Tucker Vs Ted: The Israel Throwdown

Dan McClellan Ezekiel is like, "I can fix it. I'm going to give God wheels. We're going to mobilize the throne so that God can just go and crashing out of the temple and go vroom."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan God's like, "Where we're going, we don't need roads." Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.

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

Dan Beecher Things are good. We're wading in chest deep on this one today.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher We're going in hard, and we're going in heavy.

Dan McClellan Yes, we are. We are going to ruffle some feathers- Yeah ...

Dan Beecher today, but I don't think without- It might be deeper than chest deep. We might need snorkels at this point. We'll see.

Dan McClellan I don't think it is not con razón, as the kids are saying these days, I believe. In other words, it's not unjustified. But yeah, we're going to be wading into some controversy.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Which we don't ever do.

Dan Beecher We've managed to avoid it for so long. It's finally time. The first half, we're going to be talking about a subject that has come up thanks to, of all people, one Ted Cruz. Thank goodness for him. We're all just so happy that he's around. And Tucker Carlson, I feel similar about him.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And that's going to be, oh, heaven help us, it's going to be about Israel. And then, in the second half of the show, we're going to talk about a Psalm that is interesting.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher I'm going to give it that.

Dan McClellan And maybe- Imprecatory, one might say ...

Dan Beecher a little problematic- Yeah ... for many of us, so we'll dive deep into that. But first, let's get into a Taking Issue. And this week's Taking Issue, we're taking issue with something that... This interview that Tucker Carlson did with Ted Cruz.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher The main thing that sort of went viral was Tucker grilling Ted Cruz about, "You don't know anything about Iran, and you want to blow them off the face of the earth," and there's all this Iran stuff. But sort of what got lost in the shuffle was the thing that you picked up on, Dan, when they were talking about Israel.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher And specifically what happened was Ted Cruz said, "Well, I'm a Christian, and in the Bible, we are commanded to bless Israel."

Dan McClellan Yes. And- Which he seems to interpret to mean never question- ... but always blindly support.

Dan Beecher Right. But before we get there, Tucker Carlson immediately jumps on him, and Tucker Carlson is such a jerk in this interview. They're both jerks. They're both just- Yeah ... insufferable humans.

Dan McClellan You would think they would be friendly to each other, though.

Dan Beecher Yeah. They're on the same team. They both support the same bad president, and- Yeah, they're both fascists ... for the most part, they are in 100% agreement, but apparently not on this point.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And so Tucker Carlson, if you disagree with him, apparently you're his enemy, and he's coming after you with both barrels. So he was like, "Okay, well, what scripture is that? This scripture that says that you need to bless Israel?" And Ted Cruz didn't know.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And- Well, I loved that he was like, "Oh, I don't remember. It's somewhere in the back." And he's like, "Pull up Google and look for it." And immediately, Tucker Carlson's like, "It's in Genesis."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan With as much venom as he could muster.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It was like, "You child, it is in the Book of Genesis."

Dan Beecher And- Well, and Tucker Carlson had clearly been planning his gotchas. So of course, Tucker knew where it was because he was planning this gotcha from the beginning.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But it is in Genesis, specifically Genesis 12. Is that correct?

Dan McClellan Yes. That is correct. Genesis 12, which is the beginning of the Abraham cycle. So this is immediately after we have Genesis 1 through 11, the primeval history. So this is the second main set of narrative arcs of the entire Book of Genesis. And it's pretty early in Genesis 12 because you have in Genesis 11 that Terah, who was Abraham's father, he dies. He was 205 years old. He died in Haran. And then Genesis 12 begins, "Now the Lord said to Abram: 'Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.'" And the "in you" could, I think that's probably an instrumental bate, so by you, through you. You are the instrument of their blessing.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so the idea is Abraham's offspring.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Which right off the bat, one thing to point out is that Abraham had a lot of offspring- He did ... according to the Bible, which includes- Like Ishmael, it's supposed to be- Right ... the Arab people.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And an awful lot of people beyond just the 12 sons of Israel.

Dan Beecher And so- Yeah, and that's important to point out. Israel, AKA Jacob, right? Am I getting that right?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Who is Abraham's grandson?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.

Dan Beecher Right. So, yeah, you're right. That's one line of the thing. But yeah, the Arabs, the Muslims, another line of... If we're going to take this seriously, literally.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm. Then this is not the actual ancestry of the Arab people.

