The Adult(ery) Episode

Dan McClellan Or I will remove the name of the balls from her mouth. Well, the names of the balls. The names of the balls.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Thunder and Lightning.

Dan Beecher Donner and Blitzen.

Dan McClellan All right. If the left one don't get you, then the right one will. Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.

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

Dan Beecher Things go well for me. You're back under the weather, I think, a little bit.

Dan McClellan A little bit. I'm on the end of it.

Dan Beecher Yeah. I'm guessing that our listeners will forgive a little bit of nasal resonance coming out of you.

Dan McClellan Hopefully.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan I think sometimes it can make the baritone a little more pleasing.

Dan Beecher A little sexier.

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher All right. He's going for sexy, everybody.

Dan McClellan Well, when I was a missionary, there was a time I called into the mission office, into the mission home. I was in the offices. I was the financiero. I was the financial secretary for- Sure ... several months. And I had a great relationship, still do, with my mission president's wife, Julie. She was wonderful. We all called her La Hermana. But one day I called in, I had a cold, and I was like, "Is the president there?" And she was like, "Who is this?" I was like, "Eldon McClellan." She's like, "Your voice sounds really sexy, Eldon McClellan." And that made me deeply uncomfortable.

Dan Beecher Wow.

Dan McClellan There you go.

Dan Beecher I like it.

Dan McClellan But shout out to Julie. She's awesome.

Dan Beecher What did you call her? La Esposa? What did you call her?

Dan McClellan La Hermana.

Dan Beecher La Hermana.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher The woman.

Dan McClellan The sister.

Dan Beecher Oh, the sister. That's what it is.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Ah.

Dan Beecher La Hermana.

Dan McClellan So, yeah. Anyway, moving beyond my extreme discomfort with that- Yeah. Let's- It was comfortable ...

Dan Beecher climb into a show.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher I think we can do it.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Today we're going to be doing a couple of fun segments, and we're keeping it sexy. I think we're going to keep the theme sex-themed throughout the- Yes ... entire show.

Dan McClellan We're bringing sexy way back.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Way back. Way back to the- 2,800 years almost.

Dan Beecher Yeah, exactly. We're going as far back as we can comfortably go. The first thing we're going to do, we're going to do an It's the Law. We haven't done one of these for a little while.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And that's going to be one of the top 10 of all of the commandments.

Dan McClellan Yep. Of all the Ten Commandments, this is one of them.

Dan Beecher It is one of them. And it is the one about adultery, so that'll be fun. And then there's an unassuming book just sort of buried in the middle of the Hebrew Bible called Hosea.

Dan McClellan Hosea. And we're going to- We don't talk about it a lot. A lot of people don't know what's going on with Hosea, unless, of course, they're scholars of the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible, in which case they know Hosea's a big deal.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And we're going to talk about why Hosea's a big deal.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Beyond just how often it references sex work.

Dan McClellan But we'll get- If Hosea was a person, it would come up to you at a party and say, "I'm kind of a big deal."

Dan Beecher So.

Dan McClellan All right. And so- And that joke has levels. So anyway.

Dan Beecher Yeah. That'll be our chapter and verse in the second half of the show. But first off, It's the Law. Breaking the law, breaking the law.

Dan McClellan Or as the great poet said, "Scraping the jaw, scraping the jaw."

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan That was... I can't do that laugh anymore. My voice does not do the crack with the laugh.

Dan Beecher You can't Beavis anymore?

Dan McClellan No, not as much as I used to be able to. When I was younger, I could do the . Yeah, I can't.

Dan Beecher All right. So here's the thing, we're talking about, I don't even know which of the Ten Commandments it is. I guess the seventh?

Dan McClellan Well, it's Exodus 20 verse 14.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Yeah, and there's a...

Dan Beecher This is- Just depends on how you count.

Dan McClellan Yeah, this is a little inside baseball, but I have taught primary multiple times in my- That's the child- Yes ... classes in Mormonism, yeah.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan And my students come out of there knowing more than their parents do- Uh-huh ... about the Bible.

Dan Beecher And- No one's surprised to hear that.

