Holy Sex Work?

Dan McClellan Well, if you use an, you don't pronounce the H because that's why it's an, because they didn't pronounce the H.

Dan Beecher Don't tell me how to pronounce things. People are in our comment sections telling us how to pronounce things, and frankly, pedantry is the most boring thing in the world.

Dan McClellan Hey, I make half my living off of pedantry, so don't be bad-mouthing pedantry. 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 we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How go things today, Dan?

Dan Beecher They go. They go and they go.

Dan McClellan That's what they're supposed to do.

Dan Beecher We're diving in. We're having fun. We get to talk about sex work today.

Dan McClellan Sex work is work.

Dan Beecher We get to find hidden secret scriptures.

Dan McClellan That's right. Almost forgot about the secret psalm that we're going to do.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Only the Masons and other very clandestine organizations know about this, so- Not even the Mormons have this one.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher No.

Dan McClellan This is super- No.

Dan Beecher Yeah. This one's- ... super double extra secret. They may come for us.

Dan McClellan I don't know.

Dan Beecher QAnon might get us or something.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher I'm not sure who's going to come for us, but we're going to reveal the secrets of the Psalms.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher But first, we got to take issue. And this week on Taking Issue, the issue that we're taking is with cult prostitution, question mark? What are we doing here? What are we talking about? I'm karate chopping the air because I don't know what's going on.

Dan McClellan So, in the recent interview that CNN put out with what's his name, that Doug guy, Doug Wilson.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan The guy who says really stupid stuff just to have all of America go, "What the hell is wrong with you?"

Dan Beecher He was- He's listed by Google as Doug Wilson, theologian. I guess you could call him that. I'd probably call him a pastor.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But, whatever.

Dan McClellan That's what he is. Although he did start a school.

Dan Beecher Well, that's true.

Dan McClellan I think he founded, what do they call it, New Saint Andrew's?

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan Which is just basically rip off Saint Andrew's. We want the clout.

Dan Beecher Yeah. It's one better. It's Saint Andrew's, but newer.

Dan McClellan Plus.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan This one goes to 11.

Dan Beecher Yeah, exactly.

Dan McClellan But he said in this infamous interview, he was talking about punishment for homosexuality.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And he talked about how two kings, Asa and Jehoshaphat, ran the homosexuals out of ancient Israel. And the point he was making was that there's a range of potential punishments for homosexuality that could be reinstated that fall short of the death penalty.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And he brought up Asa and Jehoshaphat, and I saw this and was like, "That never happened." Whatever he's talking about, it wasn't that.

Dan Beecher And- He's gotten something wrong.

Dan McClellan Yes. And all I could think of was that he was confusing a handful of passages in I Kings and in II Kings, and I think it's Genesis and Deuteronomy or something like that as well. I assumed that he was confusing those passages for references to homosexuals, and the reason is probably because he was going off the King James Version, because we have in I Kings 15:12, there's a reference to, we've got some reforms that are taking place.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And I Kings 15:12, this is the King James Version. Content warning, going to be using some pejoratives.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan Some homophobic terminology.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan I Kings 15:12 says, "And he took away the Sodomites out of the land and removed all the idols that his fathers had made."

Dan Beecher Wow.

Dan McClellan And so I was like, well, okay, it sounds like he's looking at this passage, and he thinks this is talking about just homosexuals in general.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And in addition to the fact that it would only be talking about males, not females, because female same-sex intercourse is never once mentioned anywhere in the entire Hebrew Bible.

Dan Beecher But- Not addressed.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher No.

Dan McClellan But this is also a mistranslation. And I looked up the translations that came before it. As fans of this show hopefully have had drilled into them enough, the King James Version is not an original translation. It is just a revision of earlier translations.

Dan Beecher And the- How dare you.

Dan McClellan Sorry, that sacred cow has been slaughtered long ago. I'm pretty sure- There's no meat on those bones anymore.

Dan Beecher Listen, I've heard from some evangelicals here in these United States. I'm pretty sure that the King James Version is actually the original version. Not a translation, just the original. It was written by God directly into- Yeah ... ye olde English.

Dan McClellan I saw a pastor one time stand up, and he was being tongue in cheek, but everybody took him to be literal and said he uses the King James Version to correct the Greek. And I was like, "You don't know Greek." Nobody who knows Greek- likes the King James Version.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But anyway, it's also a mistranslation. In the earlier translations, I couldn't understand the Bishop's Bible because it said the sewes, S-E-W-E-S.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan And I was like, "I do not know that word." Yeah, that's- And I looked it up, and it's evidently a 1500s word for a brothel.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan So, yeah. And then earlier passages referred to houses of ill repute or something like that.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan But the word in Hebrew there is hakdeshim, which that's the masculine plural form of this noun, and the feminine form is kedeshah. And there are a handful of passages that have either the masculine or the feminine. Genesis 38:21 and 38:22, and this is Judah and Tamar. Deuteronomy 23:18, 1 Kings 14:24, 15:12, 22:47, 2 Kings 23:7, and then we got once in Hosea 4:14, and once in Job 36:14. But this has led to the notion of cultic sex work in the Hebrew Bible.

