Can Jesus Forgive Sin?

Dan Beecher His first impulse isn't just like, "Hey, I'll heal you." His first impulse is like, "We'll do this other thing." And then he'll use the healing as the proof that I have the authority to do that.

Dan McClellan Yes. It's almost as if the story was carefully crafted- ... to tag these rhetorical bases.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan You didn't hear it from me. Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan And you are 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 Going well, man. I don't have a headache like you do, so that's good. I'm one up on you anyway, so that's great.

Dan McClellan There you go.

Dan Beecher Yeah. And I'm looking forward to today's show. We got some fun stuff. We're going to do a Bible versus Bible, and find some interesting contradictions. And then we're going to look at the concept of sin forgiveness via a big hole in the ceiling.

Dan McClellan So, that's going to be fun.

Dan Beecher Everyone should stay tuned for that. But first, let's do Bible versus Bible.

Dan McClellan All right. So, what are we talking about today?

Dan Beecher Well, since it was your idea, I think you already know, but Ahaziah- ... is the name of a guy that I had never heard of.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher But he pops up in both 2 Kings and, 2 Chronicles or just 1 Chronicles?

Dan McClellan 2 Chronicles.

Dan Beecher So yeah, he's in both of these places. It's always a bad idea for the Bible to retread the same ground, because- ... every time it does that- It's tricky.

Dan McClellan Yeah ...

Dan Beecher it's a different retelling, and they have some different things. So why don't you walk us through the story? Who is Ahaziah, per se?

Dan McClellan Right. So we actually have a couple of Ahaziahs in this history. But Ahaziah is a king of Judah.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So, in this period, traditionally we think of the United Kingdom, that was founded by Saul and David and Solomon, and then we had the divided kingdom. The reality is that there was probably never a United Kingdom, that these are two kingdoms that developed separately and were never- Meaning Judah and Israel?

Dan Beecher Correct.

Dan McClellan Okay. So Judah in the south with Jerusalem as home base, and then Israel in the north with Samaria as home base. And the Northern Kingdom of Israel was the larger kingdom, the more successful kingdom. And in the 8th century, there was a lot more economic growth going on. There was a lot more cities popping up. There was a lot more money flowing in. And Jerusalem, to the degree that it was able to engage in international trade and things like that, it was probably through the Northern Kingdom of Israel. And Jerusalem doesn't become prominent until the fall of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, because they take over the identity of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, and we get the creation of this history where there's a united kingdom. Mm-hmm. But Ahaziah is a king in Judah, and we have Joram as a king in Israel, so that's in the northern kingdom. And then Jehu is giving Joram a hard time.

Dan Beecher And- Jehu is some sort of antagonist. Yes But a powerful dude. Has a lot of- Yes.

Dan McClellan And Jehu is one of the earliest figures from the Hebrew Bible for which we actually have direct archeological evidence.

Dan Beecher Oh, cool.

Dan McClellan In fact, even a pictorial representation of Jehu- Oh ... bowing down before an Assyrian emperor- Oh ... Shalmaneser III. But still one of the first ones that we have represented anywhere in the late 9th century. But we have the story of Ahaziah's death, because Ahaziah is considered a wicked king. And so Jehu is coming after Ahaziah. And let me see, we got Jehu, he's going after Joram first. "Jehu drew his bow with all his strength," this is 2 Kings 9:24, "and shot Joram between the shoulders so that the arrow pierced his heart and he sank in his chariot."

Dan Beecher So- Yeah, this is probably, it's a bunch of chariot stuff.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher They all meet each other on the field in chariots.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And we're in the Jezreel Valley, which is, you got Megiddo over there, the Jezreel Valley. You go further north and you get- Megiddo.

Dan Beecher I'm sorry to interrupt, but- What's that?

Dan McClellan Pronounced Magnet-o. And further north, Nazareth is in a little bowl place- Okay ... where if you go up on the hill, you can look south over the Jezreel Valley, and on a clear day, maybe you can at least pick out where Megiddo would be way off in the south.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And "Jehu said to his aide Bidkar, 'Lift him out and throw him on the plot of ground belonging to Naboth the Jezreelite, for remember when you and I rode side by side behind his father Ahab how the Lord uttered this oracle against him'" that basically he was going to die. "When King Ahaziah of Judah saw this, he fled in the direction of Beth-haggan," House of the Garden. And this is southeast of Megiddo. This is basically just over the hill from the southern tip of the Jezreel Valley. "Jehu pursued him, saying, 'Shoot him also!'" And they shot him in the chariot at the ascent to Gur, which is by Ibleam, and then he fled to Megiddo and died there. His officers carried him in a chariot to Jerusalem and buried him in his tomb with his ancestors in the city of David.

