Bibliomancy! The Biblical Dance with the Devil?

Dan Beecher "The likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water, under the earth." Well, that couldn't be more clear.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Thank you, Bible, for that.

Dan McClellan 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 go things today, Dan?

Dan Beecher Things are good. We are, if you're in our timeline, just about to set out into the second leg of our big tour.

Dan McClellan Yep.

Dan Beecher And if you're in the listener's timeline- Your timeline.

Dan McClellan ...

Dan Beecher we've gotten home. Everything went great. There were definitely no problems flying- ... or anything like that.

Dan McClellan So. No problems with the speakers, no problems with the microphones, no problems with anything.

Dan Beecher Everything went great.

Dan McClellan So. Yeah, we signed some books, we kissed some hands and shook some babies.

Dan Beecher And- ...

Dan McClellan everybody enjoyed it a great deal.

Dan Beecher You know what that is?

Dan McClellan That is prophesying.

Dan Beecher We are prophets.

Dan McClellan Well, yeah, and provided everything does work out, then we are true prophets.

Dan Beecher Yeah, exactly.

Dan McClellan Which is better than a lot of folks can say who- ... whose work ended up in the Bible, but- Yeah.

Dan Beecher Well, speaking of the Bible, how interesting that you brought that up, because we've got a whole show- Isn't that fortuitous?

Dan McClellan Yes ...

Dan Beecher about it. So the first thing we're going to talk about is, we're going to make you go head-to-head with one Charles Xavier Kirk.

Dan McClellan Charlie Kirk- Tiberius. Charles Tiberius- That's right ...

Dan Beecher Kirk. If you don't know Charlie Kirk, good. Keep on- Yeah ... not knowing him.

Dan McClellan Oh, yeah.

Dan Beecher He's not going to give you anything that's worth anything.

Dan McClellan No.

Dan Beecher But we're going to do a taking issue with Charlie and ethnocentrism.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher And then in the latter half of the show, we're going to do a "What is that?" And we're going to talk about bibliomancy.

Dan McClellan Bibliomancy.

Dan Beecher So, get yourself some spooky clothes on and maybe dim- Yeah, some Courvoisier and- ... dim the lights, and we'll get all kinds of spooky about it. That's going to be a lot of fun.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But first, let's take issue. And the thing we're taking issue with is, there was a video that we found that- Mm-hmm ... that had Charlie Kirk. And Charlie Kirk, what he does, he loves to go to college campuses, and then he sits there with a microphone, and he puts a microphone up for students to come up and challenge him on stuff.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher And inevitably, he's loaded for bear. He has been studying to have these interactions. He knows what he wants to say.

Dan McClellan And these kids are just kids. This isn't their field of study. They haven't been prepping for this. So he gish gallops over them, says a whole bunch of stuff.

Dan Beecher They think they're coming in hot, and then he actually has what sound like pretty good answers for them, and they get put in their place.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And of course, he only releases the video- Mm-hmm ... of the ones that he's happy about.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So this particular video, he is asked about being a Christian nationalist.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher And specifically about how the young man that's asking him the question self-identifies as Christian and says, "How do you reconcile, as a Christian, trying to take over the levers of power in the government- Yeah ... when it seems like Christianity, the word of Jesus, is specifically against that?"

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And Charlie Kirk brings out Jeremiah 29.

Dan McClellan Little bullfrog, right out of his pocket.

Dan Beecher Boom.

Dan McClellan Indeed. He was drunk, though. He had been drinking an awful lot of wine.

Dan Beecher Yeah. He's helpful in that way.

Dan McClellan Yes. He cites Jeremiah 29:7.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And I forget exactly what he says about it. I actually responded to this video a bit ago on TikTok, but I wanted to just further tease out some of the implications of the way he's approaching these passages, and particularly the way he's giving weight to these passages from the Hebrew Bible and ignoring the New Testament, which is something that the young man brings up in that video, but he gets gish galloped right over.

Dan Beecher And we'll get to that because when I was researching the idea of ethnocentrism, the New Testament seemed to be all anybody was talking about. So it is interesting that he dove directly into the Old Testament, and they do seem like they have very different takes.

Dan McClellan Well, much of the Old Testament, there are some parts of the Hebrew Bible that are more universalistic in the scope of their vision. However, yeah, it's really with Christianity that you get an additional, more concerted theological framework for understanding the tearing down these ethnic boundaries. And there are reasons for that, and that's what I want to discuss- Okay ... is why there's a difference and why we can't just pick and choose whichever one we want, depending on what tradition we're representing.

