Thou Shalt Not

Dan McClellan Like in Egypt, you've got the god of bricks, you got the god of lovemaking, you got the god of beer. Those gods knew how to party.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan You got your bricks, you got your beer, you got your lovemaking. And you've got a weekend.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

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 we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. We got a hot one today, don't we?

Dan Beecher Ooh. We're coming off the heels of some current events.

Dan McClellan We're going to be- Oh, we're getting topical.

Dan Beecher We are.

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher We try. We're maybe a couple weeks late, but it's okay.

Dan McClellan Like an effective cream, today we're topical. We're going to be talking about recent legislation that was signed into law by the lovener? No, the governor of Louisiana.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan HB 71, House Bill 71, which requires that all public school classrooms have prominently posted a specific version of the Ten Commandments.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And we're going to talk a little bit about what specific version they're using and why, and then get into some of these commandments, how they're written up, why it's a little confusing, and then talk a little more about some of these commandments and then move on to some name of God stuff. Just an average Thursday.

Dan Beecher Yeah, exactly.

Dan McClellan It's going to be- Or Monday, whatever. I don't know when you're listening to this.

Dan Beecher Yeah, you'll listen whenever you listen. It's Thursday for us, but time is a flat circle, so none of it makes any sense.

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher Well, let's dive in- Yeah ...

Dan McClellan to this.

Dan Beecher Louisiana, as you say, has chosen to try to force all of the schools to have the Ten Commandments on a poster in every classroom.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Feels a little weird. Definitely problematic, I think- Problematic ... and controversial.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So- And this has been tried in a bunch of states.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Texas tried it recently. Here in Utah they tried it, and it didn't get passed. And this ought to strike most people as a pretty flagrant violation of the establishment clause of the very first amendment to the Constitution, and we're going to get into that. But I want to read one of the paragraphs that introduces the Ten Commandments- Mm ... and then we can read through it. Does that sound okay?

Dan Beecher I love it.

Dan McClellan Okay. So, let's see, line 11 on page 3 of the final form of this bill that was signed into law. "No later than January 1, 2025, each public school governing authority shall display the Ten Commandments in each classroom in each school under its jurisdiction. The nature of the display shall be determined by each governing authority with a minimum requirement that the Ten Commandments shall be displayed on a poster or framed document that is at least 11 inches by 14 inches. The text of the Ten Commandments shall be the central focus of the poster or framed document and shall be printed in a large, easily readable font. The text shall read as follows."

Dan Beecher And then- It starts with "The Ten Commandments." That's the first bit of text that you have to have on there.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Which I think should probably be read only in your best Charlton Heston impression.

Dan McClellan When I think Charlton Heston, I think of Wayne's World.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan Because I never watched the movie "The Ten Commandments."

Dan Beecher Really?

Dan McClellan Never seen it.

Dan Beecher Oh. Yeah, so- Cecil B. DeMille is rolling in his grave.

Dan McClellan Well, he can roll around all he wants. I was not raised in a religious household.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan It was just never a movie that we watched, and so I know I'm a heretic already to a lot of people out there, but that makes me even more heretical. So, that's the movie that I first saw Charlton Heston in. I was like, "What? Okay, this guy's a much better actor than the first guy that they had in the gas station, but I don't get the significance." And then later on I was like, "Ah, okay.

Dan Beecher I see." He's Moses.

Dan McClellan Yeah. "I am the Lord thy God."

Dan Beecher That's my best Heston right now.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Well- Which is also the next few words in- Yeah ... in the Commandments. Should we go through...

Dan McClellan I don't know.

Dan Beecher We don't need to read all of the Ten Commandments.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher But the point is, or at least one of the points for the purposes of this conversation, is that they chose a very specific translation, a very specific version of these, because- Yes ... different translations of the Bible do these differently, word these differently.

Dan McClellan Yeah. There are a bunch of different ways to understand the Ten Commandments. We've already done a show where we talked about the fact that Exodus 20 is not labeled the Ten Commandments.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It's actually Exodus 34 where we have the 10 things, the 10 words- Yeah ... the Ten Commandments, but that's the ritual decalogue. This is a different set of 10.

Dan Beecher So, we've discussed that, but the specific version- And also, not only is it not labeled as Ten Commandments, it's not numbered either.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher There's vast disagreement on which are the 10, and it's very reasonable to say there are not 10.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher You could number it at as few as nine easily, or as many as 12. It's not obvious in any way- Right ... that this is supposed to be 10- different commandments.

