Who are the REAL Christians?

Dan McClellan Angels can't rebel. They don't have their own agency. They can't do that. They're not sexually compatible. They're not made of flesh and bone.

Dan Beecher Never mind.

Dan McClellan So to speak.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan Hey, everybody. I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.

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

Dan Beecher It's a steamy hot day here in Salt Lake City, and life is good.

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher I'm excited. We're diving into some fun issues.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher I think we'll squeeze some juice out of these controversial issues.

Dan McClellan Yeah. It's going to be a juicy day. I went for a walk earlier today and my shoes were pretty juicy by the time I was done. I've got really comfortable shoes that I like to walk around in, but if my feet sweat, I'm just slipping and sliding all over the place in those shoes, and I hate it.

Dan Beecher You need better socks.

Dan McClellan But that's neither here nor there. I do need better socks.

Dan Beecher Touché. Yeah, indeed.

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher Well, what we're going to be doing, we have two segments today, as per the ushe. Mm-hmm. The first segment is a taking issue, and what we're going to be taking issue with is, what counts as a Christian? What are the markers- Hmm ... of a Christian?

Dan McClellan Yes, and who gets to decide, too? It's- Is it the one who makes that decision?

Dan Beecher Spoiler alert, it's me. I get to figure it out. So you'll have to come to me to know for sure if you're actually a Christian. And then the second half of our show will be a what's that, and the what's that, that we're talking about are the sons of God.

Dan McClellan bene Elohim. Yes, the sons of God.

Dan Beecher The sons.

Dan McClellan The sons.

Dan Beecher That's a plural thing.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher We're not talking about just the son of God.

Dan McClellan Nein.

Dan Beecher So, that'll be interesting.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher That'll be fun to dive into. But first, let's take issue. And this week, we're taking issue with Christians. We're taking issue with you, Christians.

Dan McClellan Yeah. We're going to go off the beaten path this week. And we're going to blaze a new trail through the tangled undergrowth of- Yeah ... contemporary Christian identity politics. We had a wonderful discussion with my friend David Congdon a while ago on "Who is a Christian?" His book that he published. I thought that was- Yeah ... a fascinating discussion, but this was catalyzed by a recent discussion that was had on the Joe Rogan podcast when Texas state representative- And Opie Taylor lookalike Representative Talarico, I believe James is his first name, right?

Dan Beecher James Talarico.

Dan McClellan James Talarico.

Dan Beecher That's right.

Dan McClellan James Talarico, who, if I understand, is hiding out somewhere right now. I don't know if he's- Right ... if the sheriff and his posse have caught up with him yet.

Dan Beecher Did someone check Mayberry? Because he's probably there. Down by the fishing hole is where I would go first.

Dan McClellan Yeah, check the fishing hole. He's got a cane pole on him, I know it. And by the way, oh, man, that brings back memories. Cane pole, poppers. Oh, I don't even want to get into it.

Dan Beecher I cannot get sidetracked thinking- I don't know all of your drugs talk Weirdo.

Dan McClellan No, this is growing up on a farm in West Virginia.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan But that is also neither here nor there. Nothing is here or there for this discussion.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And he made an interesting point when he was talking to Brother Rogan.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Rogan asked him about a biblical case for legalized abortion.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan But there was one part where James made the case that he said, "I get suspicious when people say certain issues need to be at the center of our identity as Christians- Right ... when Jesus never said anything about them."

Dan Beecher He's specifically referring to the fact that the political right and the Christian Right of the United States have coalesced very strongly around the subjects of abortion and the rights of LGBTQ people- Yes ... as the identity markers that make you Christian.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And one of the things he concluded with was, he said, "I just don't think it's fair that to be a Christian, or when people understand that you're a Christian, they automatically assume that you're against abortion and against gay folks." And he says, "Because there are lots of Christians who do not subscribe to those particular policy positions."

