Jezebel!

Dan McClellan According to some early Mormons, they inhabit an oasis behind ice walls up at the North Pole.

Dan Beecher So- Wow.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Just throwing that out there, man.

Dan McClellan Yep.

Dan Beecher You're just chucking that bomb and then running away.

Dan McClellan Okay. It's what we do here. We show up, we muddy the waters, and we scamper off. 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 we combat the spread of that wacky misinformation about the same. How are things today, Dan?

Dan Beecher Wacky.

Dan McClellan Wacky?

Dan Beecher Things are very wacky. We're going to get into some wackiness.

Dan McClellan I feel like I'm the morning talk radio guy.

Dan Beecher Oh. And we need an air horn.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Well, I- Yeah, or the trusty boioioioing is always good.

Dan Beecher A slide whistle. We need all the things.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But we won't have them, even though we are going to be talking about some clowns.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Or at least in our estimation. We're bringing in a new segment category.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher We're calling it Twisted Scripture. Because we're not going to take it anymore. Because we're not going to take it. And we are going to go after some guys who are very interested in weaponizing some scripture against a group. We're going to be talking about that Jezebel spirit. That's going to be fun.

Dan McClellan That's the one.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And then- That old-timey Jezebel spirit ...

Dan Beecher that Jezebel spirit. And then we're going to do a What's That? We're going to delve into some Sadducees, some Pharisees, some dirty knees. Look at these.

Dan McClellan Some dirty deeds and dirty knees and- Yeah. And we're going to figure out the difference between these two groups.

Dan Beecher I think I just referenced a very racist thing from my childhood and didn't mean to, the dirty knees thing.

Dan McClellan Oh.

Dan Beecher So let's just pretend like that didn't happen, everybody.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher That just came out of my head.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher Do you remember... Never mind.

Dan McClellan I do not.

Dan Beecher I didn't- We're not going to go into it. But if anyone was triggered by that- We had very different upbringings.

Dan McClellan Yes ...

Dan Beecher I'm going to voluntarily apologize for that. It was just lurking in the background of my childhood and my brain, and we'll get out of that.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher We'll go on with the show, plow valiantly forward with Twisted Scripture. And this week's twisted scripture is the Jezebel spirit.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And the reason that we're calling it twisted is that the way... First of all, the phrase Jezebel spirit does not appear in ye olde Bible. It's nowhere in there.

Dan McClellan Nope.

Dan Beecher So why do we have all of these preachers and also white Christian nationalists- Mm-hmm ...

Dan McClellan talking about it?

Dan Beecher I brought it up to you because I saw a thing on Threads- Mm-hmm ... that was Charlie Kirk talking about how great it is that young men are going back to church and how, but young women, women of the young generation, got to get rid of that Jezebel spirit. And I've heard this phrase many times. And I was like, "You know what? We've got to go after that. We've got to talk about it."

Dan McClellan Yeah. You see it quite a bit in, Charlie Kirk has said it. Oh, I'm forgetting the gentleman who, Mars Hill, was that the name of the- Mark Driscoll?

Dan Beecher Mark Driscoll.

Dan McClellan I've heard Mark Driscoll talk about it.

Dan Beecher Oh, he loves it.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher I watched some of, as much as I could tolerate, of a video of his called "The 29 Signs of the Jezebel Spirit." I think I made it through four.

Dan McClellan You've done your research today.

Dan Beecher I tried to do some research about these things. And so yeah, this guy, first of all, yeah, that Pastor Driscoll, he's a real peach. He started off his sermon by making a joke about how he had set up a website where the men in his congregation can send pictures of their wives so that they could be shown while he talks about the different, the 29 signs of the Jezebel spirit. Meaning, ha ha ha, it was a joke that he was making about how the men in his congregation have Jezebel spirit wives. And they should- That's pretty loathsome.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Men actually were like, "Yeah, put my wife up on the screen. Talk about her Jezebel spirit."

Dan Beecher They laughed about it. They were excited to do it.

Dan McClellan Yeesh.

Dan Beecher It felt very gross. But look, I'm putting cart before horse here.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher Let us talk quickly about Jezebel herself.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Because there is a biblical Jezebel.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Help me out there. Is there a historical Jezebel? Do we know?

Dan McClellan So the name Jezebel would be where is the prince in Hebrew.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So it would be E and then zevul. And this is related to the whole Beelzebub being a corruption of Baal-Zebul.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan So, this is supposed to be the daughter of the king of Tyre. The name is probably related to, like Isabel is related to this name.