Dan McClellan Yeah. This is a negotiation of the text. This is our decision to impose that organizing framework, but you can even organize it different ways.

Dan Beecher You can split the commandments up in different ways.

Dan McClellan Some people think of, "You shall not covet your neighbor's house" as one commandment, and then, "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife or slaves" as a separate commandment.

Dan Beecher Sure.

Dan McClellan The first commandment can be split up in a variety of different ways. Is the statement, "I am the Lord your God" a commandment? Within most Jewish streams of tradition, that is considered the first commandment.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But within most Christian traditions, it's the actual proscriptive, "You shall have no other gods before me." And is the commandment to not make any graven images, is that part of the same commandment? Is that a separate... So there are a lot of different ways to do this, and this legislation is prescribing a very specific way to do it, to some degree, because it doesn't number them. Like you were saying before we started recording, you could even divide up the laws, the commandments as they're represented in the bill to 12.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan There are- Absolutely ...

Dan Beecher there are certainly 12 lines It looks like 12 to me. When I read it- Yeah ... because they do have line breaks.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher And a couple of them extend beyond the line breaks, and it's very obvious when that has happened.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher And then there are... But if you just go down and you don't count- Sentence by sentence ... sentence by sentence, it looks like 12 different commandments to me.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So, that's unclear. So if somebody wanted to thumb the nose at this legislation, they could number them by 12 or something like that.

Dan Beecher And they definitely should thumb the nose- They should, yeah ... at this legislation.

Dan McClellan That's true. But the reason that they have picked the version that they have and the specific translation that they have, because you will not find this exact list of commandments in any translation. This comes from a document that was created in the 1950s by the Fraternal Order of Eagles.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan And this is not Don Henley fans.

Dan Beecher This is a charitable- I just hate the Eagles, man.

Dan McClellan That's the only part of that movie I don't like. It's funny, but I'm like, "You have lost points."

Dan Beecher You're like, "The Dude doesn't like the..." You're telling me The Dude doesn't like the Eagles.

Dan McClellan Now, I will be clear, I prefer CCR over the Eagles, but I do love me some Eagles. Now, this is a charitable organization that does a lot of good work. But back in the '50s, they were involved, like a lot of people, in red-baiting, in the Red Scare. We had a lot of, "Communism is destroying the world. We need to develop an identity that distinguishes us from the Ruskies."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so one of the main thing that took over US identity was this idea that they are godless communists, and we are God-full.

Dan Beecher I don't know.

Dan McClellan God-fearing. God-fearing, yes. We are the theos ebis. We follow the commandments of God. And so there was this push to consider the Ten Commandments an identity marker.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Now, it had never been an identity marker prior to that time period. There is an argument that this sits at the foundation of our nation's heritage and its laws, all entirely false.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan There is absolutely no case to make that the Ten Commandments sit at the foundation of our laws or our nation in general. Sure, the Bible does. Sure, even the King James Version of the Bible does. Sure, the Ten Commandments are something that appear in old spelling books from the 19th century.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Sure. That does not a foundation make.

Dan Beecher But- Well, and this bill actually references a couple of textbooks, and in language that's meant to also go on these posters.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It says, "The Ten Commandments was in this book, and the Ten Commandments was in that book." And it makes it sound like every child in school for the entire history of the United States has had to read these words and blah, blah, blah.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And that's just silly. Yeah, it's nonsense. But in the '50s, Cecil B. DeMille and the Fraternal Order of Eagles hooked up and decided that they were going to produce these big monumental displays of the Ten Commandments- Right ... and distribute them throughout the country to put next to your capitol building or your courthouses and stuff like that. And so you had a bunch of these go up.

Dan Beecher And- Right. And for DeMille, it was publicity for his movie.

Dan McClellan Well, and he would've been a McCarthy stan.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan He was also very anti-communist, so I'm sure this was personal for him as well. But yeah, but it was mainly going to be publicity for his movie.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so they go up all over the place, and then I think it's 2003, somebody sues.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan Because one of these, it might've been the one in Texas. I don't remember where. But sues saying this violates the Establishment Clause- Right ... because this is establishing a religion. And there was a big flurry of activity, and most of them were just off in a park. Nobody cared about it. They don't even make an association between this thing and a government building.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And then we get this ruling in 2005- Dan McClellan: Van Orden versus Perry, and this actually is released the same day as another ruling about the display of the Ten Commandments in public spaces that ruled the other way.