Dan Beecher So, all very specific.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher He was riding in his chariot.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher He was shot. He slumped, but he didn't die yet.

Dan McClellan Made it- Well, it was another guy who slumped to the ground. It was Joram who was killed. And then Jehu was like, "Get him, too."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so, "He's going to get away." And so they shoot Ahaziah in his chariot.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan And it says then he fled to Megiddo and died there.

Dan Beecher Yeah. And then- And Megiddo isn't even as-- Oh, yeah. So, they shot him at the ascent to Gur, meaning he was climbing a hill or something- Yeah ...

Dan McClellan in the chariot.

Dan Beecher And then he made it to a little town and then died.

Dan McClellan Yeah. It's out of the way. He turned and went another direction, probably like, "I'm not going to make it there. I'm going to head to this place."

Dan Beecher Thinking, "They can't shoot me if I serpentine."

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher Serpentine.

Dan McClellan And then Ahaziah's own officers carried him in a chariot to Jerusalem and buried him in his tomb with his ancestors in the city of David. So, we've got a clear picture of how this happened. And then we're going to go to 2 Chronicles. And it's funny how many of these contradictions are between Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan Because Samuel, Kings are basically taking a bunch of records and putting together a single history of what went on with the kings. And then Chronicles are basically doing the same thing, but a couple of centuries later. And they're like, "Eh, we don't like what that's doing. We're going to take this over here. We're going to carry the two, and we're going to slice that out right there."

Dan Beecher So- That's not what I heard. What I heard happened- Yeah.

Dan McClellan We think whoever put together Chronicles certainly had access to some version of Samuel, Kings. It certainly wasn't the version exactly as we have it, because even in the Dead Sea Scrolls, there's a lot going on that's different.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And this was centuries before that. So, some version was there, but among other things.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And also, the reason they decided to compose this history is because they had certain rhetorical goals, so to speak, of their own.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And then, so we go to 2 Chronicles 22 verse 7: But it was ordained by God that the downfall of Ahaziah should come about through his going to visit Joram. So, we're on the same page at least, that Ahaziah and Joram are having a game night or something. And says, "For when he came there, he went out with Jehoram to meet Jehu son of Nimshi, whom the Lord had anointed to destroy the house of Ahab." So, Jehu had been anointed by Adonai, the God of Israel, because these are members of the dynasty of Ahab.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so they've got Jehu's going to shut him down. When Jehu was executing judgment on the house of Ahab, he met the officials of Judah and the sons of Ahaziah's brothers, who attended Ahaziah, and he killed them. He searched for Ahaziah, who was captured while hiding in Samaria and was brought up to Jehu and put to death. They buried him, for they said, "He is the grandson of Jehoshaphat, who sought the Lord with all his heart." And the house of Ahaziah had no one able to rule the kingdom. So, end of the dynasty here, but we got a very different telling of the story.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan We've got Jehu executing judgment on the house of Ahab, the officials of Judah. So, remember, this is the king from Judah, the sons of Ahaziah's brothers. They get killed. Ahaziah's not there. And so they had to go and pound the pavement and look for Ahaziah and captured him hiding in Samaria. Now, this is a reference to Shomron. This is a reference to a city, not the region of Samaria.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And they, and this is the people who are searching for Ahaziah, brought him to Jehu, and the Hebrew is plural, which means they put him to death, that being the people who sought him out and found him in Samaria. They, the people who sought him out, found him, killed him, buried him. And it gives a reason why they would bury their enemy.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Because they said, "Hey, this guy's daddy was important. Granddaddy was important. So, we're going to do him the honor of giving him a proper burial." So, right off the bat, we've got a number of significant differences between these two accounts.

Dan Beecher Right. Again, a very specific set of circumstances or set of plot points.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher But just none of them line up other than the cast of characters.

