Omni Everything?

Dan McClellan Oh, but what if I want that kind of God? Oh, yeah, that's who God is.

Dan Beecher Go ahead.

Dan McClellan Sure.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Look, I'm not going to tell you no.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher What's it going to take to put you into a God today?

Dan McClellan Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan And you are listening to the "Data Over Dogma" podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things, Dan?

Dan Beecher Things are good.

Dan McClellan Good.

Dan Beecher We got big things shaking on this week's show. This week's show, we're tackling some of the grand concepts.

Dan McClellan Some of the big issues.

Dan Beecher Yes, ma'am.

Dan McClellan So to speak.

Dan Beecher All right. So coming up, we're going to start with a "What is that?"

Dan McClellan which- All right ...

Dan Beecher in this case, it's three "What is that's?"

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Which are omnipotence, omniscience, and omnip- Presence ...

Dan McClellan presence- Yeah ...

Dan Beecher omnibenevolence, omni-everything. As many omnis as you can come up with, we're going to talk- Uh-huh ... about them. And is the God of the Bible those things?

Dan McClellan Omni all those things, yes.

Dan Beecher Omni those?

Dan McClellan Omni omni.

Dan Beecher We don't know. We'll get to that. And then for our chapter and verse, we're going to dive into Acts 15, and you're going to explain something that I didn't- Yep ... understand when I tried to read it, and- ... I'm grateful to have you.

Dan McClellan Just two verses, Acts 15 verse 16 and verse 17. But yeah.

Dan Beecher Okay. We'll- Well, then why did I read the whole chapter, Dan?

Dan McClellan Because you're a go-getter.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan You need the context. But- Yeah, exactly ... yeah, and we'll talk more about that when we get there.

Dan Beecher But for now, let's dive into "What is that?"

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher What is that?

Dan McClellan So yeah.

Dan Beecher It's these concepts that are, at this point, just assumed and synonymous with the idea of the God of the Bible.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher The idea of omnipotence, which would be all-powerful.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Omniscience, all-knowing, and omnipresence means everywhere at all times sort of thing.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher These are literally, they feel as fundamental as concepts about God can be. They feel- Yes ... just inextricable from the idea of our understanding of God. But it may not have always been that way. So maybe let's talk about these ideas, where they come from, and you had some thoughts that you wanted to start us out with.

Dan McClellan Yeah. I think all three of these concepts have roots in certain features of deity concepts that are observed within the cognitive science of religion. Because in the cognitive science of religion, deity concepts arrive or arise initially because of the perception of agency in the world around us, and we attribute agency and intention to things that we don't know about, don't understand, or initially, if something suddenly happens, the intuitive first place our minds go is to some intentional agent.

Dan Beecher And- So if someone saw an asteroid crashing into the ground, they would assume that someone or something threw it or- Yeah ... or made that happen.

Dan McClellan Yeah. In the most fundamental, deepest roots of our mind, that's where we're going to first be led. If you're in the middle of the night, you hear a crash, the first thing is, "Oh my gosh, what is that?" And then maybe your reflective cognition is like, "That's the air conditioner kicking on," or, "That's the thing you left precariously perched on the counter in the bathroom, you idiot." The reflective cognition can overrule the intuitive cognition. But built into our intuitive cognition, and it only bubbles to the surface in certain instances, is the perception that there is agency, there are agents out in the world around us. We're very sensitive to their presence.

Dan Beecher Now- So not just what is that when the crash happens, but actually who is that?