Dan McClellan No.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan No, no, no. And one of the things, one year I was like, "Guess what? All y'all, you're memorizing the Ten Commandments." And those kids came out of there knowing the Ten Commandments, and I used a little, I don't even remember what you call it, an initialism where you- Oh, got you ... like a little narrative that you... And for the Mormons, I would say, "Why I never see President Monson at Salt Lake." And- So you got worship, you got idols, you got the name, you got the Sabbath, and then P is for parents, and then Monson is murder, at is adultery, Salt Lake is steal, lie, and then Salt Lake City, C, is covet.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So if you can remember that, you can remember all Ten Commandments. So why I never see President Monson at, so that's the seventh commandment. Yeah, there you go.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So- According to a Protestant numbering of the Ten Commandments. Which we- That's right.

Dan Beecher As we have discussed, there are many different ways that you can enumerate the commandments, and 10 is not really a very good number for them.

Dan McClellan No. You could count more than that. Although- We've already talked about how Exodus 34 is the only place where it actually refers to the set of commandments as 10. And it's not these ones. And it's not these ones.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan No. It's the you shall not boil a kid in its mother's milk, and stuff like that. The ritual debacle.

Dan Beecher Yeah, something about yeast and bread, and who knows?

Dan McClellan The festival of- Yeah, lots of stuff like that ...

Dan Beecher yeast.

Dan McClellan I don't know.

Dan Beecher It's just crazy.

Dan McClellan There is a reference in, I think, Deuteronomy 3 or 4, where it talks about these 10 things, and then- Oh ... Deuteronomy 5- Uh-huh ... recounts the Ten Commandments almost- Right ... exactly as we find in Exodus 20.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But yeah, you could divide it into a few different numbers. So, we got number seven. It's two short words in Hebrew, lo tin'af.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan I mean, nuff said, right?

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Or 'nough said.

Dan Beecher Zing.

Dan McClellan Yeah, and that literally means you shall not commit adultery.

Dan Beecher Okay. And- And that seems straightforward.

Dan McClellan It sounds- Doesn't it, though?

Dan Beecher ...

Dan McClellan easy.

Dan Beecher It sounds like, oh, we now know what that means. And here's the thing, I don't think we do. And the reason that I don't think we do, and I'll let you elucidate this quite a lot.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher But what I noticed, and maybe other astute listeners may have caught this as they did their own Bible study, or as they listened to our show and heard stories about all of these characters and whatever, the Bible's totally fine with a lot of things that we consider adultery now.

Dan McClellan Yes. The Bible doesn't seem to care much when guys are out there- ... getting their thing wet. And- Well, as long as- As long as it's not with someone who belongs to another man.

Dan Beecher Right. And that's- And that, yeah, that seems to be the crux of it, right? It's a property- Yeah ... rights issue- Yeah, it is ... as much as anything.

Dan McClellan It is a property rights issue. A lot of people want to make this about... There's no parity here.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It is very much a case of women are the property of men.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And a man who is betrothed to a woman or married to a woman, that contractual relationship is considered sacrosanct in that society because that's the relationship that facilitates procreation, and so that's what carries the society on, strengthens it, perpetuates it, protects it, all that kind of stuff. And so, the adultery is really a violation of those property rights, which is why a woman is prohibited from having any and all premarital or extramarital sex, period.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan A man is not.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan As long as the woman is not betrothed or married to someone else. So, a man is legally not prohibited from going out and having sex with a sex worker- Right ... or with a woman who is not betrothed or married to someone else, whether he's married or not.

Dan Beecher And that's what a lot of people- Though there are some sort of legalistic things that can happen. The Bible does delineate, again, whoever this woman is- Uh-huh ... if she is not married, she is likely the property now of her father.

Dan McClellan Father, right.

Dan Beecher And her sexual inexperience is a commodity that he owns.

Dan McClellan Absolutely.

Dan Beecher So, if a man, married or otherwise, is to sleep with a woman, he is violating her father's rights- Correct ... in that respect, right?

Dan McClellan Yes. Now, this is for an Israelite girl.

Dan Beecher Okay. Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan So, this is a freeborn- Oh, yeah.

Dan Beecher That's right ... Israelite or a Judahite.