Dan McClellan And even there, we don't have Joram being shot between the shoulder blades- Right ... and slumping down in his chariot. A very graphic telling of that story. But we do have Ahaziah, who is hiding out and brought to Jehu, which is not Jehu commanding his men to fire upon Ahaziah in his chariot- Yeah ... while he is fleeing.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And then fleeing to Megiddo and dying there. According to 2 Chronicles, he was killed before Jehu by Jehu's men, and then Jehu's men buried him. And I think this is one of the most explicit contradictions.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan In 2 Chronicles, it is Jehu's men who bury Ahaziah. In 2 Kings, it is Ahaziah's men who bury Ahaziah.

Dan Beecher With his ancestors. With his ancestors, yeah.

Dan McClellan That is an explicit contradiction. Jehu's men are not Ahaziah's men, and so that can't be reconciled. But we do have interesting attempts to try to gin up these scenarios that are not in evidence to make these things gel.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan I heard an interesting one. They searched for him, found him in Samaria, brought him to the Jezreel Valley, and were like, "Run." And then he went, "Okay," and runs off in his chariot, and then they shoot him, and he goes to Megiddo. And then they have to go find him again, and they find him in Megiddo, and then they put him to death in Megiddo.

Dan Beecher You've got to add a lot.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And also, the hiding thing, Kings doesn't have any of that. Kings has him and who's the other J guy? Jehoram, is that the other guy?

Dan McClellan Joram.

Dan Beecher Joram.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Both riding out specifically to meet Jehu in that place.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher There's a whole thing that leads up to it.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher He couldn't have been hiding in Samaria. That's not possible unless you really, really-- You've got to squint and turn sideways. You have to be working real, real hard.

Dan McClellan Right. You're not letting the text set its own terms. You're setting the terms for the text. And here's something that I find so baffling about the attempt to salvage the inerrancy and the univocality of these two texts, is you basically have to turn both authors into liars. You have to say that each account is just wildly misrepresenting the events.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So that you can say there are these connecting events that get us from point A to point B that are being entirely omitted. And so you have one story where everything's going on in the Jezreel Valley, and it is coherent, it makes sense. There's a beginning, a middle, and an end, and it all happens in this one little corner of the valley. And then it's like, no, the reality is that this thing was spanning over dozens of miles, and we have people coming back and forth, and we have people who are giving them a chance to get away or something, and playing sport with them. And you basically make each story entirely false- Yeah ... in order to protect the inerrancy of the two stories, which is something that frequently happens when we're talking about contradictions. Like the death of Judas is like that. People are like, "Oh, well, that's simple. He went and he hanged himself, and then over time, the rope broke and he fell, and then he burst and all that." And it's like, that's not the story.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan That is a very, very different story from the two stories that we're told. You have to insist on sovereignty over what the text is actually saying, and you turn the text into a falsehood for the sake of protecting the inerrancy of the text.

Dan Beecher Yeah. One of the things that I wanted this discussion to be about was the idea of why we point out these contradictions on this show. Because I think you think it's a very important thing to do.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher And it's not about poking whole-- I know plenty of people who point out contradictions because they want to poke holes in the Bible and, "Ha ha, it's a big gotcha," but that's not what this is about.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So why is it important to you?

Dan McClellan It's important to me because I think it is necessary to take the Bible more seriously. If we believe that what the Bible is saying is important, then I think you have to let the Bible operate on its own terms. But so many people don't want to let the Bible operate on its own terms, because these presuppositions of inerrancy, of inspiration, of univocality, have more authority than the text of the Bible. And that's not taking the Bible seriously. That's taking those dogmas seriously. But I'm trying to let what these authors were trying to say come through. When you mask, when you obscure what the authors are trying to say and alter it in order to salvage your dogmas, you're just shoving the Bible down. You're not taking the Bible seriously. And this is why I insist there's no such thing as a biblical literalist. Because, one, the Bible is not univocal, it's multivocal. There are lots of different people saying lots of different things. So you can't even extract a single coherent, consistent worldview from the Bible as a whole. You have to pick and choose.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan You have to say, "We're going to take this one for this situation, and we're going to leave that one on the side for this situation." You have no choice but to do that. And if you try to impose a unifying framework upon the whole thing to say, "No, it all works," then what you're doing is saying, "The Bible cannot operate on its own terms. It has to operate on my terms." And then it- Well, yeah.

Dan Beecher It doesn't leave room. In a book that was written over the course of what, 1,000 years or something like that? About 1,000 years, yeah. There's no room in your worldview for innovation within that period of time, for change in thought, change in philosophy- Yeah ... theology, over 1,000 years?

