The Holy Ghost (and Bears!)

Dan Beecher Here's the thing. If nothing else, bears can't kill 42 boys.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Unless they- You're going to have a couple get away.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher You're going to have a couple get away.

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 Oh, man. Life is good. The end of the show, we're tackling one of the things that we have been asked to tackle since the beginning. It's not much of a tackle. It is just one of the weirdest stories in the book.

Dan McClellan And- Two little verses.

Dan Beecher Yeah. And boy, does it just throw you for a loop- ... when you first encounter it, and then every subsequent time thereafter. So we're going to get to that. That'll be a fun chapter and verse.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But first, it's a big dog. We're going heavy. We're hitting heavy.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher And diving into, what is that? I have no idea. But we're talking about the Holy Spirit.

Dan McClellan The Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God.

Dan Beecher Yes. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Dan McClellan And, not to be confused with the holy hand grenade.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But, the Espírito Santo is... I don't know how many places are named Espírito Santo. Now that I think about it, I've been to multiple places- Yeah ... named that, including a place in Vanuatu, in Melanesia.

Dan Beecher Oh, wow.

Dan McClellan But yeah. Yeah, the Holy Spirit. Let's talk a little bit about it. I'm going to actually suggest that to understand what's going on with the way the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, is working in the Bible, we need to understand a little bit about how people conceptualize of a human spirit.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Because it's modeled after the human spirit. And this is actually something that I discuss at some length in my book, Adonai's Divine Images, which is an open access volume that is freely available online.

Dan Beecher But one of the- You're foolishly giving it away. Just foolishly.

Dan McClellan Yes. I've gone over many times about how the only compensation that I have from that book is actually the book that I'm holding in my hand right now. The contract said, "Remuneration, 10 hard copies of your book." I gave nine of them away. This is all that remains. So, I spoke at a university in Kansas a couple of weeks ago.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan And they were like, "We'll get a bunch of your books here to sell and make you a little money." And I was like, "You're not making me any money."

Dan Beecher You're like, "Okay."

Dan McClellan I don't see any of that.

Dan Beecher Do it if you want to.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It's got nothing to do with me.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So people are like, "Oh, they sold out of your book." And I was like, "You can get it for free online." Just go get it.

Dan Beecher You should pull a Taylor Swift and rewrite exactly the same book- ... and then you'll own it.

Dan McClellan Well, I had a bunch of people request audio versions.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan And I went to the publisher and I was like, "I will record myself reading it for free, as long as I can distribute it for free." And I have not heard back from them yet.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So.

Dan Beecher That's great.

Dan McClellan Anyway.

Dan Beecher Anyway. So once upon a time, there was this spirit thing.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So, to understand this in a way that I think will be most helpful, I'm going to go all the way back to infancy.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan Because one of the cool things about human infants is that we develop quite quickly a concept of the self.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan And it is based on some evolutionarily installed hardware. One of these things is the mirror neuron system, where we see other people moving and doing things, and we just have this intuitive sense that they're like us. And so we actually learn how to move from watching other people move.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And we map their movements onto our body, and then we map our movements onto their body, and we begin to perceive that we have thoughts and goals and intentions. So we're like, "I want the ball or the cookie, and I can reach my hand out to grab it."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And we see other people reaching out and we're like, "Oh, they want the thing that they're grabbing for." And we begin to project the perception of goal-oriented action onto other people. And this mirror neuron system is this just awesome thing that is in our brains that helps us to learn how to do things. And we also have this thing called a teleological outlook, which is based on this idea of goal-oriented action. As this becomes more sophisticated and complex, we begin to assume that everything that we see has a purpose and a goal. And so when things happen in the world around us that we don't understand, intuitively, we're like, "Oh, this happened for a reason. Something, someone, somebody with a mind or agency caused this to happen." And we also perceive a distinction between our intentions and our thoughts and the body, because we can hide our intentions and our thoughts. They are inside of us. They're not visible on the outside. And that contributes to a perception that the self is not the same thing as the body.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan And that there is something inside of us that is distinguished from the body. And then we also have ideas about, what are the limits of this thing? How is it contained? What happens when we die? And intuitively, we think that this thing just keeps going on. And so this is the reason that all human societies that we've ever been able to document, but most humans within them think of the world as occupied by unseen forces and agents of some kind. And in my book, I refer to these as unseen agents. And evolutionarily, the primate that was quickest to think the rustling in the bushes might have been something with teeth passed on their genes more regularly than the one that immediately assumed it was just the wind.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so this installed in us a hyperactive agency detection. In other words, we are incredibly sensitive to the presence of agents in the world around us. And so- Whether they're there or not ... whether they're there or not. And so an interesting thing happens. The brain has a bunch of different ways it can be cued to the presence of something, and our brain kind of projects a lot of our experience of other people. And if one of those cues gets tripped when there's nothing there, it can still seem like there's somebody there.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Just as real as if there actually is somebody there. This is why scary movies freak us out, and we think there's something in the shadows.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Or why we are quick to get up the stairs out of the dark basement and stuff like that. And this contributes to the presence in all known societies of concepts of ghosts, spirits, jinn, ancestors, some kind of unseen agents out there.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And they're usually based on the concept of the human person.

