Is the King James Bible Crap?

Dan McClellan Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan And this is Data Over Dogma, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things on this fine, what is it, 69-degree day at the moment? Oh, don't do that to-- I want- I've got to bring up how nice it is outside. You don't want to hear that?

Dan Beecher Well, you and I were just talking on the after party, over on our Patreon page, about golfing and just being outside. Suddenly I got the itch. I want to be out there, but instead, I'm locking in and we're going to do a show for the people. Today, we're going to be doing a twisted scripture. And the scripture that got twisted, don't get it twisted, is the KJV.

Dan McClellan Yeah, so the whole Bible.

Dan Beecher The Bible.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But a specific version. We'll get to why that specific version is its own form of twisted. So let's dive right in to Twisted Scripture. So, the KJV. There are still lots of people out there who believe that it is the only English version- Yes ... that anyone should be looking at for anything. It is the inspired and true word of God, every bit of it inerrant in every way.

Dan McClellan Amen.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan The degree of KJV onlyism out there, it puts Poe's Law to the test- ... time after time, after time, because I'm like, "You cannot possibly be serious." For instance, pastors who will insist that they will use the King James Version to correct the Greek.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And I'm like, "No, you can't be serious." But yeah.

Dan Beecher Wait. You know what? It takes a bold move to correct source material with the thing that came after.

Dan McClellan Yeah. With the target translation.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But yeah, there's a large degree of that, but the King James Version, while it remains, it is one of the most popular translations. I think it still may be the best-selling translation out there.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan It is not the most read translation out there.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan So it is kind of more of an icon, than an actual translation that people like to read, because it's a slog. I think the NIV might be the most read translation out there, but it is an influential translation, so much so that Robert Alter recently published his own translation of the Hebrew Bible, and along with it, he published somewhat of a companion volume called "The Art of Bible Translation."

Dan Beecher Oh, yeah.

Dan McClellan And he talked about how all Bible translations into English these days operate in the shadow of the King James Version, and so you might as well. You need to lean into that, otherwise you're just spitting into the wind.

Dan Beecher Now, we've been saying the phrase King James Version, but- Yes ... can I correct us a little bit?

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Because when it first was released, it was, "The Holy Bible containing the Old Testament and the New, newly translated out of the original tongues and with former translations diligently compared and revised by His Majesty's Special Commandment."

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher That was the original title. Why don't we go back to that?

Dan McClellan It's a little too wordy.

Dan Beecher Instead of the KJV, it's- Yes ...

Dan McClellan THBCOTATNNT...

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And it's also not entirely accurate- ... because the degree to which it is a new translation is very small. It is a conservative revision of the Bishop's Bible.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Specifically, 1602 edition of the Bishop's Bible. In fact, they got several copies of the Bishop's Bible and sent them to the translators, and they literally scratched words out and wrote the replacements in the margins.

Dan Beecher Oh, wow.

Dan McClellan And then they were collected, and they had folks who were the editors, who would basically just transcribe the resulting cobbled-together translation. And there are scholars who have estimated the New Testament of the King James Version, and we can see how close it is to the Bishop's Bible. It's incredibly close to the Bishop's Bible, but it's even incredibly close to Tyndale's translation of the New Testament, which is several versions removed from the Bishop's Bible. They estimated 84% of the New Testament in the King James Version is word for word Tyndale's translation of the New Testament.

Dan Beecher Oh, wow. I did not realize that. And about 70- This is why it is the KJV and not the KJT.

Dan McClellan The titles are pretty... There's not a really strict set of rules for titles, but some people call it the KJB.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan The King James Bible.

Dan Beecher Oh, sure.

Dan McClellan And that way you just sidestep the claim that it's its own translation.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But yeah, it's really just a revision of the Bishop's Bible.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And so a lot of the things that we're going to talk about today as squirrely translations have actually existed for a century before the King James Version was ever translated.

Dan Beecher Sure.

Dan McClellan So it's not like the King James Version introduced all of these things, but certainly it perpetuated, and in the history since the publication of the King James Bible, it has been responsible for making sure those things Remain influential.

Dan Beecher Become cemented into the tradition- Yeah ... or whatever.