Dan McClellan That is impossible.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And it's an example I've brought up many times in the past, but just within my own lifetime, I have seen people on one side of the political aisle go from, "You can never have an adulterer as president," to, "It's okay to have an adulterer as president." Within a single generation, you can have people entirely flip-flop on what they claim are absolutely essential central ideologies for their identities.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so over the course of 1,000 years, that's going to happen thousands and thousands of times. So yeah, it doesn't treat the Bible as an authority on its own right. It treats the Bible as the proof text for the real authority, which is the dogmas that are prioritized for a given set of social identities. Whatever one's identity politics demands the Bible be, that's what they're going to make the Bible into.

Dan Beecher It doesn't even allow the Bible to be the authority on the Bible.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher If there's one thing that the Bible can definitively be the authority on, it's its damn self.

Dan McClellan Yeah, but we assert authority over that as well. When you have New Testament authors quoting from the Book of 1 Enoch or referring to 2 Maccabees or the Ascension of Isaiah or something like that, we've got to say, "That wasn't really scripture."

Dan Beecher Yeah. That's a problem.

Dan McClellan Yeah. The folks 300, 400 years later who sat down and hammered out what the boundaries of the Bible were going to be, they knew better, or at least we're giving them more authority than we are to the actual authors of the biblical texts.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So it's such a disingenuous concern, this trying to protect univocality, because it has absolutely no choice but to assert the authority to dictate to the Bible what it is and is not allowed to mean. This is one of the reasons I'm not a huge fan of the New International version of the Bible, because it says in the preface or the introduction that all the translators are committed to the inspiration and infallibility of the text. It's like if you're committed to that, then you're not letting the authors speak.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan You are speaking for them and on their behalf, and you have to make changes in order to make things fit. And they do. You can find places where they are fiddling with the translation in ways that are not academically defensible just to make things fit this ideology.

Dan Beecher Yeah, it makes sense to me, this whole thing. I will say this on a slightly different topic, because I think we've made that point. I think we're clear on that. Anyone who would disagree with us at this point about that, they're defending that ideology or they're defending those dogmas.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher I do think that one of the things when I was reading 2 Kings 9 about Jehu, son of Nimshi, I think we should have in our merch-- We don't have merch yet, but we will. But in our merch, I think we should have a bumper sticker that says 2 Kings 9:20, because that has the part that says, "It looks like the driving of Jehu son of Nimshi, for he drives like a maniac." And I just think that would be funny. "You drive like Jehu, son of Nimshi" would be to have on a bumper sticker or something like that.

Dan McClellan Is that what it says in the King James Version?

Dan Beecher No, that's what it says in the NRSV. Oh, NRSV, "Drives like a maniac." "Drives like a maniac."

Dan McClellan Like a maniac. Oh, I probably can't sing.

Dan Beecher Nobody heard that, right?

Dan McClellan Yeah. But you know- The King James Version says, "For he driveth furiously."

Dan Beecher Yeah, either way, both are good.

Dan McClellan "Fasteth and furiously." And then, the New English Translation says, "He drives recklessly."

Dan Beecher Oh. I like "like a maniac," but "furiously" also. Yeah, the fast and the furious. I love it. Jehu, son of Nimshi, late like a diesel.

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher Well, there's that. However Ahaziah died, we will never know the truth of it, unfortunately.

Dan McClellan Probably not.

Dan Beecher Yeah. So I get it.

Dan McClellan Although, yeah, I would just say that 2 Kings is probably closer to the truth than Chronicles, since it's coming so much later and is trying to fiddle with things more.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher Fair enough.

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher We're going to say he drove wounded his chariot back to wherever the place was.

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher Well, I think it's time for a bit of chapter and verse.

Dan McClellan All right. Let's hit it.

Dan Beecher All right. So, we're going now to Mark. And walk us through, we're in Mark chapter 2.

Dan McClellan Mark chapter 2.