Dan Beecher Okay. So we're not talking about homosexuals, we're talking about, or at least you're saying that- The King James Version thinks it is, and down the road a piece, we'll talk- Uh-huh ...

Dan McClellan about how this connection is made, but also- Okay ... how that connection should be obliterated.

Dan Beecher But- Oh, interesting ... yeah, we're going to start with- Spoiler alert. You just gave away the game. All right. That's fine.

Dan McClellan It's a striptease. You got to let them know what's coming.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And so these passages led to this idea that, okay, so one of the things that was going on in the temple, that was one of the things that Hezekiah and Josiah and these others all got rid of as part of their reforms, was cultic sex work.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan And, I think the main clue about this is, well, we can start in Genesis 38:21 and 22. We have discussed the events of Judah and Tamar, and how- Yes ... she pulled one over on him, and- Yes.

Dan Beecher He was her father-in-law?

Dan McClellan Father-in-law.

Dan Beecher And then her husband died.

Dan McClellan Husband died.

Dan Beecher Tell me if I'm getting all this right.

Dan McClellan Uh-huh.

Dan Beecher And then he was supposed to take care of her, but he wasn't doing it.

Dan McClellan And so she pulled the- He was supposed to give her his next son.

Dan Beecher Oh, right.

Dan McClellan And he was like, "You're the Black Widow. I'm holding off for a bit." And then she was like, "Oh, well, we'll get this figured out."

Dan Beecher Yeah. But her scheme is that she pretends to be a prostitute, and he goes ahead and pays. She veils herself so that he doesn't know who it is.

Dan McClellan He patronizes her establishment.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher He partakes of her wares.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher And in exchange, there's a whole thing about he gives her his belt and- Yeah.

Dan McClellan He's like, "I don't got the cash on me- ... but you can hold onto this. Here's collateral."

Dan Beecher Cash in the form of a goat, if I'm not mistaken.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Anyway, so she- You take goats?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So- So- ...

Dan Beecher she pretended to be a sex worker. That's probably the only salient part to what we're talking about.

Dan McClellan Yes. And then he comes back, and he can't find her.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And he's like, "Hey, where is the kedeshah that was here?" And they say, "No, there's no kedeshah here." And earlier, the word that had been used was zonah, which is female sex worker.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Usually it gets translated more vulgarly than that.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm. But- Like hoe? Is that what they do?

Dan McClellan No.

Dan Beecher And lo, she went unto him as an hoe. I just want that to be in one translation. Can we just do that?

Dan McClellan An hoe. Okay, so- Well, if you use an, you don't pronounce the H, because that's why it's an, because they didn't pronounce the H.

Dan Beecher Don't tell me how to pronounce things. People are in our comment sections telling us- ... how to pronounce things, and frankly, pedantry is the most boring thing in the world. Let's not worry about it.

Dan McClellan If you understand what we're saying, then- Hey, I make half my living off of pedantry, so- ... don't be bad-mouthing pedantry.

Dan Beecher All right. Go on.

Dan McClellan So there's this parallelism. It sounds like he's using kedeshah as a synonym for a sex worker.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan So, then we move on to Deuteronomy 23, and it says, "None of the daughters of Israel shall serve in," or sorry, "They will not be kedeshah, and then there will be no kadesh," or male, "Among the sons of Israel." And it's not exactly clear what's going on here, but elsewhere, right around here, you have a statement about not bringing the price of a dog into the temple, which is right next to a reference to a zonah. And so there's just a lot of proximity here- ... to the concept of sex work. But kedeshah and kadesh are based on a word kadosh or kodesh, which means to be holy, and- Okay ... it has something to do with the temple. And so we've got some kind of conceptual proximity to the field of sex work.

Dan Beecher Uh-huh.

Dan McClellan And then we also have an etymological foundation in reference to holiness and the temple. So, hmm, what's going on here? And there- for a long time was this notion that there was sacred sex work going on in the temples. You would go and you would make your sacrifices, and then you'd just be like, "Oh, I'm going to go- Yeah ... I'm going to go in the- Take a load off ...

Dan Beecher other room, if you will.