Dan McClellan Yeah. This is something that goes back to even before humans evolved, was just a concern for protecting ourself, and so a hypersensitivity to the presence of agents around us is very critical to survival. The primate that first assumed the rustling in the bushes was something that might have teeth and be focused on them generally survived long enough to pass on their genes more than the primate that initially thought it was just the wind.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So, there is an upside to this. And because there's no real ceiling to our sensitivity to agency in the world around us, there's not a point at which it threatens our survival. We can be phenomenally sensitive, and this is why horror movies make you feel like there's somebody in the dark- Yeah ... shadows of the corner and in the dark basement when you're running up the steps a little more hastily than you normally would. But these are things that are going on on an individual level. But once stories start to be created about these alternative realities with these unseen agents that are occupying them, then it moves to a social level, and we develop rituals, which are interactions with each other and with these unseen agents in order to facilitate a favorable relationship with them and all this kind of stuff. But one of the things that develops with these deity concepts is, or one of the reasons they become very salient on a broader social level, like a national level, why one of these entities might become a patron deity or a national deity or a large-scale deity, is because they are perceived to be able to do some things that are helpful on a pro-social level. And so- One of those things is monitoring. If you have an unseen agent who can monitor, they can more effectively ensure that people are not free riding. So if you have certain social expectations, certain social mores and standards, you want the people to live up to those standards. If there is an unseen agent who might be at any point in time monitoring you, then that is useful as a means of enforcing those social mores, and particularly if that unseen agent also has the capacity to punish in some way, shape, or form. Deity concepts are also useful and are widespread because deities frequently are perceived to have access to what we call strategic information. That is not necessarily all information, but to any information that might be useful to us for planning, for acting. Anything that might influence decisions that we make.

Dan Beecher So this could be when to plant the crops or when to- When to plant the crops.

Dan McClellan Yeah. If we're going to invade, if we're going to go out to battle against these people.

Dan Beecher Yeah. If we'll be successful or- Yeah.

Dan McClellan If we should engage in this arranged marriage with this other nation. There are all kinds of things where we want information that we don't have. And we even see this in the case of ordeals. We need to know if this person killed this other person. We don't have evidence. We're leaving it up to the god. They will know, and then they will engage in the punishment. And so we count on a deity to have all access to strategic information. This is not omniscience because it only bubbles to the surface when it's needed. So initially, it's just like, "Well, can the deity do this? Yeah, the deity should be able to do this. We need this as strategic information. The deity can do this." And you see these kinds of things going on in the Bible, the way the God of the Bible is represented. They are somebody who monitors. They are somebody who has full access to strategic information. They are somebody who can punish, and they're also somebody who can do what needs to be done. If a deity is understood to be able to act in the world, then there are needs that humans have that they can't fulfill on their own, that they might outsource to the deity and count on them to be able to fulfill. And usually, this has to do with competition for goods or resources or protection or conquest, things like that. These are all things where deities frequently in the history of human civilization have been appealed to in order to get the job done, and then they get praised for their ability to get the job done.

Dan Beecher And in sort of multi-deity civilizations, ancient Greece or whatever, you could have a deity that was specific to one sort of thing.

Dan McClellan So- Right ...

Dan Beecher this deity is about protecting us in this scenario and giving us this specific kind of information, and if we want this specific information, we go to this other guy or whatever.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher Yeah, exactly.

Dan McClellan If you go to ancient Egypt, you've got a god of bricks. So the brick guild, the brick-making guild is very concerned for making sure that deity is appeased. And yeah, you have different deities that have some degree of sovereignty over some constituent element of the universe and its functioning, and you always wanted to ensure that the cycles always were functioning appropriately so that the river could flood, so that the crops could grow, so that the defense of the cities was successful, so that conquests of other cities were successful, all kinds of different ways that the deities were involved in the success of a given civilization. But it was also all situationally emergent. These were things that happened as the need arised.

Dan Beecher Arised?

Dan McClellan Arose? Oh, man. It's been a long day.

Dan Beecher God had arisen.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And so we see this kind of stuff in the Bible. So for instance, there's a story of Achan, who was the one who in the Book of Joshua, they were supposed to have destroyed all of the goods in this town that they destroyed, and Achan decided to take some and got a little bit of a five-finger discount on some of the goods. And then they failed the next city they attacked, and Joshua was like, "I don't understand what's going on." And God's like, "Well, one of your guys, turns out he took something." And so what they do is they line up all of the tribes and the families and everything, and then they whittle everything down, and God is the one who identifies Achan as the one who absconded with the goods that were supposed to be dedicated to herem. And then the Earth opens up and swallows Achan and- That'll happen.

Dan Beecher Punished.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher You don't want to steal the stuff that God tells you not to steal. You're going to get swallowed by the Earth.