Dan Beecher And there is a fun story of Jesus, and it starts at his house.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So, this is Mark chapter 1. The Gospel of Mark begins with, we've got the forerunner coming. Here's Jesus. He's getting baptized. He's been baptized. And then we have Jesus staying within what some people call the evangelical triangle. Which is a triangle of three cities on the northwestern corner of the Sea of Galilee. Bethsaida, Capernaum, and, shoot, I forget what the other one is. But it's a little up the hills away. And it has black stone. The city was constructed of black stone, and there are hyraxes there. And so you got to be careful because these rodents will yell at you. And they're bizarre creatures. However, so everything's going on up in Galilee, in Mark 1. And he casts out an unclean spirit. He heals many at Simon's house, and Simon lives in Capernaum or Capernaum or Capernaum, however you like to pronounce that name. And if you go visit, if you ever have the privilege of visiting, there is a statue right outside the front entrance. As you're going in the front entrance, you look to the left, and there'll be a bench, and there is what looks like a homeless man covered in a sheet or something- Blanket ... laying on the bench. But you look at the feet, and you see there are scars on the feet. And so this is Jesus. It's trying to remind you Jesus is one of us. He's a beggar. I thought that's a lovely touch. But you go into Capernaum, and you can actually go visit what some people think is Simon's actual home.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan They've drilled down to a dwelling place that likely dates to the first century and seems to have very quickly become a pilgrimage site. And so a lot of folks think this might be Peter's home. But- It's Simon's home, but you- Simon Peter.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan Sorry.

Dan Beecher These guys and these names, man.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher I will never get the New Testament prophets straight or New Testament- Apostles.

Dan McClellan Yeah ...

Dan Beecher apostles, yeah.

Dan McClellan We did a show on this.

Dan Beecher I know.

Dan McClellan And so Mark 2 begins, "When he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home." And the Greek here suggests that Jesus was at his own home. So Jesus probably lived in Capernaum.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So, yeah.

Dan Beecher There you go. If you need to send him letters- ... that's what you do.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Care of Mary. And so many gathered around that there was no longer room for them. So the word got out. It's like the tours going around- Mm-hmm ... where The Rock lives and- ... people are like, "I saw him go in." And they all run over.

Dan Beecher They have the- Not even in front of the- At the top on, without the top, so that they- Yeah ... can go and see.

Dan McClellan Yeah, the double-decker, yeah. Got to have that. Just a sidebar here. One of the things I remember the most about riding double-decker buses in England was I was always surprised by how much moss and mold and stuff grew on the tops of the bus stop.

Dan Beecher Oh, interesting.

Dan McClellan Because normally you see a bus stop, and you see there's a covering there.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But you're not looking down on the top of it. But when you're on the top deck of the bus, you're like, "Oh, I'm looking down on this roof here, and there's moss everywhere."

Dan Beecher Okay, so- I just liked being on the, sorry, now I'm on double- I just loved being at the very front on a top layer of a double-decker- Uh-huh ...

Dan McClellan bus because- You're just flying?

Dan Beecher You think you're going to hit literally everything. First of all, those bus- Yeah ... drivers, especially in London, are maniacs.

Dan McClellan Yeah. But they- They driveth furiously, huh?

Dan Beecher Yeah, they do. They are like, what's his name, son of what's his name. But they also get really close, and you feel like you're just going to hit every single- Yeah ... vehicle in front of you.

Dan McClellan I don't know what would be more un-- I don't think that's as uncomfortable as, back in the day, riding in the back of the station wagon, the seats- ... that pointed backwards.

Dan Beecher I used to love that. That was my favorite.

Dan McClellan I hated it because when you're on a road trip, and somebody's behind you on the interstate, and you're like, "Where do I look?" I don't want to just stare down the person who's going to be behind us for an hour.

Dan Beecher Oh, I was there like an idiot waving, "Hi."

Dan McClellan Okay, so many gathered around. So many gathered around that there was no longer room for them, not even in front of the door, and he was speaking the word to them. Then some people came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. And in the King James version, it says, "One sick of the palsy," but this just means someone who was paralyzed.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And there were four people carrying him. And when they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him, and after having dug through it, they let down the mat on which the paralytic lay. That's- So they climbed up on the roof, which would've been a flat roof- Yeah ... and there would've been a couple layers of things there. There would've been some mud brick, and then probably a bunch of straw and stuff like that.

Dan Beecher They literally dismantled Jesus' house.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And then what? Craned the guy up? It seems like they could've just sort of maybe asked the crowd to part a little bit. But okay, we're going in the hard way. That's fine.

Dan McClellan Yeah. The very hard way. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic child, "Your sins are forgiven." So he's obviously not upset about the property damage.

Dan Beecher No, he seems quite- Because he can- ...

Dan McClellan not. Yeah, because I'm sure he can just wave his hands and- Rebuild- ...

Dan Beecher bibbidi, bobbidi, boo.

Dan McClellan Yeah, he has repaired. Maybe it's not bibbidi, bobbidi, boo. Maybe it's, what does Merlin do in- In "Sword in the Stone"?