Dan Beecher Sure.

Dan McClellan I think we do have records of this name in some cognate literature, although it might be slightly different. We do have a name Ibal, which would be the same where it's Baal instead of Zebul.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So it would be, "Where is the Lord?" in reference to Baal. And so this is in 1 Kings 16, this is described as the wife of King Ahab, daughter of the King of Tyre. So this would be the Israelite king taking a Phoenician wife.

Dan Beecher Okay. And she was- Would that be like, you hear about in European history, if the King of France marries a princess of Germany, then they're creating alliance by doing that.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And you have this, even King Solomon married a bunch of women including the Queen of Sheba, ostensibly. So, this is not unusual, although it is kind of represented as the king betraying his fidelity to- Right ... to Adonai, the God of Israel. And particularly because Jezebel is then supposed to go on and persecute and kill a bunch of the prophets, and including hunting down Elijah, and Jezebel is supposed to have died an ignominious death as well. But she is represented as being someone who promoted idolatry and the worship of deities, specifically Asherah and Baal.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan She's represented as promoting the worship of those two. And so she's held up as this corrosive influence on Israel as one of the queens who was married to King Ahab. So this would've been 900 BC to 850 BC, somewhere around there.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Yeah. You mentioned how she's held up, and maybe we should say that. Here's what I think. I'm going to say some of the things that are attributed to her.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher And then we can go back as we talk about the actual biblical accounting of her and see if it lines up with how she is described.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher Because she is described as domineering and overbearing and unwilling to submit to authority. Oh, by the way, you mentioned her name, meaning, what did it mean? Where is the prince? Where is the prince? Well, you're going to have to explain to Mark Driscoll why it means that, because he was very sure that it means without husband. I had to look that up. I looked up why it said that, and let's see if I have that somewhere. I didn't find it, but it looks like it was just sort of a corruption. It was one of those things where it's like instead of Zebul, it was Zavel, and that meant dung or lofty/noble, which meant not lofty or noble. And so then they said it meant without honor.

Dan McClellan Anyway, this was apparently- Was interpreted as a reference to a husband?

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan I don't know.

Dan Beecher Anyway, I think that's nutty because the entire thing about her is that she has a husband. So what are we even talking about here?

Dan McClellan I don't know why he would make that argument. Where is the prince, if it were Ibal, it would be where is Baal, but Baal is also a word that can mean master, lord, or husband.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So where is the husband is a way you could interpret that if you really wanted to squeeze that interpretation in there, but that's not her name.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So I don't think that makes much sense. But yeah, certainly that doesn't really fit with anything. The whole thing is that she is the husband of the wicked King Ahab.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But she orchestrates the murder of Naboth to seize his vineyard, land consolidation for Ahab.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Uses deceit, uses false witnesses, uses her cunning to get what she wants, and- Actually, she uses it to get what he wants.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan She's frequently doing the bidding of her husband. And a lot of this comes down to interpretation. If you want to interpret it as her at the reins- Right ... her being the one making the decisions and just holding up her husband as the authority figure- Right ... as the rubber stamp, I'm sure people who don't like women being independent would be happy to interpret the text that way.

Dan Beecher Yeah. We're going to get to it, but I think we'll find that to be the crux of a lot of things.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher But because the Bible, one of the things that they accuse her of is, like you said, she promoted the worship of Baal and Asherah.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher And she like And there is a scripture, I did a lot of research on this. There is a scripture that says that, "Where are these priests of Baal and Asherah- Yeah ... that sit at Jezebel's table?"

Dan McClellan Or something.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But I'm going to point out that we're in I Kings. Is that where we are?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Yeah. I Kings 16, down at the bottom it says of her husband Ahab, "He erected an altar for Baal in the house of Baal that he built in Samaria. Ahab also made a sacred pole." I assume that that's an Asherah pole.

Dan McClellan That would be an Asherah, yeah.

Dan Beecher "Ahab did more to provoke the anger of the Lord, the God of Israel, than had all the kings of Israel who were before him."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher No mention in any of that of Jezebel. Just says he did it.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Earlier, the verse before that, it says, "He took as his wife Jezebel, and then he erected the altar for Baal." So you could say, I don't know, does chronology equal causation? Because it doesn't seem like it does.

