The Joel McHale Episode!

Joel McHale It's got to be demoralizing for his other prophets for him to be like, "You all suck.

Dan Beecher I'm going to go visit an illegal necromancer to find my dead prophet." Yeah, exactly.

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? Oh, man. Here's the thing.

Joel McHale We're both sick, you and I. Yeah.

Dan McClellan In the interview that we're about to play, you're even sicker than you are now. We recorded that a little while ago. Yeah. You have not yet fully recovered from that sickness. No. I'm starting a new sickness. Yeah.

Dan Beecher I'm pretty sure that you gave it to me over the internet somehow. Yeah.

Joel McHale I'm coming up the 18 fairway.

Dan Beecher So I'm getting there, but yeah- Yeah ... I'm still not back to 100%.

Dan McClellan But yeah, this was almost, what was this, three weeks ago that we recorded this interview?

Joel McHale Oh my gosh.

Dan McClellan Don't tell the people- Something like that ...

Joel McHale how long it's been. Anyway, coming up is a really cool interview.

Dan Beecher Those of you who follow Dan's, all of his social media and whatever, know that we teased a celebrity guest on the show.

Joel McHale This is that show.

Dan Beecher Joel McHale, star of stage and screen. I don't know if he's ever done stage work. I assume he's done stage stuff. I don't know. He likes to hawk a lot of stuff. Star of screen, anyway. Yeah. He is going to be appearing on the show for the first half of the show. That's really cool.

Joel McHale We had a really fun conversation with him. Yeah. Our patrons get to hear even more of him in the patrons-only stuff. Yeah. So that's kind of cool.

Dan McClellan So you can sign up for that if you want to hear that stuff. And then after that, we're going to do a chapter and verse. Yeah. So most of the interview was totally unusable.

Joel McHale It was just a train wreck.

Dan Beecher I wasn't going to say it.

Joel McHale No, it was a lot of... There's a lot of energy. But- Yeah.

Dan McClellan We had a great time. Don't get me wrong. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. It was actually a lot of fun, and you guys are going to have a lot of fun listening to it, but we also wanted to get some Bible content into the episode. Yeah.

Dan Beecher We want to make sure those of you who don't like fun but like the scholarship are getting yours, too.

Dan McClellan So, we talked a little bit in the interview with Joel about the famous story of the Necromancer of Endor, and so the chapter and verse- It's about an Ewok witch, you guys. Right. It is. There is literally an Ewok in the Bible. You're going to have to stay tuned through the whole episode to find out about it. And this was not written until after the second episode of "Star Trek," right? That's right. Third. That's what we're talking about? Well, no.

Dan Beecher Of "Star Trek." That's right.

Dan McClellan The second episode of- Right. You just blew a lot of people's brains out of their heads. I'm playing. I'm totally playing. But, yeah. We're going to talk about 1 Samuel chapter 28 and the Necromancer of Endor and go on a deep dive about what's going on in that chapter because it's so fascinating. Yeah.

Joel McHale It's a really interesting story. Yeah.

Dan McClellan And Joel's in it.

Joel McHale This is going to be a fun episode.

Dan McClellan I think we should just launch into the interview. All right. Let's see it. For once, we have an interesting show for you today. Yeah.

Dan Beecher We've avoided it for so many episodes, but we had to be interesting at least once.

Joel McHale It's no longer a sleep meditation app. Not anymore.

Dan Beecher We're welcoming a special guest. It's a celebrity guest, even more than Bart Ehrman, I think. Welcome, Joel McHale. Thank you.

Joel McHale It's great to be here. I'm very excited to be here. I'm not joking. As Dan McClellan knows, very fond of all the Instagram posts, and I just love the stuff you guys do because, as a man of faith, as a man of the cloth, as I am, it can be a pretty turbulent and crazy time out there in America.

Dan Beecher So Joel, you're known as Jeff Winger on the hit sitcom "Community." You came rocketing into my consciousness way back in the early aughts by being mean to reality show stars on "The Soup." Mm-hmm. You've hosted game shows. You've done a bunch of fun voiceover stuff for cartoons and I think video games, question mark? Is that a thing you've done?

Joel McHale Dan, you're doing a great job of reading my Wikipedia, and- Listen ... I feel like some of the current projects should be brought up, too.

Dan Beecher I'm getting there. I'm building. Oh, okay. All right. You know what? I'm trying to. I don't know what "Fortnite" is. I just don't know what "Fortnite" is. Can we be a little bit generous with an old guy? Gosh. "Fortnite."

Joel McHale Look, Epic Games is in Utah. It's based in Utah. My word. All right.

Dan McClellan Well, Dan is barely based in Utah, but- I'm barely based anywhere ... and you're the scientist, right, on "Fortnite?"