Dan Beecher Oh my gosh, I don't know. It's whatever the Aramaic is for bibbidi-bobbidi-boo.

Dan McClellan Yeah. "Now some of the scribes were sitting there questioning in their hearts." So they're not saying this out loud, they're thinking this. Uh-huh. And this raises an interesting thing here. Mark is a little closer to kind of the, let's say, Semitic culture than to the Greco-Roman culture. And in the more Semitic side of things, your heart was the seat of not just emotion, but also cognition.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So you thought with your heart, you didn't think with your brain because they didn't care about your brain. That's why the Egyptians, when they mummified people, they just scooped the brain out- Throw that away ... and threw it away.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Who needs one of those?

Dan McClellan Yeah. It's like a gigantic oyster, just this goo that we're going to get rid of. So the heart was the seat of cognition. And so in the statement, the first great commandment, "Love God with all your heart, might, mind, and strength." Uh-huh. That is a Greek translation of the actual commandment from Deuteronomy, which only says, "Heart, might, and soul."

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So, if they're talking about the mind, it's not Hebrew Bible stuff.

Dan Beecher Interesting. And yeah, that would not have been how Jesus would have talked about this stuff, but- I'm also interested in the fact that the author of Mark is writing in the third-person omniscient. Just talking about what's going on in everybody's heart.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Well, and this is something that some folks bring up when it comes to some of the stories of Jesus's trial, because when Jesus is before Pilate, Pilate takes him out, puts him on display, "Hey, everybody, what's going on?" And they say, "Crucify him." Pilate brings him back in, interrogates him, he's alone, and then Jesus immediately goes to his death. So whoever is telling that story, obviously we have to imagine what Pilate would've said to Jesus, but- Right ... but yeah, the narrator is omniscient.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan So they're questioning in their hearts, "Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?" At once, Jesus perceived in his spirit that they were discussing these questions among themselves, and he said to them, "Why do you raise such questions in your hearts? Which is easier? To say to the paralytic, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Stand up and take your mat and walk?' But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins." He said to the paralytic, "I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home." And he stood up and immediately took the mat and went out before all of them, so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, "We have never seen anything like this."

Dan Beecher Well, there you go.

Dan McClellan So quite the powerful parlor trick here of healing the paralyzed man.

Dan Beecher Right. And there's something interesting- A demonstration of being able to, as a demonstration of the authority to forgive sins, which is- Yes ... an interesting reason. His first impulse isn't just like, "Hey, I'll heal you." His first impulse is like, "We'll do this other thing- ... and then I'll use the healing as the proof that I have the authority to do that."

Dan McClellan Yes. It's almost as if the story was carefully crafted- Wait a minute ... to tag these rhetorical bases.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Here's what I- You didn't hear it from me.

Dan Beecher Right. Here's what I think this story does, at least one of the things this story does. We'll get to the forgiving- Okay ... thing, because that's where we're really angled for.

Dan McClellan But- Yeah ...

Dan Beecher if anyone ever claims that they are a Messiah, if you ever run into a David Koresh figure or whatever, dig into his roof, break into his house- Yeah ... and if he's mad at you, that's not him.

Dan McClellan Not the Messiah, not the one. So we've got this question about divine forgiveness. Who can forgive sins but God alone? One of the things that baffles me about this, and this text is appealed to frequently by folks who are trying to make the case that Jesus is God.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And basically, you have to agree that the scribes, is it scribes or who does it say in here?

Dan Beecher Sorry. Yeah, I think it's scribes. You said the word scribes.

Dan McClellan Yeah, some of the scribes. Some of the scribes are sitting there questioning in their hearts. So basically, you have to suppose that the scribes are right, that no one can forgive sins except for God alone. And this is not an incorrect inference to draw from the way the Hebrew Bible talks about the forgiveness of sins. However, I think Jesus's response precludes that understanding of what's going on here, because Jesus doesn't turn around and give them one of these, "What do you think that makes me?" Jesus says, "Eh, wrong. So that you may know you lack information, you don't know something, I am going to drop some knowledge on you." What is that knowledge? That the Son of Man has authority on Earth to forgive sins. In other words, the scribes were wrong. Who can forgive sins but God alone? Jesus says, "Son of Man can forgive sins."

Dan Beecher And Son of Man here is a reference specifically to him himself, right?