Dan McClellan Yes. Now, you would have females and males, and the assumption is just that if you have males there, it's probably for other males. So they would've been there to be in the role of the receptive partner.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So, that's probably where negative connotations would have become associated with that concept. And this is an assumption. There's no hard evidence- Right ... that this took place, but you can see how it makes sense to arrive at this conclusion.

Dan Beecher Yes. Although, I can also see that you, in your videos, frequently yell at people about the etymological fallacy.

Dan McClellan Yes. The etymological fallacy is a big one. But we've had a bunch of scholars since the '90s just shaking their fists at other scholars because there's just no evidence that this notion of cult sex work or sacred sex work or anything like that took place. And I think the best discussion, there was a book published in 2018 by Phyllis Bird. The title was "Harlot or Holy Woman?"

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan A study of Hebrew qedesha, and back in the '90s, she published a paper called "The End of the Male Cult Prostitute: A Literary, Historical, and Sociological Analysis of Hebrew Qadesha/Qedeshim." And she takes scholars to task for this and uses linguistic evidence, uses the archaeological evidence, uses the literary evidence, uses everything that she can marshal to show that the idea here is somewhere between either it just refers to a regular old sex worker, not a sacred one- Yeah ... or it refers to some kind of cult personnel that was not a priest, and it was unrelated to sex work. And so we might have different senses in different contexts.

Dan Beecher Okay. I'm interested in this because NRSVUE, you gave me- NRSV.

Dan McClellan NRS...

Dan Beecher Look, arrange the letters how you need to- Okay.

Dan McClellan Yeah ...

Dan Beecher to make it make sense. You gave me several of these scriptures.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher And I'm looking at 1 Kings 15.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Asa reigns over Judah, and verse 12 that you said earlier, and you were doing the King James Version.

Dan McClellan Right. Which says- I avoided the NRSVUE because that would've given- Right ... away the whole striptease.

Dan Beecher Right. But let's get to it. King James said what? Do you remember what King James said on that?

Dan McClellan "He took away the Sodomites out of the land."

Dan Beecher Right. Now, NRSVUE, are we ready for this?

Dan McClellan Is this- Yeah.

Dan Beecher I don't mean to...

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So NRSVUE- Yeah.

Dan McClellan It's- ...

Dan Beecher says, "He put away the illicit priests out of the land."

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Illicit priests. Illicit priests. So this is based on- That does sound like sex work priests. What else could an illicit priest be?

Dan McClellan This is the priest from Fleabag, right?

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan No. Illicit here doesn't necessarily mean naughty. It means a priest who's not authorized, a priest who's not one of the right priests.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan He's not from the Levitical priesthood. He's not from the right line. But I think they may have used illicit in order to try to split the difference a little bit.

Dan Beecher Right. It does sound like they're walking a line.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher They're purposefully not making a choice on that.

Dan McClellan But there are those who will argue that this cultic personnel, whatever their functionality, they weren't priests. They may have had to do with circumcision. They may have had to do with things dealing with menstruation. We know it takes place in some other societies. Maybe before a woman got married, she went to the temple to have her hymen intentionally broken.

Dan Beecher Inspected?

Dan McClellan Oh.

Dan Beecher Broken.

Dan McClellan Oh. The idea being, let's make it so there's not a mess, and you're not making your husband uncomfortable. So there are a variety of things that could bump up against the conceptual semantic field of sex work that are not actually sex work- Mm ... that this cultic personnel could've been responsible for. We're not sure, but what most scholars these days will say is, whatever it is, cultic sex worker, probably not it.

Dan Beecher Why do you have to ruin the fun parts? Well, in- Because I've got to say, the idea of the temple gets a lot more interesting- ... if it does have official cultic sex work- Yeah.

Dan McClellan Well- ...

Dan Beecher going on ...

Dan McClellan yeah. And that raises all kinds of issues. The main reason I was annoyed about Master Wilson, Doug- Mm ... hey, Doug, bringing this up, that probably doesn't mean anything outside of Utah.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan What if I said, "Hello, Douglas"? Hopefully that means something outside of Utah. But he's trying to say this refers to all homosexuals. Even if we understand it as cultic sex worker- It's only referring to sex workers.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Which would actually lend credence to the argument that a lot of people make, that when the Hebrew Bible does condemn same-sex intercourse, it's condemning sex work.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Not just same-sex intercourse in and of itself, or it's condemning abusive or exploitative, or other types of male same-sex intercourse. So, Doug, by appealing blithely to a text that he very clearly doesn't understand... By the way, he has no relevant training or expertise. He has a bachelor's and a master's in philosophy, and you know what that gets you.