Dan Beecher Roger Gowdy: Hmm.

Dan McClellan Dan McClellan: So we got two rulings, each of them five-four, going in opposite directions. And I think it was Breyer who was the one who was the deciding vote. But they said the display in Texas is good. This can stay. This does not violate the Establishment Clause. But a bunch of other displays, I think, in Kentucky or somewhere around there, they violate the Establishment Clause. And part of it was because it was a part of a bunch of displays, and they were asserting the Ten Commandments are the foundation of our legal system and of our nation, just kind of reflecting that 1950s era, that ethos.

Dan Beecher Roger Gowdy: Right.

Dan McClellan Dan McClellan: And they get rejected. And that was McCreary County versus ACLU. And so we've got a version of the Ten Commandments that passes constitutional muster, and we've got other versions of the Ten Commandments that don't. The version of the Ten Commandments that Louisiana put up is identical to the version in Texas that passed, which is from the 1950s era- Roger Gowdy: And I think that there were- Dan McClellan: ...

Dan Beecher motion picture. Roger Gowdy: I don't remember this well, but I think that there were other issues at play as to why they allowed the Texas one to stand, including they claimed that it had been there for so long, and no one had complained about it for so long that it now had sort of a traditional standing- Dan McClellan: Yeah Roger Gowdy: ... and that sort of thing. So it wasn't just the wording that was important, but you're right that the lawmakers in Louisiana grabbed onto the wording as being like, "Well, if it's okay there, then this must be fine here."

Dan McClellan Dan McClellan: Yeah, because the goal here is to get something up to the Supreme Court. The reason they're- Roger Gowdy: Yeah Dan McClellan: ... doing this is so they can get it to the Supreme Court, and they have precedence because it's already passed once. But the interesting thing is in the McCreary case, one of the things that they cited in rejecting the other displays was what's called the Lemon Test- Roger Gowdy: Mm-hmm Dan McClellan: ... which goes back to 1971, Lemon versus Kurtzman, where this is another Establishment Clause case. But they established a three-pronged test to determine if something violates the Establishment Clause. The purpose prong, it says the statute must have a secular legislative purpose; the effect prong, the principal or primary effect of the statute must neither advance nor inhibit religion; and the entanglement prong, the statute must not result in an excessive government entanglement with religion. And so that's been what's kind of governed Establishment Clause cases evidently ever since in the Supreme Court.

Dan Beecher Roger Gowdy: Right.

Dan McClellan Dan McClellan: Until- Roger Gowdy: Dun-dun-dun Dan McClellan: Two years ago- Roger Gowdy: Yeah Dan McClellan: ... when we had Kennedy versus Bremerton School District. This is the football coach who prays- Roger Gowdy: Yeah Dan McClellan: ... after the games in the middle of the field, and his contract was not renewed by the school, and he sued. And this went up to our justices, and as with so many things recently, it's a six-three ruling. We know what that means.

Dan Beecher Roger Gowdy: Yeah.

Dan McClellan Dan McClellan: And in this ruling, they basically said, "We don't care about the Lemon Test. Our test is tradition." Roger Gowdy: Dan McClellan: If it's a part of our nation's tradition, then fair game. And I'm simplifying quite a bit.

Dan Beecher Roger Gowdy: Right.

Dan McClellan Dan McClellan: But more or less, the main piece of scrutiny that it has to pass now is just whether or not it is an established part of American tradition.

Dan Beecher Roger Gowdy: But these justices go against that all the time, too.

Dan McClellan Dan McClellan: Oh, yeah.

Dan Beecher Roger Gowdy: These justices, the only test that they care about is, "What are my personal feelings about this?" Dan McClellan: Yeah, this is- Roger Gowdy: You got people like Alito and Thomas, and they don't care. They say that they're originalists, but they don't really care at all what the Founding Fathers had to say.

Dan McClellan Dan McClellan: Oh, no.

Dan Beecher Roger Gowdy: They say that literally, this is a very strange assortment of judges- Dan McClellan: Yeah Roger Gowdy: ... that's currently on our bench.

Dan McClellan Dan McClellan: A majority of our Supreme Court justices right now are Catholic.

Dan Beecher Roger Gowdy: Yeah.

Dan McClellan Dan McClellan: Like, a lot of them, which is weird because- Roger Gowdy: Which is weird, yeah Dan McClellan: ... this is also a very Protestant version of the Ten Commandments that has been approved, and what I hear from lawyers, to my knowledge, neither of us are lawyers.