Dan McClellan Yeah. In fact, the King James Version has a lot to do with the language that we use, because English was moving away from the King James Version until the first and second Great Awakenings, when suddenly it was like, "Bring back the King James Version." And then a lot of words that had fallen out of use suddenly popped back into use only because of the influence of the King James Version. So, like the word warfare- Mm. We only use that word because of the King James Version. Yeah, and there's scholarship that looks at a list of words that were no longer used until the Second Great Awakening and in the 19th century, and suddenly people started using these words again, and they're still- Huh ... used to this day. And we got a lot of different examples of problematic passages in here because while this revision was based on the best available scholarship of the day, for the most part, the scholarship has advanced significantly. Our resources have advanced.

Dan Beecher I would hope so.

Dan McClellan Yes. And probably the biggest thing is we have a lot more manuscripts that are available to us today. The science/art of textual criticism has advanced significantly, and we can make much more informed decisions about what readings are most likely earlier, particularly because we have access to a lot more New Testament manuscripts, we have access to the Dead Sea Scrolls, all that kind of stuff. So, some of the things we'll talk about have to do with translations, some of the things have to do with manuscripts and what sources are being used.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So, for instance, one of the first things, one of the biggest things, one of the most influential things, is something known as the Comma Johanneum. Are you familiar with that phrase?

Dan Beecher I'm familiar with the Oxford comma.

Dan McClellan Okay. No, this is a different one. This is a different comma. Also known as the Johannine Comma.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And comma here just means clause.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And so it is 1 John 5:7-8. And these two verses read, "For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one." And so this is a central Trinitarian proof text.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan The only problem is it's not in any early Greek manuscripts. It's something that- Oh ... pops up in Latin manuscripts.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And so the King James Version, the source text that the translators went to when they were like, "Why'd the Bishop's Bible translate it this way?" They would go back to a source text for the Greek New Testament, and the source text they went back to was what became known as the Textus Receptus, which is a version of the Greek New Testament that was originally cobbled together at the beginning of the 16th century by Desiderius Erasmus. And when he first started this project, he went to his library in Switzerland and was like, "Give me all your Greek New Testament manuscripts." And they were like, "We got six of them." And then they added a seventh later on. But it was two manuscripts that represented the majority of the New Testament, and then the other four to five represented smaller portions. And he basically just took them and collated them and said, "Okay, I like this reading over here. I like this reading over here." And between the second and the third edition, some people started asking him why he didn't include this verse. This is a clause that crosses two verses- Mm ... and there's another part of one of the verses that's not a part of this. But they said, "Where's that phrase?" And he was like, "It's not in any of the Greek manuscripts." And he got leaned on by- Mm ... people who had a lot of power and influence. And he basically said, "Look, I'm not going to include this unless I have a Greek manuscript that has it, because it's not in any of the Greek manuscripts." And lo and behold, somebody shows up with a Greek manuscript that has it.

Dan Beecher And so- I had it under my pillow, so- Yeah.

Dan McClellan And quite literally, it's dated to more or less within a couple of years of when it showed up at Erasmus's doorstep. And scholars who have looked at it have said, "Yeah, it looks like somebody just translated the Latin back into Greek- Okay ... while transcribing this manuscript." But he said, "Okay, fine. I'll include it in the third edition." So the third edition of his Textus Receptus, which was really called the Novum Instrumentum, A New Instrument- Okay ... the third edition has the Comma Johanneum, and it just so happens that the edition that the King James translators relied on for their revision was the third edition.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So the King James Version, of course, included the Johannine Comma. And that's one of the things that was stricken once we started doing more text critical work in the 1700s and then more earnestly in the 1800s.

Dan Beecher So- All you scholars and how you're trying to deceive everyone by taking- ... scriptures out of the books.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Oh, gosh. We've talked about this before, I think. The- Yeah ... there are about 16 verses in the New Testament that are commonly just omitted, just deleted from contemporary translations of the Bible, and it sends some people into conniptions.

Dan Beecher They just- That's right.

Dan McClellan Yeah. They're like, "Whoa." And the reality is it's a more accurate book. It's a more accurate New Testament without it.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So somebody added it to it. I want to talk about another one that's relevant to the use of Erasmus' Textus Receptus.

Dan Beecher Oh, sure.