Joel McHale I am the scientist on "Fortnite." Thank you, Dan McClellan. That's a point for you. I feel bad for the people that tuned in to hear about the Bible, and they're like, "What? They bring this guy in?"

Dan McClellan The hell is going on here? Yeah. Yeah. So Dan mentioned something to me earlier, and I don't know if I knew this or forgot about it or what, but you were not born in the United States of America. Is that correct?

Joel McHale No, I was born in Narnia. Thank you. In Narnia. Okay.

Dan Beecher Well done.

Dan McClellan And I wanted to... No, I was born in Italy, I was born in Rome. Right.

Joel McHale And I'm not kidding when I say this, which makes me holier than either of you. I was baptized at the Vatican At the Vatican? Yeah.

Dan McClellan Okay, very cool.

Dan Beecher That's some fancy Catholicing right there. Yeah.

Joel McHale They took Jesus off the pieta, they put me there. They poured holy water on me and then reattached Jesus. Yeah. Why not? If you're in Italy, why not, right?

Dan Beecher I had a homeless guy pour his water on me in the Vatican. Does that count? Is that the same thing?

Joel McHale I think that was Jesus. Okay. See?

Dan McClellan Well, if you go to Capernaum, on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee, there's a statue of a homeless man laying on a bench covered in a shroud right outside the front entrance, and if you look closely, you'll see nail marks in the feet and in the hands. So representative of Jesus as yon homeless man. Right. Now, yeah, I assume that was something that was a pretty brief stay in Rome. You didn't grow up there?

Joel McHale No, I was only there for three years of my life. Okay. And then my parents moved to Seattle. Seattle. Which at that point, literally there was billboards that said, "With the last person in..." It was so depressed. It said, "With the last person in Seattle, please turn the lights off." Because it was the OPEC crisis, so Boeing was slowing down. The timber industry was slowing down, and that- Mm-hmm ... was the major industries in Seattle. Yeah. And then all of a sudden the '90s hit, and late '80s, and we became the coolest place on earth. And I just assumed that's how it would happen with every city. And I was just like, "Everything just gets better. Everything's cooler. It's Microsoft and Amazon just show up and then start everything. Everyone likes your stuff." And then my friend Gillian was like, "I was raised in Pittsburgh." I'm like, "Oh, okay." Where they say bagel, right? Bagel. And Gillian Jacobs, one of my favorite people on the planet, played Britta on "Community." Yeah.

Dan Beecher I did want to ask you, since this is a Bible podcast, tell us about your background with the Bible. You told us about... I assume you're Catholic if you were baptized in the Vatican, or at least were Catholic. Oh.

Joel McHale Well, yes. I was raised Catholic, in Catholic schools, and an altar boy.

Dan Beecher And then- About which we have no further questions, just so that you know. Oh, no.

Joel McHale My mom and dad were so proud because we would serve mass, and it was both my brothers and I. We'd be doing the mass together, and my mom would leap out of the pew and start taking photos with an old Nikon, and she was so happy.

Dan Beecher That's adorable.

Joel McHale But yeah, then I had a conversion experience when I was about 17 at a Young Life camp. And that was kind of the traditional, not traditional... I guess it is traditional, where they say you have to give your life and all that, and I definitely convert. I don't know what I was converting to, but I was in. And so then I went to a, well, I'm going to, I guess, a Methodist church now, and I went to a... Well, my brother's an Episcopal priest. I'll just start. Then the Presbyterian, I was very Presbyterian for a while. But I couldn't ever go to a mega church because they freaked me out.

Dan Beecher That's fair. There's my history. No, I love it. I love it. Obviously, if you're into Dan's work, if you're into our work, then there's two camps of people. There's the hardcore atheists who are just trying to understand the book from a different perspective, and then there are believers like you who are interested in hearing the Bible as they've never heard it before. Did you ever read the Bible? Did you ever try to dive into it cover to cover?

Joel McHale Oh, Dan, I can't read. That's my problem. I am very dyslexic. So, I remember "The Simpsons" episode where Homer thought he was dying from the piece of sushi that he ate. And he decided to... He only had the Bible on tape read by Larry King. And it was so funny. I don't know. So I've never actually sat down and read it. I did read Numbers over and over again because stats- That's the good stuff right there ... is an exciting book. But I did say to Dan, because I'm always right on the verge of atheism. For me, it's either you believe it or just it doesn't exist. So I'm always one step away from that, but that's why when I started following Dan on Instagram, I was like, "Oh, this is what I needed to hear." And then I grew up with this kind of... It was a group of us in college that would listen to music, and the guy that led it was a scientist at the University of Washington, and it wasn't a Bible study, but it was a bunch of people that kind of had the same faith, and we would just listen to... We'd break down songs and listen. So his science, it was great because he was like, "The Bible's not a science book." And I was like, "Yeah, that's right." And so that's just one small... His name is Dr. John Medina, and look him up. He's got a bunch of books out. He and his wife, Kara, is incredible people. So anyway, that all said, so that's kind of how it stayed, and And then, watching Dan break it down, because I feel like American Christianity is pretty screwed up because it's very American. And so Dan's way of breaking it down, which is data, which is great. Which is like Dan points out all the time, he's like: "Well, this doesn't really make any sense," but this is exactly what it said. And then this other stuff makes so much more sense when Dan has broken it down. So, it's just kind of revelatory. So when I had dinner with Dan in Salt Lake, and his lovely wife, I was very starstruck. It was great. And Dan had no idea, but it was super fun.