Dan Beecher No, of course not. This is- Of course not. But if Ted Cruz were actually going to take his own theology seriously, he wouldn't be talking about the state of Israel, the current nation state of Israel. I guess he'd be talking about all of the occupants of that whole region- Yeah ... including the Palestinians, the Iranians, everybody.

Dan McClellan Yeah. If you take this lineage seriously.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And most people, I think the audience of Genesis 12, and this is probably an exilic, post-exilic layer. This is probably written by people who were coming back to or who had recently come back from exile. Because Abraham, stranger in a strange land story, resonates quite a bit- Yeah ... with the people who are coming back to the land. The whole sojourner thing. So, in this time period, they would've understood Abraham's main offspring to represent Israel. They would've been like, "Eh, we don't care about the Edomites. We don't care about the Arabs. We don't care about all those other folks who are also ostensibly descended from Abraham." They probably had in mind Israel.

Dan Beecher Now- Right ...

Dan McClellan the question is, what does that refer to? It certainly doesn't refer to the nation state that was founded in the middle of the 20th century CE, because the author was living 6th century BCE, had no concept of any of this, and was probably not living in a period when there was an actual nation where they had autonomy and their own identity. And so Israel almost certainly referred to the people of the house of Israel- Right ... who were actually scattered well beyond the land that is labeled Israel in the Bible.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so Israel is the name of Jacob, the legendary eponymous father of the 12 tribes of Israel, themselves the legendary origins of the 12 tribes of Israel, the people of the house of Israel, who the 10 tribes get carted off into forced exile, forced migration in 722 BCE. They are disintegrated. They're no longer around. You have mainly Judah, a little bit of Benjamin, a smattering of the other tribes that are in Judah and Jerusalem, and they take on the identity of the house of Israel. And so the people of Israel are who knows how far dispersed into the world and diffused among the world's populations. But overwhelmingly, they're identified today with the Jewish people.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So I think if you do actually take... And he says it's a commandment, but it's not.

Dan Beecher No, it's not. It's just a thing. If people bless you, I'll be happy with them.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher I'll bless them.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And if they curse you... And it's not like those are the two options. It's not like you are either blessing or you are cursing. There's a lot of indifference.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It's a mixed bag, and nobody unilaterally responds the same way. And so yeah, this just doesn't make sense as a commandment. It doesn't make sense as something that we should be expected to follow. But Raphael Edward Cruz says, this is a... I don't remember what his exact words were, but basically he said, "I was taught growing up in Sunday school- Right ... to bless the nation of Israel," which after Tucker pushes him on this, he identifies specifically as the government that is currently headed up by Benjamin Netanyahu.

Dan Beecher Right. This is a weird sort of thing that has happened. The fact that he said, "I grew up with this," sort of ties him in with a movement that's been around for a long time, but I think it really caught on in the middle of the 20th century, this idea of Christian Zionism- Mm-hmm ... which became a thing that Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson talked about, which is this idea that we need to support Israel, and we need to support the Jews of Israel specifically, and kind of specifically in opposition to the Palestinians of Israel or whatever.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Like any other claim to it.

Dan McClellan And frequently in opposition to the rest of the Jewish people.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Yes, that's true. Which makes up the majority of the Jewish people.

Dan Beecher And all of this came from this idea that the Jewish reoccupation of that land that happened in the middle of the 20th century- was fulfillment of prophecy- Yes ...

Dan McClellan in the Bible? This is the first time since 63 BCE, when this area was annexed by Pompey, the Roman general, that there has been a formal autonomous nation of Israel. So it was a big deal.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Fulfillment of prophecy? I don't think we can go that far. But for Christian Zionists, this is opening the door to the rest of the events that are supposed to precede the second coming and usher in Jesus' return. So for Christians, it's an even bigger deal that has nothing to do with the well-being of Jewish folks per se.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It primarily has to do with their own eschatology and their own idea of the end times and the licking of the chops for the world to be destroyed.

Dan Beecher Yeah. And it's so interesting because you kind of hinted at it before, but there's this dichotomy between, "We must support Israel. We support the Jews. We're so anti-Jewish hate," and all this stuff. And it's so disingenuous. I read several articles by Christians about why we need to support Israel and whatever. And there was always this, they're very anti-anti-Semitism. Which by the way- Mm-hmm ... the word anti-Semitism becomes this bludgeon where no one's allowed to question us, because if you question our support of the nation of Israel, then we get to call you a Jew-hater. We get to call you an anti-Semite and just never address any of your concerns because you're obviously just bigoted.