Dan Beecher Yeah. They're an anthropomorphized concept, which it makes sense if that comes from our perception of ourselves and others.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher If you start the conversation with the mirror neurons, it makes sense that the unperceived agents sort of in the ether that we're worried about would look, think, act like people.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And we don't confine them to bodies. I think there are such fascinating ways that this manifests in the world today, like people who go to cemeteries and talk to the headstones of their deceased loved ones because intuitively, it just kind of makes sense that we're focused on this thing, their name's on it, that this is somehow either housing their agency or it is channeling their agency or something like that. And there are a bunch of different ways that this bubbles to the surface within society. But it also means we think of people as having spirits, of having souls, and what exactly the difference between these two things is, is not very clear.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And the exact same thing is true of the Bible. They have the ruach, which means spirit, and you have the nephesh, which means soul. More or less. It's arguable that those are adequate translations of those words. But the spirit is usually understood as kind of an animating force, whereas the soul is kind of the life force. And then there are a bunch of other ways that parts of your body are loci or locations of agency.

Dan Beecher Like- Yeah, I don't know that I yet appreciate the difference between the two things you just described.

Dan McClellan Yeah. In the Bible, the spirit, it's used synonymously with soul in a lot of places. Nephesh and ruach, you'll have the same phrase where there's parallelism, and they're used interchangeably. But the spirit is kind of like what keeps you alive, but the soul is your actual life. And so the spirit, once you die, the spirit goes away, but your soul remains.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And this is the concept of life after death. There is some sense in which the locus of that person's agency continues to exist, which is why we find evidence of necromancy and ancestor cults and all this kind of stuff in the material remains of ancient Israel and Judah.

Dan Beecher And so- Yeah, I've seen this, even people who leave their religion of their birth, I've seen plenty of people hold onto some sort of sense of spirit or ghost or... It is a pervasive and powerful idea.

Dan McClellan Oh, yeah.

Dan Beecher Absolutely.

Dan McClellan And it's because it's kind of baked into our cognition.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And it's not something you can just turn off. And there's been a lot of research that shows even people who flatly reject any kind of supernatural at all, intuitively, they still feel that. Even if the reflective side of their cognition can kick in and override it- Yeah ... it's still just something that our brains kind of do.

Dan Beecher Yeah, they want that.

Dan McClellan Yeah. I'm in that category.

Dan Beecher Yeah. I don't believe in anything supernatural, but yeah, you spook me on a late night when I'm alone and in the forest or whatever, and yeah, I'm going to start seeing shadows in the distance or whatever.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And I remember when I was in college, before I got kicked out of the University of Northern Colorado, I walked by somebody's room, and there was a woman in the room who had a certain kind of perfume, and I had only smelled that perfume on one other person before in my entire life, and that was my high school girlfriend. And immediately She was there.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan Her presence was there because that was one of the cues in my brain for her presence. And so it's not even that it has to be supernatural, it's just how your brain kind of helps you experience the world.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So when we get in the Bible, people have a ruach and a nephesh, just like God does.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so in the Hebrew Bible, we have the ruach Elohim, which you see in Genesis 1:2, and it's usually translated Spirit of God. But both the word ruach and nephesh fundamentally refer to breath.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And so it's kind of this sense that whatever this animating force is, whatever this life force is, it's kind of conceptually represented as breath. But it can also mean wind. So there are some people who will translate the divine wind.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan There are some people who will translate the wind of God or the breath of God or something like that. And so from the very beginning, this is representative of the animating force of God. And just like with humans, where you can have spirit possession and you can have this concept that the soul or the spirit can leave the body- Mm ... so too God's spirit can leave their presence, their body, wherever it may be. And so that becomes kind of the active agent for God on earth.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And you see this reflected in a bunch of different ways. And in the Hebrew Bible, I think one of the most fascinating ways is in the idea of ecstatic prophecy. And one, I think, fascinating example is in 1 Samuel 10, where Saul has been chosen to be king in Israel. And in chapter 10, verse 6, you get Samuel explaining to Saul. From the King James Version, it says, "And the Spirit of the Lord will come upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy with them, and shalt be turned into another man."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And in the Hebrew, the verb there that is usually translated "come upon thee," salah, actually means force entry into or penetrate.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan And so the idea is that the spirit of God is going to penetrate you, and it says, "Turn you into another man."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And in a couple verses later, that's what happens, and it says, "God gave him another heart."

