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Banning the Bible?
Better get a lawyer, because Data Over Dogma is getting all kinds of legalistic! There are many who claim that all modern law has a direct lineage back to biblical law. This week, we're going to show several reasons why that probably isn't the case, not the least of which being that biblical law... it's really bad. We'll start by talking about the covenant code. This is the set of laws laid out in Exodus that were meant to govern how the ancient Hebrew people interacted with each other (it's all the commandments that come after the big 10). It's a fascinating series of rules that get increasingly granular to the point of preposterous specificity. After that, we dive into modern law. We're looking book bans that are cropping up around the United States (BOOOOO!), and how many of them may have accidentally caught up the banning lawmakers' favorite book in the process. Should we be protecting the children... from the Bible itself? 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:
Bonus Episode Recorded with this episode: read the full transcript $10 patrons · log in with PatreonTranscript — tap any word to jump the video there
Dan McClellan Eglon came immediately to mind. You want to talk about violence? That's where the dude goes in. He's a large man, he's fat, and he gets stabbed all the way to the hilt so that the dirt came out. I remember the first time I read that, I was like, "That is awesome." Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.
Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.
Dan McClellan And you're listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things today, Dan?
Dan Beecher Things are great. Things are good. We survived the holiday season.
Dan McClellan Yes, most of us.
Dan Beecher Which I think is a very good thing. Now it's coasting.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Until the light comes back, it's just keep your head down and- ... get yourself through it.
Dan McClellan Yeah. The first few months of the year are always weird, especially January, because now all of a sudden I'm like, "Ah, taxes!"
Dan Beecher So- Ah, don't say that. Don't make me think about that.
Dan McClellan But I'm also, normally April I'm like, "Ooh." I dread April, but this year, my book's coming out at the end of April, and so 2024 was the busiest year of my entire life, and April and May of this year are going to be busier than all of 2024.
Dan Beecher Oh, we're going to- I imagine. So- And I'm going to get caught up in it.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher So there we go.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher It's going to be a lot of fun, though. We're going to have a great time.
Dan McClellan Coming to a city near you.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan Maybe.
Dan Beecher Yeah. So, don't hesitate to reach out to us and let us know that you want us in your fair city, and maybe even let us know a few venues that you think we could book- Yeah ... that wouldn't be too expensive and that would hold 100 or two people. We'll see.
Dan McClellan In fact, last night I was on a Live, and I had a few people say Philly.
Dan Beecher Oh, I love Philadelphia.
Dan McClellan And I haven't heard Philly yet. So, I have not been to Philadelphia in a long, long time.
Dan Beecher It's a great city.
Dan McClellan So that was a new one. But yeah, we're going to have to make plans for that shortly. In the meantime, however, we- Oh my gosh.
Dan Beecher We haven't booked anything.
Dan McClellan No, nothing is booked. But in the meantime, we have a show to record.
Dan Beecher We do.
Dan McClellan We do. That is from what I understand.
Dan Beecher We're going to be doing two, I think, really fun topics this week.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Both of them under the same category.
Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.
Dan Beecher We're calling these segments Above the Law.
Dan McClellan Yes.
Dan Beecher Because we're going to get legal. First, we're going to talk about what you have told me is called the Covenant Code.
Dan McClellan The Covenant Code.
Dan Beecher And you'll explain that.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher And then we're going to talk about book banning.
Dan McClellan Book banning.
Dan Beecher Who's related to Steve Bannon.
Dan McClellan Yeah, I was going to say, that's his brother, right?
Dan Beecher Yes. We're going to talk about banning books, and there are laws happening all over these United States.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher And we're going to talk about the book that this show is about might run afoul of some of those.
Dan McClellan Mm.
Dan Beecher Mm. And we'll get to that.
Dan McClellan Yeah. But first- And has run afoul. In at least one instance- Has ...
Dan Beecher has. In multiple instances ...
Dan McClellan and people are like, "We got to do this over again."
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan So look forward to that.
Dan Beecher But let's start off with Above the Law.
Dan McClellan Dun-dun-dun. And here I picture a freeze frame. I don't know if you've seen Above the Law, but Steven Seagal throws somebody through a windshield of a car. And then it shows him looking through the windshield, and it's like a freeze frame, and it's like, "Above the Law."
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan And so I get a lot of mental imagery in my head. Every time I say Covenant Code, for some reason- Uh-huh ... I picture Samwise saying, "Share the load." That little slow-motion close-up of his mouth, only he's going, "Covenant Code." I don't know why. Maybe, I don't know.
Dan Beecher All right.
Dan McClellan It might be because we watched all of "The Lord of the Rings" shows over the holidays with my 12-year-old.
Dan Beecher Like you do.
Dan McClellan And I just got her started on "Rings of Power" last night.
Dan Beecher Ah.
Dan McClellan And now I'm thinking Johnny Cash, "Rings of Power."
Dan Beecher Wow. Oh, I probably can't sing that, but- This is a great view into Dan McClellan's brain.
Dan McClellan Yeah. It's a mess in there. But anyway, the Covenant Code is a term that scholars use for a more or less consistent collection of texts in Exodus.
Dan Beecher Hmm.
Dan McClellan The broadest designation would cover Exodus chapter 20 verse 22, so right after the end of the Ten Commandments, all the way through to chapter 23 verse 19. But a smaller designation, more restricted look would be chapter 21 verse 1 through chapter 22 verse 16.
Dan Beecher Oh, okay.
Dan McClellan So, there are two different scopes of what this covers, and that's probably because scholars have different theories about how it came together as a collection.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan But in my opinion and the opinion of a lot of scholars, this is the earliest legal material in all the Hebrew Bible. So, Ten Commandments, that came together over a few centuries and is probably, because we've got the Sabbath in there, this is probably exilic in its final form.
Dan Beecher You're talking about Exodus 20 and the- Yeah.
Dan McClellan Yeah ... the thing that's about the- The first part of Exodus 20, Ten Commandments ...
Dan Beecher you're claiming, hold on. Wait a minute. Let me just be clear about this.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher You're claiming that God did not give those laws to Moses on a rock- ... on Mount Sinai?