Dan McClellan Well, we do have a parenthetical comment in I Kings 21:25, where this is the NRSVUE, "Indeed, there was no one like Ahab, who sold himself to do what was evil in the sight of the Lord, urged on by his wife Jezebel."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so the Hebrew has which, "hesatta," which is based on a verb, "sot," which means to incite or mislead. "Hesatta Jezebel, ishto," his wife. So, the text there suggests that Jezebel is inciting him to do all of these things. So it sounds like she is functioning as a bit of a scapegoat for Ahab, but certainly it's not leaving Ahab blameless.

Dan Beecher Yeah. And yes, that is there. That parenthetical that you referred to is tucked in with Elijah pronouncing a sentence upon them or whatever- Mm-hmm ... because of Naboth's vineyard. But that's deeper. That's many chapters later into this whole thing. And in that chapter, we do see her being very integral in everything.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher She was the one that orchestrated things in that chapter- Yeah ... for which they're being sentenced or whatever.

Dan McClellan Well, there's something. Let me just...

Dan Beecher Kings.

Dan McClellan So we've got Elijah is confronting Ahab, and then we have Elijah's triumph over the prophets of Baal or the priests of Baal?

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan It says pro- prophets, but the section heading in the NRSVUE says priests. But here's the interesting thing. You said that it says that they sat at her table, right?

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm. That's verse 19- Yeah ... in chapter 18.

Dan McClellan So here's the funny thing. With the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah who eat at Jezebel's table. So here's the funny thing.

Dan Beecher That's a big table.

Dan McClellan It is a big table. She's got a large table, lots of chairs. The rest of the story- Mm ... entirely omits any reference to any prophet or priest of Asherah. It is entirely and exclusively about the 450 prophets of Baal.

Dan Beecher Of Baal.

Dan McClellan And then it says, the very end, 18:40, "Elijah said to them, 'Seize the prophets of Baal. Do not let one of them escape.' Then they seized them, and Elijah brought them down to the Wadi Kishon and killed them there." And that's the end of that. And then Elijah says to Ahab, "Go eat and drink, for there is a sound of rushing rain." And so the drought ends.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan So a lot of scholars will suggest that the reference to the prophets of Asherah is probably a later addition.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan Some editor was probably like, "Yeah, throw the one about the Asherah folks and Jezebel in there as well."

Dan Beecher Huh.

Dan McClellan And then they did, and just ignored that they're not in the rest of the story.

Dan Beecher Huh. So- That's very interesting.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher I think one of the things that has me sort of baffled by how Jezebel is seen and how she is portrayed by people recounting the story, not in the Bible itself, but by people talking about the story, is that everything she does, if it were done by a man, yes, she's the bad guy because she and Ahab are pro the wrong god, right?

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher That's why they're the bad guys.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So when she starts killing all of the prophets or the priests of Adonai, that's bad.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher But when Elijah kills all of the prophets and priests of Baal, that's good. They're doing the same stuff. But turnabout isn't fair play when it's a woman who does it. You know what I mean?

Dan McClellan Yeah. It's definitely a gendered villainy- Yeah ... that she's painted with. And you don't really see much of that elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible. The women, the sex workers, are generally treated quite well.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan You have, for instance, Judah and Tamar. Judah's like, "Oh, you got me there. That was a good one." Because she cosplayed as a sex worker, and all the way through to the end. And you have Rahab at Jericho. You have other women who are treated as-- They have a positive role in the narrative- Yeah ... in the story. But Jezebel's the one kind of negative one where she gets-- There's no indication she ever functioned as a sex worker. Promiscuity isn't a part of her story.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But it gets represented that way because we need a female villain, and what's the worst thing that a female can do is be promiscuous. Well, you know, it's- And so there's a guilt by association.

Dan Beecher She's a- Yeah ... female, so it must be- And I have seen a lot of talk about how Jezebel's spirit involves promiscuity. But I will- Yeah ... say that it's not entirely unbiblical, because there's the reference to her in Revelation.

Dan McClellan Revelation, yeah. And this is where we have the two-- In the letters, in chapters two and three, we get these references to Jezebel, and then the other one is Balaam. These two kind of symbols of unrighteousness and wayward leadership.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And the author is criticizing these folks. And so Jezebel is accused of seducing Christians to practice sexual immorality and eat foods sacrificed to idols. Those are- Right ... the two things for which Jezebel is condemned. And I don't know if we've talked about this before, but there is a theory out there, it's certainly not the leading theory, but it is a theory, that the author of Revelation is condemning Paul as- Oh ...

Dan Beecher the Jezebel.