Dan McClellan Oh, and I was going to ask you, just every time I talk to you when you're flying in and out of somewhere, do you try to get flights that get in at 11:30 at night?

Joel McHale Is that just- Oh, I take the very earliest flight or the last flight. It's the shortest amount of time when I need to be, I can be away from my family. Yeah. So I always sacrifice my sleep for that. But, no. Yeah, I always take the very last flight. Even if I'm working all day, but I never would wake another... I wouldn't sleep and then get up and go. No, that sounds insane. All right. Fair enough.

Dan Beecher How big is your family? Who do you got? You got kids, I assume?

Joel McHale I got two boys, 18 and 15. Wow. What do you got?

Dan Beecher I got nothing.

Joel McHale You got nothing?

Dan Beecher I'm a free bird. I like to travel light. That's... Yeah.

Joel McHale You saved a lot of money, dude.

Dan Beecher Well, I do want to ask you, one of the things, so we put out a call for questions for you, Joel, on our various TikTok accounts and whatnot. And we had some response. So I was curious, so one of our TikTok listeners, viewers, whatever, asked: "Curious how you see the Bible used behind the scenes in the movie/TV industry." And I don't know what that means necessarily, but I am curious about, you hear a lot of, I'm not going to name actors, but a lot of actors who are pretty hardcore Christians complaining that they're not allowed to talk about their faith and that their faith- Yeah.

Dan McClellan We're all thinking of Kevin Sorbo. Yeah. That's just awful.

Dan Beecher I'm not naming anybody, but there's a lot of them. It's just- What are your thoughts?

Joel McHale It's a pretty loaded, that question. Not that the TikTok user wanted to ask a loaded question, but the stereotype is that Hollywood is a godless, lawless brothel. And it's ironic since Los Angeles is the birthplace of many things, including neoconservatism and mega churches. Mega churches started here in the 1930s. But it was also the birthplace of JPL and 1,000 other things that all started here. And, so I'm going to say that 99% of... Well, when it was like, it's this industry that it's godless. And I was like, "So, doctors and lawyers, their industries are super clean, and they're just the epitome of virtue and righteousness," or whatever it is. I'm always like, "Yeah, whatever." It's just the same as everywhere else where there's some really great people. Most of the time, they're decent people. Everyone's working their butts off here, and then there's really awful people. And it's funny because the awful people, that eventually gets around, and then they eventually get pushed out. Thank God. But it is the only industry where you can fail upwards, and most of those are executives. But I suppose you can do that in most churches, too. Yeah. But when I hear just like... I always see this common complaint like, "I can't talk about my faith," that I'm talking about right now in this interview- Right ... that will be broadcast. And I think it's more, that comes down to more political persuasion, than it does to faith. Because if you look at an overhead map of Southern California, there's churches everywhere, and there's- Yeah ... synagogues everywhere, and there's mosques everywhere, and so I never thought it was something to hide, and so yeah. I mean, Hollywood is littered with people that go to church, and I'm guessing the percentage has to be the same of people that believe and practice. Anyway, that's a very long answer for, I don't think it's a problem.

Dan Beecher I love that. Because you're right, there's a huge stereotype that, at least, and I hear this a lot among people promoting Christian movies, that Hollywood just kicks you out immediately if they find out you believe in God, and you have to swear to become an atheist if you're going to get cast in anything.

Joel McHale It's nuts to me that, when I hear that, I'm like, I don't know where the anti-faith police are touring around Hollywood searching.

Dan Beecher They just haven't gotten to you yet, Joel. Yeah. They're on the other side of my fence.

Joel McHale Thank God it's electrified. But I don't think the same type... Again, I think it comes down to political persuasion probably because a movie like- Susan Sarandon's performance in "Dead Man Walking" is pretty incredible and also pretty true to how a lot of people see their faith as Catholics. And I was like, "Yeah." And that didn't seem to be a problem. I think like most entertainment, it is very fragmented, and now it's so dispersed that you can watch exactly what you want to watch. And then when I hear people complain about, "I can't say what I want to say." Now anyway, this is my fourth Lamborghini that I bought. And I'm like- Yeah.