Dan McClellan But that's a perfect illustration of this thing that we see in society after society that has these unseen agents functioning as deities. They are there. They are monitoring to ensure that people are not free riding, which means they are taking the benefits of living within a society, but not putting out what is expected. They're not living up to the standards. And so Achan was a free rider, and the deity used their capacity to monitor in order to call out the person who otherwise would've gotten away with it without anyone knowing, and then the deity punished. So in that story is kind of the quintessential patron deity doing what patron deities do. But you also see the God of the Bible represented as unable to do things and as not knowing certain things.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And as being absent from places.

Dan Beecher Yeah. That's always stood out to me. You look in the story of Adam and Eve in the garden, and they eat the apple, or they eat the fruit, and then God comes in and is like, "What happened? Why are you guys dressed like that?" And that was always- "Why are you hiding?" "What's happening?"

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Which feels very much against the idea of an all-knowing God.

Dan McClellan Yeah, because one, God doesn't know what's going on here. And God is like, "Did you eat from the tree of which I pretty explicitly told you not to eat?" So, there are multiple questions there. Where are you? Did you eat this fruit? And also the fact that they run and hide.

Dan Beecher Why?

Dan McClellan Because they hear God's footsteps in the garden.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Which is not omnipresence.

Dan Beecher Right. That is- It does localize him.

Dan McClellan Yes. That is an entity that is restricted to a specific point in time and space. And also they have feet and weight and make noise walking around in the garden. And so this represents God as not omniscient, not omnipresent. And I think to a degree, if you're not omniscient, then you're also not omnipotent.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan I think there's a degree to which there's some overlap there. But anyway, there are other places where God is not omnipotent. For instance, in the first chapter of the Book of Judges, you've got God is going to go out and fight a battle for the people of Judah. And then, the text says that they failed in a specific battle, and it just says "he," and it's not clear if it's referring to Judah or to God, but irrespective, because God is supposed to be fighting their battles for them- Right ... if Judah fails, that means God failed to deliver as promised. And why? It was because the people they were fighting had chariots.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Had iron chariots.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so it sounds an awful lot like God was unable to deliver in that story. And we've talked on the podcast about another story where God loses home court advantage and loses the game- Right ... in 2 Kings 3, when God promises the Israelite-Judahite-Edomite coalition victory when they invade Moab to try to extract the necessary funds from King Mesha, who has thrown off vassalage, and they fail. And it seems in the story that it's because of the intervention of the Moabite patron deity, Chemosh. So God is not all-powerful in a few different places in the text, even though God is represented in certain places as knowing everything that's going to come. For instance, there's a part in the Book of Isaiah where God challenges the gods of the other nations to, "Tell us what is to come so that we may know that you are gods." In other words- Yeah ... demonstrate that you have full access to strategic information, that you can divine the future, because God is supposed to be able to do that. But it's limited, and it's spotty. And so again, you have situationally emergent situations where it is rhetorically useful to assert that God can do whatever needs to be done, that God knows whatever needs to be known, and that God can be in whatever places they need to be. And you have things like, "There's nowhere I can hide from God," which doesn't necessarily mean that God is in all places at the same time. It means that God has access to all places. There's nowhere you can go where God does not have access. There's nothing you can hide that God can't find. But an interesting thing happens after the Bible has been written, and it is not univocal. There are a bunch of different perspectives. There are writers who thought it was rhetorically useful to have God represented as not knowing something. There are writers who think it is rhetorically useful to represent God as being limited in time and space. People leave God's presence. God leaves other people's presence. God is represented as having a existence in a specific point in time and space throughout the majority of the Hebrew Bible. And after the Bible, as later generations are negotiating with the text, I think what we get is a rhetorical kind of one-upmanship. Every time there's some other deity that does better, you've got to say, "Oh, well, our God is better than this." And you see the rhetoric of incomparability in different places in the Bible. Who can compare to our God? No one, that's who. And even the name Michael, Mikha'el, means "who is like God?" And the answer is, "Ain't nobody." That's their middle name. And so you have this rhetoric that is constantly amplifying God's ability to know, God's ability to access locations, God's ability to accomplish things. And so it keeps getting amplified until you reach a superlative degree. And I think this is something that happens in some places within the more philosophically oriented layers of the Bible, which basically means the things written during or after the Greco-Roman period, and primarily in the New Testament, for instance. I think you have in 1 John 3:20, the statement, "He knows everything."