Dan McClellan Oh.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan Because a couple of the things that Paul talks about in his letters, one of the things he says is that, because evidently they referred to followers of Jesus married to non-Christians, they said that was porneia, that was sexual immorality.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And Paul said, "No, no. It's not sexual immorality to be unequally yoked for a follower of Jesus to be married. Because stay married, you might convert and save the soul of your spouse." And so if there were folks who were committed to the other position, that, no, this is sexual immorality, then Paul would've been responsible for- ... seducing Christians to practice sexual immorality. And Paul quite openly said, "Eating food sacrificed to idols is nothing. Who cares?"

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan "That's no big deal. It's only if you're in the presence of a weaker follower of Jesus, who doesn't know that an idol is nothing in this world, that it then becomes a problem for you to scandalize them."

Dan Beecher So it's like- Oh, that's really interesting.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And so that is Paul advocating for, or at least not condemning, eating food sacrificed to idols, even though according to Acts, the chapter 15, that's one of the four things that- Yeah ... non-Jewish Christians were responsible for. But there's an argument that it's actually followers of Paul- Oh, my gosh ... that the author of Revelation is condemning- ... because of this Jezebel spirit- Yeah ... so to speak.

Dan Beecher To be clear, the Revelation reference, which is in Revelation two.

Dan McClellan Two. Yeah, verses 20 to 23.

Dan Beecher It does seem to be just using the word Jezebel, but it's actually definitely referring not to Jezebel in the past, but to someone who is in this congregation- Right ...

Dan McClellan currently.

Dan Beecher Right. Someone who, like a real person- Yeah ... who is leading the congregation of Thyatira astray.

Dan McClellan Yes. How am I doing- And so it's- ...

Dan Beecher that pronunciation?

Dan McClellan Oh, fair enough.

Dan Beecher Thyatira.

Dan McClellan I don't know.

Dan Beecher Anyway, so yeah. It's not an actual reference to the Jezebel of history or of- Right ...

Dan McClellan 1 Kings. Well, it's using her as a symbol- Right ... and a substitution for naming an actual person. And maybe it's a movement rather than an individual person. But- Yeah ... that's where we get this idea. And that's really, unless I am misremembering, that's really the only association of Jezebel with sexual immorality.

Dan Beecher Yeah. There's nothing else.

Dan McClellan Unless there's an indirect notion that worship of Asherah was invariably associated with sexual immorality, which would not be that accurate.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan That's also just a way to demonize the worship of Asherah, who, by the way, prior to probably the seventh century BCE, was worshiped as God's wife.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And we don't have any indication, we don't have any data that make it most likely that anybody in any kind of institutional position had any problem with that.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Maybe some prophets did. But even the couple of references in some of the prophetic literature to Asherah in a condemnatory- way are dated by some scholars to, they're a Deuteronomistic layer according to a number of scholars.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And this might be why this story about the prophets of Baal has somebody scribbling in the prophets of Asherah afterwards, because they're coming from a time period later when Asherah is now the villain. Asherah has been demonized.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So, the association of Asherah with sexual immorality is a later development as well.

Dan Beecher Now, when 1 Kings was written, which I take to not be the time of the actual King Ahab.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher No.

Dan McClellan Here's an interesting tidbit. You don't have historical prose in alphabetic writing until after Ahab was dead.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Like the second half of the ninth century. That's when it first pops up in the record. And what that means is, and by historical prose, I mean that genre of historical narrative.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan You had poetry, you had letters. You didn't have historical narrative. So and so was the king of so and so, and then they did this, and then they did that, and then they did the other thing. That genre doesn't show up in alphabetic writing until the second half of the ninth century BCE. So, in the Hebrew Bible, if you see narrative prose, that was written after the late ninth century BCE.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So Kings, Samuel, the overwhelming majority of all of that, apart from a few scattered pieces of poetry, were written after Ahab was dead and gone. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean they're not telling stories that were passed down from the period of his reign and her life, but it would've been committed to text in a later period, and that means it would have been articulated in a way that served the interests of the people doing the commission to text.

Dan Beecher Well, that's part of what I wanted to ask you about. Who's writing this? Because this is about Israel.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher But I read something that indicated that maybe the author was a Judean.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm. This is probably coming from the Deuteronomistic historian.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So, what this means is, so around the time of Josiah, we have Deuteronomy begins to take shape, which is Josiah saying, "I want the laws to do this." And then one day they're like, "Guess what we found in the temple? The book of the law. And guess what? It says everything you want it to say."

Dan Beecher And Josiah was a king. Josiah was a king.