Dan Beecher Roger Gowdy: I haven't checked recently, but yes.

Dan McClellan Dan McClellan: Yeah.

Dan Beecher Roger Gowdy: Last time I checked, I wasn't a lawyer.

Dan McClellan Dan McClellan: Yeah. My insurance won't pay for the test right now, but- Roger Gowdy: Dan McClellan: ... to my knowledge, I am not a lawyer. But people who are lawyers who know a lot more about the law, and particularly constitutional law than I, have said that in light of the basically abolition of the Lemon Test, when this makes it to the Supreme Court, unless something drastic changes, it's going to be six-three in favor- Roger Gowdy: Yeah Dan McClellan: ...

Dan Beecher of this.

Dan McClellan Roger Gowdy: Yeah. Dan McClellan: Which means that Utah, Texas, 30 other states tomorrow are going to suddenly have the same legislation.

Dan Beecher Roger Gowdy: Yeah. So let's talk about these commandments a little bit.

Dan McClellan Dan McClellan: Yes.

Dan Beecher Roger Gowdy: I think we're all sort of somewhat familiar with them. I think they should've done the Colbert check on all of the legislators who co-signed on this bill to say, "Hey, can you name all 10 of the Ten Commandments?"

Dan McClellan Because- Dan McClellan: Roger Gowdy: ...

Dan Beecher they can't.

Dan McClellan Dan McClellan: I want to tell you a story. The first time I ever went to general conference- This is LDS Church. LDS general conference.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Every six months, they have this big meeting. I think this was a special treat. I traveled to Utah. It was before I left on a mission. I was crossing the street to go into the recently built, shoot, conference center.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And there was one of the street preachers on the corner challenging people to recite the Ten Commandments.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And at the time, I was like, "I don't know." And ever since then, I've been like, "Ah, I want to go back and see if that guy's there."

Dan Beecher There's always somebody protesting out there.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And it's very funny because it's always someone of a different denomination. Christian, but why are you protesting this?

Dan McClellan Anyway.

Dan Beecher Yeah. It's all very weird. So these are, are they not King Jamesian in their wording?

Dan McClellan Remarkably King Jamesian with small divergences.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And that's what threw me off the first part, because I looked at it and I was like, "Yeah, that's King James." And then I looked it up and I was like, "Wait a minute. No, it's not." There are some small differences. But it is based on King James, so it's a revised King James.

Dan Beecher Interesting.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And I don't really understand the reason for the revisions. So for instance, one of them is, "Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven images."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But when we look in the King James, what we have is, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image."

Dan Beecher Oh. So we've gone from- Are the kids don't know what the word thee means?

Dan McClellan Well, but they know, yeah, to thyself.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Exactly. Maybe they were like, "We could say to thine own self?" But then they've also changed it from the singular to the plural.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan Graven images has now been pluralized in here. And in the Hebrew, it is not plural, it is singular. It's just one word, pesel.

Dan Beecher Can we talk a little bit about what that means?

Dan McClellan Because- Yeah ...

Dan Beecher that is a very strange and confusing commandment. I looked at different translations of it.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher And a lot of the newer translations, including the NRSV, they replace it, the words graven images, with an idol. "You shall not make for yourself an idol."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher What does the original seem to be saying, and what are the sort of more common interpretations of it?

Dan McClellan So pesel is a Hebrew word that refers to an image that has been crafted from wood or from stone.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And so the graven image, the idea is it is an image that has been engraved.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan Or a carved image or something like that. And you have in Judges 17, you have a story of Micaiah, who makes a graven image, but I want to say it says a graven molten image. And so it's not clear if there's a process going on here, or some people understand it as two different types of images.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan But yeah, it's an idol. So, divine image would be the object that is the focus of worship that is considered the index for the deity and their presence and all that kind of stuff. And usually, these would be carved out of wood or carved out of stone, and then they would be covered in gold and silver, or they would be cast in gold and silver or something like that. Variety of different ways to make divine images, but that's fundamentally what we're referring to here.

Dan Beecher Yeah. The verse goes on to say, and I'll read KJV right now, just because- Okay ... it says, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth."

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher And it goes on after that to say, "Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them." So that verse five indicates to me that, yes, it's an idol or whatever, but it does seem like when I look at Islam has a prohibition against imagery.

Dan McClellan Uh-huh.