Dan Beecher But he- I can too.

Dan McClellan I can pick and choose as much as I want Well, if we're identifying with a specific tradition and asserting the Bible as an authoritative text- Right ... then if you're going to presuppose univocality and all that kind of stuff, then at least be honest about it. And be honest about the fact that you are picking and choosing and negotiating- Right ... with the texts that you imagine are all saying the same thing. But he appeals to Jeremiah 29:7, and I want to read it from the NRSVUE. I don't remember exactly how he... He said something along the lines of, it was like demand the welfare- Let me check it ... of the country that you live in because in that country's welfare, you will find your welfare. And I remember, the first thing I noticed was that it does not say demand. And the idea was that this is a rationalization for Christian nationalism.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan Well, if I am to demand the welfare, then I must be at the levers of power. I must be taking them over, or at least trying to influence them to the degree I am able to, up to and including taking over the government and making it an organ of the Christian- Of the church ...

Dan Beecher body.

Dan McClellan Yeah, the church. But I want to talk a little bit about what Jeremiah 29 is doing because, in Jeremiah 27 and 28, Jeremiah is engaging with the public. The Babylonian exile is coming up, and apparently there are prophets that are saying, "Oh, this is going to end real quick. This is going to be over with. There's going to be peace, peace, and love." And Jeremiah is saying, "Fools. This is going to be 70 years. You're not going to have peace until the 70 years are up." And so, in 29:1 it says, "These are the words of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the remaining elders among the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon." So, the exile has already begun. I misremembered that.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan "And thus says Adonai of hosts, the God of Israel, to the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon, 'Build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters. Take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage that they may bear sons and daughters. Multiply there and do not decrease.'" And then we get to the verse that he paraphrased. "But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile and pray to Adonai on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare." And then continuing, "For thus says Adonai of hosts, the God of Israel, 'Do not let the prophets and the diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to your dreams that you dream, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name. I did not send them,' says Adonai." "For thus says Adonai, 'Only when Babylon's 70 years are completed will I visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place.'" So, the message is actually to these exiles, "Get comfy- Yeah ... because you're going to be there for a while." And so, it is, "Don't put your bags in the corner and not unpack them."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan "You are going to need to- Buckle in.

Dan Beecher Yeah ... this is happening.

Dan McClellan Hunker down. It's going to be 70 years. The prophets who are telling you, 'No, we're going to fix this right away,' are all lying to you. I did not send them." And it says, "Pray for the welfare of the city in which I've sent you as exiles because it is in their welfare that you are going to find your welfare."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan In other words, don't pray for the city to be destroyed. You're going to be there for 70 years, and if it's a pile of rubble, that's a crappy 70 years to be spending there.

Dan Beecher Well, and it's so weird to take this idea of pray for the place that you're in, that it's going to do well, because if it prospers, you're going to prosper. How do you take that and then flip that around to, this means that we should control the government ourselves?

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan That's not even hinted at in that. Yeah, and when Charlie says it, I think he says, "Demand the welfare of the city." But the word there in Hebrew is derash, which means to seek. That's not really ambiguous at all. It's to seek out. It is not saying you must force the welfare that you want onto the city. It's saying, seek out, don't try to undermine, and pray for the... Because the exiles are not in charge.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan The exiles are not going to become president. They're not storming the capital. And so, it's a ridiculous misreading of the text. However, I think there is something to be said for the fact that what we have in the exilic and post-exilic literature is rather ethnocentric- Yeah ... on the part of the Judahites because they are circling the ethnic wagons. They are hunkering down, and they are setting up firm boundaries around their ethnic identity, and that's not necessarily a bad thing, I don't think, because they are a minority ethnic group that is under significant threat- Right ... of disintegration, of destruction, and they're trying to preserve this ethnic identity. And so, in order to do that, you have to set up those boundaries, and you have to push back against encroachment from the outside. Now, that's not to say that I think, in Ezra-Nehemiah, we have the The decree that everybody who married non-Judahite wives had to divorce them and send them away along with their children and all that, because that kind of thing is an extreme example of that trying to preserve those ethnic boundaries.