Dan McClellan And they're- But they never mention...

Dan Beecher I saw one article, and there was a whole thing about Jewish hate is nothing new, and it was decrying Jewish hate, not mentioning who had been doing the hating for centuries.

Dan McClellan Yeah. When we're looking at, at least when it comes to Zionism, most of the Jewish folks I know are vehemently anti-Zionist. Not all, but an awful lot of the Jewish folks I know are vehemently anti-Zionist.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so we have a situation where you have a lot of Jewish folks who are being accused of anti-Semitism for pushing back against the Israeli government.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Which is problematic. And this is particularly sticky because there is an awful lot of anti-Semitism that attends Christian and non-Christian, non-Jewish anti-Zionism.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan There's definitely a problem with the anti-Semitism that we frequently see attending a lot of the anti-Zionist rhetoric on the part of people who are Christian, who are atheist, or who are other things. And that's a big problem, and it becomes a matter of just lumping in everybody, and we end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater, I think, when, well, we got to avoid anti-Semitism and identifying criticism of a government as indistinguishable from anti-Semitism.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And what's funny is I see... It's not funny. It's actually rather tragic and horrifying, but I see a lot of Christian nationalists who seem to be doing the same thing with Americans.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan I saw somebody on Twitter today who said, "I used to love Colorado, and now it's disgusting and I wish Americans would take it back for themselves." It's like Colorado's one of the whitest states that has ever graced the face of this planet.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It's overwhelmingly Americans who are making it what it is today. And so it sounds like they're saying if you don't agree with Christian nationalism, with America first, if you're a progressive or a liberal or a leftist or any of those other labels, you're not even an American.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Which kind of sounds an awful lot to me like this idea that if you don't support Netanyahu, that that makes you anti-Semitic, as if he constitutes Judaism or is the essence of Jewishness.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan As if Trump is the essence of being American or anything like that. There are a lot of attempts to reduce this down to these simple and ridiculous binaries on all sides of this and related arguments. So I get really annoyed by those attempts to try to reduce everything.

Dan Beecher And there's this sense... I think one of the problems here is the linguistic problem that we so often run into, which is one word is a synecdoche for other words. The word Israel can be used to mean the new name of the guy- Mm-hmm ... Israel, the character of Jacob in the Bible, or it can be used to mean his offspring, or it can be used to mean a political group of people, or it can be used to mean... It can be used to- A territory.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Yeah. A landmass. It can be used to mean any number of things. And if, like Ted Cruz says, and Genesis 12 isn't even about Israel. Israel has not even been born yet. So Genesis 12 is about Abraham- ... which is a very different thing, but then can be used as a synecdoche for other things.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher The Abrahamic religions we often hear about. So, if we cannot get specific. At one point, Tucker Carlson actually makes the point to Ted Cruz about, well, what is Israel? Are they talking in the Bible? Are they talking about the modern nation state? And Ted Cruz goes, "Uh, you don't know what Israel is?"

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And it's such a dodge. It's such a pathetic dodge.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And I don't know if it's insincere or just profoundly ignorant. Because I would think that Senator Cruz would understand that Israel can refer to geography, it can refer to government, it can refer to ethnicity, it can refer to Jacob, it can refer to all these things. And so, either he knows that and is just being dishonest and evasive, or he just doesn't know that.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan In which case, holy crap, we have a lot of work to do to weed profoundly unfit public servants out of our government. And here's the part that I dislike the most about this. If this were a commandment to unilaterally support and endorse and champion the actions of a government, it would basically endow that government and whoever's in charge of it with unilateral infallibility, inerrancy, authority to do whatever they wanted.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It could never be wrong.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And the notion that anyone merits that kind of authority is just so far beyond the pale.

Dan Beecher Oh, absolutely.

Dan McClellan There's no case to make for that.

Dan Beecher It's impossible.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Honestly, if an almighty God made that kind of a declaration, that God would have to make sure that in perpetuity, the leader of that nation, whatever nation it was, could never make a mistake.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Because that's the only way in which that kind of a commandment to support something could possibly make any sense.