Dan Beecher Which is why when you go to the Alhambra in Spain, you'll see really ornate writing, but no picture and a lot of- No representative imagery. Yeah, no representative. And I wonder if there was any of that prohibition of just representative imagery contained in this.

Dan McClellan It was certainly understood that way.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Because it's not nearly as programmatic as within Islam, which comes from many centuries later.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And develops within kind of a more philosophically oriented social environment. But you do have an omission of an awful lot of imagery. You don't have much ancient artwork within Judaism depicting animals or other kinds of sentient beings. And the idea here is probably we know that nations around us make divine images that look like people, that look like animals, whether swimming in the sea or flying through the air or walking on the land. So the idea is almost certainly Don't make images in order to worship that look like anything that you might see running around.

Dan Beecher Right. And we know that five minutes after this, he comes back down the mountain and there's a cow there that everybody's worshiping.

Dan McClellan And we do actually have, from the lands of Israel and Palestine, from the end of the Bronze Age, beginning of the Iron Age, we have divine images that have been discovered, most of them miniature divine images. But we know that bulls and calves were one of the forms that was frequently used to represent deities, and almost certainly to represent Adonai, the God of Israel.

Dan Beecher That's insane. Not insane, but it's very interesting that the Israelites in the Exodus story get in big trouble for a calf.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Considering the fact that the calf/bull was used as a proxy for their God.

Dan McClellan And you see it in other places throughout the Hebrew Bible. The fact that you have horns put on the incense altars, and the sacrificial altar, and things like that reflects this idea of a pedestal animal that is associated with Adonai. And the King James renders it mighty one of Jacob.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan But that's the word for bull.

Dan Beecher Oh, interesting.

Dan McClellan The bull of Jacob. And so there are a bunch of different vestigial relationships between Adonai and bull imagery, as well as El and bull imagery. And if you look in the Ugaritic literature and other Northwest Semitic literature, you see El and Baal, the storm deity.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan The Northwest Semitic counterpart to Adonai. You see both of them are represented with bulls as well. So this is probably coming from much later on, but it's a way to kind of create this blanket proscription that includes in it the prohibition of Adonai's pedestal animal and that kind of imagery. But it gets interpreted as don't have artwork- Yeah ... that represents people or animals or things like that. So you don't really see it apart from the commandment to put cherubim on the curtains of the temple and stuff like that.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So it's not until you get down into the Greco-Roman period, around the turn of the era, around the time of Jesus's life, that you see a lot of pomegranates and rosettes, and you see some other animals and plants and things represented in some imagery in synagogues and things like that.

Dan Beecher It's funny because thinking about how the next verse does talk about don't bow yourself down before it, to me, takes the curse off of just drawing a lamb or drawing a whatever.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But that gets me thinking about images that I see all the time of someone kneeling down in front of either a picture of Jesus or a candle of a saint or- A crucifix ... a crucifix or anything, and praying. It feels like that could run afoul of this graven images idea.

Dan McClellan It certainly could, and you have a lot of people who, particularly Protestants and particularly Evangelicals today, who accuse Catholics of violating these commandments all day and twice on Sunday.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Because they understand, particularly the worship of Mary and images and things like that.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But at the same time, the way that a lot of Protestants treat the Bible as the word of God and hold it up as its own icon.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan There's plenty of scholarship out there talking about the Bible as icon, as a divine image. That could run afoul of this as well.

Dan Beecher Not for nothing, but you put a poster up in a classroom and say that it has deep importance, that could easily be a graven image in this sense.

Dan McClellan Yeah, and particularly because it's functioning as an icon.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It's not functioning as a text. It's functioning as an icon because even if you can't read it, you know what it is.

Dan Beecher Yeah. There are going to be kids- This is going into kindergarten classrooms. It's not like- Yeah ... the kids are going to be going, "Oh, adultery is probably a bad idea for me."

Dan McClellan Yeah. Once it's up there, you're going to have high school kids in however many years until our legislatures grow up and get over these petty and naive identity politics. However long they're in classrooms, you're going to have high school kids who know exactly what's going to be there. They've read it a billion times, but they're not going to take it down. It's going to remain up there because it is a symbol.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And it is a symbol of authority, and that's precisely what divine images are.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan They're to remind you who's in charge, and they're to function as an index for that authority and for the presence of that authority. So in a lot of ways, it's functioning like a divine image.

Dan Beecher I do love the idea of these things breaking their own commandments.

