it just goes on and on. And then-

Dan Beecher Well, and a lot of these are based on, on oral traditions that have been passed down, uh-

Dan McClellan Yeah

Dan Beecher ... over, over centuries. That-

Dan McClellan Yeah

Dan Beecher ... which means that each time someone told that story a little differently, they get to... They get a clip of the authorship.

Dan McClellan They get

Dan Beecher the

Dan McClellan credit. Yeah, yeah. They're getting, they're getting some money. They're gonna get- ... some residuals. You know, it's a res- the check's gonna be for six cents, but, uh, you know, they get their residuals. And then, you know, you got the Gospel of John, First John, Second John, Third John, and Revelation, all the same dude. Uh-

Dan Beecher Yeah

Dan McClellan ... not actually.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Uh, the, the Gospel of John was written by somebody. First, Second, and Third John probably written by p- probably two different people who are not the author of the Gospel of John, and Revelation is just some other dude named John. So-

Dan Beecher Right

Dan McClellan ... um, the, yeah, the, the number of authors stacks up pretty quickly once you stop just presupposing that all the traditions you inherited are true.

Dan Beecher Right. Yeah.

Dan McClellan And that brings us to the continents.

Dan Beecher Well, I, yeah-

Dan McClellan There-

Dan Beecher ... we, we do need to talk about the continents, but that's just a brief thing, right? Like-

Dan McClellan Yeah. Yeah, y- um, three continents. That is presupposing that the Pentateuch, or at least parts of it, were written by Moses in Egypt- In

Dan Beecher Egypt, yeah

Dan McClellan ... in the 15th century BCE. Uh, that's not accurate. The... You could salvage it, though, if you conclude that one of the Catholic epistles, so, like, maybe 3 John or 2 Peter or something like that, was written in Alexandria.

Dan Beecher Sure.

Dan McClellan If you decide that, great. Three continents. Um, is that, is that plausible? Sure, it's plausible. I d- I don't know, I don't know if scholars have argued, um, that, that a given text was written in Alexandria. It's certainly plausible, but, um, but I don't know. And that's not what the claim is. Certainly-

Dan Beecher Right

Dan McClellan ... that's not what the claim-

Dan Beecher And it doesn't... Yeah, and it doesn't really matter, but y- the other point is that, like, three different continents makes it sound like- There was someone in, like, Far East Asia writing-

Dan McClellan Yeah

Dan Beecher ... one thing and someone in north, you know, north-

Dan McClellan Yeah, yeah

Dan Beecher ... uh, Europe writing another thing, and someone in South Africa writing a third thing. And these are all, like, it's this tiny little... Even if we were to suppose that Egypt were part of it, the, the circle that you'd draw to get all of these on here-- And I'm assuming, I, maybe I don't know, actually. I'm assuming that the Europe claim is just, uh, John of Patmos. Is, is there more than just that? Is there... Who else, what other, what other thing could've been written in Europe?

Dan McClellan Um, you've got-

Dan Beecher Or is it just Re- Revelation?

Dan McClellan Well, it's, it's the idea that, that Paul was, was writing-

Dan Beecher Oh, yeah. Oh

Dan McClellan ... some places from, um, from-

Dan Beecher From, like, Rome or something

Dan McClellan ... somewhere around there, yeah.

Dan Beecher Okay. Okay.

Dan McClellan And, and, you know, it depends on whether or not you identify Turkey as, as, uh, as Europe.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But, um-

Dan Beecher Well, part of it is. Yeah.

Dan McClellan Um, but yeah, that's the, the diameter of the circle you have to draw to include every last text of the Bible is, is smaller than the Mediterranean Sea.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Like, there, there's-- it's all surrounding the same body of water, which is not an ocean. So, um, so yeah, that, that doesn't say much. And then the, the claim that it's written in three different languages, that's accurate.

Dan Beecher Sure.

Dan McClellan So you got one.

Dan Beecher Yeah. It's-

Dan McClellan I'll give-- We'll give you that one.

Dan Beecher That one's good.

Dan McClellan A- Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek, uh, with parts of Ezra and Daniel, and then a, a few scattered verses elsewhere, uh, written in Aramaic. The overwhelming majority of the Hebrew Bible written in Hebrew, and then the New Testament written in Greek. Uh, and then the, the last part of the claim is that it all tells the same story- ... or no contradictions.