Dan Beecher Were there ever discussions about religion backstage in your shows, between takes? Did you and your fellow cast members talk about that sort of stuff?

Joel McHale Be like, "And cut. And another thing, this three-person God thing and..."

Dan McClellan Well, like any- Don't get me started on the Trinity. Yeah.

Joel McHale Like any conversations that happen anywhere, I would say, in any business, if you are close to people, you end up talking about those things. So of course, yes. I don't know, do you guys sit around in religious groups and talk about movies and television? Yes.

Dan McClellan I do, but mainly because I'm a nerd. So- ... we just got back from a biblical studies conference, actually. And yeah, I hang out with the other religious studies and Bible scholar nerds, and we mainly talk about pop culture and movies and our scholarship a little bit as well.

Joel McHale But- Well, there you go. And you're like, "Did you think that Ben Affleck's Daredevil had points that were..."

Dan Beecher Look, the- Now you're hitting closer to home for Dan. You see, you've hit a nerve.

Dan McClellan Well, I have friends who deal with the intersection of sci-fi and pop culture and religion, and comic books and religion, and things like that. So there's actual research that goes on regarding that kind of stuff. Yeah. And the new "Daredevil" series I thought did a great job of incorporating- Yeah ... contemplation about religion. I thought it was phenomenal, and I was very upset that it got canceled, and I am very much looking forward to whatever this resurrected series is going to be.

Dan Beecher Can I ask you some more questions from our TikTok people? Yes. So, aprilslily on TikTok asks, "Do you have a favorite Bible story or stories?"

Joel McHale I think, well, I guess the story when Jesus is hanging on the cross there with the thieves, and the one thief starts giving him shit. And the other guy's like, "He didn't do anything." The other guy's like, "Bro, he didn't do anything." And Jesus is like, "Yeah. Don't worry, we're going on a trip. You'll see." And- ... I always liked that because I always felt like one of the thieves. Yeah. So I was like, "Which day? Are you that guy that's heckling people or the guy that's like, 'Stop giving him a hard time?'" And I thought that, I always liked that one. And then, of course, I just read Revelation every night because it reminds me of a really good Grateful Dead concert. Yeah. You don't know what happened, but it's fun.

Dan Beecher It's comforting, is what it is. It's a good nighttime story.

Joel McHale It's like a Dali painting. Yeah.

Dan McClellan Very topical. Yeah. No, I don't know. Yeah.

Joel McHale No, I guess, yeah, those are the... Yeah, that's my answer. Right. Thank you, Lily's Lily.

Dan Beecher April's Lily, yes. And then Coach Crane asks- Well, can I- Are you ready for- Maybe I can ask you. Wait, hold on. Yeah, you ask. Go.

Joel McHale Because the way they divide up the verses in the Bible, some of the New Testament stuff, I was like, "Okay, that makes sense." Mm-hmm. "That's why they stopped there, and then they picked up with that." And then other times I'm just like, "Who numbered this thing?" Yeah. And yeah. It's great.

Dan McClellan So, 1551, and his name was Robert Estienne. Also goes by Stephanus. So the Textus Receptus was a Greek edition of the New Testament that originally was created by Desiderius Erasmus, and didn't have versification for the New Testament, and then in 1551, the edition that Stephanus produced was the first one to introduce versification. Totally arbitrary, just like- Exactly ... here. And since then, that's what the King James Version was based on, and everything since then has had verses.

Joel McHale Now that I know... See, I didn't even know that, and I'm just like, "Some dude. Some dude just numbered." Yeah.

Dan McClellan But it's become so embedded in the tradition that now we have earlier manuscripts. We know that there are about 16 verses in the New Testament, at least the traditional New Testament, that we know are not a part of the earliest manuscripts. And so we take them out, but we don't re-versify the chapters. The verses will just go 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 25. And when people stumble across that, they get really confused and really upset. So- Understandably.

Dan Beecher I do like that- Well, and then they make a video that Dan has to respond to that says something like- "Ah, there's a conspiracy. They're eliminating numbers. There are whole verses that are disappearing."

Joel McHale I can't imagine the people who direct message you and what they're saying. I can't imagine. People give me crap for like, "How come you didn't like that angel food cake?" And- ... "I can't believe what you must..." Yeah. I do like how the Torah, they had the two books, right, on the same page, somewhat contradict, like, they often contradict each other, and I was just like, "That seems about right." Yeah.

Dan McClellan Frequently contradict each other. When you have dozens and dozens of people writing stories- Yeah ... over a period of almost 1,000 years, they're going to disagree. And it's a lot easier to enjoy the Bible and to make sense of it when you can acknowledge that. When you've got to go to work to try to make this all agree and harmonize everything, that just makes the Bible become work.