Dan McClellan I think that's brilliant. Well, and yeah. So I want to just see some kind of fundamentalist who's just part of such a niche, little, tiny corner of American evangelicalism who tears it down and stomps on it like Like that doofus did for the Church of Satan or the Satanic Temple- Right ... display in the one place because it's functioning that way.

Dan Beecher Yeah. I also wanted to talk a little bit... Sorry, you were going to do something, but I- No, no.

Dan McClellan Go ahead.

Dan Beecher I wanted to jump onto the "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain."

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher That's going to eventually transition us to the second half of the show. But I wanted to talk about what that means, because I know growing up in my life, I had the idea that to take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, if I said, "Oh my God," I thought that that was what it meant to take the name of the... I don't think that's what- Right ... it means now.

Dan McClellan No. That's not what it means. And I want to point something out as well. The official text, the language that has to be on there- Mm ... "I am the Lord thy God," I am is in all caps.

Dan Beecher Right. Oh yeah, I hadn't caught that.

Dan McClellan So they're trying to say, "The great I am."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan They want to make note of that. However, in the text of Exodus 20, that's just , which is just the first-person singular personal pronoun. It is not the phrase in Exodus 3 that is rendered, "I will be what I will be," or, "I am that I am," or something- Right ...

Dan Beecher like that.

Dan McClellan So it's actually imposing that on the Hebrew, and it's not- Oh ... in the Hebrew.

Dan Beecher And it's sneaky, too, because it is a way of differentiating this god from... No one associates Allah with I am.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So it does feel like they're very clearly putting down a marker that this is the Christian or Jewish, I suppose, god, and not- Yeah ... any other god. So you're not allowed, in their minds, to interpret, "I am the Lord thy God," as being, this could be Shiva, or this could be- Yeah ... some other god.

Dan McClellan And that comes from the original displays from the 1950s. They have both I am and Lord- Mm ... in all caps.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So that's an interesting Yeah That's an interesting thing to note. However, we get back to, "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain." The word here that is translated in vain is . So, for vain in Hebrew, and there is a word that means make it worthless, make it useless. That's basically what it is.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So in vain is an okay translation.

Dan Beecher Our word vain in this sense is like, Shakespeare used it a lot, and would say- Mm ... yeah, to go somewhere, to do something in vain is to do it fruitlessly or without- Yeah ... the right effect or something.

Dan McClellan To no effect or something like that.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Right. And what is translated thou shalt not take is which means to lift, bear, or carry.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And the idea here of lifting, bearing, or carrying the name in vain is almost certainly a reference to swearing an oath.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan That's how this is used elsewhere. In fact, we've got in Leviticus another commandment. I think it's Leviticus 19. I'll just verify real quick, but can't find it. But it says not to swear by the name of Adonai falsely.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan As a lie. And so that's almost certainly what's going on here. The idea being, for an oath, an ordeal in court, whatever, don't lift your hand to the square and say God's name as part of an oath if that oath is false or if it's something that you promised to do that you're not going to carry through with.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so it's really just saying- Don't invoke me and then forsake that- Yeah ...

Dan Beecher or fudge that.

Dan McClellan Or if you're in court, yeah. So in court, you put your hand on the Bible, or you raise your right hand, and you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God. That's a way to bear, lift, bear, carry the name of God. There, it's just the title of God, but if you're lying in your testimony in court, that would be directly a violation of that commandment.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Now, it became inappropriate to use the divine name at all shortly after this, probably in the Greco-Roman period.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Second, first century BCE.

Dan Beecher That's when- Which is why you don't say it on the podcast. Yes, that's- Because there are still people that hold to the ideas- Oh, absolutely ... that we don't say the- Yeah.

Dan McClellan And a lot of friends of mine, and several of them have said if I would not mind making that accommodation, and that's not a costly accommodation for me. I'm used to hearing it in academic conferences and stuff like that. I'm fine with that. So yeah, around that time period, it became considered inappropriate. And my opinion on this, based on work that I've published, is that the divine name was considered a way to invoke God's presence and authority. Kind of like how in Russian, they don't say the actual Russian word for bear- Right ... because they're afraid the bear's going to show up or something like that. The idea being, there's only one person who can say it in the Holy of Holies because when you say it, God is invoked. And so To be outside the temple and to say it is to bring God into a profane context, and that would be considered inappropriate. And so, I think it was probably that sensitivity, that taboo developed because the name was thought to invoke deity, which is probably why this tradition developed of not destroying texts that had the divine name on it. You had to use the genizah. Sometimes you buried the text. There were specific processes you went through to discard text that had the divine name, and there were even debates that arose within Judaism when the internet became a thing, of typing divine name on a screen that would just go away. So it's something that was taken very seriously within Judaism. But once that happened, you can't bear the divine name anywhere. And so what does this commandment mean? And I think that's probably when it got renegotiated to refer to other things. I think one of the renegotiations was this idea that you bear the divine name when you represent the deity in public, in private, in your dealings with your fellow man.