Dan McClellan And this comes from the Book of Revelation.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Revelation 22:19. And when Erasmus went and asked for all those manuscripts, what he got omitted the last chapter or so of the Book of Revelation. He did not have a manuscript that included the end of the Book of Revelation. So, what he did was he took the Latin, and he just translated the Latin back into Greek and just slapped that on the end of his product.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So, it's in Greek in the Textus Receptus, but it is Greek that was translated from a Latin manuscript. And part of the Revelation 22:19 in the King James Version, it talks about the people's names being in the book of life.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan Which in Latin would be libro. And so Erasmus' Textus Receptus has book of life. All fine and good except for the fact that the Latin is wrong. Or at least somebody was wrong in transmission because the Latin probably said ligno, which meant tree. Because the- Oh ... Greek manuscripts all say tree of life.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So, Revelation 22:19 in the King James Version refers to the book of life, but it should refer to the tree of life.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan Having your name written in the tree of life.

Dan Beecher And- Who writes in trees? I guess people do.

Dan McClellan Revelation talks a little bit about this tree that grows alongside the river. But yeah, an interesting little variation that we see based on the fact that Erasmus was like, "Where'd the last chapter go? I'll just translate it from Latin. That looks like the word book."

Dan Beecher And- So wait, the Textus Receptus that he was creating was- Uh-huh ... in Latin, right?

Dan McClellan No, he was creating a Greek edition of the New Testament. He was basically- Oh, okay.

Dan Beecher So he's taking original Greek sources and just cobbling together a Greek version.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher Okay. I get it now.

Dan McClellan This would be called an eclectic edition.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Eclectic meaning it's cobbled together from a bunch of different manuscripts. The alternative would be a diplomatic edition. That's where you're just basing it on a single manuscript.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So, most critical editions of the Hebrew Bible, they're based on the Leningrad Codex. They're diplomatic editions. Most critical editions of the New Testament are based on a bunch of different manuscripts. They're eclectic editions. But you can have the opposite. You can have a New Testament manuscript that's based on Codex Sinaiticus or something like that.

Dan Beecher Sure.

Dan McClellan That would be a single manuscript. That'd be a diplomatic edition. And there's an Oxford Hebrew Bible project that's trying to put together an eclectic edition of the Hebrew Bible, where they're incorporating Dead Sea Scroll readings and Septuagint readings and things like that. So, yes, he was generating a Greek edition of the New Testament. It was the first widely available Greek edition of the New Testament.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Because up until him, if you wanted the Greek New Testament, you had to go find a manuscript, and most of the early manuscripts didn't cover the whole New Testament. And so his edition of the Greek New Testament is what made it possible for Martin Luther to translate the New Testament from Greek into German.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Because before that, they were using the Latin.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And this kind of caused this sea change where everybody was like, "All right, we're leaving the Latin behind. We're going back to the Greek."

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So, it was a big deal.

Dan Beecher Yeah. I get it now. I had translation on my mind, and so I was thinking that he was translating to something, but I just hadn't- Oh, yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Anyway, now that I understand what we're talking about let's continue going on with KJV- All right ... and ways that it might have gotten a few things a little a-wonky-doodle.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Let's talk unicorns.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Because there's something just delightful about a Bible... Frankly, I don't want to give this one up. I want there to be unicorns in the Bible. You're about to tell me that I can't have my unicorns, and I'm about to be sad. But let's talk about where they come from and what it's trying to translate.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So, the King James Version has nine occurrences. I think six occurrences in the singular unicorn, three occurrences of the plural unicorns. And when we look in the... The first place we can go is the Septuagint, because that's one of the traditions that the King James translators referred to. In fact, I pulled up Tyndale's Pentateuch, because William Tyndale translated more than the New Testament. He also translated the entire Pentateuch- Mm ... which was published in 1530. But in Deuteronomy 33:17, we have a reference to this where it says, "His horns as the horns of an unicorn." And unicorn has a Y instead of an I and an E on the end and all that kind of stuff.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So, the use of unicorn goes all the way back to Tyndale in English, and something related is used in the Vulgate. I think they use rhinoceros- Mm ... let me just pull up the Vulgate real quick to make sure. But the Latin would be translating the Septuagint's monokeros. Is it monokeros or monakero- Yeah, it's monokeros, which means one horn.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And so the Septuagint is probably the foundation of this misunderstanding. I think once you get into the Latin Vulgate, this was probably Jerome's attempt to try to understand the Hebrew word by appealing to the Greek, because the Hebrew has raem, and that is kind of an unusual term. For a long time, people weren't exactly sure what it was. Most scholars today would say it is a now extinct kind of ox called an oryx.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan But they didn't know this anciently. I'm looking in the... Yeah, rhinoceros is what the Vulgate has- Okay ... in Deuteronomy 33:17. So it sounds like the Vulgate is like, "A one-horn? What's that?" Well We've got these things called rhinoceroses, rhinoceri. Maybe that's what's going on. So the Vulgate is using that. The Greek is probably basing this translation on reports from Persia, from people who are exploring, and legends from even further east into the Indus Valley or something like that.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan Because there's an idea that in Persia, they knew about this animal that had one long horn. Not quite a unicorn, but some single-horned animal. And deeper into the Indus Valley, into India, there were reports coming out of this creature that had a long horn. Its horn had healing properties and stuff like that, and that's where the mythical creature probably comes from.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan And so this is like 5th, 4th century BCE explorers writing in Greek or talking about these mythical creatures, and I think the Septuagint translator either was trying to reflect that idea or was just trying to reflect the idea of a rhinoceros.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So when we get into English, they're like, "What the...