Dan McClellan That is what the data indicate.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan And you can look in Exodus 24. This is one of the ones I love pointing people to. It's like, so Moses went up the mountain Turns out Moses had to go up the mountain, so Moses went up the mountain. Anyway, then Moses went up the mountain. It's a very choppy narrative.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan So the covenant code is probably the earliest bit of legislation that we have in the Hebrew Bible, and things in Leviticus, things in Deuteronomy, even some stuff in Numbers, these are probably later renegotiations of what's in the covenant code. They're expanding on it, they're changing some of it, and we're going to talk a little bit about a few of those instances today.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan But we're going to start, I think it would be a good idea, did you find anything in chapter 20 that you wanted to look at, or did you want to get into 21? So most of chapter 20 is what we know as the Ten Commandments- Right ...
Dan Beecher and people can refer back to our episode about that, if they want to hear us talk about that. And then the very end, it just talks about sort of the altar, and how you're supposed to make an altar, and you're not supposed to chisel it.
Dan McClellan Right.
Dan Beecher It's just a rock.
Dan McClellan Well, and I like verse 23: "You shall not make gods of silver alongside me, nor shall you make for yourself gods of gold." It's like, well, we know you just told us that.
Dan Beecher You literally just got so mad at us about that. We got it.
Dan McClellan And that's the very first commandments from the Ten Commandments- Right ... which just came 20 verses earlier or so.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan Exactly. You can tell there's a bit of a literary seam here.
Dan Beecher Yes.
Dan McClellan Indeed.
Dan Beecher Yeah. And that seam continues, I noticed, because in the next chapter, there was a law, I don't remember what it was, but it was basically one of the Ten Commandments just being reiterated all over again.
Dan McClellan Yeah. In a different way.
Dan Beecher Yeah. So yeah, I think we can skip the altar stuff.
Dan McClellan Okay.
Dan Beecher People tend not to do altars much anymore, so I think we can move past that.
Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.
Dan Beecher Though it seems to have been very important at the time.
Dan McClellan Yeah. How the altar's supposed to be made, hewn or unhewn, what's your pleasure? God was like, "Definitely unhewn. I'm an unhewn guy."
Dan Beecher So- Don't you dare hew.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher If you hew, you're out.
Dan McClellan All right.
Dan Beecher Let's move on to chapter 21.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher It starts with slavery.
Dan McClellan It does.
Dan Beecher And if you've been listening to this show or you've even read the Bible at all, you know that the law is not going to be about how slavery is bad.
Dan McClellan Right. That was on the five commandments on the third tablet that Moses dropped.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan And God is like, "I'm not doing this again." So unfortunately, slavery is evil got blotted out.
Dan Beecher Got nixed.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Instead, we have a whole bunch of laws about how, it's not even about how to treat your slaves. It's about what to do if things happen to your property.
Dan McClellan Yeah. And it starts with, "When you buy a male Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, but in the seventh, he shall go out a free person without debt." And basically, this is debt slavery.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan And so it's like he serves six years, no matter what the debt is, it's wiped out. If he comes in single, he goes out single. If he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out alone. So you can breed enslaved folks.
Dan Beecher Yes.
Dan McClellan You get yourself a debt slave, and then you get a female slave, and then you can breed your own perpetual slaves. They stay hers or his.
Dan Beecher The master's.
Dan McClellan And then we have the particularly unfortunate part in verse seven. So male Hebrew debt slaves, they go out in the seventh year. But starting in verse seven, "When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do."
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan And people are like, "Well, how often does that happen?" This is really the only instance where a woman could be a debt slave because they don't really have much property of their own. They're not going to get into their own debt.
Dan Beecher Well, this doesn't even sound like a debt slave because it's a man selling his daughter. Well, to cover his debts. To cover his debts.
Dan McClellan Okay.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan So this is, "Ooh, I can't pay this bill for re-renovating the bathroom." And he's like, "Well, you got that daughter over there."
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan He's like, "Ooh, how about the younger one?"
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan And so according to Exodus 21, only male debt slaves go free in the seventh year. Female debt slaves are perpetual debt slaves, and the reason seems to be that they're basically concubines or sex slaves. That's the only reason you have a female debt slave. And verse eight says, "If she does not please her master who designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed. He shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people since he has dealt unfairly with her." And an interesting thing- So weird. It is very weird, but there are some things to note from this. So there are some protections that are being offered here. So she's a perpetual debt slave as a concubine or a sex slave, but he's not allowed to sell her to a foreign people, which would suggest that he could sell her to other Israelites.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan So she could enter the slave trade as a perpetual debt slave and then get sold to other folks.
Dan Beecher So things are looking- But it also suggests that there was a thriving foreign slave trade.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Oh, yeah. It's clear that this was very common in that era, in that area.
Dan McClellan Yeah. And then we have a few more verses, and yeah, it makes it sound like everybody's in on this. This is just something that's going on. If he designates her for his son, he shall deal with her as a daughter. Basically, if he's going to make her his concubine, he's got to treat her As a wife, and if he's like, "Nah." If he doesn't treat her appropriately, then there are some protections offered to her. He can designate her for his son. He has to treat her like he would his own daughter. If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish the food, clothing, or marital rights of the first wife. In other words, he can't demote her if he takes on another wife. And if he doesn't do these three things, she goes out without debt, without payment of money. In other words, there is a circumstance where she is released, and that's if her master doesn't treat her right.
Dan Beecher So- But she is still... And women as property is kind of a theme that runs through this, even if they're not debt slaves. Women are kind of property.
Dan McClellan Yeah. Well, marriages, and we talked with Jennifer Bird about this, marriage is taking a woman. It's purchasing her sexual availability and her procreative capacities from another man, basically.
Dan Beecher Right. And we get to that. Because immediately after that, we start to get into some... Well, immediately after that, we've got violence, and we should- Yeah ... get into that.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher So let's do that first.
Dan McClellan Okay.
Dan Beecher This is where we get, and I think we talked about this when we discussed abortion- Uh-huh ... a while back, and one of the relevant passages that we talked about is here. Because there's a whole bunch of stuff about striking slave owner.
Dan McClellan When a slave owner strikes a slave. Male or female slave, yeah. And I want to talk about those verses when we're done with the- Yeah.
Dan Beecher We'll get right back to that.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Let's just do get into this moment where- Yeah ... oddly, it's the weirdest thing. It's not if you purposefully punch a pregnant woman. It's if two people are fighting, they happen to be in a fight, and a pregnant woman's walking past and gets whacked and falls down, and she's fine, but she miscarries the baby- Mm-hmm ... then you have to pay some money for it.