Dan Beecher So would you say that, for instance, if you wanted to display a series of scripture, that would be an instance of maybe bearing the divine name, and if you were to do so under false pretenses, like let's say you claim that they are just historical and part of a- Yeah.

Dan McClellan Falsely so ...

Dan Beecher then would that be perhaps bearing the name of the Lord in vain? I'm just- Just spitballing here.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher No examples in mind, just thinking about it.

Dan McClellan That could certainly be according to that renegotiation of the text, that could certainly be an example of bearing the divine name in vain.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan If you're just using it to try to structure power, absolutely. That could be understood according to that renegotiation, and then it would be further renegotiated to be any kind of use in an expletive of the word God or something like that.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Which is, I think, how most people from our generation and generations around us were probably raised- Yeah ... with this idea that you weren't supposed to use the word God or Lord or anything like that in expletives.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Even though there are ways that, "Oh, God," can be used devoutly.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But really, your inflection is the only thing. If you're in a prayer and you say, "Oh, God," just a little bit wrong, it might come across as- Right.

Dan Beecher Right ...

Dan McClellan a problem.

Dan Beecher And it's definitely not okay if you do it just after stubbing your toe.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But then if you pray for healing, then it's okay.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher The lines could get blurry.

Dan McClellan And who knows, maybe Genesis 38, Onan, maybe he let out an, "Oh, God," and that was really why God was like, "Zap."

Dan Beecher Well, yeah. There you go. Have we done that story? I don't know that we've ever done that story.

Dan McClellan Did we not do Onan?

Dan Beecher Maybe we did.

Dan McClellan I don't know.

Dan Beecher Okay. We'll have to- I don't remember. Look, the second we record these things, I forget everything we talked about. So, okay. I think it's interesting that they're putting these Ten Commandments up. Since the first four or five, depending on how you number it, of the commandments are about God- Mm-hmm ... and specifically, at least one of them is specifically about God's name.

Dan McClellan Uh-huh.

Dan Beecher Let's talk about that name.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher Let's talk about the development of that name, where it came from. What's going on with that?

Dan McClellan Yeah. So the first thing you need to know is that Jehovah begins with an I. If you ever find yourself in a life-or-death situation where you have to spell out the name of God, just keep that in mind. In the older Latin, Jehovah begins with an I.

Dan Beecher We did a whole show about, or we talked about the Tetragrammaton some.

Dan McClellan Uh-huh.

Dan Beecher But not sort of the development of it.

Dan McClellan Oh, yeah. So we've probably mentioned that the earliest known occurrence of the divine name, the Tetragrammaton, as a reference to the God of Israel, comes from probably the third or fourth quarter of the ninth century BCE. So the Mesha Inscription, where Mesha talks about carting away the vessels of Adonai after having defeated the nation of Israel at Nebo. And we got a couple of references- Sorry.

Dan Beecher We should just do a quick reminder that Tetragrammaton is a reference to four letters, Yodh He Vav He, if I'm recalling correctly.

Dan McClellan You recall correctly.

Dan Beecher And that is the name of God.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So you're saying that this thing was the first time we saw those letters in that order, in that reference.

Dan McClellan As a reference to a deity.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And then we also have most of the letters of the Tetragrammaton used in names- Mm ... in some other inscriptions. So the Tel Dan Stele, which was probably written by an Aramaean named Hazael, who's boasting about defeating a handful of kings, and they have Yahwistic theophoric elements in the name. And by the way, I say Adonai. Most scholars pronounce it Y-A-H-W-E-H. And the name Jehovah is an alternate form of this based on the combination of the consonants Yod He Vav He, and the vowels that come from the Hebrew word for "my Lord," a special form of it that's pronounced Adonai. If you put those two together, and then you transliterate them into modern English, Yehovah or Jehovah is what you would get. So if you've ever wondered where the name Jehovah comes from, it comes from the combination of the consonants of Adonai, the consonants of Adonai, and the vowels of Adonai. The consonants of the Tetragrammaton and the vowels of Adonai.