Dan Beecher Yeah, but I'm going to push back a little bit because you said that it's not necessarily a bad thing, but I think that the extreme examples are the place that those ideologies tend to go. Like eventually, so often, the group that is the marginalized or the less powerful group, they say, "Circle the wagons." And that becomes their thing. "We are this group. We are isolated. We don't want to be interfered with, and we don't want to interfere." And then that becomes a statement of superiority or a statement of, I don't know. And I think we see it in other parts of the Bible as well, where the Israelites or the Hebrews come out of Egypt, and then they go and they start just laying waste to all of these other ethnic groups- Yeah ... because they have the power to do so. So I don't know. I feel like maybe I'm not okay with the idea that hunkering down in your ethnicity is...

Dan McClellan I don't know.

Dan Beecher I'm ill at ease with that idea.

Dan McClellan Well, let's consider it further because absolutely, there are ways that it can become incredibly problematic, and I would suggest that it becomes most problematic, it's not the only way it becomes problematic, but I think it becomes most problematic when the systemic power asymmetries begin to even off or begin to efface.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And then it gets leveraged as a part of privilege. And this is what Christianity did. Christianity was a marginalized and oppressed group, and they were certainly circling the wagons, and then they took over the Roman Empire, and then they became the Roman Empire. And at that point, you then have to become aware of the shift in the asymmetries. You're now on the other end of the stick. And so I think that's when it becomes dangerous and phenomenally problematic to start wielding that identity aggressively and antagonistically.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan I think there's a defensive and there's an offensive use of this idea of ethnic boundaries, and there are groups that have to defensively use those boundaries. And I think that's what's going on for a lot of the Hebrew Bible, but I think there are ways that it begins to harm other people who are in even more vulnerable positions. For instance, these women and these children who they have married into a Judahite household, and that's the life they know, and now they're just being shoved out into the street.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan That's incredibly problematic. But if you don't have that kind of defensive ethnic identity, then identities get destroyed. And I think there's a case to make that that's not a great thing.

Dan Beecher That- Yeah, I'm of two minds. It bothers me kind of both ways. I see problems with either thing, or at least potential issues. It does seem like if your ethnic group comes under attack, what else are you going to do but band together? What else are you going to do but circle the wagons? So it totally makes sense.

Dan McClellan And a lot of times, that identity is forced upon folks- Oh, yeah ... by the larger groups who are intentionally like, "You get over here. You guys are all one group now, and we're in charge of your group and how you understand yourselves." And so that's another example of a way that you can have a defensive reification of ethnic boundaries.

Dan Beecher And- And maybe that's another problem that I have with this whole thing, is that these boundaries are kind of, they're just imposed. They're just made up. Like somebody- Well, yeah You know what I mean?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Just like the concept of race, it's just something someone came up with at some point. And it doesn't have to be that meaningful, but it becomes that meaningful. And when it becomes meaningful and when it becomes really important, it can become deeply problematic.

Dan McClellan I don't know.

Dan Beecher I'm still grappling with this. I'm not making statements here. I'm just sort of exploring, so- But it- Sorry if I sound weird or if I make a statement that you're ill at ease with. We're just exploring here.

Dan McClellan No.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan We're just jamming. And I think the Jewish identity is an example of one that down to today has been historically on the receiving end of an awful lot of oppression and suppression and antagonism- Absolutely ... and violence. And so I would say it's their prerogative to police the boundaries of their own ethnic identity, which is one of the things that makes me so uneasy with the ideas about combating antisemitism in MAGA.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan Because they're not really trying to combat antisemitism. They're reifying antisemitism and really just trying to protect their own structures of power and the identity politics that serve the interests of white Christian nationalism. And you see a lot of tokenizing of- Right ... these identities on the part of Christians who sit at the intersection of some of the most privileged and powerful social identities that have ever existed. And so when somebody like Charlie Kirk appeals to Some of the more ethnocentric passages in the Hebrew Bible, in an effort to try to validate the most privileged and powerful groups getting to dictate the rules to everybody else, I see that as somebody who has entirely swung the wrong way with this.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Where they have taken something that is, I think, rationalizable in certain circumstances and said, "I'm leveraging that for an entirely different set of circumstances where I don't think it is at all defensible or appropriate in order to say Christians should be thumping their chests and be making the decisions for everybody else."

Dan Beecher Well, and that's one of the points that you make in your social media video, is that the circumstances of Jeremiah 7, they're not analogous to anything that's happening now.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher They're not analogous to anything in the United States.