Dan McClellan Because if she's a foreigner or if she is an enslaved girl or something like that, it doesn't really matter. But it matters if she is eligible for proper Israelite marriage because her father then stands to benefit financially from that transaction, and so, yes, it's a violation of his property rights. It's not as serious a violation. So, we see in Exodus 22:16, we see in Deuteronomy 22:28 and 29, that Exodus 22:16 uses a word that a lot of scholars translate seduce.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan So, it's not clear that it is non-consensual. There is some coercion going on maybe.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan It might be sexual assault. It might not be. Deuteronomy 22:28 and 29 is clearly sexual assault. No matter what an apologist tells you, it is about sexual assault. They will make up all kinds of crap about the verb tafas- Hmm ... and say, "It just means to handle. It just means he's handling her. It's consensual." And that's garbage.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Every time the object of the verb is a person, it means force. So, anyway, in those two cases, the perpetrator owes the father an elevated bride price.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And then he is required to marry the girl because she's damaged goods now.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan She's no longer eligible for proper Israelite marriage, and so the penalty is like, well, you broke it, you bought it.

Dan Beecher Right. And then- Since we're using fairly rough terminology- Yes ... for all of this- Yes ... can we make it clear that this is not our feeling- No.

Dan McClellan No, no, no ...

Dan Beecher about how things are?

Dan McClellan This is- No.

Dan Beecher But this literally is exactly how the Bible treats these scenarios.

Dan McClellan Yes. And when you look in Deuteronomy 22:28 and 29, and the verses that lead up to it, 22 is one, 23 through 27 is another segment. When you look at these things, the problem ... is that this has violated someone's rights, which is why if the woman is betrothed or married, the penalty for the assaulter is death.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan If she's not betrothed or married, it's that elevated bride price, and you've got to marry her. You're never allowed to divorce her. Her father can reject the marriage, however, and just take the money.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But what that indicates is that the severity of the punishment depends upon who is asserting rights over the woman's procreative capacities and sexual availability.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Is it a husband? In which case, death. Is it cake or death? You get death, or you get the wedding cake from- Yeah ... marrying this girl. It's a case of cake or death.

Dan Beecher One wonders if Eddie Izzard had this in mind.

Dan McClellan I would not be surprised. Eddie Izzard is a genius- Yes, it's true ... on several levels. So it would not surprise me in the least. However, yeah, you're absolutely right. This is a question of property rights, and adultery comes down to property rights. It is not a fundamentally moral question. It's a question of property rights.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Which is why, if a guy's married, he can go out and have sex with a sex worker.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan She's not eligible for proper Israelite marriage. Nobody owns her, so no biggie.

Dan Beecher Well, and we've talked about this multiple times, where heroes of the Bible- Yeah ... people who are considered good, upstanding men of the Bible have gone out and partaken of sex work with no problem, including every... Well, not with no problems. Every now and then- ... it's his daughter-in-law tricking him.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher But the problem isn't that he partook of a sex worker's wares.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher That's never an issue.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So there's quite an asymmetry here going on regarding responsibilities related to sex- Yeah ... and the propriety of sex.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Because people today like to think of sex as this holy, not full of holes, but there are holes involved, but in- ... this sanctified thing where- Yeah ... this is the power that grants life and stuff like that. No, not in the Hebrew Bible.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Hebrew Bible, sex was just an everyday part of life.

Dan Beecher And we're talking about the big dogs of the Hebrew Bible.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Abraham has the whole thing with Hagar.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So, he's got a wife. She's not producing.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And so, he sleeps with her maidservant, right?

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher That's basically it.

Dan McClellan And slave girl, yeah.

Dan Beecher Jacob has a whole bunch of... He's got Leah and Rachel, and sleeps with their maidservants as well.

Dan McClellan Yep. You got Judah, who messed up with the daughter-in-law because he wouldn't give his other son to her because he thought she was the Black Widow.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Yes. And she tricked him into- Yeah ... impregnating her, and he was like, "Uno bueno. You got me."

Dan Beecher "Ah, you. That was a good trick."

Dan McClellan "Well played."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So, and in none of these cases is anyone treating sex as if it is some sacrosanct kind of experience that God has placed these boundaries around- Right ... outside of questions of property rights.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So, adultery is a very different thing in the Hebrew Bible. It is not what we talk about when we talk about adultery today.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And when Jesus says, "Any man who looks on a woman unless after her has committed adultery already with her in his heart," that is a significant renegotiation- Right ... of what's going on here.

Dan Beecher Well, we should dive into that, because it does- Yeah ... seem like the New Testament does have a modified version of, or a modified view- Yes ... of what adultery is and what it means.