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan And basically, the idea is that spirit, that animating agent of God, went into Saul's body, and the heart is kind of constitutive of personhood- Right ... for them, and so altered Saul's heart, turning him into another man, and he had a new heart.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But this is also what allowed Saul to prophesy, and this is ecstatic prophecy.

Dan Beecher Specifically turned him into the heart of Patrick Swayze- ... and that was when Whoopi Goldberg could speak on behalf of Patrick Swayze.

Dan McClellan Right. It was a very intimate scene, and The Righteous Brothers playing in the background and everything.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But this is spirit possession. This is someone else's spirit, and in this case, God's spirit, is forcing entry into the person, taking over executive function of their body, and probably in the early conceptualization of ecstatic prophecy, threw him on the ground, tore his clothes off, and he was probably convulsing in an ecstatic frenzy, and that was how you prophesied.

Dan Beecher That's pretty exciting stuff, man.

Dan McClellan Yeah. That's what the spirit of God does in the Hebrew Bible.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But that concept of this agent, this extension of God's agency, changes as the society changes. Once we get into the Persian and the Greco-Roman period, you're incorporating ideas from Persian period about dualism. You start to get, in the Greco-Roman period, ideas about demons who are also these unseen agents. And so by the time we get to the New Testament, you have demon possession. So- Yeah.

Dan Beecher Presumably, if a good guy can take over your body, a bad guy can probably do it, too.

Dan McClellan Exactly. And this is something that we see people worrying about this in what are called magico-medical texts. So they're like medical textbooks and texts from the ancient world, only it's more magic than it is- Yeah ...

Dan Beecher medicine.

Dan McClellan But it addresses things having to do with the human body and pathologies and things like that. So in a previous episode of the show, I joked about demons getting in through the ear or during- Mm-hmm ... menstruation, and that's literally what some of these texts say, is that women are particularly susceptible when their openings are where the boundaries are, their integrity has been compromised. And so- Yeah.

Dan Beecher It's funny that an incorporeal entity would need a physical entrance, but- Right ... there you go.

Dan McClellan That's how it works.

Dan Beecher And- Just open a door, then in they go.

Dan McClellan Whoop. And so the ears were considered particularly susceptible to this. And you had magical spells that you had to do to try to get that demon out of there. Kind of like I get my left ear, if I go swimming or anything like that, or even if I just move my head wrong in the shower, immediately gets plugged up with water, and then I've got to be like, "Wah, wah, wah," trying to get that out.

Dan Beecher I think you mean plugged up with demons, Dan.

Dan McClellan Well, yeah. But a demon-possessed person would never admit that.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so the You have the further development of this concept of these unseen agents that can possess your executive functions and can do good or bad things to you. And by the time of the New Testament, you've got these demons floating all over the place. But you've also got development in the concept of God's spirit and the Holy Spirit. So, ruach Elohim would be the spirit of God, but you also have ruach kodesh, which would be Holy Spirit. And it's the same thing. It's God's spirit, but because it's from God, it is holy. It becomes personified more and more, and this is something that you see with a lot of the features of deity, the aspects of deity, when we get into the Greco-Roman period. So, chokmah, wisdom, in Proverbs 8 is personified, treated as this woman who was, "I was conceived back before the foundation of the Earth, and I was birthed," and all this kind of stuff. So chokmah becomes sophia once we get into Greek, and that becomes personified, and it resonates with the Greek concept of sophia as this deity. And so, you have kind of a goddess concept, and you have other things that are personified as well. But one of these things is the spirit, which comes into Greek as the pneuma.