Dan McClellan Right.
Dan Beecher But if she's not fine, and she dies, then eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.
Dan McClellan Right.
Dan Beecher Hand for a hand.
Dan McClellan Lex- Yeah. Burn for burn.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan Lex talionis or talionic justice, which is the retributive justice. Do to the perpetrator what was done to the victim.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan Which, as we've talked about, indicates that a fetus was not considered a full legal and moral person, but was- Right ... more treated as property. And there's an interesting thing there. It says there, the very last clause of verse 22, in the NRSVUE says, "Paying as much as the judges determine." In the KJV, it says, "The woman's husband will lay upon him, and he shall pay as the judges determine." Elsewhere we have, "He will pay what the court decides."
Dan Beecher Mm.
Dan McClellan And this is interesting because when it comes to the life of an enslaved person, there's a socially standardized value.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan 30 shekels. That's what it is. Enslaved person, 30 shekels.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan Fetus, court determines, which suggests that there's no socially standardized value, but the husband is probably the one who is making the determination, is like, "I'm going to need at least 350."
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan And then the court is there to arbitrate, to ensure that it is not exorbitant, most likely.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan It's not perfectly clear because the word there that they're using, pelelim, is a very rare word. And so, we're not exactly sure what's going on there, but that seems to be what that means is, there's no standardized value. The husband's like, "I was really looking forward to this one, so I'm going to need a little bit more." But it is a pretty harsh system.
Dan Beecher Yeah. And gets into some... The other theme that we're going to notice throughout all of this is that this code gets into weird minutia that seems so vanishingly rare.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher How often are two people going to be fighting and this pregnant woman's going to walk by?
Dan McClellan Right.
Dan Beecher How often could that possibly have happened?
Dan McClellan Well, and this gets into the famous goring ox law, and that's- Mm ... in this chapter. But one of the things that it highlights is that the covenant code is not an original composition. There were not some- Yeah ... Israelites who were like, "You know what? I got an idea. Let's write all this down." And it certainly did not descend ex nihilo from the heavens- Right ... on a tablet or anything else. They're actually borrowing from Hammurabi's law. So these laws are being adapted and adopted from Hammurabi's law. There's a great book that discusses all the evidence for this by a wonderful scholar named David Wright called "Inventing God's Law," and he goes through and shows that you can start at the beginning of Exodus 21, the beginning of the covenant code, go all the way through to the end, and every law has a parallel in Hammurabi's law, and a lot of them are in the same order they appear in Hammurabi's law.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan And he even talks about they switched order here and goes into why.
Dan Beecher Mm.
Dan McClellan It's a phenomenal analysis. But this seems to be an alteration of one of Hammurabi's laws. It was, let's see. It was law 207. 206, 207, there's men fighting, there's an injury, but there's also associated with that what happens if... 209 through 214 is what happens if a man strikes a woman and causes a miscarriage. But the penalties are different depending on the social status of the victim.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan Which is something that we're going to see in the Covenant Code as well. But there's the goring ox law. It's like, what happens if an ox gets out and gores somebody? If it's never happened before, then the owner has this penalty. But if it's happened before and the owner's been warned, then it's life for life. But if the victim's family is like, "We just want to fine them," then they can fine them, and they save their life. And it's like, were oxen just running rampant in the streets- Right ... in these societies? And Hammurabi's law is from 1,000 years before the Covenant Code.
Dan Beecher I was going to ask you to sort of give us a date- Oh, yeah ... on all of that.
Dan McClellan Yeah. So Hammurabi's law is much earlier, around 1800-ish BCE.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan The Covenant Code, its earliest layers are probably 8th century, 700 to 800 BCE, so- Okay ... just around 1,000 years later.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan And some of these probably come from earlier time periods, but the version of these laws that we find in the Covenant Code, they were probably written down initially in the 8th century BCE or maybe the 7th century BCE. And so it's not that these things were just, they had a weird society where it was like the only kind of injury a woman had was when two men were fighting and she got injured, or there's the other one elsewhere where two men are fighting and one of their wives grabs one of them by the junk.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan Then you've got to cut her hand off.
Dan Beecher Yeah. Literally grabs the other guy's genitals to help him win.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher To help her husband win. What are we talking about?
Dan McClellan Yeah. Well, and these laws were not on-the-ground actual jurisprudence. There's a famous saying, every stupid law exists because somebody did something stupid. Not necessarily.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan When it comes to these laws, this actually probably originates in literary exercises and in rhetorical exercises. And this is the case with Hammurabi, for instance. Hammurabi's law, it starts off, great king, he did all this. He ensured that there was justice for the orphan and the widow and the oppressed. And then you go look through all of Hammurabi's laws, and it's like, nope, not a single law says anything about justice for the orphan or the widow. It's rhetorical, and those are just kind of your prototypical victims. They're the canaries in the coal mine of justice.
Dan Beecher Sure.
Dan McClellan The orphan and the widow. And so, it's basically putting on display how just and ordered your leader is. They've thought of everything. Well- Right ... surely they haven't thought about what happens if an ox gets out and gores somebody, and the owner has already been warned.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan And they're like, "No, we got that. That's in there, too."
Dan Beecher Wait. What if my donkey falls in a ditch? Then what?
Dan McClellan Yeah. And then you've got your, but wait, there's more.
Dan Beecher Uh-huh.
Dan McClellan We also thought about what happens if the ox gores an enslaved person, or the ox- Yeah ... gores the child of a citizen. It is an attempt to show how ordered and just and righteous the sovereign is. And with Hammurabi's law, it's Hammurabi who's the sovereign. In the Covenant Code, it's God.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan But it's basically trying to show off that God has thought of everything.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan And it's like, we're not going to actually go event by event through all the possible iterations of a given law, but we're going to drill down to the bedrock of some weird stuff just to make it seem like we've thought of everything.
Dan Beecher It would be nice if just at the beginning of all of this, there was some text that just said something along the lines of, "Here's a smattering of- ... representative laws- Yes ... just as examples of things that might come up or whatever."
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Because the way that this is all worded makes it seem like, "Here is the totality of our laws."
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Things that are important to us are- Yeah ... slavery, violence, animals falling into holes- Yeah.
Dan McClellan ...
Dan Beecher or goring people. I keep mentioning that one because that's my favorite one. We'll get to it later.