Joel McHale Well, and then growing up, it was like, "Well, God breathed." "Oh, yeah? Really? Okay." And I remember going like, "Yeah, we can't argue with that, right? I mean, we can't." I mean, literally, there's no way you can argue with that. And I was just like, "Come on." It was, yeah. All right, another TikTok. Oh, man.

Dan Beecher We had some that were more addressed to Dan, but also, we'll just throw it to the group. All right.

Joel McHale I'll take the Dan question. Give me a Dan question. Yeah.

Dan Beecher So somebody asked, "Witchcraft, necromancy. Is it okay if it's for God? Why the heck would any deity need a witch's skills?" I think this is probably a reference to, or could be a reference to first Samuel, Dan, and the Witch of Endor, which I always thought- Yeah ... was a Star Wars thing.

Joel McHale There was a witch on Endor that exploded? Yeah. Yeah.

Dan McClellan She was in the woods. It was kind of a Blair Witch setup she had. Let me just go on that note.

Joel McHale And the Death Star just hovered above and went, "Man."

Dan McClellan She had Ewok friends.

Joel McHale You got nothing to worry about. It was delightful.

Dan McClellan But yeah, Endor is the name of a place in Southwest Asia. I think that's probably where they got the name of that planet from. But, we have this story in 1 Samuel 28 about the necromancer of Endor. And the title is, people call her witch, but the title is Baalat Ov, which literally means mistress of ghosts, and mistress in the sense of master- Mm ... not in the sense of, like the feminine form of master. And yeah, Saul can't seem to get access to counsel from God, direction from God, and he's outlawed necromancy everywhere, but goes in disguise to this necromancer to go see if he can get information on whether or not he should go to battle the next day. And so the witch is able to conjure up the deceased prophet Samuel, and she says, "I see gods coming up from the underworld." And Saul says, "Describe them to me." And she describes the prophet Samuel, and then Samuel tells Saul, "You've been a bad boy. You're going to go up to battle and you're going to die." And that's what happens. And so it's a fun story because you have Saul going to a necromancer, and then it works.

Joel McHale And- Wait, Samuel wasn't actually there. She just said, "Here's what he told me."

Dan McClellan Well, the narrative tells it as if this is what actually happened. Right. So it's representing it that way. And then Samuel is chewing Saul out through the medium of the necromancer.

Joel McHale But- Did you see this question?

Dan Beecher Samuel who was dead, right?

Dan McClellan Yeah, Samuel's dead.

Joel McHale I mean, for necromancy to work, someone has to be dead, right? Yeah.

Dan McClellan That's the word necro.

Joel McHale Wait, did you just see this question, or did you answer it?

Dan McClellan I get asked this kind of question a lot. Right. And I actually- And that's- I have a few pages of discussion in my book on this, so this is something- I was going to say, that's the real witchcraft, that you can just pull that answer out like that. Yeah. I was just like, "How? What?"

Joel McHale I can't even tell you what I did two days ago. And it's very impressive.

Dan McClellan But to further answer the question, yeah, witchcraft is just divine agency I don't like. Right. The same processes, the same tools, the same media that a prophet uses are the same that a necromancer or witch would use, only instead of seeking out the guidance of the deity, you're seeking out the guidance of a deceased person. And anciently, a deceased person was a deity. So it's really saying, "You're doing this, you're approaching the wrong person." And this is part of God's jealousy. You don't go seeking after information from the gods of other nations, from the ancestors. You only come to me. So that's why it's considered a problem. So the line between magic and prophecy is an artificial one that people draw only when they're trying to structure power, and say, "We're the only ones who are allowed to do this because we're doing it with the appropriate agent, and so everybody else, you're not allowed to do it."

Joel McHale But if a witch sinks, then they're not a witch, right? Right.

Dan Beecher Or- If she floats- But- ... then she's made of wood, and- They're a whole witch. Anyway.

Joel McHale You ever see that book, there's a movie called Seven Sovereigns for Sarah, I think it was called, about the witch trials.

Dan McClellan No, I haven't seen that. And they were like- I don't think so ...

Joel McHale "Well, if you can get through the Lord's Prayer without stuttering, then we won't kill you." What?

Dan McClellan Yeah, there's a long history of ordeals, and there's been some cool scholarship on the use of the ordeal, where it would be everything from, "We'll throw you in the river, and if you die, you are innocent, but if you survive, then you're guilty, so we're going to kill you." Right. But most of the ordeals, the idea was, we're going to threaten you with a bad time. God is going to punish you- Right ... if you lie, and then the hope is that that fear of God will compel them to be honest and admit whatever. Yeah. And, yeah.