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan Ginoski panta, which just means "He knows all things," which is obviously rhetorical, but tags that base of omniscience.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And then So there are rhetorical contexts where this idea in its most basic form is achieved, where people are saying, "Oh, yeah. Well, God knows everything, all things." And then after the Bible, you have the more philosophically oriented thinkers within Christianity and Judaism who are looking back at the Bible and negotiating with it, and they're still trying to develop a God concept that can compete. And within the Greco-Roman world, the concept of God, at least on the philosophical side of things, was the superlative of everything. The unmoved mover, the first cause, the thing that is all good, and all that kind of stuff. And so because God is defined by these superlatives, God's ability to know, God's ability to be located wherever they need to be located, God's ability to achieve things also gets ratcheted up to a superlative degree until you get the ideas of omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence. But then you also obviously have people saying, "Well, what about can God make a stone so large that God can't lift it?"

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan You get a lot of stuff like that. Can God do the impossible? Can God lie? And these are the discussions that happen within the realm of philosophy. This is not what happens when priests are wondering when they're going to plant their crops. These are not the things that are happening when somebody is contemplating why bad things happen to good people. These are things that happen as people engage in philosophical, kind of dialectic back-and-forth discussions, and that's overwhelmingly taking place after the Bible. And so what began as kind of fundamental tent poles of deity concepts were because of their incorporation into these philosophical discussions. They get amplified to the superlative degrees within philosophical context. And suddenly your God isn't just able to do the things that need to be done. Your God can do any and all things, and even impossible things, and even paradoxical things. God can do whatever. And then it's not just the God that can give you whatever strategic information you might need in any given situation. God knows all things. And it's not just a God that can access any location, can find anything, can find your missing wallet. It's a God that is located in all places. And so I think what we get is certain rhetorically useful concepts of God that are building on, innovating on, elaborating on these kind of basic ideas that then get picked up and philosophically further innovated on and elaborated on until we get to, oh, this is a deity that is omniscient, that is omnipotent, that is omnipresent, and that is the lens through which we have looked at deity ever since. And so that's why- You know, it's al- ... it is fundamental, it is basic, it is intuitive. It's just what a god is.

Dan Beecher Right. It has only just now occurred to me that while I understand wanting to make God all of these things, these superlatives, and it makes sense that in order to make sense of the innovations later in the Bible and just sort of how to make sense of this concept of a god, that you would want these superlative descriptors to apply. It also seems like you lose something when you make the God this big and powerful. And it feels like the God that the writers of the Old Testament were writing about was more recognizable and understandable. You know what I mean? There was a sense of it's like us, but more powerful, and the God of omniscience and omnipotence doesn't feel like us at all to me. There's- I don't know how to relate to that in any way.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And that's definitely a tension, because one of the reasons that deity concepts are so useful, particularly on the individual level, is because there is a relatability, and there- Yeah ... is an immanence that allows them to be approached in things like prayer and things like that. And so you've got a give and take between the function of the deity on an individual level and the function of the deity on a social level, and even an institutional level. And so as one is increased, the other is somewhat decreased, which is why these deity concepts need constant curation.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan Because as the deity is elevated further and further away from the individual, you also need to say, "Well, we got prayer. We can always pray. God is always accessible through prayer." And so there are traditions where we have God who has legions of angels as intermediaries, but is still accessible directly through prayer by anyone. And sometimes these concepts kind of... There's a feedback loop as well because if you want a deity that is immanent, that is relatable, that is close to you, a deity that can be in all places at the same time is... There's a degree to which that's a little more intuitive. It's like, well, they're doing this thing over here- For these other people, but I can also access the deity at the same time. So that's part of that curation.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Part of the reason you keep getting the ratcheting up is because you're responding to concerns like these, a less relatable deity that is further away. And that's kind of what Jesus does as well. Because with Jesus, it's like, "We got a dude. We got a guy. It's a dude. It's a man. He's tactile. He's material. He's right there. He walked among us."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So, in a sense, Jesus is kind of splitting the difference, is mediating.