Dan McClellan It's nothing to do with us.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And no good analogy can be made there.

Dan Beecher You know what I mean?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So him trying to export that into his own reality is just a non-starter.

Dan McClellan Yeah. It's definitely wrenching it out of its context and then trying to impose it into service for an entirely different context. And he gets called out on that by the gentleman with which he is debating, who says, "Well, what about the New Testament? Everything is fulfilled in Christ." And the point here is that the New Testament is not an ethnically oriented corpus.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Christianity is supposed to have transcended those boundaries. It's supposed to be for everybody.

Dan Beecher It is- This is where we get these ideas of there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is- Right ... neither bond nor free, all of that sort of thing.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Neither male nor female, Galatians 3:28. And yeah, that's the ideal within Christianity, and Kirk just sidesteps that entirely.

Dan Beecher Of course he does.

Dan McClellan And his response is to say, "What is Genesis 1 is less than the New Testament?" And he was like, "Well, no, we read it through a Christological lens." And Charlie Kirk is just like, "Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa. Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa," and just flustered and is using this defense of, "You can't say Genesis 1 is less than," which is kind of silly because if you ask Charlie Kirk what Genesis 1:26 means when it says, "Let us make," he's going to read it through a Christological lens.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan He's going to subordinate the Hebrew Bible to the New Testament in absolutely every single instance where it serves his interest to do so, and that's going to be the default. But here, when this guy says, "Hey, wait a minute, we're not supposed to be thinking of ourselves and our identities and our groups on those terms," and this is where J.D. Vance's ignorant appeal to the ordo amoris- ... where you're supposed to love the people closest to you, and then the- The concentric circles of- Yes ...

Dan Beecher of importance of love.

Dan McClellan Yes. And it was such a treat to have the new pope call him out on that. But it's kind of a similar idea. Ethnocentrism is not appropriate in any of these circumstances that the folks who are leveraging this find themselves in.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Especially not Charlie Kirk, especially not for white Christian nationalists in 21st century America. If you call yourself a Christian, and if you claim to be following Jesus, the last thing you should be doing is trying to assert these ethnocentric things and appealing exclusively to Hebrew Bible passages to try to do it. I think you see a, it's Deutero-Isaiah, so second Isaiah, Isaiah 40 through 55, where you see what a lot of scholars call the universalization of Adonai's purview, kingdom, whatever you want to call it, where now you don't have to be a part of the nation of Judah to enjoy the blessings of Adonai's bounty. And this is an ideal. It doesn't really take root precisely because this is coming at a time when everybody needs to circle the wagons.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan But the idea that God's love, God's concern, God's charity extends to all peoples and is not only for the nation of Israel, begins in the Hebrew Bible. Begins in the exilic period. However, you have kind of competing interests because at the same time, you have large empires like the Babylonian, like the Persian, like the Hellenistic, like the Roman, that are coming down hard on the Judahites and the Judean people, and then the Jewish people. And so there's an effort to kind of say, "Yeah, it's for everybody, but hey, wait a minute. We got to take care of ourselves so that we can live through this."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And all of those dynamics are just ignored, and he just rides roughshod over all of them in the interest of trying to defend this notion that Christianity, this kind of Crusades-style approach to Christianity, which- So let's maybe talk a little bit about what the Bible might actually have to say about the interplay between politics and the religion My mind jumps immediately to the render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's sort of idea.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Does that mean what I think it means? And what would we say, since we're viewing it through the Christological lens, what would we say is Jesus' message about that?

Dan McClellan I think it has to do with the positionality of the authors. Because if we're talking about D, the Deuteronomistic literature, these are people who are under the employ of the king.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan These are people whose paycheck, their wellbeing is directly tied to the wellbeing of the king and the king's household and everything like that. So they're going to advocate for the interests of the king. And if that means they're writing legislation, so that the king can say, "Oh, look what I found in the temple." "Oh, look at that. We've been doing it all wrong, and now we've got to change everything. Dang it. Oh, man, that really serves my interest, doesn't it?"

Dan Beecher Yeah. Did you guys know that the Lord writes in my handwriting? That's crazy.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Spells things wrong the same way, just like me. Every time I do the... I grew up learning the, have your cake and eat it too, in that order.

Dan Beecher Uh-huh.