Joel McHale It's like someone going like, "Well, we're going to shoot a hostage every five minutes. We have no choice." I mean, it's up to you if you want to...

Dan McClellan Oh, gosh. Yeah, the ordeal has such an interesting history. Yeah.

Dan Beecher Not a great history. It's not- No, no ... not a good thing that happened. I would like to cheers...

Joel McHale I mean, how happy was every fantasy writer when the word necromancy started, where they were like, "Wait, what? We can use that? Oh, that's going to be in every book."

Dan McClellan The Necronomicon, that's one of the greatest words. Yeah. Yeah. Good stuff. Well, I can go. All right.

Dan Beecher You know what I'm going to do is I am going to say that we are going to take the rest of this conversation, and throw it into... We're going to keep talking with Joel McHale- Yes ... but we're going to chuck it into the patron's only stuff. Joel McHale, thank you so much.

Joel McHale Love how many people will be left. It'll probably be like, wonder who's going to stay around. It's just going to be the elites. But anyway. The party continues. Patreon, the paying people. That's right.

Dan Beecher For the rest of you, thank you so much for listening. Joel, thank you so much for joining us on the show. We really appreciate that.

Joel McHale And we'll- Thanks for making it this far, whoever hung in there. And, I can't stop talking. Please forgive me.

Dan Beecher Well, let's get into our second segment, our chapter and verse, and what I have only known as The Witch of Endor.

Joel McHale I feel like there should be like a swoosh, a musical something or other- Yeah ... about it.

Dan McClellan Because- Yeah, I think it's a shame that we don't have some kind of...

Dan Beecher Certainly, there's got to be some kind of cinematic interpretation of this story. I don't think we've seen this in any movies.

Dan McClellan It's not in the Ten Commandments. No. It's not in- Because it's kind of crazy. Yeah.

Joel McHale It's a weird story. If I were trying to make a movie of it or something, I wouldn't know what to do with it.

Dan McClellan But I wouldn't know what to do with it. I mean, every time you watch any movie or retelling of a Bible story, they don't know what to do with it. Yeah. You're always like, "What are they going to include?

Joel McHale Oh, I'm so excited." Because- Like, "They totally made that up."

Dan McClellan Well, they kind of have to.

Dan Beecher Yeah, exactly.

Dan McClellan They don't really have a choice. Yeah.

Joel McHale So, we're in the Book of 1 Samuel, toward the end of it. We're in chapter 28.

Dan McClellan And we are dealing with Saul is still the king. David has run off, and he is hanging out with the Philistines, of all people.

Joel McHale How dare he? Yeah.

Dan McClellan It's- It's just, he's betrayed his tribe. And there's an argument to make that this kind of warlord, mercenary origin story may have some truth to it, that maybe David was really a warlord who kind of took over down in the kingdom of Judah, conquered Jerusalem, took over, and then made his way into proclaiming himself king and- Interesting ...

Dan Beecher starting up this chiefdom/kingdom in the south.

Dan McClellan So- Yeah, we may have to have a whole show about the historicity of David. We're going to have to do that at some point, definitely.

Joel McHale But when we move into chapter 28, we have the Philistines gathering their forces to war. And Achish, or Achish, is David's master, leader, ruler. David's just kind of serving under him. And they're ready to go to battle. And then we cut into verse three, which is a segment that runs from verse three to the end of chapter 28. And just real quick, just so you know, chapter 29 and 30 have nothing to do with what's going on in the Saul story. These are two different stories, and you can tell things have been edited together here.

Dan Beecher Because- Yeah, it's a little confusing to read. Yeah. It's a little tricky.

Dan McClellan Because you got Achish and David getting ready to battle, and then it says, "So the Philistines gathered for battle at Gilboa." And that's where Saul's in, in the story. And then it says, "Now the Philistines gathered all their forces at Aphek."

Joel McHale And then we've got these other battles that have nothing to do with Saul.

Dan McClellan And then it says, "So Saul went up to battle against the Philistines at Gilboa," at the very last chapter of 1 Samuel. And so more than likely, we are seeing different stories stitched together. Mm-hmm. So that's how we can most easily... Occam's razor is going to tell us these come from originally distinct stories, and they've been stitched together. Okay. But 1 Samuel 28 verse 3 through 25 is a single sense unit. It's a single story, and this is where Samuel has died. All of Israel has mourned, and Saul has expelled the mediums and the wizards from the land. So- Let's talk about Samuel and Saul, by the way. Okay. So we know that Saul was the king. Mm-hmm. Samuel was like a prophet. Right. Like advisor to the king guy. Yes. So in this time period, prophets primarily were like court prophets. The king just had a retinue of prophets who had different specializations, and if he was like, "I think I want to go to war, what does God say?" And the prophets would push their glasses up on their nose, and they would go off with their calculators and everything, and they would come back and say, "Favorable," or, "Unfavorable," or something like that.