Dan McClellan Well, and you have all these opportunities to do this because they start this off very similar ways multiple times. Like Exodus 20 verse 1, "Then God spoke all these words." And then you get to the beginning of the Covenant Code, "The Lord said to Moses, 'Thus you shall say to the Israelites.'" And then you get to chapter 21 verse 1, "These are the ordinances that you shall set before them."
Dan Beecher They repeatedly are saying, "Here are our laws."
Dan McClellan And that is one of the reasons that scholars are like, okay, it seems like they just stacked up a bunch of different collections.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan But yeah, you don't see, including but not limited to- Right. They needed a lawyer to proofread this- Yeah ... and be like, "Well, you're going to run into problems here." And that's what Deuteronomy is for. Because you get into Deuteronomy, and they're actually repeating a lot of these laws and improving on them.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan So, the male debt slave goes free on the seventh year, the female is perpetual. You get to Deuteronomy 15, and it explicitly says male and female slaves go free in the seventh year. And what's more, you've got to give them stuff when they leave. They don't leave empty-handed. You got to make sure they don't f- We're going to prevent recidivism by saying you have to give them some pocket change on the way out the door so that they- Right ... don't immediately go hold up a 7-Eleven. So Deuteronomy is like, "Oh, we did it better this time around." But there was one that I wanted to look at.
Dan Beecher Oh, yeah.
Dan McClellan Did you have something you wanted to- No.
Dan Beecher Okay. I was just going to say that you wanted to go back to some of the violence earlier in- Yeah ... the chapter.
Dan McClellan You know me, I'm all about violence.
Dan Beecher Oh, yeah.
Dan McClellan But Exodus 21:16, I made a video about this recently. "Whoever kidnaps a person, whether that person has been sold or is still held in possession, they shall be put to death." That's what the NRSVUE says. The Hebrew is literally, "And the stealer of a man, if he sells him or is caught in his hand, shall be put to death."
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan And this is interesting because people who say, "Well, the Ten Commandments says, 'Do not steal.'" A lot of people say that that is prohibiting kidnapping.
Dan Beecher Oh, interesting.
Dan McClellan Now, the verbal root is the same, ganav, but here it's stealing a man.
Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.
Dan McClellan So it's more explicit. But again, they're repeating things- Right ... if that does mean kidnapping. But it says, "Ish," "Gover ish," or, "Gonav gonaiv ish." That is a technical term. Throughout the covenant code, when they say, "Ish," they mean an adult male Israelite, a citizen.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan Because when they want to talk about kids, they'll talk about a son or a daughter of an ish. When they want to talk about a woman, they will say an isha. When they want to talk about a foreign person, they will say a nokhar. When they want to talk about an enslaved person, they will say an eved. They're very clear about who these laws apply to, and here it's about kidnapping, specifically an adult male Israelite.
Dan Beecher Hmm.
Dan McClellan And this is another instance where in Deuteronomy, they improved on it, because maybe that's a little ambiguous. And so in Deuteronomy, it says, "Anyone who steals one of their brethren- Hmm ... one of the sons of Israel."
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan So they're more explicit about that. And the ambiguity here is what leads some folks, Frank Turek comes to mind, other Christian apologists, to say, "No, the slave trade was prohibited because it says right here- ... you can't steal a person to sell them." And I hear that all the time about how, no, it actually, in the very same chapter that it tells you what you can and can't do to your slave, and how long slaves serve, it evidently entirely prohibits the slave trade. So- Right.
Dan Beecher Yeah ...
Dan McClellan yeah, that's a bad interpretation of that passage. But another example of something that we find in the covenant code and we find revised- Yeah ... in Deuteronomy.
Dan Beecher And it's funny because that one, kidnapping a person against their will, holding him or selling him, death penalty seems strong to me, but I get it. But that is sandwiched between two other verses that hold the death penalty.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher One of them being, "Whoever strikes father or mother shall be put to death."
Dan McClellan Yep.
Dan Beecher That seems a bit strong. I know several people who got in fights with their dads. It doesn't seem like a- I know several people- ... death penalty situation ...
Dan McClellan where that was like a sport for their dad.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher And then the other one, and this one kills me, "Whoever curses father or mother shall be put to death."
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Because like the- I don't know what curses means in this case, but death seems like a strong thing no matter what.
Dan McClellan Yeah. They're pretty trigger-happy when it comes to the death penalty- Yeah ...
Dan Beecher here.
Dan McClellan And again, this is a repetition of, "Honor your father and your mother so that your days will be long in the land," from the Ten Commandments. Now it's like, "Let's get into the nitty-gritty of this. You hit your parents, you die. You curse your parents, you die." It's pretty strict.
Dan Beecher Yeah. Although, that's followed directly by, "When individuals quarrel," the we've- ... we're off the father, mother thing, "and one strikes another with a stone or a fist so that the injured party, though not dead, is confined to bed, but recovers and walks around outside with the help of a staff." This is a very long- Yeah ...
Dan McClellan way.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan If then proposition- One of those drill down to the bedrock ones.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan Right.
Dan Beecher "Then the assailant shall be free of liability except to pay for the loss of time and to arrange for a full recovery."
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher You can't get in a fight with mom or dad, but boy, you could hit a guy with a rock- ... and if he recovers, you got to pay him for some time lost or whatever.
Dan McClellan Yeah. And then the one after that is like, "Oh, what if it happens to an enslaved person?"
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan So we're like, "See, we thought of everything." And this is the one where it says, "When a slave owner strikes a male or female slave," again, they're very careful about this- Yeah ... "with a rod and the slave dies immediately, the owner shall be punished." And it doesn't say death penalty.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan It just says punished.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan And it's likely because if it is a debt slave, then it's probably an Israelite, and they want to treat that crime more harshly than if it is a chattel enslaved person who is a foreigner.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan Because they don't really care as much about the life of the foreigner. So they're kind of hedging their bets by just saying, "Yeah, there's a punishment."
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan "You know what to do." And then the next verse says, "But if the slave survives a day or two, there is no punishment, for the slave is the owner's property."
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan And this is a passage that gets interpreted a couple of different ways, because most scholars would say in the Hebrew, the idea here seems to be that if the slave lives for a couple of days and then dies- Yeah ... then he's free of punishment. And it says, "For the slave is the owner's property." The idea being, "Hey, man, that's his property. He relies on that slave. If that slave dies- It probably wasn't intentional. If he beats him to death, that seems premeditated, it seems intentional. But if he's like, "This is an instructional beating."