Dan McClellan Okay. And so after that, you then have the Deuteronomistic history, which is probably taking the historical annals that precede it by a couple of centuries, and it is kind of narrativizing these things, but telling the stories in a way that represents the Northern Kingdom as wicked and the Southern Kingdom as good.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Because the Northern Kingdom had been destroyed a century before. Specifically, Northern Kingdom is Israel, Southern Kingdom- Israel, Southern Kingdom is Judah.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Right. So the Northern Kingdom had been destroyed 722 BCE, and so they're not there anymore. And there are a lot of scholars who think that Judah was just like, "Oh, that was us the whole time." It was always this united kingdom, or at least it started out as this united kingdom, and then they were wicked up in the north, and that's why God carted them off to the lands to the north and dispersed them throughout the world. And according to some early Mormons, they inhabit an oasis behind ice walls up at the North Pole.

Dan Beecher So- Wow.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Just throwing that out there, man.

Dan McClellan Yep.

Dan Beecher You're just chucking that bomb and then running away.

Dan McClellan Okay. It's what we do here. We show up, we muddy the waters, and we scamper off. So, they are writing the story explaining why the Northern Kingdom got the boot, explaining why they're the good guys. Well, at least some of the kings. Hezekiah is a mostly good king, but not quite all the way there, and then Josiah was the big savior king who did everything he was supposed to do.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so the Deuteronomistic history is this project of recording all of Judah and Israel's history through the eyes of a Judean, or a Judahite. Through the eyes of somebody who identifies with the Southern Kingdom, which is why, yeah, the kings in the north are all bad guys.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And you see the Omrides. When you look in the historical record, Israel was at its peak under the Omride dynasty. But they're just glossed over in the Deuteronomistic history- Huh ... and treated as just meh, they were there. And this is because they're telling the story in a way that makes David the big hero, and Josiah is supposed to be continuing on the Davidic dynasty.

Dan Beecher I see.

Dan McClellan Okay. So yeah, it's all propaganda.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Well, and the propaganda continues because now we have guys like Charlie Kirk, like Mark Driscoll, and many others using this phrase Using the name of Jezebel, using the phrase Jezebel spirit, and sometimes meaning like an actual spirit, like a demon- Yeah ... that is possessing them ... that is wandering the earth, that is influencing people badly. But, and it's funny because Driscoll keeps saying things like, "A woman can have the Jezebel spirit or a man can have the Jezebel spirit. A woman can have the Ahab spirit," but it's always a woman that has the Jezebel spirit.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And he didn't say, "Wives, send up pictures of your husbands who have the Jezebel spirit."

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher He's very clear that the Jezebel spirit is women who are bad and women who will not submit to authority, and women who are overly controlling and blah, blah, blah. And really, listen, obviously the Jezebel who is presented in the Bible is not a good person.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Like you said, she does that whole thing with the vineyard of Naboth. She did a bad thing there.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher She set him up, got him killed, just so that her husband could have the land.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher At least in that part of the story, she is very much a Lady Macbeth-type character.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher But the way that she is used, the way that she is crafted as a bludgeon against women who won't submit to their husbands, who won't submit to the church, who actually want to have equal place- Mm-hmm ... in their marriages and in society, it's pretty gross. I'm just going to say it's pretty gross.

Dan McClellan Yeah. The Jezebel spirit rhetoric is always about trying to undermine women seeking after a role that these men believe is their- Yeah ... unique and exclusive prerogative. So, authority in the church, oh, if a woman wants that, that's the Jezebel spirit.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan An equal partnership in the home, if a woman wants that, the Jezebel spirit.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan If a woman wants a career, the Jezebel spirit. It is a rhetorical trump card for right-wing authoritarian sexual politics- I really may have first- ... is basically what it is ...

Dan Beecher heard that phrase, now that I think about it, when Hillary Clinton was running for president.

Dan McClellan Oh, really?

Dan Beecher Yeah, that may have been my first introduction, and then of course it came back very strong also when Kamala Harris was running for president.

Dan McClellan Yes. Oh, absolutely.

Dan Beecher These are women who are possessed of the Jezebel spirit- Yeah ... because they want to do something that these pastors and Christian nationalists want to reserve- Yeah ... solely for men.

Dan McClellan Yes. And you know who they don't say has the Jezebel spirit? Jael or Deborah in Judges 5.

Dan Beecher Yeah. These are women who have not just local but military authority.

Dan McClellan Jael kills another man, invites him in to let him rest, and then drives a tent peg through his forehead.