Dan Beecher Yes. A job as a river rafting tour guide.

Dan McClellan But, he's making a case against the foundation of his bigotry, if he's going to appeal to the Bible for that bigotry.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So, his argument is garbage, but also, at the same time, I think people should be aware that you're going to hear about cultic sex workers an awful lot if you are around arguments about the Bible- Mm ... and particularly human sexuality and homosexuality and all that kind of stuff. But the notion that when the teenagers, they were like, "He looks like he might be meant to be one of the kedeshim," or something like that. The notion that they had these men that were just in the temple that were there for that, doesn't really fit the data. And so, there probably was not any cultic sex work going on in ancient Israel. And whatever Asa and Jehoshaphat, whoever they were running out of Israel, and even if it is sex workers, it's not clear that it's same-sex sex workers.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It's certainly not the case for the women, because it was Judah who patronized what he labeled a kedeshah, and that would not be same sex. So, it's not even clear that it's homosexual sex work. It's probably either just regular old sex work, or it has something to do with the non-illicit functionality of the temple. But- Yeah.

Dan Beecher Sorry. I'm just trying to get an idea of, is the female version of this treated significantly differently throughout the Bible as the kedeshim? Did I do that right?

Dan McClellan Hosea refers to the kedeshot, and that is used in parallel to the zonot.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So, here, I'll read that passage in the NRSVUE. "I will not punish your daughters when they prostitute themselves, nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery, for the men themselves go aside with prostitutes and with the kedeshot they sacrifice." Okay, so the NRSV use says, "And sacrifice with female attendants." So, it's not clear exactly what's being condemned here. Is it because they're offering sacrifices with the help of a woman being the one who is engaged in the cultic activity? Are they like, "For shame, they had a woman offering a sacrifice."

Dan Beecher Sorry, what does the suffix "-ot" mean?

Dan McClellan That's the plural. That's the female- The feminine plural ...

Dan Beecher female plural.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Kedeshot.

Dan Beecher Sorry.

Dan McClellan Okay. You said, "Oh," like there was something more significant than just the feminine plural.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So, they're sacrificing with the kedeshot.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So there, the context is an actual cultic activity, sacrifice.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So, this, while it's parallel to zonot, which is the feminine plural of zona, it's not suggestive that they are there to do... And it's not like they come out of the room and it's like, "Let's go do a sacrifice together.

Dan Beecher Yeah."

Dan McClellan And like this. That's a bizarre reconstruction of what was going on in the temple. But I think you have kedeshah occurs in Genesis, three times in Genesis 38, occurs in Deuteronomy 23:18, and then it's masculine the rest of the time up until Hosea 4:14.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So yeah. We don't have a ton of context to be able to gain a lot of contextual purchase on what exactly is going on here, which is why a lot of people will retreat to references in Akkadian literature or in Ugaritic literature, where the resonance with sex work is even less prominent, less clear.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan So yeah. There's not a good case to make that this is a reference to cultic sex workers. Could be a reference to regular sex workers. I don't think there's a decent case to make that when it's referring to males, that is a reference to same-sex sex workers, but that's a possibility, or it could just be a reference to cultic personnel. Could be different from one context to the other.

Dan Beecher Yeah. None of this precludes the possibility of it meaning different things in different contexts.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher Same words frequently do that.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So, that's tricky. This is all very tricky, Dan. Well- It's not easy to figure out.

Dan McClellan That's what we do here.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan We muddy the waters, and then we scamper away.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So, giggling. The giggling- Yeah ... is important. It's not like- Cultic.

Dan Beecher And when we use the word cultic, we should probably figure out what we mean by that. Just sort of to do with ceremonial/religious- Yeah. So- Whatever, I don't know ...

Dan McClellan the word cult has overwhelmingly, and for the overwhelming majority of the existence of the word, it has referred to the ceremonial features or aspects of religious life.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So every time people hear me say the word cult, they imagine I'm using it in the Jim Jones sense.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And no, I'm using it in the, every religion has a cultic dimension. Not every religion, but the main religions that we talk about on this channel, religions associated with the Bible. Whether that's prayer, incense, sacrifice, those things are all that religion's cult.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And I mentioned earlier, we need to do a show on cult with some specialists who are getting quite annoyed with the use of this word recently. But yeah, when we are talking about a cultic something, we're talking about some kind of religious activity that has to do with ceremonial worship practice- Right ... related stuff.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So, yeah.

Dan Beecher Okay. Sorry, but I derailed something. Let me see if I can get us back on track. I don't remember what we were talking about. Oh, so what I was going to say is, there are historical and ancient precedents for cultic sex work, or cultic sex, at least.