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan And then- You got to be able to beat him.
Dan Beecher I don't know.
Dan McClellan Yeah. What are you going to do? He doesn't listen, right? But then it seems like it's accidental, and it's punishment enough that he has lost his property. And so it was like, "Well, we've already deprived him of his property, so all good. No harm, no foul." But the other way to interpret that is to say, if the slave recovers in a day or two, very similar to the previous passage, but the Hebrew is very different. It does not say if the slave recovers in a day or two.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan So, yeah. Again, rough times.
Dan Beecher Yeah. So- Next, we get to some oxen stuff. We're talking about property. This is where we get the ox goring a man or woman to death, that you talked about.
Dan McClellan Right.
Dan Beecher I love that one of the things that- And that's seven verses.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher It's way more intense than- One, two, three, four.
Dan McClellan Okay, it's five verses, I think.
Dan Beecher Yeah. If we're going by pure word count- Yeah ... this is by far the most important thing in all of Hebrew law. Absolutely, just forget about it.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher And you know what- "Thou shalt not kill," not a big deal, but- Yeah ... let's talk about oxen- Yeah ... for a minute.
Dan McClellan And even with the kidnapping, it's like, "Don't kidnap a man."
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan And here it's like, "Well, the ox might gore a man, if the ox gores a woman, if the ox gores a child, if the ox gores an enslaved person." But with kidnapping, it's like, "We really only care about the man, so- Right ... we're not worried about the others."
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan Very inconsistent in the scope of their legislation here.
Dan Beecher By the way, in case anyone's wondering, if the ox gores a male or female slave, the owner shall pay to the slave owner 30 shekels of silver, and the ox shall be stoned. They're going to stone the ox?
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher That's a spectacle I hope never to see, I'll say that.
Dan McClellan Well, if you go to Leviticus chapters 18 and chapter 20, we have our prohibitions on bestiality.
Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.
Dan McClellan And there, the human participant as well as the animal- ... are both required to be killed.
Dan Beecher To be...
Dan McClellan Yeah. It's quite a spectacle to see somebody pulls a donkey out into the town square. "What happened?" "It was some bestiality." "So we're going to kill the donkey?" "Yeah, that's what the law says."
Dan Beecher That's what we're...
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Verse 33 talks about, this is the one that I keep referencing because I love it.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher If someone leaves a pit open or digs a pit and does not cover it, and an ox or a donkey falls into it, the owner of the pit shall make restitution, giving money to its owner, but keeping the dead animal. So, you get something out of it.
Dan McClellan What are you going to do with a dead donkey?
Dan Beecher People are digging donkey traps, apparently, is what was happening all the time.
Dan McClellan Yeah. It's like, what if somebody's kid falls into it? It doesn't say anything about that.
Dan Beecher They can't help... Look, if the kid's so dumb they fall in a pit, that's on them.
Dan McClellan They shouldn't have been standing there.
Dan Beecher Yeah. Let's get to Exodus 22 really quickly.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Because now we have laws of restitution- Yes ... which are all about various scenarios that probably won't, but might happen.
Dan McClellan Yes, very detailed and oddly specific scenarios.
Dan Beecher Including but not limited to, if your field is grazed over, and you let your livestock loose to graze in someone else's field, what to do.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher If fire breaks out in a field, what to do. If you let your neighbor take care of your money or goods- Uh-huh ... for safekeeping, and then it's stolen. How often could that have been coming up? How many people are doing...
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Although, it's actually a good deal, so I think everybody probably should have just let their neighbors hold... Everybody just trade goods and hold onto it for your neighbor, because then, if the thief is caught, they have to pay double.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher I don't know why that doesn't apply if the thief steals it from your house, they just have to pay it back. But if it's from your neighbor's house, they have to pay double. Is that what I'm getting? It's very confusing.
Dan McClellan Well, and this is an interesting set of passages, too, because we have a bit of an ordeal to resolve this.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan So, you're letting somebody borrow something, and you're like, "Hey, can I have my lawnmower back?" And they're like, "Oh, sorry, it got stolen." And you're like, "What?" And in verse eight it says, "If the thief is not caught," in other words, you don't have evidence of this, "The owner of the house shall be brought before God." Now, the word here is Elohim, which can be the singular God, but can also be gods, "To determine whether or not the owner had laid hands on the neighbor's goods." And most scholars would say this is an ordeal. You're basically trotting them before the divine image and say, "Yeah, tell it to God's face." And you've got to be able to say, "I swear according to all the things that I didn't take this." The idea being, hopefully they'll be too scared to lie to God.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan And so if they can swear the oath before God, and lightning does not strike them where they stand, then they must be telling the truth. But it says in verse nine in the English, and this is verse eight- In the Hebrew, NRSVUE: "In any case of disputed ownership involving ox, donkey, sheep, clothing, or any other loss of which one party says, 'This is mine,' the case of both parties shall come before Elohim. The one whom Elohim condemns shall pay double to the other." Here's the interesting part. The verb condemns there, that is, of which Elohim is the subject, is plural. It says, "The gods condemn."
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan "The one whom the gods condemn shall pay double to the other." And we actually have something very similar in the previous chapter in Exodus 21 about another ordeal that somebody has to do before Elohim. And so I think it's interesting that this, again, earliest legislation in all the Hebrew Bible, we have indications that they are doing ordeals before almost certainly images of multiple deities, not just Adonai.
Dan Beecher Yeah. Which is another reason to believe that this is separate from Exodus 20 and the idea of thou shalt have no gods before me.
Dan McClellan No other gods.
Dan Beecher Yes.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Yes.
Dan McClellan Separate and earlier.
Dan Beecher And earlier.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher So interesting.
Dan McClellan And the end of this chapter has, I think, the clearest indication we're dealing with an incredibly early set of laws here. But we- Which is what?
Dan Beecher Which is what?
Dan McClellan The child sacrifice requirement.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan Right.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan Shall we hop to that?
Dan Beecher Or- Yes.
Dan McClellan Let's hop.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan Let's hop.
Dan Beecher We're running out of time here, so yes.
Dan McClellan Yep.
Dan Beecher Hop away. We have talked about it before.