Dan Beecher Nor con- Yeah, exactly.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher Which is-- which, I mean, you know, obviously we've talked a lot about that.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But also, even i- even if it did, even-- let's just say that it managed to line up with no contradictions- ... the whole way. It's not as impressive as they think they're say, making it sound.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Because these were not written independent of each other.

Dan McClellan Right, right.

Dan Beecher Each of them had the one before as they w- as they were writing.

Dan McClellan Yeah, yeah.

Dan Beecher So it's like, it's like saying, you know, the last Spider-Man author- ... this Spider-Man author s- managed to get all of the canon in from the last guy.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Even though even those don't line up. Uh-

Dan McClellan Yeah

Dan Beecher ... it-

Dan McClellan It's, it's an accumulating anthology. It's, it's not like they just all wrote their books independently and brought them together and were like, "What? Jackpot."

Dan Beecher Yeah, exactly.

Dan McClellan Like, that's, that's not how it went down.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Uh, they were intentionally riffing off of, responding to, uh, quoting. Uh, and, and when it comes to the Gospels, you know, they were bor- they were using the other gospels as sources. Everybody used whatever was, was-- had already been published as a source.

Dan Beecher Well, and-

Dan McClellan So

Dan Beecher ... it, you know, you look at the more ancient texts, you look at the, the, the, the texts that come to us from the Hebrew Bible, and they were changing each other as they went along.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Dan Beecher Like, like, you know, somebody might have written something new, and for all we know, they went back and changed the older book to, to line up with the new thing or whatever.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Like, they had the ability to do that. It's not like this-- there were printing presses about.

Dan McClellan Yeah, and-

Dan Beecher There were very few copies of these things

Dan McClellan ... and you can, you can compare the books of Samuel and Kings to the books of Chronicles and see they're telling the same stories.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But in many cases, they're flatly contradicting each other.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan They're changing them significantly. And so the-- when, when people say there are zero contradictions, like, they can't support that.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But that's a claim. That's not a fact. That's not a datum.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan You can't point to the, that and go, "See? No contradictions." That's, that's nonsensical. So once again, they're gathering together a bunch of disputed and in m- in most cases just flatly false claims, and they're saying, "Look at this evidence that the book is true. You just have to agree with me that all the book is true first."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It's flagrantly begging the question.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Uh, when- whenever they use that as, as an argument, it's just flagrantly begging the question-

Dan Beecher Yeah

Dan McClellan ... because it simply doesn't work unless you already just arbitrarily presuppose that every last word of it is true and every tradition associated with date, authorship, and interpretation is true, and it just doesn't work that way.

Dan Beecher Okay, fine. I guess I'll stop using that argument now.

Dan McClellan Ple- please do.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Um, yeah, I-

Dan Beecher And please, if, if, if you see someone using that argument, send them this video- ... or send them this, this podcast, and, uh, and, and maybe they will, uh, I-- No, they won't reconsider using it.

Dan McClellan They won't. They won't. They won't. Yeah.

Dan Beecher They'll, they'll continue using it.

Dan McClellan This, this is, this, this is not the domain of critical thinkers. Uh, the, this ar- this claim-

Dan Beecher Yeah

Dan McClellan ... is not something that people, uh, have decided after much research and introspection- ... that they're going to promulgate. This is the kind of thing that they, they promulgate because it tickles the tuning fork in the loins of their dogmatism, and, uh, and they just wanna pass that tickle along.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So, so please stop giving people that kind of tickle- ... um, because it's, it's inappropriate.

Dan Beecher Or-- Yeah. Uh, well, there you go. Uh, the Bi- the Bible says not to.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Beecher So let's just do that. Well, uh, you know, the apologetics, uh, march merrily onward. Uh, but we, we have to march onward, too. Thanks so much for joining us. If you would like to become a part of keeping the onward march happening, we would love for you to go and ch- become a patron over on patreon.com/dataoverdogma, where you can get acc- early and ad-free access to every episode of the show, plus bonus content. Uh, if you sign up at the right level, you can get the, uh, the after party slash, what do we call it? The pregame. The pregame. Uh, we might be, we might be changing the name to that, 'cause since we're recording it before we record the show. Either way, it's, it's bonus content that we do for our patrons every week. Uh, so head on over there. We certainly love it when you do that. Thanks to Roger Gowdy for editing the show. Thanks to Sam for being our right-hand man, and we'll talk to all of y'all next time.

Dan McClellan Bye, everybody.