Dan Beecher Right. And I thought- He's one of them, specifically.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And there are many of them, and I thought he made a pretty good appeal, and also pointed out, he said, "My Christian brothers and sisters, they will have their passages to which they point in defense of their opposition to these things, and we can have that debate, and we should be able to have that debate." And he said, "This is different from my concern, which is the notion that you have to oppose abortion and homosexuality if you're a Christian." And that's what he was speaking against. And immediately, everybody jumped down his throat, and the overwhelming majority of the negative responses I saw were all entirely misrepresenting his argument, and- Sure ... they all- thought that he was saying nobody has a biblical case to make against abortion- Right ... or homosexuality, which is what he specifically said. We can have that debate. That's a separate thing.

Dan Beecher And he was talking about- Well, and the way that he phrased it seemed important to me. By the way, we should mention, we introduced him as a member of the Texas House of Representatives, which is true, but he's also a pastor.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher So people should be aware that he's not dumb about theology. He does know what he...

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher He went to theological seminary, et cetera.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But what he said specifically was that he gets suspicious when people say that you have to centralize these ideas, ideas that Jesus never specifically spoke about.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And I think that that's an important thing. Again, like you said, he recognized that you can make a case one way or the other on both of these things, and a biblical case at that. But to say that the thing that defines your Christianity is something that Jesus didn't even talk about is, I think that's a pretty strong point to make.

Dan McClellan Yeah. I think the idea there is that, hey, if the Bible and the New Testament are the roadmap, if that is what is supposed to be dictating our morality, our identity, our faith, and all that to us, and Jesus never says anything about it, on what grounds do we say, "Well, this now takes priority over-" Yeah ... these other things. It's basically, I think he's pointing out that it is kind of a socially and historically contingent identity that these folks are asserting, as if what it means to be a Christian changes from generation to generation, depending on the particular political stances.

Dan Beecher And- I think I have news for you. I think what it means to be a Christian does change from generation to generation.

Dan McClellan Well, yes, and that is because it's all socially contingent.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Yeah. But for folks who insist this is all inspired, you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot rhetorically here- Right ... by saying that it is ever-changing, and it is always subordinated to social and historical context and circumstances.

Dan Beecher Yeah. So what are we talking about? What does make a Christian? Because I think that it is an interesting... I think when he said that and everybody jumped down his throat- ... I think what they were jumping down his throat about was they do mark those as key and central points- Yes ... to their Christianity and- Yeah ... to what they believe a Christian has to believe.

Dan McClellan And I think, and I believe we've talked about it before, but at least in the case of abortion, this is of recent historical origin.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan We can trace in the '70s- Yeah ... an intentional rhetorical campaign to turn abortion into a central evangelical identity marker. It was, for a time, something that evangelical leaders did not feel so strongly about until some folks decided that they needed to gin up some outrage, and they identified abortion as their golden ticket, because they were trying to arrogate more authority, government authority, to the Christian right so that they could exercise political power in their favor, rather than being on the losing end of a lot of the political battles.

Dan Beecher Well, and specifically, they were losing traction because they had been using the idea of race as their bludgeon, as their wedge point.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And they were losing traction on that. The writing was on the wall for that point.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher At least then.

Dan McClellan I don't know.

Dan Beecher It's making a comeback.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher The whole racism- The pendulum is unfortunately swinging the other direction.

Dan McClellan Yeah. But with the Civil Rights Act, the government was starting to deny funding to schools that were not admitting Black students and denying grants and things like that to students. And so folks at Bob Jones University, Jerry Falwell, Paul Weyrich, and others were like, "We've got to do something about this."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And the most bizarre thing, in my opinion, is that they ultimately... Well, okay, pendulum again. For decades, they lost that battle.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan What they wanted to do, they weren't able to do. But instead, they ginned up this central identity marker that has become phenomenally powerful- Yeah ... to the point that that has helped facilitate the pendulum swinging back, and now you have a lot of the school choice arguments that people are ginning up for, "Oh, I need state vouchers so that I can send kids to private schools."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Even though the vouchers really are only going to work for people who can already afford to send kids to private schools. But this is no different from "Remember the Titans" and people getting upset about desegregation.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It's the same concern, really. It's just reborn in slightly different packaging. And so yeah, I think that the pendulum's swinging back, and I don't know if Jerry Falwell and Paul Weyrich are celebrating in their graves right now about white supremacy becoming such a big part of right-wing Politics again, but- Yeah ...