Dan McClellan And even within an organization, a global organization, that does assert infallibility Yeah.

Dan Beecher ...

Dan McClellan you have an awful lot of people being like, "Yeah, well."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And a lot of people who push back- ... against the one person who is endowed with that infallibility, however they conceptualize it.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Whether they say, "Well, he's got to be wearing this robe, and it's got to be this kind of day, and the weather's got to be such and such." Even the people who want to reduce the context for infallibility down as tiny as they can make it, they're still like, "Eh." They give a lot more wiggle room to that than this idea that, well, bless Israel. You've got to.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan You've got to. Because I was taught as a child in Sunday school this. The things that you are taught as a child in Sunday school, you should have outgrown. Because a lot of them are being taught to you precisely because you're a child.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And you're not thinking about these things in the ways that they need to be thought about.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And the frameworks that people use to transmit these ideas and these identity markers and things like that to children, you're supposed to outgrow those. Unfortunately, a lot of people, instead of outgrowing them, they just find ways to rationalize their preservation, even if it means creating institutions that go out and try to create pseudoscience to defend the notion of a 6,000-year-old Earth and a global flood- Yeah ... and a boat that all the animals on the entire planet descended from the animals that were on there.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan You're supposed to outgrow those things.

Dan Beecher It's so interesting. I went onto a website called Christians United for Israel- Mm-hmm ... which claims and may well be the largest organization in defense of Israel in the country. They claim to have over 10 million members.

Dan McClellan Hmm.

Dan Beecher And you would think that that would be a comforting thought to Jewish people around the world.

Dan McClellan It is not.

Dan Beecher Most Jewish people that I know of, and in polling, most Jewish people wildly mistrust- ... especially the evangelical Christian defense of Israel.

Dan McClellan And as the kids are saying, "Con razón." Yeah, they should distrust that.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Because there's an agenda that is motivating that support, which is- Yeah ... very much one-sided and isolated and very targeted.

Dan Beecher Right. It's a poison pill because these people, like we said, they believe that this is all in service of getting to the end of days, getting to the eschaton.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher And at that point, they assume that Israel will be then handed over to them, the Christians- Yes ... as the fulfillment of that prophecy and blah, blah, blah. It's like, preserve it for the Jews so that we can have it.

Dan McClellan Yeah, so that God can then say, "Thank you. I'll take that now. This goes to them."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So, yeesh.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It's pretty bad.

Dan Beecher It's, yeah.

Dan McClellan And the notion that these ideologies are so deeply entrenched in the halls of the US government.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Among the people who make decisions about going to war, and this is one of the reasons that a lot of people think Tucker Carlson was pushing back against Senator Cruz. A lot of people have pointed out he seems to be very pro-Russia. Iran is a big supporter of Russia. They're mutually supporting. And so- Mm ... it's not that Tucker Carlson suddenly had a bout of conscience. It's that he has a very isolationist and, in many ways, pro-Russia approach to America first. Whether that's the case or not, whether that's motivating things, I don't know. It certainly is reason to not throw your hat into the Tucker Carlson ring.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Don't put all your eggs in that basket.

Dan Beecher Just because you might line up with him once on a thing, don't- Yeah ... don't get pro-Tucker by any means.

Dan McClellan The notion that we would be going to war with Iran, using Israel as a proxy, even though they are not developing a nuclear weapon, all of the experts are in pretty widespread agreement about that.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan It's baffling to me.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And yeah, trying to leverage the Bible as rationalization for that, got to do better, man. Got to do so much better than that.

Dan Beecher Do you want to know one of the biblical references that I saw made about Iran and Israel that I thought was interesting?

Dan McClellan Did it have something to do with Gog and Magog?

Dan Beecher Yes. Ezekiel 38.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher I don't know what that is. I read it, and then I went and checked out Ezekiel and was like, "Wait, that's not about now."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But none of this is about now. That's the other thing, is that one of the things that you and I have talked about a lot is that all of these people who are very into the idea that this is all the fulfillment of the prophecies of Revelation and Daniel and whatever.

Dan McClellan No.

Dan Beecher No.

Dan McClellan No.

Dan Beecher It was very clearly about a very specific time, and that time- Yeah ... was a long time ago.