Dan McClellan Yes, and that is primarily the product of Greco-Roman society.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Because we have the introduction of Greek philosophy, one, and then Greco-Roman family conventions, household conventions and norms, and things like that, where it was still men had a lot more freedom than women still, but those who were a little more philosophically oriented asserted a bit more parity between the sexes related to sexual activity because sexual desire began to be seen as one of the baser urges of the corrupt flesh.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And particularly through a Platonic lens, where you have the world of the divine and the world of the flesh, and you were really trying to transcend the world of the flesh to commune with and hopefully one day return to the world of the divine. This is where the idea of the logos, the Word, Jesus as the Word, is what it's based on. This is what Paul is talking about an awful lot. But as a result of this, sex was seen as something dirty.

Dan Beecher Right. And we've talked about this- Or they talk about it as carnal, as being of- Yeah ...

Dan McClellan yeah.

Dan Beecher Like you say, it becomes this thing of two realms where one group of things is sort of the body and of the earth, and that's the lesser things.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher And then there are the things of the spirit and of the divine- And that's the things to which one is supposed to aspire.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Which, yeah, I disagree, but that's- Yeah, and- ... that's the Greeks for you. What are you going to do?

Dan McClellan Yeah. It's all Greek to them. Now, and something that you have in Greco-Roman period Judaism is this whole spectrum of approaches to the propriety of sex.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And we've talked about this before, where there were some hardliners who talked about sex as something that was only ever appropriate for procreation, and so it was totally inappropriate when it was not explicitly for the sake of procreation. So, past menopause, sorry man, y'all are retired. The wife is menstruating, you know that's already out. She's pregnant right now, sorry, you're going to have to take matters into your own hands, or not. But there were those who said, and even when you are engaged in intercourse for the sake of procreation, you're not allowed to enjoy it. Because to enjoy it is to mess around in the filth of fleshly desire.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so you're supposed to be above that. You're supposed to be just doing your husbandly duty- ... with a stoic face.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Maybe a little bead of sweat drips off your nose or whatever, but otherwise you are stone-faced.

Dan Beecher It is your joyless exertion- Yes ... that is required of you.

Dan McClellan And then you had others who were a little more lenient, who were like, "Eh." If they're past the period of being able to have kids, it's no big deal. But otherwise, you're supposed to stay away from doing it when it's not explicitly for procreation. So you had this whole spectrum of approaches to the propriety of sex. But for the most part, it was considered something that we are better leaving behind. And this is the approach of Paul, this is the approach of the author of the Gospel of Matthew. Has Jesus say, "There are those who are born eunuchs, there are those who are made eunuchs by men, and there are those who make themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven." And this is a hard saying.

Dan Beecher Yeah. And- It is.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher I agree.

Dan McClellan Yeah. That is a hard...

Dan Beecher Yeah, that's rough.

Dan McClellan And he says that anyone who can accept it, accept it. Basically saying, the real ones are going to be celibate, and this led to self-castration- Yeah ... among a lot of early Christians. And a lot of people don't know that one of the first rules they laid down, they did three things at the Council of Nicaea, 325 CE.

Dan Beecher Constantine.

Dan McClellan They were there to resolve the Arian controversy. They were there to come up with a new way to determine the date of Easter every year that decoupled it from Judaism and allowed people to calculate it on their own. Third thing they did was come up with a list of canon law. Law number one, nobody who has castrated himself is eligible for the clergy.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan Yeah. It was like, "Sorry, you thought you were a real one, and-" You thought you were doing the right thing.

Dan Beecher "...

Dan McClellan you're out now."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Sorry. So, the sexual ethic was motivated by Greek philosophy and Greco-Roman societal convention. So, when we look at how Paul and Jesus and other folks are talking about sex in the New Testament, it's very different from the Hebrew Bible.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And it's influenced by Greek philosophy.

Dan Beecher And the- It's so important. You talk a lot about, univocality is your word.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher About how anyone who assumes that the entirety of the Bible from Genesis to Reveille is going to be in harmony with each other- Uh-huh ... you're just missing the depth and the breadth of this book.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Or rather, this huge series of books.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It's not a book. It is many books over centuries. And yeah, of course there are going to be philosophical and legal and moral innovations over that much time.