Dan Beecher yeah.

Dan McClellan It's certainly hurting a lot of the living- Yeah ... these days. But, yeah, you can see they're trying to orchestrate what the central identity markers of Christianity are, so that they can structure power. And I was talking, before we hit record, was mentioning that there are a lot of folks who make an awful lot of money trying to curate the boundaries of Christianity.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan A lot of apologists. I brought up James White, someone I got into it with on blogs back when blogs were a big thing. Almost 15 years ago.

Dan Beecher Dueling blogs.

Dan McClellan Oh.

Dan Beecher Yeah. The internet of yesteryear. It's like "Home on the Prairie" for the internet.

Dan McClellan Yeah. We were so young and naive then. I can remember when, if my blog had 200 visits in a day, I was like, "I had a good day today." And good day. To quote the great poet.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan To misquote the great poet. But yeah, James White was fond of denying a lot of other folks their Christianity. And he had a video denying that Mormons were Christians.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And on my blog, I would say, self-identity is really the main marker of membership in something like Christianity. And so if somebody's like, "I don't think you're a Christian," great. You can't really tell them they're not allowed to think that.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But it doesn't go beyond their own perception, and when they try to make a case for why this should be authoritative beyond the boundaries of their own skull, that case is never anything but dogmatic and arbitrary, and usually pretty hypocritical. Because James White will say that, "Well, the Trinity is the defining feature of Christianity." But then when he wants to turn around and tell Catholics that they're not Christians, suddenly the defining feature of Christianity is something entirely different.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan For a lot of people, what defines Christianity changes depending on who it is precisely they're trying to shove out- Right ... of Christianity. And- Yeah.

Dan Beecher I guess that's the more salient question is, who isn't Christian?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Right? Because the project is one of exclusion.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And that's from my cognitive linguistic days and prototype theory, we approach categories as if they are naturally bounded, as if they have natural boundaries inherent to them.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And the reality is that when we form conceptual categories, and religious identity is 100% conceptual categories, we actually focus on prototypes. We focus on the center of the category, and membership radiates out towards nonexistent initially or fuzzy boundaries where membership is debated.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And there's a lot of examples that linguists will use to talk about this. If you had 100 different pieces of dining in a row going from a cup to a bowl, and just incrementally changing a tiny bit between the two ends of that, where do you say, "This is no longer a cup. This is now a bowl"? It's entirely arbitrary.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so that's absolutely the case with something like religious identity. There's no inherent essence to being Christian. There's no inherent boundaries to what makes a Christian. And so when people try to define it, overwhelmingly in order to exclude, because those fuzzy boundaries, they really only harden up when you need to exclude something.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan When you run into an argument about whether or not this is a member of the category and it's an undesirable member.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan That's when you tend to come up with boundaries, and there are so many different ways that that plays out in how we use our categories today. I have a paper that's going to be coming out in a volume on monotheism, hopefully next year. I'm editing the volume, and I'm very slow, but the other editors will do a better job than me. But one of the things I point to is the, you'll recall every now and then the argument flares up about whether or not a hotdog is a sandwich.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And this is a rather silly example of how attempts to define things cause problems.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan When it's like, "Well, when you look at the definition of a sandwich, a hotdog qualifies." And it's like, well, these are conceptual categories. Definitions are arbitrary. They're imposed upon the category. They don't actually have anything to do with how categories function in real life. But that's one of the artifacts of- Right ... of this, is that you get these silly, "A hotdog isn't a sandwich."

Dan Beecher And that was a little hermetic, but- I mean, listen, hotdog I can go with you on, but if a hotdog's a sandwich- ... then is a taco a sandwich? And now we're in a whole heap of trouble.