Dan Beecher Yeah, that is an interesting point. Jesus becomes the bridge between our human sort of life and experience and this increasingly foreign God figure.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And this is why I argue that Jesus, in some sense, is functioning as a divine image, because that's exactly what divine images do.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan We got this deity way up in the heavens, but check out this rock.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan It looks like him. And so we're going to talk to the rock. Now, and I'm kind of treating it in kind of a crude manner, but it's the idea of talking to a headstone. This represents the entity.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It's going to channel the agency of the entity intuitively, so I'm going to talk to it because it's here. It's in front of me. It has their name on it, and so it's going to act that way. And so, yeah, there have always been ways that humans have tried to bring the deity near, and with the Reformation, we kind of went, "Eh, we don't like all the material stuff. We just want the scriptures." And now the scriptures have to be the divine image.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan You have, "I'm going to go commune with God." What does that mean? I'm going to go read the scriptures. The Spirit is going to be here. I can feel it when I read the scriptures. You're doing the exact same thing people did when they went to visit divine images, or the same kind of thing that the Jesus tradition functions to do. It's to bring God near. It's to make God imminent as God becomes further and further away.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher When I read the, especially Old Testament depictions of the deity, you get anger. You get all of these very human emotions from God. And the more God is represented as omniscient, and omnipotent, and all-knowing, all of this stuff, it becomes harder for me to reconcile these ideas of an angry God who would visit punishment on people, and who would become enraged or whatever. That doesn't square as well for me. But to think about an early concept where their god wasn't omniscient and omnipotent to them, but was just more powerful than they were- Mm-hmm ... then all of those ideas, then those stories start to make a lot more sense in my mind.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And here's where I think the accident of the preservation of the Bible is such a boon to the later philosophical concept of God. It's because this is the amazon.com of religion. "Oh, we got that too. Oh, you need a deity who can get mad? We got that over here. You need a deity that has no parts or passions? We got that over here. You need a deity that is concerned about your feelings? We got one of those, too." God can be whatever the person needs God to be because God is represented in so many different ways.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so anciently, it was like, "Hey, we need our God to lie through the prophet Micaiah to deceive the king to his death in battle against the Philistines. Hey, we got one right over here who can do that."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan You have this utility deity who can be represented in whatever way you need him, and so that's why we have people today who are like, "Oh, yeah, God hates abortion. God hates members of the LGBTQIA community." They don't write that all out on their sign.

Dan Beecher Nope.

Dan McClellan They write a much shorter word.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan But you need a God who hates? Great, we got that God, too. You need a God who loves? We got that God, too. But I think the fact that the Bible has been preserved in all of its multivocality and with all of its different conceptions of God just makes for a more utility deity.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan So that anybody, whatever kind of God you need, we got that kind of God.

Dan Beecher And all you have to do to get that kind of God is to ignore the other parts- Right ... that pointed in a different direction.

Dan McClellan Yeah, because every person who needs the kind of God over here, there's also a person who's like, "Why would you have that kind of God over there?" And then you got an argument for that. "Oh, well- Right ... this was just metaphorical. We need some kind of way to talk about God because God is beyond all description, and we'll worry about apophatic theology a little later. But anyway, these folks over here, it's just a manner of speaking. They just needed to think about God in some way, so that's how they did it." "Oh, but what if I want that kind of God?"

Dan Beecher "Oh, yeah.

Dan McClellan That's who God is."

Dan Beecher "Go ahead.

Dan McClellan Sure."

Dan Beecher Yeah. "Look, I'm not going to tell you no."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher "What's it going to take to put you into a God today?"

Dan McClellan And so yeah, you've got the Swiss Army God who can be whatever someone needs that God to be, which is I- think that this is one of the reasons that the God of the Bible has become the most common God around the world is because it's a deity that satisfies the philosophical concerns. You've got all the theologians who have developed a concept of deity that responds to all of the different criticisms and everything. And then you've also got the God who will happily kill the person you want to be killed if that's what you need. So, and omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, those are three of the things that God became mostly after the Bible to satisfy the more philosophically oriented side of things, even though, and they're happy to be like, oh, they got the cute story about God not knowing where Adam and Eve were hiding, but God was just playing with them. God knew.

Dan Beecher He was kidding.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher He was kidding. God kids.

Dan McClellan Like when a parent goes into the kid's room and goes, "Now, where are you?" When they can see their feet sticking out from behind the curtain- Right ... kind of thing. Obviously, that's what's going on in the story of the Garden of Eden. It's whatever you need it to be. Like the great poet once said, "Science is whatever we need it to be."