Dan McClellan So there's a debate about this. I think Mark is presenting Jesus as the Son of Man. However, those who, Bart Ehrman and others who try to reconstruct how Jesus himself- might have thought about this. Some of them will argue that Jesus did not actually think he was the Son of Man, and this requires taking some of these Son of Man statements as actual words of Jesus, but reinterpreting them as third-person references rather than first-person references.

Dan Beecher Okay. But I- The way this story presents itself, it is very clear that he is saying, "I have this authority."

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher And he's not saying anyone else does. So it's basically- Right ... according to him, at least in this moment, me and Dad.

Dan McClellan Yeah. The guys are saying, "Only God can do this," and Jesus says, "I am God's plus one."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Because the Son of Man has authority on Earth to forgive sins. I just don't see how you can interpret this as anything other than a correction of an error.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And so right off the bat, I don't think it serves as a proof text for the notion that Jesus is God. But there's more to this when it comes to the forgiveness of sins, because this is a question that we see rising up in some other Jewish literature, even some Greco-Roman period Jewish literature. There's an idea that there might be a Dead Sea Scroll fragment that is talking about a priest having authority to forgive sins. But this is a debate that people have been having for a while. Does the Bible say that only God forgives sins, and is there anything else, anywhere else that says anyone else has the authority to forgive sins? Because this is something that is repeatedly attributed to, this is a divine prerogative throughout the Hebrew Bible and most of the New Testament, except for here.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan So we have in Numbers 14, Moses asks God to forgive the people, and God says, "I have pardoned according to your word." We have a bunch of references to God having authority to forgive sins. In fact, in Joshua 24:19, you have Joshua telling the people, "You can't serve God because he's a jealous God, and he will not forgive your sins." The word there is a word that's more commonly translated transgressions, but there's a lot of semantic overlap between the two.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But Joshua says, "He will not forgive your transgressions." And most scholars agree, this is not saying that you're hopeless, God's never going to forgive your sins, but that God is the one who has the authority to do so, and God is jealous about that authority, and God is also pretty sparing with that authority.

Dan Beecher That feels in conflict with what I was taught, which is that anyone who asks for forgiveness earnestly and repents- Mm-hmm ... and doesn't sin anymore gets forgiveness.

Dan McClellan It certainly sounds like that in the way the New Testament represents it, where we forgive those who have sinned against us seven times 70 times, and things like that. It sounds an awful lot like we have the ability to forgive other people's sins.

Dan Beecher Well, no, I'm saying I thought that God forgave our sins. He's not stingy about it. All you have to do is go ahead and- Oh ...

Dan McClellan ask for forgiveness.

Dan Beecher Ask for forgiveness. Then you get it. So it's interesting that the earlier idea was maybe.

Dan McClellan I don't know. We're going to see.

Dan Beecher I doubt it. He doesn't like you very much, so...

Dan McClellan Yeah. It's a mixed bag because the Bible's not univocal, so you've got a lot of different representations of God's perspective on sin, because you have other things where Micah, for instance, is praising God. "Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance?" So God is praised as being pretty liberal with the forgiveness of sins, and elsewhere, God is stingy with the forgiveness of sins. Mm-hmm. But God is mainly the one who is able to forgive sins. At least forgive other people's sins. Now, I was about to say, in human circumstances, we're supposed to forgive others who sin against us. But we can't really forgive the sins of someone against somebody else.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so that's outside of our purview. That's above our pay grade.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And here we get into the question of how God's authority relates to that, and scholars would say that the sins as they are laid out, as they are described in the Bible and within early Jewish literature and things like that, overwhelmingly are represented as violations of God's commands.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So if it's not against God's command, then it's not a sin. And so God is the offended party, is the injured party when it comes to any sin whatsoever, and so it's up to God to do that.

Dan Beecher Yeah, because it's often bothered me, the idea that someone, even if it's God, that someone other than the-- I do something horrible to someone else, and then forgiveness is something that God can grant me. But to my mind, that's not how that transaction works.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher The only person who can grant me forgiveness is the person that I have hurt in some way. And they're under no obligation to do so.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher I think that forgiveness also means different things. Forgiveness, I think oftentimes in these kinds of contexts, in biblical contexts, it's more a sense of forgiveness as in we forgive a debt, not as in- Mm ... an emotional forgiveness. Like I have gotten myself to a place emotionally where I can now let go of the fact that you've done harm to me.