Dan McClellan Absolutely. And I think it does so much violence to the text to force it into these strictures and say, "No, not allowed to say that. It's not allowed to do that. It has to say this."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan The book is so much more fascinating and so much weirder- ... when you allow it to operate on its own terms.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And it's so much cooler. I think- Let the book do its thing.

Dan Beecher I think you and I really embrace, and I think most of our listeners really embrace the weirdness- Yeah ... that you're discussing. But I do think that that might be why it's so uncomfortable for a lot of people, because they want this book to be holy and pure. They want to be able to look to it and have it just be the exalted perfect word of God so that they don't have to think about it.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So that it's not challenging, so that it's just easy and nice.

Dan McClellan And it just sits there as the transcendent and unassailable authority for your identity politics.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan They want it to change everybody else. You don't want it to change you. You just want to leverage it as the, "Change everybody"- Yeah ... bludgeon, to go make everybody else fall in line with your thinking, whatever that thinking happens to be.

Dan Beecher Yeah. And then you go and you compare the story of David and Bathsheba, and all of his wives, and all of his concubines and whatever- With the Matthew quote of Jesus about, "Yeah, if you look at a woman lustfully, you've already committed adultery," those are two very different perspectives.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And that's also Matthew saying you have to obey the law of Moses. Only I'm ratcheting it up. I'm ratcheting up some of the laws.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher You have to obey the law of Moses, but we're redefining all of it.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher We're redefining it. Your righteousness must exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees.

Dan McClellan So yeah. And when you look at the stories about King David, what does Nathan compare David's adultery to? He compares it to stealing some farmer's lamb- Right ... and eating it. And it's like, well, it's a person that you have- Right ... effectively raped.

Dan Beecher It's a human being.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher And also, you had the farmer killed in that particular metaphor.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And what is it about again? His property.

Dan Beecher Property rights, yeah.

Dan McClellan It wasn't because there was something morally wrong about this particular phallus in this particular area. And later, the more holiness code laws, that's where you have this idea that these actions generate this metaphysical contamination that gets out on the land and pollutes the land, and the land can only handle so much before it's going to vomit you out. You do get this idea that there is this metaphysical aspect to these sins. But for the folks who wrote Samuel, no. It's just that she belonged to somebody else. He violated somebody else's property rights.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And as king, that's a no-no. Nobody cares about Bathsheba in that text.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So it's problematic- Yeah ... as all get out.

Dan Beecher Well, maybe not for them. Maybe not for David, but it's problematic for us.

Dan McClellan Yes. And it should be problematic for all y'all out there.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And this brings up, this is only tangentially related to our topic, but it is something that has me fuming.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan Somebody on Twitter or X or whatever the hell people want to call it these days, recently... X, my algorithm on X is so effed right now, if I can say that.

Dan Beecher I thought everybody's was. That's why I left.

Dan McClellan All I get is these Christian nationalists and freaking Elon, and it just irritates me to no end. However, somebody posted something in response to something about divine command ethics. They said, "The universe goes unchanged if someone rapes. Without God, morals have no meaning." And I responded to this. "God of the Bible doesn't really seem to care about rape. It's not even punished unless it's a free Israelite girl. Then it's only a property crime against her husband, in which case it's the death penalty, or her father, in which case he pays an elevated bride price. Foreign and enslaved girls could be violated at will." Somebody who's evidently been following me on Twitter for some time took issue with my statement- Yeah ... and just wanted to complain about it. And what they retreated to was 1 Corinthians 7:1-5. I don't know if you have this passage memorized, but- I don't ... this is something that a lot of people have appealed to, where it says the husband's body is not his own, the wife's body is not her own. They should render unto each other due benevolence- Oh, okay ... which is basically a way to say you owe your spouse their conjugal rights.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So this person commented, "People have no right to arbitrarily refuse intimacy in marriage."

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan That is it. Parentheses, 1 Corinthians 7:1-5, close parentheses.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And I've seen this verse come up a lot recently. This is apologetics for marital rape.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan This is insisting that there's no such thing as marital rape because a wife's body is not her own in marriage- Right ... and that her husband has a right to her body, and that is so abominable.

Dan Beecher Yeah. It is on its face obviously wrong.