Dan Beecher What?"

Dan McClellan Either they don't know what's going on, or unicorn originally had a broader semantic range and could include a rhinoceros.

Dan Beecher Sure.

Dan McClellan But very quickly, the idea was that this is this mythical creature, when in reality, the Hebrew raem would've just referred to this particular kind of ox. And one of the confusing reasons, one of the reasons we know it is not a one-horned animal is because Deuteronomy 33:17, it talks about the plural horns of the raem in Hebrew. And so the- Mm.

Dan Beecher Okay, well, that's a problem ...

Dan McClellan the animal is singular. The horns are plural.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan Now, you can use a singular word for an animal to speak collectively about- Sure ... multiple animals. We talked about that in Exodus, where the plague of frogs just mentions a frog. The plague of a frog.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan So there's like this Kaiju frog going Crawling out of the Nile. And also the word for bird. Every bird of the sky, all the birds, it's just oph in the singular.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And so maybe that's what's going on. But when the King James Version translated Deuteronomy 33:17, it kind of fiddled with that a little bit, and it talks about the horns of unicorns in the plural.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan So they didn't quite want to abandon the notion that this word referred to a single-horned animal, whether it was understood as natural or mythological.

Dan Beecher But the way that it talks about these animals in the Bible, it doesn't seem like it's referring to a mythical creature with magical abilities.

Dan McClellan No, no.

Dan Beecher It just seems like it's referring to an animal that the people reading it would understand, would know, right?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Well- Just like if we wrote about a bear, no one would think, "Oh, it's mythical or whatever." They would just- Yeah ... that's a thing that exists, and we all know what a bear is.

Dan McClellan Yeah, and certainly some of these animals would've been better well-known than others, because I think you've got plenty of examples of different regions, even in the United States, but especially around the world, where some people might know about a certain animal, and people who don't live very far away from them might be like, "What's that?"

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan The first time I went to Israel-Palestine, I was in, I forget, the ruins of an ancient city, and I heard this high-pitched squeak, almost like a yell, and I was like, "What is that?" And somebody was like, "Oh, it's a hyrax." And I was like, "And what, pray tell, is a hyrax?"

Dan Beecher Excuse me?

Dan McClellan And they were like, "Oh, it's kind of a rodent that hides out in rocky areas." And then I was looking at a pile of basalt rocks- ... and then this little rodent poked its head out and went, "Nah," and yelled at me. And I was like, "Oh, that's a hyrax."

Dan Beecher So. I heavily encourage everyone to look up hyraxes because they're, I wouldn't say cute. They look mad. They all look pretty mad.

Dan McClellan Yeah, they do. Yeah, and they sound mad. They sound like they're like, "Get out of here."

Dan Beecher Hey What are you doing?

Dan McClellan Yeah. So, I had no idea what a hyrax was until I started getting shouted at by one. And I had to have some knowledge dropped on me.

Dan Beecher There you go.