Dan McClellan But it's rather- Mm-hmm ...

Dan Beecher like, okay, you owe me X amount because you did this, and I forgive that debt sort of thing.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And I think that is a metaphor that governs the representation of the moral transgressions. So the word that is used for forgive is release, loosen- Mm ...

Dan Beecher let go.

Dan McClellan Mm. And so I think it's probably related to the idea of that debt. And as you pointed out, as we were outlining what we were going to talk about today in the Lord's Prayer. In Matthew, it says, "Forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors." And then if you go to the Lucan version, the Sermon on the Plain, it says, "Forgive our sins." And so one could interpret Matthew to be talking about fiscal principles.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan I think it's probably more likely that it's being used figuratively to refer to moral debts and things like that.

Dan Beecher All I know is that the first time I looked up the Lord's Prayer, because I wasn't raised saying it. LDS people don't say the Lord's Prayer, but I'd heard it in media, on movies or whatever, and I kind of know it. It's enough in the zeitgeist that I kind of know it.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher So I look it up in Matthew, and I'm like, "And forgive us our debts. Our what?

Dan McClellan Huh?"

Dan Beecher "That doesn't say trespasses.

Dan McClellan What's going on?"

Dan Beecher Yeah. And then I was in a frantic, I'm looking at all of the different translations and whatever, and it all says debts, and I was blown away by that.

Dan McClellan Yeah. There's what the text says, and then there's the discourse about it. And frequently what we internalize and what we remember, and what the level at which the discourse operates is not what's in the text. There are a lot of conspiracy theorists who claim that that's because CERN has been screwing with the fabric of reality and has been changing things. So it is the lion and the lamb- Uh-huh ... because in reality, the Bible never talks about the lion and the lamb. It talks about the wolf and the lamb. But it has become the lion and the lamb in the discourse. And a lot of people are like, "No, NASA and CERN have changed reality and-" Mandela Effect.

Dan Beecher Mandela Effect.

Dan McClellan The Mandela Effect, exactly. So they're like, "I know what I remember." There was a scholar at one point, I can't remember where this was, I don't remember the context, but somebody at some point was talking about when the Pharaoh gave Moses his ring, and I was like, "You're thinking of 'The Prince of Egypt.'" That was an animated movie. That's not in the Bible. That was quite a movie.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan All right. So yeah, I totally lost track of where we were going.

Dan Beecher We were doing forgiveness for a minute there.

Dan McClellan Forgiveness for sins, yeah. But I want to return to this idea of God being this jealous God who will not forgive your transgressions, because there actually is another divine agent of whom the exact same thing is said word for word. And that happens in Exodus 23, when we have the angel. God says, "Look, I'm sending an angel before you to guide you along the way. Don't disobey him. Don't tick him off." Says, "Because he will not forgive your sins." And it's the exact same Hebrew that we find in Joshua 24:19, the purview, the prerogative of the jealous God. And then it says, "Because my name is in him." And so I argue in my book that this seems to be, they're accounting for why the angel's identity gets mixed up with God's identity, which we see with the angel who appears to Moses in the burning bush, and it happens with Hagar, it happens with Abraham, it happens with Gideon, it happens with Manoah and his wife, where stories that were originally about God visiting humanity have the angel written in to kind of muddy the waters.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And this, I argue, is a way to account for how the angel can do what only God is supposed to be able to do. And in the case of Exodus 23, it's that prerogative not to forgive sins that the angel has as a result of God's name being in him. And so I would take this back to Mark 2 and say it's possible, I think it's likely, that the author has in mind an allusion to this notion that, hey, there was a divine agent that was able to have authority over the forgiveness of sins in the Hebrew Bible. The Son of Man is held up as an example of someone who is able to exercise divine prerogatives, and in some instances, because they were endowed with God's name, or have God's name indwelling within them. And so I think that's probably what is underlying the story here rather than- The notion that Jesus is winking at them about being God through this narrative In truth Without actually coming out and saying, "Yeah, don't you get it yet?"

Dan Beecher "I'm the same guy."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher "It's me."

Dan McClellan The Messiah.

Dan Beecher Messario.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher That's fascinating. It's weird that it happened, the whole setup with the paralyzed guy coming in through the roof- Mm-hmm ... seems real strange to me. Since we're setting up something that could've happened any number of other ways. But, who knows? Maybe it's because it actually happened. People digging through your roof, that's a fun story. You're going to be dining out on that for a long time.