Dan McClellan And then on social media, I said it once that way. And the world came crashing down on top of me as everybody said it's, "Eat your cake and have it too." Because the order is supposed to be important.

Dan Beecher Yeah. It means literally exactly the same thing. But- It doesn't matter what order you do it in. You can't have both of the things.

Dan McClellan And there are a lot of sayings like that. People are like, "I could care less." And they're like, "I think you mean you couldn't care less."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It's like they both work. You know what the sense is. But they identified the Unabomber based on the way he used that phrase.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Evidently. Which is funny. He thinks he's using it right, but he uses it the way nobody likes to use it. That must be that guy, Kaczynski. So I forgot what we were talking about. I'm starting to get into the- We were talking about New Testament. We were talking about the relationship of religion- The politics ...

Dan Beecher and politics.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And so- Because one of the things that occurs to me as you were talking about the kings and being subject to a king, is that that's a very different setup than what we're- Very new.

Dan McClellan Well, yeah ...

Dan Beecher it's getting less different by the day. I'll try not to get too political, but that's a very different thing- Yeah ... than a democracy.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And by the time of the New Testament, none of the authors of New Testament texts have any close relationship to the Roman emperor or anything like that.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan In fact, they're very much on the other end of things. And so they're kind of like, "Eh, we don't want to have anything to do with them. In fact, they're Satan."

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan "They're the dragon or the great whore" or whatever. They're the evil empire.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so we're just this plucky little band of Jesus followers out here in the wilderness trying to get by. And so a lot of it has to do with positionality. And even in the Hebrew Bible, you have the prophets. Some of them were probably court prophets like Isaiah, but had an awful lot of bad things to say about a lot of the kings. And then you had other prophets who were probably itinerant prophets. They were probably prophets for hire.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And they had even worse things to say about the king.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so it depends an awful lot on who's writing this literature, whether or not they're supporting the political power structures or are criticizing them. And by the time you get to the New Testament, it's pretty unilaterally critical.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan None of the folks there have a lot of political power.

Dan Beecher Well, Jesus himself was essentially an itinerant prophet.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher And I- So yeah, he fits into that non-king slot.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And we've talked about Romans 13, where Paul says that all this power comes from God. And basically, he's just writing to the people in Rome. He thinks Jesus is coming back at any moment, and so he's like, and basically doing the same thing that Jeremiah's doing. Make it easier for yourself. Don't rock the boat.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan I said rock the apple cart in a video one time, and I should've said, knock over the boat or something like that just to really- Just to- ...

Dan Beecher annoy people, but- But that's putting the horse before the cart.

Dan McClellan The horse before the cookie? Isn't that what it is?

Dan Beecher That's right.

Dan McClellan So he's making a practical exhortation- Yeah ... that you just leave them be, don't cause too many problems for yourself by needling the powers that be. So when it comes to how we should be leveraging the Bible for politics today, it's a dealer's choice.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Everybody's going to do whatever serves their interests. And I think if folks who claim to be followers of Jesus think that the New Testament is inspired and inerrant and has authority over the Hebrew Bible, which they overwhelmingly do, then you got to take that position. That position comes with that hierarchy, scriptural hierarchy that you're asserting. And so I think it is disingenuous for them to be like, "I'm going to leapfrog right over the Sermon on the Mount, and I'm going to get into Ezra, Nehemiah, and that's where we're going to be talking about the relationship that we should have with political power and with ethnic identities."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And when you have- As much power as you... And this was a big deal. We've talked about this as well with the Book of Revelation. When Christianity took over the Roman Empire, a lot of the people who now had the Book of Revelation in their canon were like, "Huh, I think we won. I think this is the fulfillment of the Book of Revelation, isn't it? We traded places with the evil empire. We're in charge now."

Dan Beecher We did it.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And then they immediately turned to a lot of horrible things.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And it's been a lot of horrible things ever since, for the folks, I think, who are most concerned with what Christianity can do for their power.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And, yeah. And a lot of people will say, "Well, they're not real Christians." I think the history of Christianity kind of makes them the more real Christians than- Well, and yeah.

Dan Beecher And also there's that whole Scotsman fallacy, but we don't need to- No, no, no ...

Dan McClellan get into that.

Dan Beecher All right. Well, I think that that's fascinating. Charlie Kirk should hit the bricks or hit the books. Hit something.

Dan McClellan Yeah. I think he should spend a little more time in the buildings he's debating out front of.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan He went to Harvard, didn't he?