Dan Beecher I'm trying to follow it all, man. This concept is bouncing all over the place.

Dan McClellan Yeah. It's such a complex thing to try to reduce in a non-erratic and chaotic way.

Dan Beecher And I'm sure you- Well, and I think that's what spawned a lot of the confusion about this entity, this Holy Spirit being... And yeah, we've talked about the invention of the Trinity as a useful tool because it does seem like the Holy Spirit is both its own thing and part of God.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And that feels confusing.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And it is confusing. It's because it's such an intuitive thing in terms of if we just let the natural intuitive cognition just kind of run wild, it's like, sure, we do that. It's just as natural as a lot of things. It's not until we're required to sit down and explain it, and usually it's how can you maintain these things in tension that you have to be like, "Well, I was just checking the overhead rotary girder on..." You're trying to rationalize something irrational.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And it usually requires ginning up all kinds of crazy stuff. Like the person who talks to a headstone in a cemetery. If you were such a jerk as to go up to them and be like, "Why on earth would you do that? You know they're not in there."

Dan Beecher Yeah. "That's just a piece of rock, man."

Dan McClellan Yeah. First of all, that's a real dick move, but second of all, the person's not going to be able to be like, "Well, you see intuitively what's going on." It's like, "This feels right."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan "This is just how I feel like interacting." And there's a story, I don't know if I've shared it on the podcast before, but it's in my book where I talk about how the heart is still constitutive of the person even today.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so, there's a story about a guy whose 21-year-old daughter was killed in a car accident, but she was an organ donor. And so, her heart went to another guy named Lamont. And he went to visit him, and he brought a stethoscope and listened to his heartbeat and was like, "That's her heart within him, holding him up." He's like, "I was so glad I got to meet him and I got to spend time with my daughter."

Dan Beecher Wow.

Dan McClellan And if you stuffed a microphone in that guy's face and be like, "Account for yourself. Explain how you can think that that's your daughter in there," they're not going to do that. Again, dick move.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But also, it's just kind of an intuitive thing that you just let happen and you don't worry about it. And that's how it worked for so long.

Dan Beecher Yeah, it's psychologically useful- Yeah ... sometimes to just have an object that you can sort of imbue with the meaning that is emotionally meaningful to you. And you can just say, hey. I have literally talked to my grandparents' headstone- Mm-hmm ... and to my dad, who I keep. He was cremated, so I have him at my house.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher And I've talked to him before.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Yeah. I don't recognize the idea that there's a spirit of him in it.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher For me, it has the symbolic usefulness of me communicating with my past and trying to sort of reconcile my understanding of who he was with who I am and all this other stuff. But yeah, it's emotionally and psychologically cathartic.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And that intuition expresses itself in all kinds of different ways.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And another thing somebody might be, if someone were such a jerk to demand an explanation, I'm sure that guy, after he left wherever Lamont was and went back home, I'm sure he still visits his daughter's grave- Mm-hmm ... and talks to her. It's like, but she was over there.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But she's also over here.

Dan Beecher She's in that Lamont guy. What are you talking about?

Dan McClellan Yeah. And so, the concept of the spirit being both God and not God, and being located in one spot, but also being accessible anywhere, it's just intuitively natural, and it doesn't require explanation for it to bubble to the surface in social interactions.

Dan Beecher It doesn't until it does.

Dan McClellan Until it does.

Dan Beecher Right. And here's the problem with the Holy Spirit, the Holy Ghost ... is that it becomes a character.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher And, so for instance, I was going to mention this. There was a tweet by Answers in Genesis, which is Ken Ham's organization.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And it simply said, "Because the Holy Spirit has a mind, a will, and emotions, we know that he is a person." And I thought, "Wow, there's a lot packed into that one very small sentence." And I tweeted back at them and was like, "Hey, would you please show us where in the Bible it says this about the Holy Spirit?" I genuinely don't know. Does the Bible say that the Holy Spirit has a mind, a will, and emotions?

Dan McClellan Did they respond?

Dan Beecher No, nobody responded.