Dan Beecher It's pretty hardcore. She's pretty hardcore.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And yeah, I think there would probably be a lot of people if the full story of... Oh my gosh, I'm blanking on the name. Mary Magdalene, excuse me.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan Mary Magdalene, if the name Magdalene truly was an epithet, was a title that was given to her, towering one or toweress or something like that- Mm ... certainly that is a result of her not only seeking after, but obtaining and exercising authority, including- Mm ... over men. You never hear about the Jezebel spirit of Mary Magdalene. Of course, you do have people falsely accusing her of being a sex worker- Yeah ... based on a homily given by the Pope in 591 CE, which falsely identifies her with another woman who had a bunch of sins. And basically the idea again is when it comes to what a woman can do to sin, really there's just sexual sin. That's about it, because that's all they function as- Right ... is a sex receptacle.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so if she's a sinful woman, she must have been a sex worker.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And then identifying that unnamed woman as Mary Magdalene results in the idea that Mary Magdalene was a sex worker. Yeah, all features of the story that don't really play into how folks like Driscoll and others... Driscoll, by the way, who has been accused and even found liable for all kinds of abuses of authority- Yeah ... and intimidation, and manipulation, and lying, and deception, and all this kind of stuff.

Dan Beecher I would say he's domineering, overbearing- Yeah ... in control and not willing to be controlled. I would say he is definitely possessed of a Jezebel spirit.

Dan McClellan As long as a man can be possessed of the Jezebel spirit, yeah, he's our- Yeah ... our poster child for the man- He's an exemplar.

Dan Beecher Absolutely. So there you go. That's the Jezebel spirit for you. I think Jezebel is definitely being unfairly treated in this, but that's par for the course in terms of the sexism of how these guys treat almost any woman's story that they come across. As you say, Mary Magdalene definitely gets the short end of the stick, too. So, there you go. I think we should move on to our next segment.

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher What's that? And the what's that of this segment, the that in this case are two thats. What is they? Which is the Sadducees and the Pharisees. The Sadducees and the Pharisees. These are two of at least four different, what Josephus calls philosophies of Judaism.

Dan McClellan Okay. Which we would call sects these days. S-E-C-T-S.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan We have the Pharisees, you have the Sadducees, you have the Essenes, which are another group that I think probably most scholars today would say is how the folks at Qumran, who are responsible for storing at least the Dead Sea Scrolls, how they would- Right ... have identified. And then you have the Zealots, and there are some other groups that are identified by Philo and stuff like that. But we're focused on the Sadducees and the Pharisees, and these groups probably begin to distinguish themselves around the middle of the 2nd century BCE. So, this is when we have the Second Temple is operating, everybody's bopping along. The Hellenistic empires are fighting over this territory. The Seleucids cause a lot of problems for the Judeans, and then you have Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who comes in, does a lot of bad stuff. It's what 1 and 2 Maccabees is all about. This is what the celebration of Hanukkah is about. They come in and they desecrate the temple, and then Judah Maccabee, they fight back. They wrestle control of the temple back from the Seleucids. They rededicate the temple. That's what Hanukkah is celebrating, the rededication of the temple.

Dan Beecher And- Will you just briefly remind me who the Seleucids are? That's not what this is about, but just as a quick rabbit trail.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Sorry.

Dan McClellan Seleucid is a reference to one of the kind of groups that controlled a part of Alexander the Great's kingdom. So, after he died, you had a bunch of his subordinates fighting over control of his territory, and rather than one person stepping in and taking control of everything that Alexander the Great controlled, it split up into- Right ... a bunch of different territories. And you had the Ptolemies controlling Egypt- Okay ... and the Seleucids. So, Ptolemy was the one who was in Egypt. Seleucus was the one who was in Syria.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And so Israel-Palestine is right in between those two, and so they're kind of a battleground- Okay ... between these two groups, and they kind of went back and forth. But the Seleucids caused some trouble. The Maccabees fight back, they win, and this is actually the reestablishment of a semi-autonomous, semi-independent kingdom. So, in the 160s BCE, the Book of Daniel is written right around this time. A lot of the apocalyptic literature of Second Temple Judaism is- Mm ... is written around this time. And for the people living in that time, this must have felt like the fulfillment of prophecy, because for a long time, you've been waiting on restoration and the return of the Kingdom of Israel, and suddenly, the Maccabees win, drive off the invaders, and establish what becomes known as the Hasmonean dynasty and kingdom.

Dan Beecher Now- Right ...