Dan Beecher Probably.

Dan McClellan I don't know.

Dan Beecher I haven't done much looking into Charlie Kirk. I mostly try to avoid the guy as much as possible.

Dan McClellan Yeah. For your own mental health, I think that's a- Yeah ... that's a good idea. But I think he might've... Yeah, I don't know if he went there, if he finished a degree or what, but there's an awful lot of money to be made in shilling for right-wing authoritarians right now.

Dan Beecher There sure is.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Jordan Peterson- All right ... knows that, too.

Dan Beecher So.

Dan McClellan But that's a story for another day.

Dan Beecher Okay. Let's dive in then to our next topic. It's a what is that? And the that that we're what is-ing today, everyone get a cauldron out and- Yeah ... and some sage to burn or something, because we're going bibliomancy. We're divining, baby.

Dan McClellan Bibliomancy is an... I don't know what syllable it's supposed to be. Bible-io- Bible-io- ...

Dan Beecher mancy.

Dan McClellan -mancy.

Dan Beecher Mancy.

Dan McClellan So, which would be very close to necromancy- Oh ... which is consultation with the dead- Yes ... which is prohibited in the Hebrew Bible. Interestingly, there are parts of the Hebrew Bible that suggest it may not be fully prohibited. There's a part in Deuteronomy where it says, "When you bring your food offerings to Adonai, make sure none of it was offered to the dead."

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan Which doesn't say... If you weren't supposed to offer anything to the dead anyway, you shouldn't need to add that on there.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It seems like a thing where it's like- It almost sounds like it's like that food is just for them. That's just for the dead. Whatever you bring- Yeah ... to Adonai, it's got to be separate food.

Dan Beecher There's no double-dipping on- Yeah ... on sacrifices, you guys. Come on. You can do it to them, you can do it to him, but you can't do it to both. Got to keep them separated, as- Yes, indeed ...

Dan McClellan as the great poet once said. And so the idea of bibliomancy is consultation with the Bible. It's a means of divination using- Right ...

Dan Beecher the Bible.

Dan McClellan And this was all brought up because I stumbled across a video where somebody was... They're doing a little performance where they had a Bible in their hand and like, "Lord, I really need to know what to do with my life." And then they slam it down just with their eyes closed, open it to a random page, and then just put their finger down and read. And he went and hanged himself.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan And was like, "Ah." And so it was supposed to be funny.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But the content creator, their caption was like, "Isn't it so funny that we literally all do this?" And listen- And that's- ...

Dan Beecher I grew up, my people did it.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher That was a thing in the Mormon Church that I was, the people around me. And by the way, I have in front of me- A Holy Bible ...

Dan McClellan a Holy Bible.

Dan Beecher These are free.

Dan McClellan And it's not burning your skin? If you- Oh, if you steal it from a, steal a Gideon's Bible?

Dan Beecher If you stay at a hotel, these are free. So I'm going to just launch us in by doing a little mancy myself.

Dan McClellan Hang on.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Uh-oh.

Dan Beecher It's Nehemiah. We got into Nehemiah- ...

Dan McClellan chapter eight.

Dan Beecher "And all the people gathered as one man into the square before the Water Gate." It's about Watergate.

Dan McClellan Uh-oh.

Dan Beecher Oh, wow.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher That's obviously, I'm supposed to vote for Nixon- Yeah ... is what this means.

Dan McClellan Well, I don't know when he's going to be on the ballot again, but yeah- It's a good- ... you have your marching orders, I guess.

Dan Beecher I was really disappointed when our event in DC didn't end up being at the Watergate Hotel. I think that was one of the possibilities, but it didn't make it.

Dan McClellan Surely it's been renovated since then. It can't be the same layout and everything, can it?

Dan Beecher I don't know. I wanted to break... Let's go break into it.

Dan McClellan Because the closest I've come to actually knowing what the Watergate looks like is the scene in Forrest Gump. When he's like, "Hey, I got some people over there."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan They're in flashlights.

Dan Beecher I remember it from All the President's Men, but whatever.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher Anyway, not the point. The point is that my bibliomancy gave me nothing.

Dan McClellan Nothing helpful anyway.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Nothing helpful anyway.

Dan Beecher Yeah. And what's funny is that I Like in high school, me and all my Mormon friends, we would gather around and do it, and then it was always disappointing.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Because the really meaningful scriptures are kind of few and far between.