Dan McClellan No response. No surprise there.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Off the top of my head, I can't think of any place. There is some personification of the Holy Spirit, but it would overwhelmingly be in poetry and in metaphor and stuff like that. And it's odd because a lot of conservative Christians would say you can't build a doctrine off of a Psalm or- Right ... or poetry or things like that. And why it would be male strikes me- Yeah ...

Dan Beecher as odd because the words- Well, because God's male, right?

Dan McClellan Right. The word ruach. Yeah, that's definitely the assumption. The word ruach is feminine in Hebrew.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Although in the places where it talks about spirits as actual agents, sometimes, as in 1 Kings 22 with Micaiah, it uses masculine verbs.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan So, it can conceptualize of a masculine ruach spirit. And then once you get into the Greek, I believe it's neuter, so it's in the middle. So, it would actually be the third gender if- There you go ... if the New Testament Greek were considered inerrant, then- Right ... it would have to be something in between.

Dan Beecher Interesting. I was mistaken, by the way. One person did answer my tweet- Okay ... and mentioned John 15:26, which says, "When the advocate comes"- So that's just the comforter, yeah ... "I will send to you from the Father the Spirit of truth, who comes from the Father. He will testify on my behalf."

Dan McClellan Mm.

Dan Beecher So, is that the spirit of God? Is that the same spirit? This says, "I will send to you from the Father the Spirit of truth." Is that the same thing that we're talking about? I think- The Holy Spirit, the Holy Ghost, I don't know.

Dan McClellan I think it treats these spirits, it uses different names for them, but I think it's basically just dancing around the idea that this active agent that comes from God, and it's the comforter or the advocate. Parakletos is the Greek word, which means a mediator or an intercessor or something like that. And so yeah, I think it's referring to God's spirit that way. But yeah, the fact that this actually personifies the spirit is a little squishy- Mm ... because the whole idea of testifying, well, that's just something that the spirit could just be transmitting an understanding or a feeling to your heart. It's not like the comforter is sitting there and whispering into your ear its testimony. That seems like a kind of squishy proof text for this notion that the spirit has a mind and emotions and- Right ... and a hairy chest and stuff like that.

Dan Beecher That's just- Well, and it's funny because the guy that tweeted that to me, I said, "That doesn't say anything about a mind, a will, or emotions." And he was like, "Oh, that's right." "It's true."

Dan McClellan "You got me there." That was the only response you got, though, huh?

Dan Beecher That was the only response I got other than a joke from a friend of mine.

Dan McClellan Okay. Well, yeah.

Dan Beecher And someone else saying- You guys expect that ... someone else pointing out that dogs have minds, wills, and emotions, so I guess they're persons, too. Can you talk a little bit about, I don't know if you even know this, but it seems like the concept has evolved a lot over time.

Dan McClellan The concept of- Mm-hmm ...

Dan Beecher because it seems like most of the scriptures that I've read about the Holy Spirit are a very soft notion, like you said. It could be its own entity, or it could just be God just sort of whispering something across the universe to you or whatever.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher But at some point, theologically, it became a distinct entity. It became important enough that every Catholic priest blesses someone in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost.

Dan McClellan Yeah. This seems to be a New Testament development because it's treated as... One of the things you have as you get from the Hebrew Bible into the New Testament is you have a lot of consolidation.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan A lot of things that are done by different figures in the Hebrew Bible or in the Greco-Roman period Jewish literature get consolidated into individual characters. So, Satan is every bad thing that happens in the Hebrew Bible is Satan- Yeah ... in the New Testament. Everybody from Baal to, in early Christianity, I would say after the New Testament, but you got Lucifer, you got the serpent, you got Leviathan, everybody becomes Satan. And just like Jesus is consolidating a lot of different traditions about mediatory figures. And so, I think what you have is a lot of the different kind of personified extensions of God get consolidated in the Spirit. And because it is personified and you're getting to this Christological debate where we have these big questions about Jesus' relationship with God- There were probably people saying, "It says the same thing about the spirit over here." And so, it became rhetorically necessary to create space for that additional person of the Trinity, and which then compelled it to be even further personified and concretized as an individual person. So, I think that's contributing to the development, but certainly, it is among the different semi-autonomous agents that are discussed in Greco-Roman period Jewish literature. When you get into rabbinic stuff, you have the Shekhinah, which is the presence. You have the Chochmah, you have the wisdom. You have the Kavod, the glory. Even the name of God is a kind of semi-autonomous personified entity in- Oh, interesting ... some literature. And so, I think the spirit is just the one that became the centerpiece of this concept. And I think there was also, when they had three, I think they kind of felt like that completed the set. Because I don't think they wanted to get to a set of 11 different- Right ... entities that comprise this trinity. And so, because when you look at Nicaea and the Nicene Creed and the Christological arguments, the Spirit is not the center of discussion. The Spirit is kind of like, "We got to have the Spirit there." It's kind of a third wheel to the Trinity until subsequent centuries, where it's like, "It's here. We might as well deal with it." And they kind of flesh out a more full conceptualization of the Spirit as this third person of the Trinity.