Dan McClellan Ah.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so when it comes to Christian, it's always contextual.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It's like, who's asking?

Dan Beecher Why?

Dan McClellan Who is it you're trying to keep out? And then you basically, you argue from the conclusion.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It's overwhelmingly a conclusion in search of an argument.

Dan Beecher Right. So I decide Dan McClellan is a Mormon, and therefore, that's not a Christian. Let me find an argument that fits that- Conclusion.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And it's funny because people will be like, "Well, Christians don't accept them as Christians." It's like, well, that's kind of begging the question.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Because you have to decide whether or not they count in the Christian part of it all, and if you already are denying them that identity, that's kind of begging the question. But also, Pew and others have done research on this, and actually, the majority of Christians in America say that Mormons are Christians.

Dan Beecher So- You got the name Jesus Christ right there in the full title of the church, so.

Dan McClellan Which Mormons now feel obligated to say every time they say the name of the church.

Dan Beecher They got yelled at pretty hard by their daddy.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher We're not supposed to say Mormons. They don't want us to.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher We're all very shocked, Dan, that you go along with this word, Mormon.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Well, if you go on Twitter or X or whatever the hell it's going by these days, there you will find a lot of people who insist that I probably can't even call myself a Mormon anymore. And shouldn't call myself a Mormon, for multiple reasons. One of them being that you're not supposed to use that word.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan I was going to make an our word joke and thought better of it, so.

Dan Beecher Well, it is your word.

Dan McClellan I don't know. I mean- But we're not even allowed to use it now.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Exactly. So, yeah. But that becomes an identity marker in and of itself.

Dan Beecher Absolutely.

Dan McClellan That's a piece of costly signaling also.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan If you go online and you go, "How dare you say Mormon? You're not supposed to..." That's a way to put on display to everybody else that you're willing to berate another Mormon, all in the name of defending the prophetic counsel that we've all been given. So, that's just credibility-enhancing displays. It's identity politics all the way down, so. Well, and that's what we're- Whether it's- That's really what- That's what we're talking about ...

Dan Beecher what we're getting at- Yeah ... is that identity is the issue here. And whether you're an evangelical or a Catholic or some other kind of Protestant or LDS or whatever, if the word Christian is important to you, which presumably it is to all of those categories, or most of those categories, or most people who inhabit those categories, the question of what makes someone a Christian becomes very, very vital.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And it becomes- And it just comes- And can lead to some very silly arguments about like, "No, Christians believe..." It's funny, I remember at one point, I heard a guy that I knew and his brother, who was of a different religious ilk, arguing just furiously about what makes you a Christian, is your belief in faith by works or- ... salvation by faith or by works or whatever. And they kept both, from an outside perspective, they were saying exactly the same thing.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher They were using different words, but they were saying exactly the same thing. And I was just sitting there giggling as I- Yeah ... listened from the other room.

Dan McClellan And sometimes it comes down to whether or not you say the thing with the right words.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Because you can say the right thing and with the wrong words, and then suddenly you're out. And I've been surprised how frequently this comes up on TikTok.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan Because every single day, multiple times a day, people will comment that non-Christians shouldn't be talking about the New Testament or the Bible or things like that. And if I happen to see those and respond to them, I'll be like, "Oh, I'm a Christian."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And then heads explode at that point.

Dan Beecher Right. All hell breaks loose.

Dan McClellan Yeah, because inevitably there will be those who will be like, "Mormons aren't Christians." And then that whole argument erupts, and then there will be others who it just does not compute for them. It's like, "You're an atheist." And it's like, "No, I'm not an atheist." Like the video I responded to some guy, a Catholic apologist, I think he goes by Jimmy Akin.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan But he made a video responding to me, and one of the things that he was talking about was my Mormonism, and he was like, "And you say that it doesn't matter, but then you go and make statements like this." And then he shares a clip of me saying, "I am not an atheist." And like, "Checkmate," I imagine he felt like saying, but I get kind of annoyed by how frequently I have to curate the understanding of the relevance of my religious identity on my channel. I wish... And people are like, "You're lying to people. You need to let them know at the top of every video that you're a Mormon." It's like, that would be kind of dumb.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But sometimes I'm like, I should do that just so... That will reduce the number of comments I have on most of my videos by probably 20% to 25%.