Dan McClellan Yeah. There's a lot of begets between the good stuff.

Dan Beecher You know what I mean?

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Yeah. I'm going to do it again.

Dan McClellan Hang on.

Dan Beecher Judges 1... Oh, no.

Dan McClellan Wait.

Dan Beecher Oh, no. I'm in the end of Joshua.

Dan McClellan Oh.

Dan Beecher "After these things, Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died being 110 years old."

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher Boom. This is not good. This is not helpful for me, Bible.

Dan McClellan Hang on a second.

Dan Beecher Oh, are you going to do one?

Dan McClellan I'm going to do one, too, yeah.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan This would be better with something digital where you get to say, "Just give me a random verse." In fact, I'm going to do that because if I'm flipping through, I know more or less, kind of in general, where I've stopped.

Dan Beecher Uh-huh.

Dan McClellan I can stop closer to the end and be like, "I want a New Testament verse this time."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But I'm sure that if I just go, "Give me a random Bible verse."

Dan Beecher Boom.

Dan McClellan DailyVerses.net.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan "Then said Jesus to them again, 'Peace be unto you, as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.'" Which is John 20:21.

Dan Beecher Yeah. That is very clearly a curated list. That is a- Yes.

Dan McClellan Very clearly that is going to be New Testament heavy.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Okay. I'll try another one, see how random this is. Generate random verse. I want an actual verse, but Psalm 34:17-20, "The righteous cry, and the Lord heareth, and deli-" Why is everybody using the freaking KJV? "And delivereth them out of all their troubles. The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.

Dan Beecher Many a..."

Dan McClellan This is also very clearly curated.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It's four specific verses- Yeah ... that make a sense unit, so.

Dan Beecher And of course, they chose the KJV because they stole it from the hotel, like I did. I think you're allowed to.

Dan McClellan These are all cheaters.

Dan Beecher I'm pretty sure that you're allowed to take those.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher I just opened- That's actually a thing, the Gideon- Here, let's...

Dan McClellan Oh, really? That they're like, "Take it if you want it."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Because they have a lot of...

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan They seem to think of it as kind of a pastoral thing- Yeah ... as almost a therapeutic thing that they're providing these Bibles for people who might be in dire straits.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Okay. I'm going to hold it on the spine and then just let it fall open.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Okay. It just fell down and the cover closed, but.

Dan Beecher So your verse is Holy Bible?

Dan McClellan Yeah, the SBL Bible.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Oh, I think I got one.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan 2 Peter 3:14. "Therefore, beloved, while you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by him at peace, without spot or blemish."

Dan Beecher Hey, that's a good one. That's a- That wasn't even a curated one. You got a- Yeah ... good one.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher I got all crap.

Dan McClellan It only took- Anyway ... six or seven tries, but- You know, here's the thing.

Dan Beecher It makes sense because I'm just a dirty atheist, and you're the Lord's beloved Dan McClellan, so I feel like- Well, not if you ask my compatriots. If you ask the New York Times bestseller list, maybe. What about that?

Dan McClellan Boom.

Dan Beecher Sorry, I'm- You putting it away?

Dan McClellan ... eating up air time trying to put my Bible away.

Dan Beecher It's not fitting in the- Yeah, you can just put it down next to you and put it away after the show.

Dan McClellan That's- Do you know how many books I have sitting next to me right here? I don't have room for much on my desk.

Dan Beecher Just tuck it behind you. It's fine. But- Anyway, one of the things that's interesting about this concept of bibliomancy- Mm-hmm ... when I looked it up, I found a lot of places. I go back to GotQuestions- Mm-hmm ...

Dan McClellan which is that website that purports to give you the- That's like Answers in Genesis or something, isn't it?

Dan Beecher Well, yeah. No, it's- I don't know who runs it. Is it- I think they're their own thing. Anyway, they had an article about bibliomancy, and one of the things, they did do the joke about Judas went and hanged himself. But then they were like, "And by the way, the Bible, the God's word condemns all forms of divination in no uncertain terms."

Dan McClellan And they- Where?

Dan Beecher To support that, they said Deuteronomy 18:10, which says, "There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens or a sorcerer."

Dan McClellan That's the ESV.

Dan Beecher Yeah. And then they also did a quote, they pulled up Acts.

Dan McClellan Because that means to...