Dan Beecher But it's certainly just one of- It doesn't fit into the other category. Father and Son makes a lot of sense. That is a relationship that we know and understand. Person and Spirit is a relationship that would be understandable also.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Though to separate them as different entities feels a little weird to me. But those two relationships are nothing to each other.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Father and Son, and Person and Spirit feel like they are completely different relationships and completely different categories of relationship.

Dan McClellan And when you see Jesus talking about the Spirit, particularly in the Gospel of John, it's like, "I'm here. The Spirit can't be here," and nya-nya, "And when I'm gone, then the Spirit will be back."

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And so, yeah, it's certainly not like the relationship that Jesus has with God is identical to the relationship that Jesus has with the Spirit.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It's kind of like they're competing brothers.

Dan Beecher And, yeah. Spirit tries to show up, and Jesus is already there.

Dan McClellan He's like, "Darn."

Dan Beecher "I wanted to go to that."

Dan McClellan You beat me. And in Greco-Roman period Judaism, when you look in Philo and things like that, you have the logos, the Word, which is what Jesus is identified with. But you have a handful of other figures as well, and they just kind of get brushed aside in favor of the Spirit, or they kind of get mushed together with the Spirit. Because Chochmah, the wisdom, there are early Christian texts where Jesus is identified as Sophia, as the wisdom, and there are others where the Spirit is identified as Sophia. So, it's kind of still being worked out- Okay ... until you get to the councils and the philosophers who are like, "We're going to nail this down once and for all."

Dan Beecher We'll figure it out. Let's vote on it.

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher Well, I'm still confused about it, but that gives me some background, some stuff to go on. Maybe we'll come back to it. Who knows?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Maybe people will have enough questions, and we'll come back to it.

Dan McClellan But for now, we're going to- Probably say, "Hey, don't talk about that again.

Dan Beecher That was-" Please don't do that ever again. Please don't do that. But I'll tell you what they will be excited about.

Dan McClellan Bears!

Dan Beecher Bears.

Dan McClellan Da Bears.

Dan Beecher Da Bears. We're going to do a chapter and verse. So, this chapter and verse, we are going to 2 Kings. Oh, I clicked away from it. Oh, what a fool I am.

Dan McClellan Oh, no.

Dan Beecher Yeah, 2 Kings. 2 Kings, chapter 2.

Dan McClellan Chapter 2.

Dan Beecher And this is one of those ones that I don't even know what to do with it. It's a very self-contained story. I'll just do the setup- Mm-hmm ... which is that the prophet Elijah starts off this chapter, and he and his sidekick Elisha are tooling around the various parts of the ancient land- Mm-hmm ... prophesying as they are wont to do.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Elijah gets in a truck and hitches his way back home to heaven.

Dan McClellan Yeah. A fiery truck.

Dan Beecher Literally, a chariot of fire- Mm-hmm ... with horses of fire, and then in a whirlwind, which that may be the coolest earthly exit that has ever occurred. Unless you get Thanos involved or something.

Dan McClellan I don't know.

Dan Beecher Anyway, a pretty strong exit.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But it leaves us with the prophet now, Elisha- Mm-hmm ... who has some pretty big shoes to fill- Yeah ... when it comes to Elijah, including just people not mixing up their names and thinking that they're the same person. Now we're onto Elisha, and the funny thing is that this section of the Bible, if you're looking as I am at the NRSVUE, they like to sort of give chapter headings or headings to subsections.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher And this one is called Elisha Performs Miracles.

Dan McClellan Yay.

Dan Beecher And that sounds really nice.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It's maybe not.

Dan McClellan No.

Dan Beecher The first thing has to do with a bowl and some salt, and then making water nice.

Dan McClellan That's good.

Dan Beecher That's good.