Dan McClellan But yeah, so if I tell this story and 2,000 years from now, somebody reads a transcript and the knowledge of the hyrax has been lost because maybe it's extinct or something like that- Yeah ... then yeah, they might be like, "Hyrax? That kind of sounds like the Toyota Hilux. So it was probably an animal that looked a lot like a car." Or I don't know.

Dan Beecher Yeah, any number of things.

Dan McClellan There are all kinds of ways that people come up with stuff.

Dan Beecher Yeah. But sure. If you're trying to translate a word that you don't have a translation for, you kind of go with whatever you got.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And in the King James version, they're using a lot of traditions that are found in the translations that precede them, and some of them are kind of silly.

Dan Beecher One of the ones that I wanted to jump to, we don't have a lot of time, but I wanted to jump- Yeah ... to how the KJV handles how it translates a bunch of different words, all to the word hell.

Dan McClellan Oh.

Dan Beecher And doesn't bother to distinguish any of them.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So you got three different words. Well, one in Hebrew, Sheol- Right ... is translated hell in the King James version.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And this is just based on the assumption of univocality. Well, we're talking about the realm of the dead, and it's not particularly happy. That must mean hell.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And the reality is that they did not have a concept of hell in the Hebrew Bible. Everybody went to the same place. Good, bad- Right.

Dan Beecher Nor heaven, just Sheol.

Dan McClellan Right. Yeah, Sheol, which is just the realm of the dead, and it was a hazy, murky, not very exciting existence. And they didn't know an awful lot about it. So right off the bat, yeah, that's a mistranslation in the King James version. And then you've got a few different words that are used in the New Testament. The main two are Hades and Gehenna. It's really Gehenna in Greek transliteration. But those are the two that are most commonly translated hell. And then you've got one occurrence of the word Tartarus.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And in Greek, Gehenna is a Greek Jewish term. It comes from Gehenna, from the Valley of the Son of Hinnom. And this is this valley that comes around the south end of Jerusalem. And this is associated with child sacrifice in the pre-exilic period, the Tophet, which is where the pre-exilic kings were supposed to have offered their children as sacrifice, make them pass through the fire, all that stuff.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan That's supposed to be on the edge of the Valley of Hinnom. And in Greco-Roman period Jewish tradition, that location becomes associated with the bad place, just because there's fire, there's wickedness, there's killing.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan That is the bad place. And so that becomes kind of an eschatological location of divine punishment. And so in the New Testament, that's Gehenna. Hades is largely borrowed from Greek mythology, and Tartarus in Greek mythology is one of the two places you can go within Hades. Hades is kind of a more generic realm of the dead, and for certain groups, if you've been good, you go to the fields of Elysium.

Dan Beecher Wow.

Dan McClellan That is in Gladiator.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan That's what he says. "You are in Elysium." And then the other place is Tartarus. That's if you've been bad.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And you don't want to end up in Tartarus. But in borrowing that concept into the New Testament, Hades kind of has more of a negative tone, so it's kind of conceptually merging with the idea of Gehenna. But Tartarus is, I think it's used in one of the letters of Peter, and that's more directly referring to the lake of fire, kind of bad part of Hades.

Dan Beecher I'm trying to imagine what Christianity today would look like if those three words/four words were each given a different translation, or were- Yeah.

Dan McClellan ...

Dan Beecher you know what I mean? Were separated out as four distinct concepts. I think it would- Yeah ... that's a big deal difference.

Dan McClellan Well, yeah. You can look in Mormonism for their degrees of glory if you really wanted to try to...

Dan Beecher Sure, man.

Dan McClellan But no. Although it's not quite the hierarchy- Yeah ... that Mormonism presents. But yeah, I think it would be fascinating if those different concepts were allowed to stay different.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But that's kind of the pattern, is everything gets kind of lumped together. You have the good side and the bad side, and all of the bad entities from the Hebrew Bible get just consolidated in Satan.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Whereas all the good, all the supernatural mediator figures from the Hebrew Bible get consolidated into Jesus.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And all of the different concepts of postmortem divine punishment get consolidated into hell, whereas the idea of postmortem good stuff gets consolidated into heaven. There's only one concept, and yeah, I think that's an outgrowth of the fact that everybody's presupposing it all has to be pointed in the same direction.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But yeah, I think it would be an interesting thought experiment. Somebody will have to make a movie one day about Christianity that did not presuppose univocality.

Dan Beecher Yeah. And just let- That would be interesting.