Dan McClellan Yeah. It's disgusting, but it is something that an awful lot of Christians on social media seem to think is perfectly fine.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And if you're participating in a society or a worldview where that is seen as okay, you need to sit a few plays out. You need to come to grips with the fact that that is rape apologetics.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan There is no circumstance in which a woman's right to her bodily autonomy is forfeited to a man, ever. And it does not matter if you are Paul, who prided himself in being celibate anyway.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan He wasn't even on the field for any of this. So I don't care what he has to say.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But yeah. I loathe when people bring up 1 Corinthians 7:1-5.

Dan Beecher Well, it's just, yeah. And I have seen both women and men online quoting that idea and saying that... And what's funny is that the way you said it, I don't know that I knew the scripture that they were referencing when they did it. But the way you said it made it sound like the woman also has the right to just demand sex from the man whenever he wants.

Dan McClellan Well, that's how men make it sound okay. It's like, "It's reciprocal."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan "It's reciprocal. She can demand it, too."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Now, I will say there are not a ton of women out there who are like, "I'm not getting it enough, sweetie." Well, I believe- But that's not true. There are women out there like that.

Dan Beecher I was going to say, I know a lot of over 40 women, and there are plenty of them who would like more sex.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But not a one of them has ever considered demanding it as their right from their partner.

Dan McClellan Or maybe not even demanding it, just taking it.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan They don't even act like that is something that they're thinking about. NRSVUE says this: "But because of cases of sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife what is due her, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a set time to devote yourselves to prayer, and then come together again so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control." And really, all Paul is saying is that if you're married, you need to make sure you have the relief valve of occasional prophylactic passionless sex.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Otherwise, it's going to get pent up, and then something bad going to happen. But this gets far too often leveraged by men to mean, "You're not allowed to deny me sex."

Dan Beecher And I think a lot of those apologists would attack us and say, who are we to say that the Bible's morality is wrong, or the Bible's definition of what's okay isn't correct.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And yet they would be the first ones to say, "No, you can't have three wives and four concubines.

Dan McClellan No, you can't- And however many sex slaves you want.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Yeah. We've come to the consensus that we reject so much of the Bible's, not just sexual ethic, but just ethic in general.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan That the notion that it bears any authority in and of itself that is absolute is absolutely laughable.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It's all negotiable. And people can get as upset about that as they want. That does not change the fact.

Dan Beecher And it must be negotiated.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher You have to.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And so, taking the position that, well, one part of the Bible says that I get to maritally rape my wife, as you say, you're doing apologetics for rape now.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Maybe back off of that one. That's probably... That's a loser right there.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And that's an auto-block response for me.

Dan Beecher So, yeah.

Dan McClellan Sorry, that was a bit of a tangent that took more time than I intended.

Dan Beecher No, it was important, and I'm glad that we went there. Well, all right.

Dan McClellan There you go.

Dan Beecher That's the law. Please feel free to ignore it or to redefine it as pleases your morality. Let's move on to our chapter and verse. In this week's chapter and verse, we're going to Hosea. Hosea is a prophet, and this is his book.

Dan McClellan It is.

Dan Beecher It's an interesting one. As I was reading it, and usually when you and I do a whole book- Yeah ... it's a- It's usually a one chapter book. It's a one chapter, maybe two, three chapters. This one has 14 chapters, so- Yes ... it's a little... And what drives me- You're getting the 30,000-foot view.

Dan McClellan Right. We're in Comfort Plus, but we're getting the 30,000-foot view.

Dan Beecher And what drives me bonkers about it, and what was so hard for me as I was reading it, is that it keeps saying the same damn thing over and over and over.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But it uses a lot of metaphor, it uses a lot of symbolism, and it gets, for my money, quite confusing in the process.

Dan McClellan Yes. So, I don't know.

Dan Beecher So, dive in.

Dan McClellan Well, let's set the stage first.

Dan Beecher Yeah. That's what I was going to say.