Joel McHale They would say, "Mercury's retrograde. I don't think it's a good idea." Right.

Dan McClellan Or he would say, "I think I'll have the fish." And they would go off and they'll say... Yeah. And as everyone knows from the movie "Airplane!," fish is a bad choice. It's a bad choice. Yeah. Milk, also a bad choice. So, the mediums and the wizards are also doing the same kind of stuff. It's still divination. Mm-hmm. It is still trying to divine the will of the gods or the universe or whatever, using different instruments and different means and techniques and things like that. And so the difference between a prophet and a witch, a medium, a wizard, all these kinds of things, usually has to do with who's on the other end of the line. Uh-huh.

Joel McHale And it's either you got an acceptable entity on the other end of the line, or you got a bad entity on the other end of the line, and therefore what you're doing is outlawed. Right.

Dan McClellan And sometimes, even if it is an acceptable entity on the other end of the line, if you're not a part of the acceptable group, if you don't have the authority, and the authority was basically the people who are on my side have the authority. Anyone who's not on my side- Right ...

Joel McHale even if they're still working for the God of Israel, that's a big no-no. So they get dismissed as wizards and magicians and all these other things.

Dan McClellan So anyway, Saul has outlawed all of this, and the Philistines are coming up to battle going, "Debate me." And Saul goes to his court prophets.

Dan Beecher Samuel's not there, but he's got other folks that he's going to go consult.

Dan McClellan And it says here in verse six, "When Saul inquired of Adonai, Adonai did not answer him, not by dreams or by Urim or by prophets." So the idea being, dreams were one way that God could communicate their will to folks. Urim, this is the Urim and Thummim. Latter-day Saints are going to be familiar with this term.

Joel McHale Urim and Thummim is how it is also pronounced. These are two objects of some kind, probably stones of some kind, that were a divinization. I keep saying divinization. Are a divination tool, a means of trying to divine the will of God or by prophets because he's got however many hundred prophets. Right. It's a secret decoder ring. Yeah.

Dan McClellan And you know what? There were all kinds of different ways that you could do this. Casting lots is divination. Mm-hmm. Right. You see that in the Hebrew Bible. You see it in the New Testament.

Joel McHale That's how they pick- As a matter of fact, doesn't Saul's story start with casting lots to see, or with some sort of a game of chance almost to see who gets to be the king? Kinda. It has to do with Samuel, as God is telling him, "You're going to see this, that, and the other, and this is how you'll know that this is the right one."

Dan McClellan So it is kind of a sign that Samuel is going to get. He rolls double sixes and something. Yeah. And he's like, "Man."

Joel McHale And in all the stories- Card 12. Yeah, in all the stories, it starts out as a nat 20. It's like, "Look at this one." And God's like, "He's the one. He's the one."

Dan Beecher And then, before too long, he's not the one. Oh, that's a shame.

Dan McClellan So Saul needs to know, "What am I going to do?" And so he says to his servants, "Seek out for me a woman who is a medium or a necromancer, and I just want-" The very thing that he banished. That he banned. The very thing that he banned, right. And that's because these things work.

Joel McHale But he probably figures...

Dan McClellan Well, the first thing to note here is that a necromancer is somebody who tries to communicate with the dead. There was a very active cult of the dead in ancient Israel, and probably a wonderful book from just a couple of years ago by a scholar named Cary Sonia.

Joel McHale It's called "Caring for the Dead in Ancient Israel."

Dan McClellan Talks about necromancy, talks about the cult of the dead. But basically, everybody believed that the dead were still around in some sense, and when people died, you buried them in a mortuary chapel where you would set up a standing stone or something, and you would go have meals there, and you would go consult with the deceased. You could ask for blessings and things like that. And what we do in cemeteries today, go and talk to headstones and things like that. Very similar things going on. So the idea that you could consult with the dead was normative up until, I would argue, the reign of Josiah. I think Josiah is probably the king who tries to put a stop to this. So the fact that- Other than Saul trying to put a stop to it- Well, that's what- ... and then participating in it like a jerk.

Joel McHale Well, that's what I was going to point out.

Dan McClellan This story was written afterwards. Oh. But it's about a time that's way before.

Dan Beecher And so if there is a social memory from centuries before about Saul visiting a necromancer, there wouldn't have been an issue. But writing about it later, they were like, "Now, Saul had outlawed all these people, and then he goes to visit one. Come on, what's going on here?"

Dan McClellan But the idea of the king going to visit a necromancer not really. Wouldn't really have been that unusual or surprising in the periods before the 7th century BCE.