Dan McClellan That's helpful.

Dan Beecher A spring that has bad water and then he miraculously turns it into drinkable water.

Dan McClellan That's good.

Dan Beecher But the next one is a little something. Do you want to read it? Do you want me to read it? How do you want to read this?

Dan McClellan Yeah, I can go ahead and read it.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So we're in 2 Kings 2:23-24. "He went up from there to Bethel, and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, 'Go away, baldhead. Go away, baldhead.'" "When he turned around and saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord.

Dan Beecher Then two-" Which I understand. I'm just going to pause you and say- ... as a man who has felt the sting of male pattern baldness- ... I am understanding of him cursing them.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher I just didn't know what curse them in the name of the Lord, what the implications might mean.

Dan McClellan "Then two she-bears came out of the woods and mauled 42 of the boys."

Dan Beecher "And then from there he went on to Mount Carmel and then returned to Samaria." It is so just a tossed-off little story.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher 42 kids.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Those bears were hungry.

Dan Beecher Not only that, they were efficient.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher You would think that- They would've run away ... if you've got a crowd of 42, even two bears can't corral that many kids as they go and murder them one by one, but- Yeah ... these were God bears, so they apparently were capable.

Dan McClellan Yeah. I wonder what it must be like to feel the power of fulfilling a curse in that way. I imagine it has something to do with how Mike Tyson felt in the '90s when he would just- ... send men to the shadow realm.

Dan Beecher It feels like maybe this was a don't know my own strength moment for Elisha, because you've got to feel bad.

Dan McClellan He doesn't seem too upset about it.

Dan Beecher No, that's true.

Dan McClellan But yeah.

Dan Beecher He just goes on vacation.

Dan McClellan And this is something that, a point I've tried to make on social media in the past. A lot of times when we're reading these stories and we try to understand what on earth they mean, we try to recreate these scenarios in our head and imagine them being historical. Imagine what the characters are thinking. Imagine what's going on in the background. Imagine what other people might be thinking.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Which is, in many cases, totally distorting things because most of these things are literary creations. They're not intended to operate on that level.

Dan Beecher They're intended- Listen, every literary creation I've ever made, I at least try to think about what the characters are thinking.

Dan McClellan Well, that's responsible literary creation. But sometimes what's going on on the page is the extent of what the author is intending, at least in terms of the details that are supposed to evoke whatever- Yeah ... response from the reader. But there are some things to point out here. There is an apologetic response that tries to understand these not as small boys as the NRSV translates. The KJV says little children.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan The NET says young boys. And the Hebrew here is literally na'arim qetanim, and that means small boys. And the na'ar can be everything from a newborn up to an adult, but when it talks about adults, it's usually talking about someone who is in a servile role.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan They're a servant, or they have some role within either a household or a kingdom or something like that. And so, what does Princess Buttercup call Westley in the beginning of "Princess Bride?" She calls him boy, doesn't she?

Dan Beecher Yeah, something like that.

Dan McClellan Yeah. It's because you're in a servile position, you're a boy.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Even if you're an adult. But usually, the kind of generic sense is a child.

Dan Beecher Sure.

Dan McClellan Everything from a newborn up to someone in their late teens.

Dan Beecher And- And making fun of a dude for being bald is a pretty childish thing to do.

Dan McClellan Yeah, and these are not just boys, these are little boys.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So these are young children, and the idea, they're making fun of him. They're challenging his authority, basically.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Because they're saying, "You're not the successor. Get on out of here."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Or the way the NRSV translates it with go away.

Dan Beecher Some people translate it go up, and- Yeah, I think the KJV is, "Go up thou baldhead."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher "Go up thou baldhead."

Dan McClellan And let me see. The verb there isalah, which means go up. Which could be saying, "Hey, follow after your predecessor." Why don't you go catch a chariot on out of here?

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan Why don't you peace out- Right ... just like him? And so, in a sense, it's challenging his prophetic authority.

Dan Beecher We like our prophets with hair, idiot.

Dan McClellan And so the curse is, this is like a scary story to tell kids. Don't curse the prophet, or rather than a witch cooking you in an oven to eat you- Right ... it will just be some bears will come out of the woods- Bears ... and eat you.

Dan Beecher Yeah. So, it is- It's pretty gruesome. The Brothers Grimm got nothing on this. And the specific number of 42, it just gives it that je ne sais quoi, that little bit of extra reality because we named the number of them.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It's not just random crowd.