Dan McClellan And when you look in Ezekiel, Gog and Magog are a place and a ruler of a place- Right ... as near as we can tell. When we get into the Book of Revelation, they seem to be both rulers of places- Mm ... rather than one and the other. Even the authors of the New Testament are at quite a distance from the composition of that quote, unquote, "prophecy," and so are interpreting it in different ways. And now people are like, "Oh, it's Iran, it's Russia, it's China, it's Turkey."

Dan Beecher It's whoever I don't like.

Dan McClellan And it's so silly. Yeah, that's really all it is. You're just looking at the world and through the lenses of, "This is coming. This is in the post. This is going to happen, so I got to be ready for it."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Which is literally understanding the Bible as kind of a Ouija board, as a way to divine the future.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Which, as we have talked about in the recent past, is something a lot of people unwittingly use the Bible to try to do.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But looking at these things that were-- Ezekiel's about the 6th century BCE. Daniel's about the 2nd century BCE. Revelation is about the late 1st century CE. The Gospels are about the late 1st and early 2nd centuries CE. They're not looking beyond that.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan They're looking at their own times. They're trying to prognosticate out into the near future.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And they're hoping that something happens. They're worried that something happens. They're warning people that if they don't change their behavior, maybe this will happen. That's what those prophecies are. And the fact that geopolitical events can pivot on somebody's interpretation of one of these biblical passages just makes me so disappointed in humanity.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Come on.

Dan Beecher Well, the other thing is that when we say, "Oh, that was fulfillment of prophecy. Oh, that was fulfillment- Yeah ... of prophecy," that totally disregards the fact that events since the 1st century CE have been said to be the fulfillment of the same prophecies throughout the centuries.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher They get- When some world event happens in the 600s, in the 1600s, in the whenever, somebody was saying, "That's the fulfillment of this prophecy. The eschaton is around the corner."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher That's been an unbroken chain of proclamations since Revelation began, since Revelation existed. You know what I mean?

Dan McClellan Yeah. When everything is a fulfillment of prophecy, nothing is a fulfillment of prophecy.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan People can find ways to interpret anything as a fulfillment of prophecy, as 666, as the antichrist- Right ... as all of these things. And yeah, it's all how they're negotiating using this text to inform their experiences, give meaning, give significance to their experiences today, and there's not really a circumstance where somebody's going to be like, "Eh, I can't see anything that fits.

Dan Beecher Sorry."

Dan McClellan Yeah. Everything gets to be a fulfillment of prophecy, which again means nothing is actually- Right ... a fulfillment of actual prophecy.

Dan Beecher Well, and not for nothing, none of them has actually led to the eschaton.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It has yet to happen. It won't happen this time.

Dan McClellan You're just- Unless you're a preterist.

Dan Beecher Oh, sure.

Dan McClellan We got to do a segment on preterism at some point.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Yeah. That'd be- Somebody remind us that we wanted to do that.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher I'm not writing it down right now, so I don't know. All right. Well, I think that was fascinating.

Dan McClellan I think Yeah.

Dan Beecher Watch out, maybe give a little gentle nudge to your family members who think we're in the final days and just be like, "No, what's happening is just geopolitical turmoil, and we shouldn't support war of any kind, especially the kind that is really, really hurting a bunch of people."

Dan McClellan And especially not because a book from 2,000 years ago commands you to support the actions of a government.

Dan Beecher Correct. There's no such thing.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher All right. Let's move on. Our next thing is going to be a chapter and verse. And this week's chapter and verse- Mm-hmm ... is a psalm.

Dan McClellan Yes. We're in the Psalms.

Dan Beecher Where are we at?

Dan McClellan We're in 137.

Dan Beecher 137.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan There are nine verses in this psalm, and I actually want to go through the whole thing just because it starts in an interesting way. And there's actually a passage in here I've used many times in the past, in my scholarship, that is distinct from the one I want to land on.

Dan Beecher Okay. But Psalms- It is a mercifully short psalm.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Some of them can be- Yeah.

Dan McClellan It's one verse longer than Psalm 82, the psalm I've probably done the most work with.

Dan Beecher But- Mm-hmm ...

Dan McClellan it begins, "By the rivers of Babylon." So we're in the exile, so not written by David.

Dan Beecher Oh, how dare he.

Dan McClellan "There we sat down, and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. And there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, 'Sing us one of the songs of Zion.'" And here I'm thinking of Blazing Saddles.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher I'm with you.

Dan McClellan "Swing low, chariot?"