Dan Beecher Spock Chat. Well, I think that's a fascinating discussion, and I think a lot of people would be very shocked to hear someone say that the God of the Bible is not inherently omniscient, omnipotent, all of those things. I think a lot of people would be very shocked to learn that that happened after, that that's not directly in there.

Dan McClellan Yeah. You see hints at it, but it's not programmatic. It's not a philosophical, metaphysical kind of ontological doctrine until you get into second, third century CE.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But yeah.

Dan Beecher All right.

Dan McClellan It's so fascinating, I think.

Dan Beecher I do, too. I think that's really interesting. Well, hey, speaking of that Bible there, should we go do a chapter and verse?

Dan McClellan Let's do it.

Dan Beecher All right. So we're starting in Acts chapter 15.

Dan McClellan Acts chapter 15. We've got the yon Jerusalem Council.

Dan Beecher Yes. We start with some fellows coming in and saying some stuff, and then Paul and maybe Barnabas, but maybe- ... there's some question as to who Paul is hanging out with, I think. Is that right?

Dan McClellan I don't know. And not really relevant to the discussion.

Dan Beecher Not relevant to what we're talking about.

Dan McClellan No.

Dan Beecher So let's not get into that. Where we're looking is, remind me, which of the things are we looking at?

Dan McClellan We're looking at- So, let's start in verse 12. I'm just going to kind of summarize a bit, but verses 16 and 17 are the two verses that I want to look at, which are quotations from the Hebrew Bible, that reveal something fascinating about this story. So they're basically trying to decide if are we going to extend the gospel to the Gentiles without requiring that they first convert to Judaism and adopt the cultural conventions of Judaism. And so in verse 12, and I'm reading here from the NRSVUE, and I'm going to kind of bounce around a bit. But, "The whole assembly kept silence and listened to Barnabas and Paul as they told of all the signs and wonders that God had done through them among the Gentiles." And then you get this scene where they sit down, and then after they finish speaking, James replied, "My brothers, listen to me." So this is the patriarchal kind of figure standing up and is going to pronounce judgment. James is the brother of Jesus, the very brother of the Lord, who stands up, and he offers the final word on this. It says in verse 14, "Simeon has related how God first looked favorably on the Gentiles to take from among them a people for his name." And then in verse 15, "This agrees with the words of the prophets as it is written." And then we get 16 and 17, and I'll go ahead and read these two and then explain what happens at the Jerusalem Council, and then go back to where these verses are coming from.

Dan Beecher Because these two are presented, at least in the NRSVUE, as quotations.

Dan McClellan Yes. So verse 16, "After this, I will return, and I will rebuild the dwelling of David, which has fallen. From its ruins, I will rebuild it, and I will set it up so that all other peoples may seek the Lord, even all the Gentiles over whom my name has been called. Thus says the Lord, who has been making these things known from long ago." And so this is basically James is saying, "Hey, look, this prophet prophesied that there would come a time when the house of David would be rebuilt, and it would be extended. The tent would be embiggened- ... so that all peoples might seek the Lord, even all the Gentiles over whom my name has been called." So that's the important phrase in beginning of verse 17, "So that all other peoples may seek the Lord."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Now, this is something that I found out when I got my first copy of the Bible when I was 20 years old. I found out that when they quote the Old Testament in the New Testament, and you go look up the Old Testament passages, sometimes they say different things- What?

Dan Beecher ...

Dan McClellan from what you expect here.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan No. So verses 16 and 17 are supposed to be quotations of Amos. This is the prophet that James is referring to. And this basically ended the discussion. James says this and then James immediately is like, "Therefore, I have reached a decision that we should not trouble those Gentiles who are turning to God, but we should..." And then he says, "We got four rules. Four rules only. Don't eat things polluted by idols, stay away from sexual immorality, stay away from whatever has been strangled, and stay away from blood." So, four very important things that have remained obviously incredibly important for us ever since.

Dan Beecher Just so vital.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Just so vital.