Dan Beecher Of the word Adonai.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And that probably happens in the medieval period, in a couple of different languages and becomes very common. Because if we go look in the Masoretic Text, and if we look at ancient texts, they were already using those letters as substitutions, for the divine name in ancient texts. So anyway, we've got Adonai, we've got Jehovah, we've got the Tetragrammaton, we've got the divine name. It first appears on the scene suddenly in the names of kings and in the name of the patron deity of Israel around 850, 825-ish BCE.

Dan Beecher Who? Give me some of these names that this is appearing in.

Dan McClellan Jehoram, Jehu- Okay ... names like that. So the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, talks about Jehu, a king, in Israel. And that is actually the earliest artistic depiction of an actual known Israelite. It shows him bowing down to the ground in front of Shalmaneser III.

Dan Beecher Oh, wow.

Dan McClellan Okay. And I actually ran across this. I was in the British Museum last October, and I was just kind of do, do, do, looking around, and then whoa, it's right there in front of me. I was like, "Oh, my gosh.

Dan Beecher Shalmaneser."

Dan McClellan Oh, sh- So that was a fun experience. But then we don't have anything before that. And we have an inscription, we have the Egyptian Pharaoh Merneptah, who talks about a people known as Israel, around 1208 BCE. So, over 300 years earlier than that, Israel is a people, but there's no indication that Adonai is their deity.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan But we can go back even further, deeper into the 1200s and even into the early 1300s BCE, and we have a couple of inscriptions in Egyptian, on the sides of pillars that use three of those letters, Yod He Vav, and then an Egyptian version of a glottal stop or an aleph or something like that, as a reference to either a people or a land that is associated with a group known as the Shasu. And this is an Egyptian term that probably refers to nomadic Asiatic peoples, from West Asia. So down into Arabia, up further north around the lands of Israel and Palestine and elsewhere. And they've got a bunch of lands listed, the Shasu of this land, the Shasu of that land, the Shasu of that land, and then they've got the Shasu of Yod He Vav glottal stop land. And so a lot of scholars think this-- Most scholars think this has some kind of relationship to the divine name.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And so, the question is, what's the exact relationship? And I think many scholars would say if there is a relationship, then whoever occupied this land or whoever bore this name probably named their deity after the land or the people, and at some point made their way into the northern hill country of Israel, bringing their deity with them, and introduced that deity into this Northwest Semitic group that was probably already devoted mainly to El, but also to other deities. And now we have the introduction of this deity, known as Adonai, according to the way I pronounce it.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And they were probably inserted into the pantheon on the second tier. They initially were one of the offspring of the high god, who was either El or El Yon or maybe Elohim. And they seem to have adopted a storm deity profile, very similar to Baal, who's already operating in the area- Right ... which is probably the reason that throughout the Hebrew Bible, we keep having conflicts. Adonai and Baal keep butting heads, like with the challenge, between the contest between Elijah and the prophets of Baal.

Dan Beecher Would this have operated similarly to... When I hear about ancient Greeks and how there were all of these gods, but there would be some people who would just devote themselves, there would be a cult of this god or that god. Is that how this would've operated likely, with these people? Is that there's the high god, and then there's these other sort of lower individual gods that some people would go to, and there would be maybe patron gods of a certain group or tribe or something?

Dan McClellan Yeah, absolutely. There were all kinds of different deities and levels to the hierarchy, but they were also associated with different kinds of functions. Like in Egypt, you've got the god of bricks. You got the god of lovemaking. You got the god of beer.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan You got all these different kinds of gods who are thought to be- Those gods knew how to party. That was a fun- Yeah. You got your bricks, you got your beer, you got your lovemaking- ... and you've got a weekend.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And those gods were thought to oversee those industries, and the people associated with them. And so if you were a part of that guild, maybe that was one of the main gods that you liked. If you were a wife and mother, maybe you were concerned with Asherah, because Asherah, or Athirat in the Ugaritic text, was associated with child rearing, with conception, with lactation, breastfeeding, and things like that. So, if you're having trouble getting an adequate latch, maybe you burn some incense to set up a votive offering to Asherah or Athirat or something like that. If you're going off to war, maybe you pour out a little extra for whatever deity you want to watch over you in battle. And you also had ancestral deities in this time period.