Dan McClellan We don't really have clear evidence for it.

Dan Beecher Like there's e- I'm saying just like, it may not be in this context, but like ancient Greece, right?

Dan McClellan Yes?

Dan Beecher Question mark.

Dan McClellan No, in all of ancient West Asia, the notion of cultic sex work is widely just assumed. There's not a lot of good evidence for the conclusion, whether it's Greece or Rome. Now, you have an awful lot of just run-of-the-mill sex work going on in all these places.

Dan Beecher Sure. Of course.

Dan McClellan And frequently, they are attached to institutions.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so I don't know that they were... A lot of this has to do with the assumption that fertility cults included sex work. And that's something for which we do not have clear evidence because those kinds of cults, people weren't out there writing texts about, "Here's all the things that happened in my mystery religion today."

Dan Beecher Uh-huh.

Dan McClellan Because they're a mystery religion. You're not supposed to talk about them. That's the first- Right ... rule of mystery religions. You don't talk about mystery religions. So, this is why people will talk an awful lot about... And now I've completely forgotten the dude's name. I have Osiris in my head and it's- Oh ... and it's not Osiris. But there's a tauroctony. The guy kills a bull- Mm ... as part of this, and there were sacred meals and things like that, and it had to do with- Yeah ... the sun, and we don't really know because they didn't leave any texts explaining what was going on and what their thinking was. And without texts, we're like, "Well, could be this."

Dan Beecher But- Everybody's like, "I mean, it'd be more fun if there was sex involved."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher "Let's just chuck it in there."

Dan McClellan I just think, I don't- So and so's been sleeping on the couch for too long, and- ... he's just like, "Man, you say everything is about sex."

Dan Beecher So, but no, if you go- I will say this, I have watched plenty of cult in the bad way documentaries.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm. And- Yeah, usually sex is involved.

Dan Beecher Sex gets involved.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Let's just get real- Yes ...

Dan McClellan about it.

Dan Beecher Especially in the early days of any new religion, the religious leader, unless it happens to be a lady person, which is more rare than it ought to be.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher And sometimes when it happens to be a lady person, and it ends up being about getting that leader some strange.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher So.

Dan McClellan It veers into that quite quickly.

Dan Beecher Pretty quickly.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Pretty quickly, yeah.

Dan McClellan But, yeah, we just don't have a ton of evidence for temples hosting or- Right ... having their own sex work industries, so to speak.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And if you go to an archeological dig and they find something, and it's not immediately clear what it is, the next thing they'll do is go, "Okay, probably cultic."

Dan Beecher Uh-huh.

Dan McClellan If you look, Gary Larson's Far Side, tools for cows.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan One of the things is clearly a saw, and Gary Larson knows he screwed up by making one of the things look like it could be identified. But all the other stuff, we find that kind of crap in archeological digs, and they all stand around and go, "Probably cultic."

Dan Beecher This was probably used- Eh ... as a ceremonial something.

Dan McClellan Yeah, ceremonial.

Dan Beecher And probably sex. It's probably a ceremonial dildo or...

Dan McClellan Oh, at some point we need to do a segment- ... on the dildo in Ezekiel.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So- Yeah, we do.

Dan Beecher What?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher You guys, remind us to do a thing about the Ezekiel dildo. That's a- Yeah ... that's a good one. All right.

Dan McClellan But- Well- Yeah. So- As far as we can tell, no cultic sex workers in the Bible, so sorry, Doug.

Dan Beecher But- I'll try to mask my own disappointment. Doug's disappointed for an entirely different reason. Doug's disappointed on the exact opposite side of the spectrum from my own disappointment. But yes, let's not let Brother Wilson's bad misinformation get out there too much.

Dan McClellan Take away from how stupid the bigotry he's trying to pawn off is.

Dan Beecher Yeah. It's so bad.

Dan McClellan Alrighty.

Dan Beecher Well, let us then move on to our next thing, which is a chapter and verse. In this week's chapter and verse, everybody open your Bibles right now and go to Psalm 151, and as you start flipping through, we're going to giggle to ourselves because you're not going to find it.

Dan McClellan Well, hang on.

Dan Beecher Uh-oh, wait a minute. I may have spoken too soon.

Dan McClellan I'm curious if the SBL Study Bible has Psalm 151 because it has the Apocrypha.

Dan Beecher Yeah, okay.

Dan McClellan But if it is included, it seems to me like it would be in a different section, but I'm just scrolling.

Dan Beecher I'm looking in my trusty Gideon Bible.

Dan McClellan Nope. It's not in the SBL Study Bible.

Dan Beecher And it's not, yeah. The King James ends in 150.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So what are we even talking about, Dan? There's no 151.