Dan McClellan Yeah. But the tyranny of that darn clock. Okay, so this is in English. This is usually verses 28 and 29 in Hebrew... Or no, this is usually verses 29 and 30. In Hebrew, it's verse 28 and verse 29. NRSVUE: "You shall not delay to make offerings from the fullness of your harvest and from the outflow of your presses. The firstborn of your sons you shall give to me. You shall do the same with your oxen and with your sheep. Seven days it shall remain with its mother. On the eighth day, you shall give it to me." And so the question is, what does this mean, "Give it to me"?
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan Okay. I got to not quote song lyrics.
Dan Beecher Ah.
Dan McClellan Because there was a Disturbed song that I thought would've gone really well right there.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan Anyway, because whatever giving is going on here, it's the same giving that is supposed to happen with the oxen and the sheep who are left for seven days with the mother before being taken away, and something is done with them.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan Now...
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan It's a- And we talked about this before, but- We talked about this. Either you give your firstborn into priesthood, and then also you have to give your sheep and your oxen into priesthood.
Dan Beecher Yes.
Dan McClellan The animal priesthood.
Dan Beecher The animal priesthood, or it's that other thing, and that seems pretty freaky.
Dan McClellan Pretty freaky, and also pretty correct in terms of how we interpret this passage, and I think one of the clearest giveaways of this is in the story of Abraham, in the story of the Passover, in the other legislation we have in Exodus 13 and in Exodus 34 and elsewhere. There is always child sacrifice that is required, but then superseded by another law to redeem the intended sacrifice with some other animal.
Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.
Dan McClellan And so if you're putting together laws and you're like, "Hey, what if we had them sacrifice their children?" And somebody was like, "Hmm, better yet, what if we didn't have them sacrifice their children?" But we started off by saying they had to, and then swooped in with a, "Just kidding."
Dan Beecher With the psyche.
Dan McClellan "You're going to redeem them."
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan There's no reason for the psyche unless the thing is there to begin with.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan You don't start from the position of, "Look, we don't want to sacrifice children, but I think we should say we do, and then turn the tables on them."
Dan Beecher I don't like it. I don't like any of it.
Dan McClellan Yeah. So, this is probably a part of this incredibly old legislation, the earliest legislation we have, that got adopted by Israel, and later legislation... Again, they're already modifying it. We know they're modifying it, and their modification here is, "Ew. Let's put a psyche in there.
Dan Beecher Got you, suckers.
Dan McClellan Turns out all you have to do, you got to redeem them. They're intended for sacrifice, but we're going to require you redeem them." So, and I- Oh ... I recorded a discussion with Heath Durrell and Kipp Davis a bit ago. Heath Durrell published, about six years ago, a book called "Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel" that talks about this. So, if you're interested in a far more boring discussion go check out Kipp Davis' YouTube channel.
Dan Beecher Down in the... Get all the way into the weeds with it.
Dan McClellan Yes.
Dan Beecher All right.
Dan McClellan Cool.
Dan Beecher Is there anything more that we should be covering in this covenant code? We could go on and on, clearly, for hours about it.
Dan McClellan Yeah. Next, you get into kind of justice for all stuff, but they are including the base line for... That might be a little too deep a cut, but you have false reports and lawsuits and stuff like that that come in chapter 23- Right ... but which might be a part of a later layer, so we won't worry about it.
Dan Beecher And those false reports things, again, we already have the Ten Commandments just a few chapters earlier about thou shall not bear false witness.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher And yet- Yeah ...
Dan McClellan up it pops again, so.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan So, and yeah, the Jason Newsted joke was about how his base audio was basically muted ... in the Metallica's And Justice for All album, because they were upset about the death of their original bassist. But that's neither here nor there. That has no bearing on this.
Dan Beecher No, I'm so glad you went there. I'm so desperately glad you went there. Let's move on to our next Above The Law. And this one is not about ancient laws based on Hammurabi and various codes, but they will claim, a lot of these lawmakers, that they're based on older, ancient, more important law.
Dan McClellan Mm.
Dan Beecher Namely, a lot of them are citing the Bible when they start to come up with reasons for their laws. We're talking about the spate of new book-banning laws that are sweeping the country here in these United States.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Including in our own fair state of Utah. It's something to be very, very not proud of. I am horrified by what's happening- Yeah ...
Dan McClellan in America right now. And you know if the power of these legislators was not limited to the schools, that they would be reaching into the homes as well.
Dan Beecher Yes.
Dan McClellan We're not at too far a distance from 1984, where you've got to find a corner of your house where the video cameras don't get to you so that you can read the contraband literature.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan But luckily, they're limited to the things that the state is sponsoring, and right now, however, that is the public education of our children.
Dan Beecher Yeah. Such as it is, and for however long that ends up lasting. We'll see.
Dan McClellan Yeah. Uh- It's all going to be privatized.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan It's going to be the Musk education before too long.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan Where everybody will be taught how to code and then kicked to the curb if they're not performing.
Dan Beecher Right. And well, they'll be taught how to code and the Bible.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher But one of the sort of funny things that has happened in all of this, as they sort of try to limit the knowledge and breadth of humanity's education that children get, is that in so doing, as was the case in Texas, House Bill 900 passed.
Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.
Dan Beecher And this has happened in many places. I'm just using this as an example. It happened here in Utah, too. But in Texas, this House Bill 900 passed, which is meant to prevent kids from seeing scary content.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher It specifically- Smut.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Any kind of smut. Any kind of sexual anything.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Which led one superintendent to take the Bible off the shelves of all of the schools.
Dan McClellan Yes.
Dan Beecher To which then the state representative of Texas, who sponsored the bill, wrote a scathing letter to that superintendent saying, "I don't know how you could possibly have interpreted it such that- ... the Bible would run afoul of these indecency laws or whatever, but put it back on." Which then the superintendent did.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher So here's the question, and I've looked at lots of... There are bills from Tennessee and bills from Iowa. There are bills all over the place. And I wanted to see if this book, if the Bible actually runs afoul of these things. The Tennessee bill I looked up, and then they had a section that was about definitions.
Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.
Dan Beecher So, the Tennessee bill talks about excess violence.
Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.
Dan Beecher And they define that as, "The depiction of acts of violence in such a graphic or bloody manner as to exceed common limits of custom and candor, or in such a manner that it is apparent that the predominant appeal of the material is portrayal of violence."
Dan McClellan Hmm.