Dan McClellan We're in the 8th century, and this may mean absolutely nothing to many of you. Maybe you have no framework for thinking about this. But if we have pre-exilic Israel and post-exilic Israel, and the exile's in the middle, the exile is 6th century.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Pre-exilic is everything prior to that. 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th brings you traditionally to Saul and David and Solomon.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan We're not going to worry about everything after the exile. This is the 8th century. The northern kingdom of Israel still exists. The southern kingdom of Judah is there. And both of them are thriving.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan You have a king in the northern kingdom, Jeroboam II, who reigns for about 40 years. You have a king in the southern kingdom of Judah, named Uzziah, who reigns for about 40 years. And as a result of the unusually long reigns of these two kings, there is a lot of prosperity.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan There is trade going on. There is building going on. There is population growth going on. There is concentration of wealth. And this is what- Actually catalyzes a lot of the prophetic literature that comes from the 8th century. Micah, Amos, Isaiah, Hosea. These are 8th-century prophets, and we've talked about it before. One of their main problems is with all the wealth and the prosperity and the suffering of the poor and the needy and the afflicted and the foreigner. And Hosea is no exception. Hosea 6:6 is the famous, "I will have mercy and not sacrifice," that Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew quotes twice, tells his challengers, "Go and learn what that means." So, Hosea is one of a bunch of prophets who pop up in the 8th century right when people are getting really wealthy to chew them out for social injustices that are going on. So, Hosea is from the Northern Kingdom, and the Northern Kingdom is going to be destroyed in 722 BCE. The Assyrians come in, and they take away the 10 tribes of Israel, and they are assimilated into Assyria and later Babylon, and they disappear, and they are functionally gone.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Now, we believe that remnants of these 10 tribes were left behind or ran down to the southern kingdom. And so, there are fragments of those populations that became part of the southern kingdom of Judah. But the lost 10 tribes of Israel is a reference to what happens in 722 BCE.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Hosea is writing between around 750 BCE and around 720 BCE. So, he's talking about this.

Dan Beecher Now, scholars say- This is a thing that's happening in real-time for Hosea.

Dan McClellan Yes. For the prophet Hosea. Now, scholars are in pretty widespread agreement that a good chunk of Hosea does go back to somebody and a poetic prophet who was writing in the 8th century BCE.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So, there is disagreement about exactly how much of it is from the middle of the 8th century and how much of it is the end of the 8th century or into the 7th century, or maybe post-exilic in origin. Some people think there are some Deuteronomistic revisions going on here and there. Some people think that the author of Hosea and the particular ideological school that produced Hosea might be responsible for the later production of Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic histories because of the close relationships between the two.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So, we don't have a real clear idea about what is genuine and what is not, but most scholars think that probably the majority of it is genuine.

Dan Beecher Okay. That's a good thing to note.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher As so much of this book ends up not being authentic to what it claims to be.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So, verse one starts off, "The word of the Lord that came to Hosea, son of Beeri, in the days of King Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah of Judah, and in the days of King Jeroboam, son of Joash of Israel." So, we got four kings.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan His tenure overlaps with- Okay ...

Dan Beecher the reigns of four different kings, starting with- Because you had just said that we had kings with long reigns, but I guess, so he's presiding prophet over all of the reigns of all these kings.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So, Uzziah is reigning from around 780, 775 to around 740, 735, something like that.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And so, Hosea is the last 15-ish years of Uzziah's reign. Jotham is 15 years. Ahaz is 20 years, and then Hezekiah is batting cleanup there. So, Hosea is mainly towards the beginning of Hezekiah.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And then in the days of King Jeroboam, son of Joash, he just mentions Jeroboam, which is odd because he reigns from 790-ish to 750-ish.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan So, he's ignoring the Northern Kingdom for the rest of the existence of the Northern Kingdom down to 722 when it gets destroyed.

Dan Beecher And just so that I'm clear, the Northern Kingdom is Israel, and the southern kingdom is Judah. Is that correct?

Dan McClellan Correct. That is correct.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Yes. Now, the Northern Kingdom, the capital is Samaria. So, that's why, I don't know if you recall when you read through Hosea, there was a lot of mention of Samaria.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But Hosea also refers to the Northern Kingdom as Ephraim, which is- Yeah. There were so many...

Dan Beecher Yes. Ephraim confused the crap out of me. Had to look that one up.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And yes, I didn't know that Samaria was a capital city rather than another kingdom. I was confused about that.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So, it's spoken of as a region.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan But yeah. And that's why when you get down to the New Testament, they're like, "Don't go through Samaria. Don't go through there."

Dan Beecher Bad bandits.

Dan McClellan Stay away from there. Stay away from Samaria. And then we get to verse two. I remember several years ago I sat down, I was like, "I'm going to translate the Book of Hosea." And I stopped at verse two.