Dan McClellan But James basically says, "Hey, here's what we're going to do," and everybody else says, "Sounds great, James." And they draft letters to send out to everybody. So this passage basically ends the discussion. But when we go look at Amos 9:12 and 13, or 11 and 12, excuse me. Here's what those passages say. "On that day, I will raise up the booth of David that has fallen and repair its breaches and raise up its ruins and rebuild it as in the days of old." Fair enough.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan "In order that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations who are called by my name," says the Lord who does this.

Dan Beecher That sounds different.

Dan McClellan It is different.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan We got some big differences here. One of the biggest is that in the Greek of Acts, it says, "So that all people might seek the Lord." In the Hebrew, what we have is, "So that they might possess the remnant of Edom." And the reason for the difference is that in the ancient Greek translation, the Septuagint of this passage, there were two words that were changed. The word for possess, they might possess, which means dispossess, it means take over control of, conquer the remnant of Edom. This is a reference to the nation of Israel reconquering the territory of Edom that at one point belonged to them, but they lost.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan So what Amos 9:12 is saying, that the house of David will be rebuilt so that David will regain the lands that it once possessed, that it lost, specifically the land of Edom. And then it says, "And all the nations who are called by my name." In other words, any place that we conquered at some point where my name was called in that land, we're going to get those lands back.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan Israel is going to be at its peak once again. That word for possess, conquer, conquest, I think that's yarash in Hebrew.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Yarash. That is read as zarash in Greek, or in the Greek translation, they misunderstood it as zarash. Zarash is the verb for "to seek."

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan And so the Greek translator said, and whether this was intentional or unintentional, I'm not making a case in either direction. I don't think we can know. Conservative Christians will be like, "Oh, this was all on purpose. It was guided by inspiration." But whatever the cause, yarash is read as zarash, and so it's not so that they might possess, it is so that they might seek. And who is going to seek? Well, in Amos 9:12, it's supposed to be the members of the house of David are going to repossess the remnant of Edom.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But here, the remnant of Edom is read as the remnant of Adam- Oh ... or humanity.

Dan Beecher Yeah. So Edom- Adam meaning Adam, the- Right.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So Edom and Adam are spelled almost exactly the same.

Dan Beecher Right. And all you have- Because the ancient Hebrew doesn't have the vowels, right? Is that why they would be spelled the same?

Dan McClellan Right. Now, in the Masoretic Text, there is a vav that represents an ancient consonant that is used as a vowel.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Which is something that we do in English, like the Y can be a vowel- Sure ... or a consonant. So they use a consonant to represent the O vowel there in the Masoretic Text. But in 1,000 years earlier, it probably did not have the vav there. So it would've been spelled exactly the same as Adam.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And so the remnant of Edom has now become the remnant of Adam, and they become the subject of the verb.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So it's no longer they will dispossess or conquer the remnant of Edom. It's now the remnant of humanity will seek. And what will they seek? Doesn't say.

Dan Beecher Why?

Dan McClellan Because the Hebrew doesn't have anything there. You've rearranged the sentence, the clause- Right ... and now you have a transitive verb without an object. And so in the Book of Acts, the writer who is quoting from the Greek translation of Amos just says, "Oh, the Lord."

Dan Beecher Seek the Lord.

Dan McClellan So what will they seek? And so that all other peoples may seek the Lord is what we have in the Book of Acts.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And what this indicates, I hesitate to say demonstrate because I know a lot of people will disagree with me, but what this indicates is that this story was composed with reference to the Greek translation of Amos. Now, if this were an actual verbatim account of what took place at the Jerusalem Council, in the 30s CE in Jerusalem, James would've been speaking in probably Aramaic, but possibly Hebrew. James would not have been speaking in Greek to this crowd.

Dan Beecher And so- And would've been referencing the Hebrew scripture.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And so, if James had actually said this, James would've referred to the Hebrew. And if James had referred to the Hebrew, the passage would've had absolutely no relevance.

Dan Beecher Right. It wouldn't have made any sense to bring up that particular scripture for this argument, for this concept.

Dan McClellan Right. Because the argument is we're extending the gospel to the Gentiles.

Dan Beecher Why?

Dan McClellan Because, well, the Greek translation says the Gentiles are going to seek after the Lord. The Hebrew says absolutely no such thing. And so, what this suggests is that this is a literary creation. This appeal to this passage on the part of James to close down the Jerusalem Council and to validate the extending of the gospel to the Gentiles without first having them to convert to Judaism, was a literary invention.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It was something the author of the Book of Acts created, and they had to go back to their Greek translation of Amos to get the passage that would work the way they wanted it to work.