Dan Beecher Never heard of that.

Dan McClellan And here's the verse that I've used before, where they say they lament, "How could we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?" And this is a passage I use to illustrate the fact that Adonai's purview or authority, sovereignty, was understood to extend to the borders of the nation of Israel.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But not beyond that. Once you get beyond that, that's the purview of some other deity, and this is why we have Ezekiel is like, "I can fix it. I'm going to give God wheels." "We're going to mobilize the throne, and so that God can just go crashing out of the temple and go vroom."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan God's like, "Where we're going, we don't need roads." And that's Ezekiel's way of solving the problem. And then Psalm 82's way of solving the problem is to have God sue the other gods.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan God stands up and presents- Right ... their reeve, their lawsuit, and deposes the other gods of the divine council, and then the psalmist calls on God to rise up and inherit all nations. In other words, the seats of the divine council sit empty. You now take over all of the divine council for yourself, and that universalizes Adonai's rule. But here we have another reflection of this idea that we're in a foreign land. We can't access Adonai. We can't see Adonai. We're not going to sing the songs of Adonai.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And then we get in verse five, "If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither. Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy. Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem's fall, how they said, 'Tear it down, tear it down, down to its foundations.' O Daughter Babylon, you devastator, happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us." And then we get the imprecatory, "Happy shall they be," and the word here in Hebrew is ashrei, which is the exact same word that is translated in the Septuagint as makarii, which is what is in the Beatitudes.

Dan Beecher Blessed.

Dan McClellan Okay. Fortunate, happy. "Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock."

Dan Beecher Yikes.

Dan McClellan Scene.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan Yeah. That's the end of this passage. So it's a lament. It's an exilic lament. They're lamenting the fact that they're outside of Adonai's purview, and they're fantasizing about the folks responsible for this forced migration getting their comeuppance.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And the climax is the very end, "Happy or blessed shall they be, who take your little ones and dash them against the rock." In fact, I think the Septuagint here has makarios, the exact same word that's in the Beatitudes. So what do we do with that?

Dan Beecher Right. It does seem a little macabre.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Yes, we're talking about, and maybe the claim here, you can help me out with this.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher Is part of the claim here that Babylon, when they took over and kicked everybody out, that they went and dashed Israel's little ones against the rock?

Dan McClellan I think the assumption is that- Because it says, "Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Yeah. I think the assumption is that this would be reciprocal.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan They would be doing to Babylon what was done to Israel. Certainly, there would have been, as a part of the conquest of Jerusalem and this forced migration, there would have been people who would've been executed in the course of the conquest, and also probably for show afterwards. We see that- This is- ... from the Assyrians. We see that even in the wall relief in the palace in Nineveh- Mm ... that shows the sacking of Lachish.

Dan Beecher You see ...

Dan McClellan people being impaled.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan You see babies dying, you see this kind of thing. So, yeah, certainly that would've been a part of Babylon's activity.

Dan Beecher So it's kind of the dark side of the golden rule coin, which is- Yeah. "Do unto others as they did unto you."

Dan McClellan The upside down- Yeah ... of, yeah. And didn't we recently hear somebody say that? I'm trying to remember when this happened, but some prominent commentator, I don't know if it was a politician, it might've been, but somebody said the golden rule was, "Do unto others as they've done to you."

Dan Beecher Oh, my gosh.

Dan McClellan And the idea was, we're going to get you back.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Oh, I've got to look that up. I've got to figure out who that was that said that. Because that deserves its own video at some point.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But yeah.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It is fantasizing about revenge.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan About vengeance. And if you're a group that's been forcibly migrated into another nation and people are trying to basically destroy your identity, I'm not saying that I'm justifying it, I'm just saying I understand.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so, the fact that it's included in the Psalms is not a huge surprise. But it does leave us with the question of, okay, now it's in the authoritative literature, and if you're a Christian, for instance, it's inspired.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It's univocal, it's inerrant, it's infallible, so what are we going to do with that?

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan That's tricky.

Dan Beecher Fantasizing about killing children seems particularly nut balls. But I will say this, I peeked at the Psalm immediately preceding this one- Uh-huh ... 136, and it's a praise of God and his work in creation and history, it says. And one of the things that it talks about is, this is the God who liberated us from Egypt by killing all the firstborn.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher And specifically calls out the killing of the firstborn as being this wonderful thing. So, child murder is kind of in the zeitgeist here.