Dan McClellan Oh, no, wait, there it is.

Dan Beecher Ah.

Dan McClellan Page 1624. It is in the Apocrypha section.

Dan Beecher Ah, okay.

Dan McClellan So, hmm.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan Sneaky.

Dan Beecher Well, Psalm- Sneaky. It's a sneaky psalm.

Dan McClellan You underestimate the sneakiness. That is good old John Turturro.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher That one I remember.

Dan McClellan You remember that one?

Dan Beecher All right.

Dan McClellan Psalm 151 is a psalm that is included in the Septuagint, and- Okay ... it is not included in the Masoretic Text. Now, when I mentioned this to you, I was like, "Yeah, it was written in Greek." Wait a minute, holy crap. No, it wasn't. It was actually written in Hebrew.

Dan Beecher In the Septuagint it was in Greek.

Dan McClellan Yes. So, we've known about it for a long time because the Septuagint was in circulation before Jesus was even born.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so, it is in some translations of the Vulgate and stuff like that. But Psalm 151 claims to be an autobiographical account written by David.

Dan Beecher Yeah. It's written in first person- Yes ... in the character of David, yeah.

Dan McClellan Yes. So, I'll go ahead and read the whole thing- Ooh ... and then we can get into the nitty-gritty. This psalm, and this is a prologue. There's a part of it that introduces it and says, "This psalm is ascribed to David as his own composition," so autobiographical, "after he had fought in single combat with Goliath."

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan So this is, yes, post-killing. "I was small among my brothers and the youngest in my father's house. I tended my father's sheep. My hands made a harp, my fingers fashioned a lyre. And who will tell my Lord? The Lord himself, it is he who hears. It is he who sent his messenger and took me from my father's sheep and anointed me with his anointing oil. My brothers were handsome and tall, but the Lord was not pleased with them. I went out to meet the foreigner, and he cursed me by his idols. But I drew his own sword, I beheaded him, and removed disgrace from the people of Israel." So, this psalm was probably composed after a tradition developed that the psalms were written by David, and somebody was like, "We need a first-person 'I'm David, here's what I did' kind of psalm."

Dan Beecher And- Could it not have been composed-- Could it not have been the genesis of the idea that David wrote the psalms? No, because we have- I think I just broke scholarly ground here. I think I just blew the doors off this thing.

Dan McClellan Well, there are a bunch of psalms that say, "Mizmor l'David," which means psalm to David, belonging to David, of David, something like that. The exact sense of l'David is unclear. It's open to interpretation. So no, a lot of the psalms lend to this idea that David was either the possessor, the intended audience for, or the author of the psalms. And so, I think this is just in those waters without necessarily being the origin of it. But for a long time, nobody had any evidence of any Hebrew version of this psalm. We had it in the Peshitta, which was a translation into Aramaic- Hmm ... the earliest versions of which date to shortly after the New Testament. So that's a Semitic language, but no Hebrew. And so, like 100 years ago, there's a quote from a scholar, says, "There's no evidence that Psalm 151 ever existed in Hebrew." Done and dusted, right? Until we discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls and found, guess what? Not only a version of Psalm 151 in Hebrew, but two separate psalms, which were probably the origin of the single Psalm 151.

Dan Beecher Dun, dun, dun.

Dan McClellan Dun, dun, dun. So they exist- 151A and 151B.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan And- We have 151A is in Hebrew. This was discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls. It's a part of the Great Isaiah Scroll, 11Q5 or 11Q Psalms is another way to refer to it. But this is just a bunch of columns of Psalms, one after the other, and they're grouped together, but they're not arranged exactly as we find in the Masoretic Text, which lends credence to the theory that the arrangement of the Psalms is actually pretty late, is actually something that occurred quite late in the life of these texts. So 151A has pretty much all the seven verses that we talked about.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But, 151B, or actually no, 151B has the reference to Goliath. 151A doesn't.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan We have, "The mountains cannot witness to God, the hills cannot proclaim Him, but the trees have cherished my words, the flocks my deeds. Who can proclaim? Who can announce? Who can declare the Lord's deeds? God has seen everything. God has heard everything. God has listened. God sent his prophet to anoint me, Samuel, to make me great. My brothers went out to meet him, handsome in form and appearance. Their stature tall, their hair beautiful, but the Lord God did not choose them. Instead, He sent me, or instead He sent and took me from following the flock, anointed me. God made me leader for His people, ruler of the children of His covenant." And then 151B is where he says, "I went out to attack the Philistine who cursed me by his idols. And I cut off his head, and so I removed the shame from the Israelites." And so it looks like the Greek version is kind of folding the two together.