Dan McClellan they are kind of like, "Hey, Rome, we're going to play nice."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan "Can we get some help?" And so they are kind of subordinate to Rome in some sense.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But they are an independent kingdom. And so, this is what gives rise to, now, some scholars think this is when the Torah and the Hebrew Bible first begins to become authoritative.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Where they're finally like, "All right, we have our kingdom back. We got all these texts. We got all these laws. Let's start putting them into play."

Dan Beecher "Let's do this."

Dan McClellan And then they went, "Oh, crap." They conflict with each other in a bunch of ways, and- ... we got a bunch of gaps, and we got... And so you have a bunch of schools of thought that are trying to figure out how we're going to approach this. The Sadducees may have grown out of the Zadokite priests, and Zadok would've been one of the descendants of Aaron, so this was a priestly household, a priestly family. And so Sadducee is thought by most scholars to be a callback to this idea of the Zadokite priests. And so these are wealthy, elite people associated with the temple, and they want stability, and so they're very happy to play nice with Rome as long as this gives us stability. And so there's The high priest is, in later periods, after 63 BCE, you have Pompey who annexes Judea for Rome. So, 160s BCE to around 63 BCE, you have an independent Judean kingdom.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And then Rome takes over, and from this point on, the high priest is appointed by Rome, and so it's coming from the Sadducees. So, they're basically the temple authorities. The Pharisees are a lay movement that are about the law, and they're about purity. And so this is why in the first century BCE and around the turn of the era, right around the time of Jesus's life, you have a lot of people focusing on purity, and you have things like stone pots and cups and vessels that do not transmit impurity to the things that they're holding. This is something that pops up in this time period because of the Pharisees. And the biggest differences between the two, the Pharisees accepted this oral tradition and the authority of traditions about how to interpret the law. Because remember, they were like, "All right, let's get rolling with the implementation of all these laws," and then they're like, "Oh, wait, it doesn't all fit. We've got to do all these things to smooth over, iron out the wrinkles and everything." And this is what later- Square the circles, et cetera.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And this is what later turns into the rabbinic literature and the Halakhic literature, which is basically trying to figure out legal questions, answer legal questions, and things like that. The Sadducees reject that. They reject the oral interpretations, and they want to go back to just the Torah. So, their text is the five books of Moses, and which means that they don't have things like Daniel. They don't have other texts that develop the concept of resurrection. They don't have discussion of angels and all this other kind of stuff that's later in the Hebrew Bible and in Second Temple Jewish literature that the Pharisees do have. So, while the Pharisees are exploring heaven and hell and resurrection and all this other kind of stuff, the Sadducees are sitting there with their five books of Moses like, "Y'all are nuts. Don't know where you're getting all this. None of this is in here."

Dan Beecher These extremists over here with their resurrections and whatnot.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And so these were some movements that clashed on a lot of things. And even in the New Testament, you see at one point, Paul is caught between a rock and a hard place, and he's like, "Angels," and starts the fight over his head between the Sadducees and the Pharisees, and then slips out the back door while they're all fighting. So, he's exploiting the differences between these two groups. And then because the Sadducees' authority is based entirely on the temple and not on household religion, like the Pharisees, it's all about, "I'm going to school, I'm reading the law. I've got stone cups at home. I'm washing my hands before the meal and all this." That's this ritual and ideological framework that governs all different parts of life. Sadducees are like, "We just deal with the temple." And then the temple gets destroyed, and they've got nothing.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan They've got no framework that they can provide for how to go on. And so for all intents and purposes, the Sadducees disappear- Just stop ... within a decade or two after 70 CE. And the Pharisees basically become Rabbinic Judaism because they have everything else. They have how we do this at home. They have how we do this in our synagogues. They have how we do this everywhere else apart from the temple. And with the destruction of the temple, it doesn't really hurt their worldview nearly as much as it hurt the worldview, or at least the structures of power that held up the Sadducees. And also, they were cozy with Rome, and the Pharisees hated that. They shook their fist at Rome, and they shook their fist at the Pharisees playing nice with Rome.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And so those are the main differences between the Sadducees and the Pharisees, as I recall them.

Dan Beecher Okay. Talk to me a little bit about, because look, I don't know if everyone knows this. I am not a scholar of the Bible. I have not read all of the Bible, nor have I-- But my memory of the word Pharisees is that it only comes up in the Bible, in the New Testament, as a pejorative. These are the bad guys in a lot of the stories of the Bible. Is that right? Am I remembering that correctly?