Dan McClellan Yeah, and it's a time period, I think, and we've talked about this in a recent episode, there's an awful lot of ethnocentricity. There's an awful lot of othering.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And you have that representation of God as, "These are my people. Everybody else, meh."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan There's an awful lot of that. You've got to wipe out every living thing that breathes. Leave nothing alive.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan There's an awful lot of that, which obviously includes children. And unfortunately, that rhetoric still, there are these vestigial bubblings to the surface of this kind of rhetoric when it comes to children. I know members of the LDS church are familiar with similar rhetoric back in the 19th century, where people would say that, and I'm forgetting exactly what the words are, but basically, you've got to kill them before they develop into Mormons, because then they become this, that, and the other. And you hear the same thing in the early to mid-20th century, the same kinds of things were said about Jewish folks.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan And today, the same kinds of things are being said about Palestinians. And so that rhetoric is not unfamiliar. And the devastating effects of that rhetoric are still being felt. And so it's a problem. But I wanted to share a little bit about some of the way early Christian and Jewish interpreters read this, because there's a guy, Origen of Alexandria.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And I think Origen of Alexandria is one of the unsung influencers of early Christianity. He was condemned as a heretic for some stuff- Uh-huh ... a little later on, even though he is responsible for, I would say, some of the most important features of early Christian orthodoxy. Origen was the one who put them on the road to where they went.

Dan Beecher Give me a timeframe.

Dan McClellan When was- Oh, Origen is third century CE.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan In fact, if you'll give me just a second. And I believe he was a presbyter in Alexandria, which is northern Egypt, right by the delta, right by the Mediterranean Sea.

Dan Beecher I believe you'll find it's in Virginia.

Dan McClellan We were just there at a hotel. We were just there.

Dan Beecher Yeah. You should've known that, Dan.

Dan McClellan Born around 185 CE, died 253- Okay ...

Dan Beecher CE.

Dan McClellan So, Alexandria, province of Egypt, Roman Empire, yeah. Probably somewhere around Tyre is where he died, which was still in the Roman Empire, but no longer in Egypt. So, he's responsible for a lot of stuff. But here's what he says about this. "Blessed is the one who seizes the little ones of Babylon, which are understood to be nothing else but these evil thoughts that confound and disturb our heart, for this is what Babylon means. While these thoughts are still small and just beginning, they must be seized and dashed against the rock, who is Christ, and by his order, they must be slain." "So that nothing in us may remain to draw breath." And that is going back to Joshua 11. Like I said, the command to kill everything, leave nothing alive that draws breath. And so Origen here is skipping over the literal sense- Right ... and going right to what he calls the anagogical sense. Origen argued for four different layers of meaning for scripture. You had the literal, the allegorical, the moral, and the anagogical. And the anagogical was the highest. That's what we should be focused on. We should be striving to understand the scriptures in their anagogical sense.

Dan Beecher I don't know what that word means. Can you explain- Um ... what he meant by anagogical?

Dan McClellan He writes that it is what you are to strive for.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So it's a method of, and I'm just reading off of a website here, a method of interpretation that focuses on the spiritual or mystical meaning and its relation to the afterlife or ultimate destiny. So it's basically what is the ultimate goal or end of what's going on here. And for Origen, this idea was that we are supposed to take the little ones of Babylon, which is a metaphor for our evil thoughts and inclinations and motivations, and metaphorically smash them on the rock that is Jesus.

Dan Beecher So- That's nice. I'm fine with that It's nicer. Yeah, it's- It's a lot better than talking about actually killing children.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher That's much better.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And this becomes pretty widespread. You have a handful of people within Jewish as well as Christian tradition that understand it this way, that this is about sinful thoughts, evil inclinations, because Babylon becomes a metaphor for all that is evil in the world.

Dan Beecher And so- Right ...

Dan McClellan whether it's demonic spirits or the sinful desires of our heart, we've got to take those little ones and we've got to smash them against the rock. And in the Hebrew Bible, the rock is Adonai, the God of Israel. For Christians, the rock is Jesus. So that becomes a widespread sidestepping of the apparent phenomenally immoral blessing of those folks. And then you also have another common reading is to understand this as not a call for people to actually do this, but a hope that God punishes folks who will murder other children in like manner. So it's basically saying, "Oh, this isn't talking about us. This is talking about God. He's the blessed one." So God is the one who is going to be meting out these punishments that are responses in kind to whatever kinds of sins people commit.