Dan Beecher I feel like there's a lot of violence in the Bible. I can remember, even just there's wars in which violence is... Is there explicit violence throughout? Because I tried to remember. Oh, there's what's-her-name stabbing the head of the dude.
Dan McClellan Oh, yeah. In the dirt. Driving it through until the spike hit the ground on the other side.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan Yeah. Well, there's tons of violence in- ...
Dan Beecher the Bible.
Dan McClellan You have all kinds.
Dan Beecher There's swordplay.
Dan McClellan There's people being burned to death. There's- Yeah ... people having their heads chopped off. There's people being run through. You have Saul has his armor-bearer kill him, and then David has the armor-bearer killed for killing Saul at Saul's own request. You have, oh gosh, all kinds of violence. David cutting Goliath's head off.
Dan Beecher Hmm.
Dan McClellan It's funny, David hits him with a stone and it kills him, and then David cuts his head off, which kills him.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher So maybe giants have double lives of some kind, but- You got what's-his-name with the sack of foreskins.
Dan McClellan Oh, yeah.
Dan Beecher That's pretty gruesome.
Dan McClellan He had to go collect. Yeah, you have Samson killing a bunch of Philistines with the jawbone of an ass.
Dan Beecher Oh yeah, that was like 1,000 dudes, right?
Dan McClellan It was an awful lot of dudes.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan All right. Well, the main thing- So violence, check.
Dan Beecher Violence, check and double-check.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Yeah. It's a very violent book.
Dan McClellan And a lot of people- And here's one thing I want to be clear on. It's not just Hebrew Bible stuff. The dichotomy of the violent God of the Old Testament versus the loving God of the New Testament is anti-Semitic and also entirely false. Because you have a mix of different representations in both.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan And in the Book of Revelation, you have a deity who threatens to sexually assault folks. You have somebody talking about bathing their sword in the blood of their enemies. You have blood running up to people's ankles and things like that. There's an awful lot of violence in- Yeah ... at least the Book of Revelation.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan I still don't know why people thought that would be a good book to include in there.
Dan Beecher Yeah, I wonder about that, too. So I think the violence, I think that is a good reason not to have kids read this book.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher I think violence is far worse for children than sex. Depictions of violence is going to be far more impactful on a child's mind than sex is, but these legislators are far more worried about sex.
Dan McClellan Oh, well, yeah.
Dan Beecher So let's talk about that.
Dan McClellan Well, they've got some deviant sexualities that they're trying to police here, which is the main problem.
Dan Beecher Right. Yeah, that's true because most of this legislation, even if it doesn't mention it at all, most of this legislation is about policing- Yeah ... like LGBTQIA+ things. They just don't want to be seen as that, so they call it community standards or whatever. Anyway, this Tennessee bill has a phrase called harmful to minors, and they very generously defined that for us.
Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.
Dan Beecher Harmful to minors means that quality of any description or representation in whatever form of nudity, so I assume that that means described nudity or visual nudity, sexual excitement, sexual conduct, excess violence, or sadomasochistic abuse, when the matter of performance A would be found by the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, there's a lot of sex in the Bible.
Dan McClellan Yes.
Dan Beecher Can you give us some examples of what might run afoul of this?
Dan McClellan Well, are we including incest in here?
Dan Beecher Because- I think that's a great thing to include.
Dan McClellan Okay, because I know some of the legislation explicitly calls that out.
Dan Beecher Yes, it does.
Dan McClellan But yeah, in Genesis, you've got the case of, we're going to skip over Noah because I really don't think that's sexual in nature. It just talks about the fact that Noah was nude.
Dan Beecher There's nudity.
Dan McClellan There's nudity.
Dan Beecher That's nudity, though.
Dan McClellan But in Genesis 19, you have Lot escapes to the hills with his two daughters who seem to imagine that they're the only humans left on Earth after the- Right ... destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities of the plains. So they seem to take it upon themselves to try to repopulate the Earth by getting their father drunk and engaging in coitus to impregnate themselves, resulting in the people of Moab and the people of Ammon.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan And this is basically a way to say, "Ha, you guys suck. You were the product of incest."
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan So they're describing incest in not incredible detail, but being quite explicit about what's happening here.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan And yeah, you have a description of Onan. Who can forget Onan?
Dan Beecher Poor- Onan's great.
Dan McClellan Yeah ... sweet Onan, who it says, and we think of it as a euphemism, but it's not really a euphemism. Intercourse frequently in the Bible is framed as the man going into the woman.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan Which is not a euphemism. But I think it's Genesis 38 talking about Onan, says every time he would go into his wife, he would spill his seed on the ground.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan So we've got some coitus interruptus going on, which then required somebody either kick some dust over that or I don't know what they're doing there, but there is pretty explicit sexuality going on there. We've got a bunch of other- Yeah ... oh, I was just thinking of the Book of Judges, but Eglon came immediately to mind. You want to talk about violence, that's where the dude goes in. He's a large man. He's fat, and he gets stabbed- Oh, right ... all the way to the hilt so that the dirt came out. I remember the first time I read that, I was like, "That is awesome." But yeah, that's pretty graphic. Well, we have Ezekiel 23, there's a passage that an awful lot of people really enjoy. Oh, what is the other one? I'm going to have to look up another one, because there's a passage that talks about two people, they're named, but they're metaphors for unrighteous Israelites, and it talks about how they love to go down to Egypt where the men fondle their youthful nipples.
Dan Beecher Mm.
Dan McClellan But here in Ezekiel 23, God is condemning probably Jerusalem. It's always Jerusalem. "Yet she increased her prostitutions, remembering the days of her youth, when she prostituted herself in the land of Egypt and lusted after her paramours there, whose members were like those of donkeys-" Right.
Dan Beecher "...
Dan McClellan and whose emission was like that of stallions."
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan Only I wanted to see what the Hebrew was. Emissions there is a word, zerma, which seems to mean phallus. Rod branch phallus.
Dan Beecher So- Huh ...
Dan McClellan it's, at least in Hebrew, it pretty explicitly is saying their phalluses are like the phalluses of stallions.
Dan Beecher So.
Dan McClellan Yeah. Oh, in fact, it's the very next verse. "Thus you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when the Egyptians fondled your bosom and caressed your young breasts."
Dan Beecher But- I don't know how you can get more explicit than that.
Dan McClellan I mean, that is pretty explicit.
Dan Beecher Yeah. Anyway, I think we can safely say- Segue out of that, Dan.