Dan Beecher But- I think it would just change the comments.

Dan McClellan Yeah, there would be different comments. I'm still surprised by how many times... In this video I posted where I was responding to this individual, I was still getting comments from people who were like, "I've been following Dan for two years. I didn't know he was a Mormon."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And it's like, only every other video now has to address it.

Dan Beecher I think it's funny. The other funny thing about that is that, like you say, if a person, or rather what I assume you mean is that if a person knows what they're talking about, this whole idea of the atheists, Mormons, whoever, shouldn't be talking about the New Testament or shouldn't be talking about the Bible.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher If they know what they're talking about, why wouldn't you want their input? Why wouldn't you want to hear it? But again, it's this grabbing of ownership of something, which by that logic, probably Christians, if you want to say that, "We own this, so you shouldn't have any access to it," I got bad news about the Old Testament for you guys because- Yeah ... somebody else claims that one.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And there are a lot of folks like Christina Rossetti and others who study Mormonism, who are not Latter-day Saints, and I'm not about to step to them, say, "Hey, that's your wheelhouse," the particular fields of study that they're in. Just because you happen to be a living, breathing human does not make you an expert on human biology.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Just kind of innately, that's not how it works. But yeah, it frequently comes down to boundary maintenance and who gets to be in charge, and something that I frequently pointed out, who gets to be in charge of who's a Christian?

Dan Beecher Nobody.

Dan McClellan There is no individual or combination of individuals on the planet who has authority over another individual's ability to identify as a Christian. Really, it comes down to consensus and ecclesiastical hierarchy. If there's a group out there where you actually have to have a membership card, or you have to have the tattoo, or you have to have some kind of indication that you are an official member of that group, that's the only time somebody can say, "You're not a member of our particular group."

Dan Beecher Right. And there is no such group that- Every individual Christian church can say that.

Dan McClellan Yeah, and there's no group that has authority over all Christians.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan That just doesn't exist.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So there's no person or combination of people who has any authority at all over anyone's ability to identify just as a Christian. And anybody who pretends to arrogate that authority to themselves is just playing identity politics.

Dan Beecher Damn you, Martin Luther. There used to be a guy who had authority over who get to call themselves a Christian. Oh, I guess not, because there were still Eastern Orthodox. Oh yeah, there are Christians all over the place who- But there was a guy who was pretty sure he had the... There's lots of people who are pretty sure they have the authority to do it.

Dan McClellan Yes. They come to my website and my channel every single day to let me know that they're the ones.

Dan Beecher Now I'm tempted to start calling myself a Christian who doesn't believe in Jesus or God, just to mess with people, just to really mess up the category.

Dan McClellan Okay, I'm going to throw a wrench into this discussion a little bit.

Dan Beecher Great.

Dan McClellan Talked about Pew. Not Pew pews, but the Pew Research Center.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan They do a wonderful religious landscape survey every few years.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan And one of the things they talk about is belief in God.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan And it's fascinating because you get Buddhists and things like that where 25% of them are positive that no god exists.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And it's comparable for Jewish folks.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And then there's 3% of Orthodox Christians say they're positive God doesn't exist. And about the same percentage of atheists are positive that a god does exist.

Dan Beecher I know. It's amazing.

Dan McClellan And I think it's so fun because, hey, man, atheism is just as much an identity as any of the religions.

Dan Beecher Or can be.