Dan Beecher There you go. One of the things that we've talked about is the fact that these books were written long after the fact, or many of these books were written long after the fact. Do we know who and when Acts was written? Who wrote it, when it was written?

Dan McClellan So traditionally, it's the same author as the Gospel of Luke.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And I think probably at least around half of scholars, if not more, would say that even if Luke wasn't the author, whoever wrote the Gospel of Luke is probably also the same person who wrote the Gospel of Acts. I'm not so convinced of that. We talked with Dr. Bond, Helen Bond, about the dating of Luke, Acts- Right ... and how it might be 2nd century. It might be something that is like the 110s CE- Right ... when it was written. So, that would've been a good 75, maybe 80 years after this Council of Jerusalem would've taken place.

Dan Beecher Yeah. I think you've made a really interesting argument here, that the way that this fell out, even if the story is largely true, even if the story that's being relayed about Simeon and- Paul and Barnabas ... Paul and everyone hearing James speak, even if all of that actually happened, it stands to reason that you would want to include details, and if you don't have the details at hand, you might want to inject some interesting stuff in, just as a flourish, if nothing else.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And if you can have them appeal to scripture, that would be the cherry on top. Because people use scripture an awful lot in arguments these days. In the early 1st century CE, who's to say? Maybe they didn't quote scripture at all, and the author of Acts was like, "We need some scripture in here."

Dan Beecher Gets- Yeah. Do you think that one of the things that this indicates is that the person who wrote Acts was a native Greek speaker?

Dan McClellan I think it suggests that they definitely have preference for the Greek Septuagint, because although I don't think we have a ton of discussions about differences between the Greek and the Hebrew yet within Christianity, later within Christianity, the idea is that the Greek translation is the original, and that the Jewish folks, in order to try to undermine Christianity, altered their texts, and that's why they're less Messianic.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan And so, I think it's probably likely that Greek was the first language. I think if they were able to engage fully with the Hebrew, that this might have given them some pause, unless they were just like, "Eh, my audience won't know the difference," which is certainly a plausibility.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan That certainly happens today, where people write stuff just counting on their audience- ... not knowing or caring. So yeah, I don't know, but I would say I'm probably 60/40 that if not their native language, it was a better language for them than was Hebrew or Aramaic.

Dan Beecher Or possibly could be the only language that they knew how to read.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And they may have spoken other languages, but this was the one that they learned to read and write in.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It's just an interesting thing. I love moments like this because, yeah, it does tell us, without meaning to, without any intention, it tells us a so much bigger story just about the creation of these works and about some behind-the-scenes stuff that we just don't have access to otherwise.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And I think it is an interesting-- When I first would read through the Bible, and I would see something quoted from the Old Testament, and I'd go check it out and be like, "Oh, that's different." I did not have the skills or the resources or the ability to, or even the now I can't even think of the word, attention span to go track down what's going on. But this is one that I always found fascinating, that when I learned this, I was like, "Huh!

Dan Beecher Huh!"

Dan McClellan That it seems like it's a literary creation rather than something historical.

Dan Beecher Yeah, and again, like you say, one of the things that, and I've talked about this on the show before, but one of the things that has always frustrated me about reading the Bible is that I don't feel that I have anywhere near enough background to understand what I'm reading. There's so many moments where I'm just like, "What? I don't know what that is." And without having your level of education about the whole thing, you're kind of just not going to. You know what I mean?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher This is why I like doing this podcast, because things can start to actually make a little bit of sense and stuff.

Dan McClellan I think it is fascinating when-- because there are a lot of questions, and people ask me weird questions all the time. Where they're like, "Hey, I noticed this." And I'm like, "It's nothing. It's really boring." And those are not the answers people want. People want something like this, where it's like- Yeah ... look at all this stuff that we can unpack, and we can realize about this text based on just comparing it to the Hebrew, and there are certainly lots of places throughout the Bible where we see this. But yeah, not every one is a home run. Some of them are- Well ... some of them are hit by pitch, some of them are grounding out.