Dan McClellan There are definitely those who are Pharisees who are not represented as bad guys. Most of the New Testament, I think it would be unfair to say it's anti-Pharisaical. I think they would attribute a lot of the faults of the Judaism against which they were representing themselves as the product of the Pharisees, but a lot of that was incidental. That was the fact that- Okay ... the Sadducees were off in their temple doing weird temple stuff. The Pharisees were the ones in the streets. And By the time of the Gospel of John, it's just the Jews- Okay ... is how Jesus' enemies are generally represented. There is certainly, I think, what we could call Judeophobia, if not straight-up antisemitism in different parts of the New Testament. I don't think it is the, "If you're a Pharisee, you're a bad person," or something like that. Because Paul represents himself as a Pharisee.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Now, so today, people use the term Pharisee pejoratively, and it's wildly inappropriate. That is antisemitism today.

Dan Beecher Right. So it's an antisemitic sort of dog whistle.

Dan McClellan Yeah. It's accusing someone of being overly legalistic, and I even recorded a video with a friend, Logan Williams, when I was in Italy at this Enoch seminar, where he was pointing out, he's got a paper that he's going to publish soon on this, that when you look at the scenes, when you look at Jesus in the New Testament, when you look at other non-Pharisaical interpretations of the law, the Pharisees were commonly dismissed as casuals.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan They were not strict enough.

Dan Beecher Interesting.

Dan McClellan And even when you look in Matthew, Jesus says, "Your righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees, or you cannot enter the kingdom of God." So when you look at the texts themselves, the Pharisees are not represented as these strict legalists. They're frequently represented as folks who are not legalistic enough.

Dan Beecher Huh.

Dan McClellan And today, people use Pharisee to mean overly legalistic person, and it's inaccurate, and it's pejorative. And like I said, the Pharisees would become Rabbinic Judaism, which is the mainstream of Jewish tradition- Right ... today, and so it is directly maligning the ancestor of contemporary Judaism. And in that sense, it is antisemitic as well. And yeah, the whole anti-Pharisee thing, pejorative use of Pharisee is incredibly common- Mm ... within contemporary Christianity. Not just Evangelical Christianity, it is widespread all over Christianity. And there is a wonderful book that was recently published that I should have gotten handy for this discussion, called Judeophobia in the New Testament. And in the back, there is a handy flowchart that answers the question, "Can I call this person a Pharisee?"

Dan Beecher Do all of the things go to no?

Dan McClellan Basically. The only time you can call somebody a Pharisee is if you're referring to a person in 1st century CE, 1st century BCE Judea, who identifies as a Pharisee.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And everything else all goes to, "Do not call this person a Pharisee."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So, that's the lesson here.

Dan Beecher Don't use Pharisee as- Are you referring to Paul? Then yes.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Are you referring to your neighbor, Paul, who lives down the street? Then no.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Stop using it pejoratively.

Dan Beecher It's antisemitic.

Dan McClellan It is inaccurate historically, textually, ecumenically, grammatically. In all the senses, it's not a good thing to use the term Pharisee pejoratively.

Dan Beecher I assume, though, that I can use the term Sadducees pejoratively. Well, I- With impunity ...

Dan McClellan tend not to. But there's not really a reputation to- No ... for that pejorative.

Dan Beecher You wealthy temple guy, you. You're such a Sadducee.

Dan McClellan That might work within Mormon circles, but- Well, that's true.

Dan Beecher They do- But probably- ... like their temples ...

Dan McClellan yeah, we would have to be a little careful about that.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But, yeah, I am of the mind that you should not use designations of other ethnic and religious and ideological groups as pejoratives just in general.

Dan Beecher Just in general.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And except the one that I make an exception for is doofus. I don't think that really counts as an ethnic group or anything like that.

Dan Beecher Well- But that- What was it?

Dan McClellan Oh, I have no idea where the word came from.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay. But- It's just a- Yeah ... pejorative term.

Dan McClellan Yeah. The only time you'll ever see me name-calling is if I call somebody a doofus. Because I feel like that's a pretty tame name to call.

Dan Beecher Oh, man. Somebody right now is heading to the comments section on YouTube- ... to tell us about the origin of the word doofus and how it's horrible in some way.

Dan McClellan But- Well ...

Dan Beecher until that happens, you're clear to use the word doofus.

Dan McClellan Probably related to doo-doo and goofus.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Student slang, dolt, idiot, nerd.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan By the 1960s.

Dan Beecher There you go.

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher Well, that's great. Thank you for setting... I'm so glad when I actually know what a thing is. Because I have heard the words Pharisees and Sadducees so many times, and I haven't really known what we were talking about. So thank you for that. That is very handy.