Dan McClellan It's not just a bunch of them.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And it's not even, normally you would use 40 or 70. That's kind of the ancient equivalent of saying a million today.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It's a lot.

Dan Beecher A gazillion or something.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It's a fill-in number for a large amount or whatever.

Dan McClellan Right. But here we've got 42 specifically.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Six times seven.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan There are debates about the significance of that. I don't think any of them make any more sense than the others.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But yeah, we have this weird story that is probably something that was circulated around the time period that these texts were coming together as just a way to warn against challenging the authority of the prophet because of what might happen. And yeah, back then, if you were a young boy, there wasn't really mercy to spare for you.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan If you mocked the prophet, you were going to get what you deserved.

Dan Beecher Yeah, I guess so. Boy, between that and Ham making fun of his dad for being naked- ... it just feels like the Bible is very fine with disproportional punishments for seemingly small offenses.

Dan McClellan Minor infractions.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And I think there are nursery tales and stories where there are similar, what we might consider disproportionate reactions. But yeah, those are things that definitely strike us as far enough outside the kind of ethical norm that they are troubling.

Dan Beecher Yeah. It's funny because you mentioned that there are apologetic discussions of this story, and you don't need them. This story doesn't prove anything negative. There's nothing in this story specifically that disproves the Bible unless you twist it this way or that way, or that- Yeah ... says something that disproves the existence of God unless you twist it this way or that. It's just so gruesome- Yeah ... that it feels like there's no way this could've come from a good and benevolent Lord.

Dan McClellan And I think that's why apologists feel compelled to try to reinterpret it, is because it is something that is just used to mock the moral system of the God of the Bible.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It's like, "Hey, minors, little boys, he doesn't care. He'll kill them."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan In fact, when we were discussing this segment, I shared a video. It just randomly showed up on, I think, Twitter somewhere. It's a video of Sydney Sweeney. That's her name, right?

Dan Beecher I think so.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Sydney Sweeney reading this story from the Bible.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And the video starts with her sitting in a big comfy chair, and it's like, "Sydney Sweeney reads the Bible." And then she's got this gigantic Bible and opens it up and just reads these two verses and then shuts it, and is like, "This happens."

Dan Beecher Just plays it completely straight.

Dan McClellan Yep.

Dan Beecher Yeah. It definitely speaks volumes, these two verses, for sure.

Dan McClellan But that's a source of embarrassment for a lot of folks who try to- Yeah ... hold up the God of the Bible as some kind of moral lodestar. And it's like- Yeah ... no, they're pretty messed-up morals in the Hebrew Bible and in the New Testament.

Dan Beecher If there's any takeaway for a believer, this is yet another reason to let go of the need for it to be a literal truth at all times, and gravitate much more toward the understanding that this was a product of its culture and of its time, and not everything it says has to be the literal truth about an omnibenevolent, omnipresent God.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And I'm sure there are many people over the last 2,000 years who have taken this as a personal challenge to find Jesus in here. Because everybody's like, "Every word of the Old Testament's about Christ." It's like, "No."

Dan Beecher Figure out how a bald dude murdering kids with bears fits into that rubric.

Dan McClellan And yeah, the fact that it specifically says she-bears, and I was looking at the Hebrew, and it is, where did it go?

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Shteyim duwim, which is the two feminine bears, which is a weird thing to add.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Another little detail that adds some spice to the story.

Dan McClellan Yeah. I've seen a lot of, not a lot, but I have seen apologetic arguments before that have been like, "Well, how do you know those boys weren't messing with their cubs? Because it says they're she-bears, so they were probably screwing with their cubs earlier. And so they were just- ... coming to exact revenge or something like that.

Dan Beecher Oh my God. Here's the thing. If nothing else, bears can't kill 42 boys.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Unless they are really small.

Dan Beecher You're going to have a couple get away.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher You're going to have a couple get away.

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher Well, we'll leave it at that. For those of you who want more discussion from us, you can find it at patreon.com/dataoverdogma, where Dan and I have a after party every week, that is often related to the episode and sometimes not. We can talk about whatever we want. It gets a little more personal. So please feel free to head over there and become a patron. Otherwise, you can contact us by reaching out, contact@dataoverdogmapod.com, and we'll see you again next week.