Dan McClellan It would be a mess, but- It would be a mess.

Dan Beecher And I think that to some extent, these consolidations kind of have to happen, or at least Like some- So yeah, for any kind of unity- You need to- You have- ... for any kind of consistency ... you have to converge on some sort of understanding.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher There's also the way the KJV talked about the word, "kashaph." I don't know how to say that, but a sorcerer, diviner, or- Oh ... as in the KJV, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," which- Oh, yeah. Exodus 22:18, right?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So, it should be 17 in the Hebrew. Yeah, so mechashaphah is the word in- Okay ... in Hebrew, but it's a noun form based on the verbal roots, kashaph, to practice sorcery. Yeah, and a lot of people say, "Oh, King James was anti-witch, and so he either told them to write this in or made them change it to witch," or something like that.

Dan Beecher And- I mean- ...

Dan McClellan yeah ...

Dan Beecher you know, Shakespeare wrote Macbeth for King James. So obviously, he had a witch thing.

Dan McClellan Yeah, but it's just not true because it's in the Bishop's Bible, it's in the Geneva Bible, it's in the Great Bible, it's in the Matthew's Bible, it's in the Coverdale Bible, it's in the Tyndale- Okay ...

Dan Beecher translation.

Dan McClellan It is, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," every single place it occurs in English up to and including the King James Version. But yeah, in Hebrew, it actually doesn't address the law to you in the second person. It just says, "Mechashaphah lo tichyeh," which would be, "A witch shall not live."

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So the verb is actually third feminine singular.

Dan Beecher But is witch the right... I guess the problem that I have with the word witch, in this case, is that it's gendered in most- Yeah, and it's a feminine noun in the Hebrew.

Dan McClellan Oh.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Now, interestingly enough, the ancient Greek translation not only changed it to masculine, but changed it to plural.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan And they have pharmakos, which is based on the word pharmakon or pharmakos, which could be magician, could be sorcerer, but fundamentally it refers to someone who mixes up potions.

Dan Beecher Thou shalt not suffer a pharmacist to live. I get it.

Dan McClellan Right, yeah.

Dan Beecher I hear what you're saying.

Dan McClellan This is an anti-vaxxer. This is a COVID denier who prophesied thousands of years prior to the arrival of COVID-19- Yeah ... that this was all going to happen, and that Fauci, because the original Greek could be rendered Fauci if you- ... you just got to, because it starts with an F.

Dan Beecher There you go.

Dan McClellan You just got to elide the rho and the mu, and then you got to kind of take the kappa and render it more of a ch. So anyway, yeah, for some weird reason, the Greek decided to just fiddle with it and make it... And pharmakos can refer to potions for good or potions for bad.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So you see the usage of the word in reference to people who are using it to heal, but you more commonly see it as in reference to people who are using these potions for ill. And so, the pharmakia became kind of a bad word in early Christianity, which gives rise now to all kinds of ridiculous conspiracy theories that I have to see on TikTok day after day after day.

Dan Beecher All right. Well, that's all the time we have for our twisted scripture for today. KJV still has some of the prettiest language of any of the translations or versions.

Dan McClellan Yeah, there are some renderings that you can't get away from. You just got to lean into that King James English.

Dan Beecher Yeah. It was the time of Shakespeare. They say Shakespeare may have written some of it, but he probably didn't.

Dan McClellan Oh, gosh.

Dan Beecher Come on. What is it, Psalm 46 or something?

Dan McClellan Oh, gosh.

Dan Beecher There's a whole thing.

Dan McClellan Anyway- ...

Dan Beecher look into it. Shakespeare, Psalm 46.

Dan McClellan Shakespeare. It's all in there.

Dan Beecher 46 in, 46 in.

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher We'll leave it at that. If you would like to become a part of keeping our show going, we would sure appreciate if you would head on over to the patreon.com/dataoverdogma, where you can become a subscriber, and you just give us a little bit of your money, and then you can have access to an early and ad-free version of every show. And if you subscribe at the $10 a month level, you can get the after party, which is bonus content that we record every week, and we sure do appreciate our patrons. Thanks so much to Roger Gowdy for editing the show. Thanks to JJ for being our producer, and thanks to all of you all for tuning in. We'll talk to you again next time.

Dan McClellan Bye, everybody.