Dan Beecher Right. Is there a possibility, because look, we've talked about David, we've talked about the fact that there was another guy who also slew Goliath.

Dan McClellan Elhanan.

Dan Beecher Yes. And, so now I'm wondering if 151B and the harmonizing of the two for the Greek, if that actually arises as a- As an apologetic?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher As a sort of like, "We got to get this Goliath." The original David story didn't include the Goliath thing, and when they decided to attribute the Goliath thing to David, they went back and sort of retrofitted the Psalm with a little bit of Goliath action just to spice it up.

Dan McClellan Well, I think the attribution of Goliath's killing to David is much earlier than this Psalm.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan But you do have the tension. Because 1 and 2 Samuel probably were not, it's not like they wrote 1 and 2 Samuel from beginning to end and then were like, "Whoo. That was a lot of work. Now we have the whole thing. Now it all gets published at once." Those two books, which anciently were one book, probably would've circulated as independent stories first, and so it's probably not until the collation of the Books of Samuel, whenever that happened, that people were suddenly like, "Well, wait a minute. We got 1 Samuel 17 over here. We got 2 Samuel 19 over here. What's the deal with that?" And that's probably around the time that Chronicles was looking at this and was like, "Change that word to lachmi, brother of Goliath."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And it's probably around that time that Psalm 151 was composed, or at least these constituent parts. So yeah, I imagine that it could have had something to do with trying to clarify that issue, but it certainly wasn't something that goes all the way back to the original- Okay ... "Let's say David did it." That's centuries earlier, so yeah.

Dan Beecher All right. It's very interesting. One of the funny things about this is that as I read it, it offers very little in the way of life. It doesn't elucidate anything.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It doesn't make any claims that aren't made elsewhere in the Bible. It's not tremendously useful.

Dan McClellan Well, and it also, oddly, it's kind of thin on the praise.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Because you have the Lord hears stuff, but for the most part it's like, "And then I did this, and then I did that, and then God did this, and then I did that."

Dan Beecher And so it's- "My brothers were tall and handsome, but I still got it, so ha ha on them."

Dan McClellan Yeah. And I'm looking for the word for, yeah, the foreigner. Alephile, I think, is what we have in the, I think the Greek says alephile, which has been interpreted as foreigner, but is used in reference to Philistines.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan But yeah, I think it just meant foreigner, but that's what the Greek has. I don't have the Hebrew. I don't have the Dead Sea Scroll fragment in front of me, but I suppose I could pull it up.

Dan Beecher Call Kip. Let's get him on the line here.

Dan McClellan Not so that we can see the, but so that you can actually have a physical fragment in front of you, is what I'm saying. I don't think he carries them on him.

Dan Beecher You don't think he's got one in his wallet? Just a little Dead Sea Scroll bit.

Dan McClellan "Hey, buddy.

Dan Beecher You want to see something cool?" Whips it out on his Tinder dates just to show off.

Dan McClellan Yeah, 11Q Psalms a. Okay, there is the Psalms scroll. It would take a while for me to dig through here to find the Hebrew of this particular one, but it probably says Philistine because Aleph is something that was pretty typical of the Greek- Okay ... rather than Hebrew. But, yeah, when we were talking about this, you said, "Secret Psalm," and I immediately, because it's David talking about himself, I was like- Right ... "I heard there was a secret Psalm that David wrote," and there the rhyming goes off.

Dan Beecher And it pleased his mom. It pleased his mom. Yeah, there you go.

Dan McClellan But you don't really care for- For scriptures, do you?

Dan Beecher ...

Dan McClellan scripture anyway.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It goes like this, "The harp, the lyre."

Dan Beecher The harp and lyre thing, in mine it's translated, "My hands made a musical instrument. My fingers strung up a lap harp."

Dan McClellan A lap harp.

Dan Beecher Or strung a lap harp.

Dan McClellan Well, musical instrument, man, that's punting if ever- Right ... anybody was.

Dan Beecher Take a stand, man. Make a- Yeah.

Dan McClellan Stand for something, man.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan You're looking at that like it's some kind of musical instrument, but- Oh, on this other one, on the translation of 151A, the Hebrew- Mm-hmm ...

Dan Beecher it actually says, "My hands made a flute, my fingers a lyre." So that's interesting.

Dan McClellan Who knows?

Dan Beecher You're the one that can translate these things, but I just like that he's a very musical fellow, this David.

Dan McClellan Yeah. That's the rumor.

Dan Beecher And apparently he made his own instruments, which maybe that's impressive, too.

Dan McClellan I don't know. I think that's probably also legendary.