Joel McHale And so, the necromancer, and here I want to plug a book real quick by a scholar that you and I have both spoken with, Esther Hamori. Yeah.

Dan McClellan And the book is called "Women's Divination in Biblical Literature: Prophecy, Necromancy, and Other Arts of Knowledge." Hmm. And it's a wonderful book, and there's a great chapter all about the necromancer of Endor. And it starts off talking about what we're calling this person, because colloquially, this is who?

Dan Beecher Well, the Wikipedia page article is about the Witch of Endor. Right. The Witch of Endor.

Dan McClellan The Hebrew phrase here is Eshet Ba'alat Ov, which means the woman, mistress of ov, and ov is a word for ghosts or the deceased or something like that. Hmm. And so the woman, the mistress, and this is mistress in the sense of the feminine version of master- Right ... of ghosts. There's a word for witch. Almost a wife of ghosts, yeah? Or could get to that? That's another sense. Well, I don't think that they ever use that sense- Okay ... for the feminine of Baale, but the word Baale, which means master, can also mean husband. Okay. But I think we got to decouple those senses. Machash, I think it's Machashafah is the word for witch.

Joel McHale So in Exodus 22, "You will not suffer a witch to live." That's Machashafah.

Dan Beecher You also have spell caster, which, I think is Haver Hover.

Dan McClellan And then you have the Ba'alat Kashafim, which would be the mistress of sorcery or witchcraft or something like that.

Dan Beecher By the way, I can just hear our listeners screaming for the show about all of these different- ... categories of magic users. Yes. It does feel like we're starting a D&D campaign. Doesn't it? Yeah. What is your race? What is your class? Machashafah.

Joel McHale Those are the words that are used to describe a witch. None of those words appear anywhere in this chapter at all. Because a witch uses poisons and potions and casts spells. This person is doing none of that.

Dan McClellan This person is consulting the dead, so they are a medium or a necromancer. Right. So colloquially, people refer to her as a witch, and that is gendered in a lot of ways. Yeah. This is boo, she's a villain, she's a witch. Kill the witch. Burn her. Yeah.

Dan Beecher So, to start off, I want to make sure that we're referring to her the correct way, and she's just trying to scratch out a living. Right? And then, yeah.

Dan McClellan She's literally just like a phone operator to the dead. And she's got a gift. So- Yeah ...

Dan Beecher she- She's good at it. Yeah. She's genuinely amazing at it- ... according to the story.

Joel McHale And so Saul asks his servants, he's like, "I need a witch." And they're like, "Oh, yeah. There's a witch over here." And it's not like, "Sir, you outlawed all the witches. We wouldn't know where to find any witches." They're just like, "Oh, yeah.

Dan McClellan We know one. We use her all the time."

Dan Beecher Although you got to know that- She's great ... one guy didn't speak up. One guy was like- ... "This is a trick.

Joel McHale I know this is a trick. I'm not going to say anything."

Dan McClellan So he goes in disguise and lays the money down.

Dan Beecher And she asks, "Who do you want me to bring up?" And he says, "Samuel." And there's not a great vibe initially, and she's- Right ... like, "Hey." She's suspicious because- Yeah ... she's doing something illegal. Right. And she says, "Saul has outlawed this." And the disguised Saul swears by the name of the God of Israel that nothing will happen to her. Why she would be like, "Oh, well, I guess it's okay then," is anybody's guess. It feels like one of those, "If you're a cop, you have to tell me" sort of moments. And then she immediately brings up Samuel.

Dan McClellan And the text does not say how, and scholars have debated this, and it's just not a part of the story.

Joel McHale But somehow, she understands that this is Saul. And now as I'm picturing the scene in "Prince of Thieves," the painted man, the witch- Oh my God. You just went back hard. Yeah.

Dan McClellan Even I don't remember "The Prince of..."

Joel McHale This is the what's-his-name, Robin Hood. Yeah. Anyway.

Dan McClellan But she gets freaked out, the crone. But Saul's not worried about this. He's like, "Who did you see?" And she says, "I see an Elohim coming up from the earth." Oh, okay. And Elohim means god or gods, and there is a little question here about whether this is supposed to be singular or plural because she says, "I see Elohim coming up from the earth," and the participle is in the plural, but Saul then says, "What does he look like?" Oh. And then the woman says, "An old man coming up.

Joel McHale He's wearing a robe." Okay. And then Saul was like, "Oh, that's Samuel. Obviously. Old man, robe. That's the right guy." There can be only one- Yeah. ... old man in a robe. I also love that he doesn't go to a prophet.

Dan McClellan He goes to a necromancer to talk to his favorite prophet who is dead. Yeah. I think that's amazing. Yeah.

Dan Beecher It's got to be demoralizing for his other prophets- ...

Joel McHale for him to be like, "You all suck.