Dan McClellan Right?
Dan Beecher Well, no, I'm just saying we can safely say this runs afoul of these laws.
Dan McClellan Like, this is a book- We haven't even gotten to the Song of Songs.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan Right.
Dan Beecher That is all about it.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher I noted that in the Iowa law, which went into effect in 2023, it says no sexual acts can be depicted in any book for all of K through 12. That's kindergarten, five-year-olds through 12th grade.
Dan McClellan Through seniors in high school.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan 17-year-olds, sometimes 18-year-olds in some places.
Dan Beecher Right. So, we're protecting them all the way up to 12th grade from sexual acts, except for religious texts. Because they thought, "We see them coming. We're going to make sure that the Bible's safe."
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher But that exception is a dangerous one, considering the fact that the Kama Sutra, for crying out loud, could very easily be considered religious text.
Dan McClellan I think whatever state it says that in, somebody needs to go put a Kama Sutra in the library.
Dan Beecher Absolutely, man. If you're in Iowa and you want to mess around with some people, just demand that the Kama Sutra be in the- Yeah ... may- maybe don't do it in an elementary school.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher But get that thing into a high school.
Dan McClellan Yeah, do a high school. Yeah, definitely a high school.
Dan Beecher Get it into a high school there.
Dan McClellan You remember "Field of Dreams," right?
Dan Beecher Uh-huh.
Dan McClellan There's a part where they're at a PTA meeting.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan Remember? They're in the gym, and he's just close encounters of the third kind guy. He's just playing with his mashed potatoes in his head, and his wife is freaking out at these people who are like, "It's pornography."
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan And these fights have been going on for the longest time, and it's so depressing that we've gotten to the point where they're like, "Oh, we want to keep this stuff away from kids." Hey, man, your holy book says that stuff. "Okay, we want to keep this stuff away from kids, but we're making exception for our holy book." Well, it has to be all holy books. "Okay, we're going to keep this away from kids, but we're going to write in an exception. We're going to do a little carve-out for any holy books. But really, we just mean the Bible because that's all we care about." And the ignorance, the historical ignorance, just the malice of trying to shape public education so that everybody will end up being a Christian nationalist - Right ... just infuriating.
Dan Beecher And it always backfires. It always goes wrong.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher And I think part of the reason I wanted to talk about this is that the fact that the Bible so clearly, so explicitly runs afoul of these laws, and yet they want to insist that the Bible be in these schools proves the hypocrisy of their position.
Dan McClellan Yeah. And not only that, they insist that we need to require the Bible be taught in all classes.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan Because that will result in a more moral people. It's like, well, no, it'll result in people who think slavery is okay and that women are property.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan And it will result in a lot more insurrections at the Capitol. But what it's not going to result in is moral people.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan Telling a story about how it's okay to be, for a high school kid who isn't sure what's going on sexually, a book that makes them feel okay in their own body, that's going to help- Yeah ... the morality of this country infinitely more than saying, "Hey, read the story about Onan."
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan "You've got to read this."
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan Pure and utter nonsense, for lack of a better word.
Dan Beecher Yeah. What you're talking about is there are books that are literally written for teenagers at their level. It's not inappropriate.
Dan McClellan To save their lives.
Dan Beecher To help them understand what's going on in their own bodies, and these people are banning those books because they say the word "gay" in them, and half of these bills are nicknamed the Don't Say Gay bills. So, things that would give them real-life knowledge that would be helpful and useful to them are banned. And then this book, which is a valuable book, and it's a book that I think, I'll be honest, I don't think it's appropriate at all to give to children.
Dan McClellan Right.
Dan Beecher But late teens, yeah, let them start looking at this book. I think that the Bible's an important book, and I think there's no reason why they shouldn't.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher But if we're talking about what's actually appropriate and good for children, especially, yeah, before high school, this book is not okay.
Dan McClellan Yeah. And what's unfortunate is, we mentioned it earlier, but I think the driving impetus here is they want to be able to control- Whether or not you're allowed to say that it's okay to be gay in public spaces.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan That's what frequently this is all coming down to. And increasingly, it's okay to be trans and trans people exist.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan Basically, they don't want anyone who is growing up thinking they might be gay or trans or something like that being told that's okay.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan They want to be able to beat into them, or at least compel, condition them, to think that it's not okay and that they need to change.
Dan Beecher And- And on a wider level, they're actually looking to provide cover for bigotry.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher They're looking to provide cover, not just against LGBTQ people, but these same book bans also have cover for all these reasons why... And it's not explicit in them, but then you look at which books actually get banned and Tony Morrison suddenly disappears from all of the bookshelves.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher And all of these Black and people of color authors- Yeah ... are suddenly disappearing and- Oh, they would re-litigate Brown v.
Dan McClellan Board of Education yesterday if they- Oh, in a heartbeat ... if they could.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan And it's the exact same argument. Parents ought to have control over public education. That was the argument against desegregation.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan It was like, "No, no, no, parents have to have control." And that is what gave rise to private education.
Dan Beecher Yep.
Dan McClellan And you had your desegregation or your segregation academies, which turned into private school and then charter schools and stuff like that. And another- Why does it always come back to white supremacy, Dan?
Dan Beecher It's because it does.
Dan McClellan Why does it always come back to white supremacy?
Dan Beecher And that's where we're at.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher That's where we're at.
Dan McClellan Ugh.
Dan Beecher And trying to divorce Christian nationalism from white supremacy is a fool's errand that you will never be able to achieve, so.
Dan McClellan Oh, gosh.
Dan Beecher Yeah. There you go. Please, if you have any white supremacy or Christian nationalist in you- Go the hell up.
Dan McClellan Yeah ...
Dan Beecher don't anymore. And go get this book banned, I guess, or I don't know. I guess that's it for the show. Thanks everybody for paying attention. We appreciate you.
Dan McClellan If you like- If you're still paying attention.
Dan Beecher If we lost you- If you're still with us, we appreciate it. You can write into us pod... Oh, no, wait. You can donate to us and help make the show go- Oh, there you go ... and become a part of it. And also you can get access to an early ad free version of every episode, and you can get access to our after parties, which are for patrons only over on patreon.com/dataoverdogma. We appreciate that. If you want to get in touch with us, contact at dataoverdogmapod.com is the way to do that, and we'll talk to you again next week.
Dan McClellan Bye everybody.
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