Dan Beecher Yeah. That seems a trickier interpretation considering the plural nature of the happy shall they be who pay you back.

Dan McClellan Well, actually, let me do, do, do, do, do, do.

Dan Beecher Oh, yep, you better check that out.

Dan McClellan I'm going to check the Hebrew. Checking the Hebrew. We are in 136. Where's 137? There's 137.

Dan Beecher Ashrei.

Dan McClellan So, that's a particle, and it looks like that's the masculine singular.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So it'd be better translated as- It is he.

Dan Beecher Happy is he ... happy should he be.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Or happy is he who will pay you back. All right. Well, there you go.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So, there are a bunch of different ways to handle this, but I think this is a good illustration of the fact that everything is negotiable and everything has to be negotiated. If you want to try to extract consistent principles from the Bible, you're going to have to deal with these things that at first glance and at correct glance do not fit. And so you have to work your way around them. You've got to negotiate with them.

Dan Beecher Well, and also if we're going to take Origen's theory as a jumping-off point, the literal version of this, the literal interpretation of this Psalm, has nothing to do with anybody now.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It's like nobody is now lamenting their exile and the Babylonian conquest of their people.

Dan McClellan So- No Babylonians around right now ...

Dan Beecher so literally, the only way you could possibly make this relevant to yourself is to find some sort of either allegorical or metaphorical or figurative way to look at it.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Which inherently is an interpretation, is a negotiation, as you like to say.

Dan McClellan Yeah. As is my wont. And that raises the other point. Does it have to be relevant?

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan Do we have to preserve every last syllable of the Bible? Or can we say this was a vengeance fantasy that expired long ago- Right ... so we can just be like, "Huh. They had undergone an awful lot of trauma." Trauma theory and trauma lenses I think are a great way to look at an awful lot of what's going on in the Bible. Shout out Alexiana Fry, who's doing great work on that, and she's on social media too if you want to check out her work. And that stopped being relevant- Right.

Dan Beecher You can let that go ...

Dan McClellan over 2,000 years ago.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Or just see it as interesting literature that you don't have to think of as sacred and holy to your life that you have to find the way to make it useful to you or whatever.

Dan McClellan Yeah. I think the I'm sure that there are a lot of actors who have played roles where they did terrible things- Yeah ... and learned things from that, but didn't go on to be like, "It's important that I-" "... I live this out."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan There are ways to learn, take lessons from awful things without endorsing the awful things.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan If you then go to Jonah from here, which is about the Assyrians who did the same kinds of things and even worse to Israel, and this is why Jonah was like, "No, I'm not preaching destruction to them because you're just going to forgive them."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan "And I would rather die than watch them be forgiven."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan You have a very similar sentiment, and then God wags the finger at Jonah and is like, "If I forgive them, you got no case. You got no leg to stand on." And the cattle, consider the cattle.

Dan Beecher Right. Forgot about the cows.

Dan McClellan So, you have differing perspectives- Yeah ... between Jonah and Psalm 137. And when you impose that presupposition of univocality, which you get to choose which direction you're going to go.

Dan Beecher Yeah. I guess thematically for the whole show, the idea is overcome the bad readings.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher All right.

Dan McClellan Don't leverage the Bible to do harm and evil.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan That's a problem.

Dan Beecher Yep.

Dan McClellan Absolutely. Menos eficaz as they, one of the first things we learned in Spanish in the MTC when - What does that mean? Menos eficaz means less effective.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan Because they were trying to teach us methods that were eficaz and menos eficaz.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Because they didn't want us to learn bad things like stupid.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan So we learned to call everything menos eficaz.

Dan Beecher Okay. All right. Well, hopefully this has been eficaz anyway for some. Thank you all so much for joining us. If you would like to become a part of keeping this show alive and vibrant and also gain potentially early access to an ad-free version of every show and the after party, which is bonus content weekly done by us, you can go to patreon.com/dataoverdogma and become one of our patrons. We so appreciate it when people are able to kick us a couple coins. That is always a lovely thing. If you would like to reach us, it's contact@dataoverdogmapod.com. Thanks so much to Roger Gowdy for editing the show, and we will talk to you again next week.