Dan Beecher You don't think that he was actually a luthier, our David?

Dan McClellan I don't think so. Certainly not on par with your Martin or your Les Paul or- Right ... or anything like that. I exclusively play Martin, by the way, just so- Oh, okay ... that's what that was sitting against my wall right now for those in the- Sitting behind you ... the video. But I am awful, so don't ask me to play anything.

Dan Beecher Well, then it's good that you picked an exclusive maker of your instruments because- Yes.

Dan McClellan It's funny that the only two people in the Bible, or at least in Christian tradition, who are known for being these cool musicians are David and Satan.

Dan Beecher Wait, what did Satan play? Now- Why don't I know this?

Dan McClellan Now, this is just part of Christian tradition. It's not actually real.

Dan Beecher Oh. Oh, it's not in the Bible?

Dan McClellan No, it's not. But, so in Ezekiel 28, we have the proclamation against the King of Tyre, and this is where we have God says, "You compare your mind with the mind of a god. Therefore, I will bring strangers against you," blah, blah, blah. "Mortal, raise a lamentation over the King of Tyre and say to him, 'Thus says the Lord God, you were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God. Every precious stone was your covering.'" And then lists precious stones after precious stone. So, maybe the guy who did your translation would be like, "This kind of precious stone, and then a different kind of precious stone." And then there- Emerald, and then there's...

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And then there's one part where I think the NRSVUE renders it more clearly. It talks about, yeah, "Worked in gold were your settings and your engravings." Now, that's using some unusual Hebrew words, but traditionally that was understood to refer to musical instruments.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan In fact, if you give me just a second, I want to pull up and see what the King James has to say. Silly King James.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan Verse 13, "The workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created." And then it goes on to say, "Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire." "Thou wast perfect." And it goes on like this.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Now, this is a very unique Eden tradition that is using the King of Tyre. The text is constantly calling the King of Tyre mortal.

Dan Beecher "Mortal.

Dan McClellan You, mortal."

Dan Beecher The contrast.

Dan McClellan "I'm God. You, mortal."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And then it's talking about Eden and talking about the King of Tyre as if the King of Tyre was Adam, since Adam means human, mortal. But it gets misinterpreted as a reference to Lucifer because there's a later translation that understands Lucifer as an angel, and so when it says, "Thou art the anointed cherub," obviously that's got to be Lucifer. He's the only other one who was in the Garden of Eden, even though at this time period, Lucifer or Satan had nothing to do with the Garden of Eden. But it talks about his musical prowess, and then there are some other later traditions that have him being this super sexy angel who was the prettiest and the most talented and everything. So, you will hear that a lot, that Lucifer- Interesting ... was this awesome musician, like the angel of music. And now, I don't even know if I'm allowed to sing "Angel of Music" or if we'll get in trouble for that, so I'll just- Yeah. And nobody wants to hear me sing, so. We'll skip over it.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Well, that's interesting.

Dan McClellan It's a mess.

Dan Beecher That's a fun little side note. The music of the Bible.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Apparently not much.

Dan McClellan Well, the Psalms are quite musical, and although the ancient Hebrew, the musicality was enjoyed for different reasons. I found this out one time I was in Athens, and I went to a Bible store. I forget what it was. It was some Bible society. Because I wanted to check and see what kinds of versions of the Bible they had, and I picked up a translation of the Septuagint. Now, it was a translation from ancient Greek to modern Greek.

Dan Beecher Interesting. But it was all the Septuagint, and the- Did it do a side by side?

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Oh, wow.

Dan McClellan And then the Orthodox Church uses the Septuagint, Greek Orthodox.

Dan Beecher Sure.

Dan McClellan And so they have Psalm 151 in there. So this is a part of the liturgy and part of scripture for a number of groups around the world, Christian groups, particularly Orthodox Christian groups or any that descend from the tradition of the Septuagint. And so there are those who treat this as scripture. So, Psalm 151 should not be dismissed offhand, and particularly because we have two versions, the original two elements of it preserved among the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Dan Beecher And 151, so it's placed in the Bibles that include it- Mm-hmm ... specifically the Orthodox Bibles that you're referencing.

Dan McClellan And the Slavonic.

Dan Beecher Is it placed at the very end of the Psalms? Is it the last Psalm?

Dan McClellan Yes, it is the last Psalm.

Dan Beecher That's weird. It doesn't feel like a last Psalm.

Dan McClellan No, it's not.

Dan Beecher It feels like the beginning of something.

Dan McClellan Yeah, you don't tie off the whole Book of Psalms with, "And then I cut his head off."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan See you.

Dan Beecher Yeah, it feels like the opening gambit of an origin story or something.