Dan Beecher You didn't make it very far.

Dan McClellan No, but I had a lot of other things getting in the way. But here's what the NRSVUE says. "When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, 'Go, take for yourself a wife of prostitution.'"

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan "'And have children of prostitution. For the land commits great prostitution by forsaking the Lord.'" So, and I'm just going to pull up the Hebrew real quick of- Yeah ... Hosea 1:2. And he says, "And said to the Lord to Hosea, 'Take for yourself Eshet zunnim.'" So, a wife of, and then it's the plural, prostitution's, sex workings. It's probably an abstract plural, meaning it's referring to the abstraction. The idea of- Yeah ...

Dan Beecher prostitution or whatever.

Dan McClellan So, it's unclear if the idea is marry a woman who's a sex worker, or marry a woman who is characterized by promiscuity, or marry a woman who was born of sex work.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan There are a variety of different ways to interpret this, and it's not exactly clear what is going on.

Dan Beecher Well, and also, none of the potential interpretations make it any better. It's still wildly confusing why the Lord is saying this to Hosea. Why do you want Hosea... Basically, it turns out that the Lord is just saying, "Hey, take this kind of wife because it'll be useful for my metaphor."

Dan McClellan Yeah. You'll love this. The payoff is great.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But there's also an interesting thing. It says, "Take for yourself a woman of prostitution and children of prostitution." So it's not clear that it's saying have children with this woman, but adopt the children that have been born to this woman as an outcome of her sex work.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It's unclear what's going on here. Not the kind of thing that you would expect from a prophet in our day and age.

Dan Beecher No.

Dan McClellan Or unless maybe for some Christian nationalists- Yeah ... this is exactly the kind of thing you would expect.

Dan Beecher Pete Hegseth or something coming in strong with something weird. I would say, one of the things that's really interesting for me, I'm glad that you mentioned trying to translate this because one of the ways that I sometimes explore a biblical text for this show is that I listen to a recording of someone who has done a recording of the Bible, but nobody's done that for the NRSVUE. Mm-hmm. So they're usually reading out of the King James Version.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So I'm listening to the King James Version while I'm following along with the NRSVUE, that way I can see the differences and whatever. And I'll tell you what, Hosea frequently is just like, "Those translation differences are off the rails."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It is so hard to follow. I have to pause and go, "Wait, what did he just say? What does this say?" So yeah, the King James Version of verse two says, "In the beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea," or, "The beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea. And the Lord said to Hosea, 'Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms, for the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from the Lord.'"

Dan McClellan Yeah. And it's such an odd thing to do because it seems like the I'm imagining Hosea being like, "Uh-huh.

Dan Beecher Uh-huh.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Couldn't I just write down that I did this?"

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan "Since it seems like the impact is in other people finding out about it."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan "And so I could just write down that I did this?" God's like, "No, you have to go do it."

Dan Beecher You have to actually do it.

Dan McClellan "I don't think you're understanding me. It doesn't seem meaningful until I tell other people about it, and I could just tell them about it." "You really want me to do this and then just write down that I did it, and then publish that?"

Dan Beecher You and I need to write a biblical sitcom. I don't know why that's not on our plate yet. Anyway, we're going to crowdfund that eventually.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So he went, and he took Gomer, daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son. So this makes it sound like, no, the text is saying have children of sex workings, promiscuity- Yeah ... prostitutions, whoredoms, whatever. And whether this means because that was her profession, or maybe it means this is going to characterize them. Maybe they're going to grow up to engage, the son is going to engage in sex work.

Dan Beecher I don't know. It seems reasonable to just say that because their mother was a sex worker, they are the children of sex workers, and that there's a stigma that just sort of follows them because of that or something.

Dan McClellan Maybe.

Dan Beecher You would think that since he's the one- But it's not clear ...

Dan McClellan who's the father- Right ... doesn't his prophethood kind of cover a multitude of sex work? But I don't know.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And the Lord said to him, "Name him Jezreel." And that's the valley in the northern kingdom of Israel that was very prominent. That's where they got a lot of their wealth from.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan For a little while, agriculturally, that's one of the richest areas in all of Israel is the Jezreel Valley.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan "For a little while, I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel. On that day, I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel." And we have talked about Jehu- Getting slain in the northern kingdom.