Dan Beecher That's actually...

Dan McClellan Okay, continue. They pull up Acts. Yeah, and- Where they're- It's- ... casting knuckle bones, right?

Dan Beecher For- This is the slave girl. This is Acts 16 verse 16, and it says, "We were going to a place of prayer. We were met by a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners much gain by fortune telling." And then apparently Paul eventually casts the spirit out of her, and then her owners are mad because they're not going to get rich from her divinations.

Dan McClellan When they have to replace Judas in Acts, they cast lots for it. They gave- Oh, right ... forth their lots. Yeah, and I'm not sure, let me look up the Greek term, if the idea is they voted or if they cast lots in the sense of roll dice- Yeah ... for it. Yeah, they cast lot, the lot fell upon someone. "A specially marked object, such as a pebble, a piece of pottery, or a stick used to decide something by lot." It kind of sounds like that might be... I'm not sure if the idea there is like drawing straws or what it is. Because they cast lots for Jesus' garments as well.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Remember Lot's wife. I think the search function might have taken the plural noun for the- Did they cast Lot's wife?

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But you have a lot of examples of types of divination in the Hebrew Bible, and perhaps in the New Testament as well. And there's a good kind and a bad kind.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan Because when it comes to Adonai, you have your sanctioned type of casting lots, whether it's using this Urim v'Tummim, the Urim and Thummim, which the priests were supposed to use to try to- Right ... divine God's will and things like that. So there were ways that were approved, and there were ways that were not approved. And it seems to me the two main factors were, one, who's on the other end of this? If it's God, then that's a check mark in your favor.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It's more likely to be okay if you're trying to seek the will of the God of Israel. And then the other thing is the means or the method. If it's associated with people we hate, then- Right ... we don't want to do it. That's what you constantly have in Deuteronomy and elsewhere. Don't worship Adonai using the conventions and the methods that the nations around you are using, because that's- Right ... we've got our own way to do it. We do our own thing.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But there's also, if I recall, and you can correct me on this if I'm wrong, when we talked about the necromancer on the forest moon of Endor- Mm-hmm ...

Dan Beecher her practice- Yes ... of speaking to the dead, of divining by speaking to the dead, A, was effective.

Dan McClellan Yep, it worked.

Dan Beecher Worked. It had been banished, or it had been- Prohibited ...

Dan McClellan prohibited.

Dan Beecher Yeah. But just by that king. Was it Saul?

Dan McClellan I don't know.

Dan Beecher Yeah. And so clearly before then, it had not been prohibited.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It had been widely practiced, and this person had practiced this before that with sanction.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And it worked.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And then it worked that time as well, although it spooked the necromancer as well because it was Samuel. Yeah, the idea doesn't seem to be, "Don't do it because that's all hokum, and that's all pretend make-believe stuff."

Dan Beecher It's very much- Or even that it's sin.

Dan McClellan Yeah, in and of itself, it's- Right ... there's nothing particularly considered bad about the practice in and of itself. It's the circumstances, it's the target of it, it's whether or not the actual conventions are okay or not. And so you have a lot of people today who I see all the time on social media, people getting upset about witchcraft.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But what's the difference between the knuckle bones or whatever the crone in "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" does, and then the lady who just makes you breakfast in "Robin Hood: Men in Tights," and some dude closing his eyes and opening up the Bible and slapping his finger down on a passage?

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Both of them are based on the idea that the universe is just chock-full of these divine forces, and God's will or the future or whatever is just inscribed all over it.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so whether it's by reading a particular passage in the Bible, they're still conceptualizing this Bible as a piece of material media that transmits or channels God's will or agency or power or even presence. And so whether someone uses the Bible to try to divine a path for their life or in an effort to try to feel God's spirit commune with the holy or whatever, they're treating the Bible like a divine image.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And there's quite a bit of overlap in divination and divine imagery. A lot of people think of a divine image as just an object of worship. But it really was there to facilitate the presence of the deity for whatever required the presence of the deity, whether that was consultation, so divination- Right ... or that was worship, or that was what have you. Even trying to communicate back and forth, trying to feed the deity or whatever. There were a lot of different functions that used this divine image. And because Christianity has sworn off all of the material media of worship except for the Bible, that kind of is the grab bag that has collected all of the different means of interacting with deity, have all been subsumed within that single piece of material media. And an awful lot of people treat it like it is something divine.