Dan McClellan Sure. Yeah, it can be. And so I think as much as Christians are like, "You can't be an atheist Christian," I regularly get, "You can't be a believing atheist" from the other side as well when I point that out. But- Yeah ... those kinds of identities are messy, and they are tricky, and they have to do with belonging and membership commonly more than they have to do with a credence that you sign off on.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And again, when it comes to a lot of these religions, signing off on the credence doesn't necessarily mean you actually believe those things. There are an awful lot of people who are like, "Oh, yeah, I'm willing to sign off on that."

Dan Beecher Yeah. I say even though they don't- They say they sing a creed every Sunday, but it's like, "Eh, come on."

Dan McClellan Yeah. And I think one of the things that Protestantism did was it reduced Christianity at least, but religion really, because our conceptualization of religion is a thoroughly Protestant conceptualization, but reduced it all down to a set of truth claims.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so now people think of religious identity and religion as just a set of truth claims, but it's never been that. It's never been reducible to that.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It's community. It's ritual.

Dan Beecher It's behaviors.

Dan McClellan It's meaning-making.

Dan Beecher It's behaviors.

Dan McClellan It is death anxiety curating. It's all of these things all wrapped into one, and there are an awful lot of people who enjoy everything about it, but maybe not so much the truth claims.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan That doesn't make them any less Christian- Sure ... or Jewish, or Muslim- Right ... or atheist. So- I think it's a fun conversation to have, mainly because of how just enraging it is for people who would like everything to fit into a neat, nice little box.

Dan Beecher One of the interesting things, when you ask a Christian, what makes a Christian? You'll get a lot of different answers. You'll get people that say you have to personally accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior, or the Bible is the final authority on whatever, blah, blah, blah. And what I never hear is the one section of Romans, I think it's Romans 12.

Dan McClellan Romans 12.

Dan Beecher Where Paul is talking about... Is this actually Paul? I never remember which ones are Paul.

Dan McClellan Oh, yeah. Romans is one of the genuine Pauline epistles.

Dan Beecher Okay. So Paul is talking about, well, the section, Romans 12 verse 9 through the end of the chapter, the section in multiple translations is marked Marks of the True Christian.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher And you know what it doesn't say? Any of the things that I hear people say when they're asked what a true Christian is.

Dan McClellan Well, yeah. There's nothing about belief in here. There's certainly nothing about whether you are a dyophysite or a monophysite or a miaphysite or whatever.

Dan Beecher There's nothing- I don't know what those words mean at all. I don't know what any of those things were.

Dan McClellan Remember when we talked about saying the same thing, but using different language?

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan These are some of the debates that raged in the third and fourth and fifth and sixth centuries about when you're whittling down your conceptualization of Jesus, it came down to, well, how do you understand the distinction between Jesus's divine and human natures?

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Because we are at an impasse.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan We can go no further until we settle this, and you are all now ejected from our kingdom- Right ... if you cannot say the right word. But yeah, there's nothing about belief in here.

Dan Beecher No. It says, "Let love be genuine. Hate what is evil. Hold fast to what is good. Love one another with mutual affection. Outdo one another in showing honor." It's real nice.

Dan McClellan It's a whole bunch- Well, here's one verse that I think a lot of people would do well to take note of. "Contribute to the needs of the saints. Pursue hospitality to strangers." So for the folks who are like, "Hey, I'm sorry, we got to snatch Jesus from the parking lot of the Home Depot that he's working at- Right ... and send him off to a gulag and leave his kids in the car that is running- Right ... because of Romans 13:1." It's like, but you just entirely ignored Romans 12:13, which is quite a bit more central to defining Christianity- Right ... if we take Paul's word for it.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher There you go.

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher Well, you can rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep, and we will move on to our next segment, which is What's That? And the What's That that we're talking about, we're going to Genesis 6- That's a good one ... as our starting point.

Dan McClellan Yes. Because- Our jumping-off point, our springboard, so to speak.

Dan Beecher Our springboard, if you will. Because Genesis 6 opens up with people multiplying.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher We're in the early days of humanity in this.

Dan McClellan Yes. We're about to segue into the flood.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But the multiplying of people is about to get Yeah.

Dan McClellan It's not subtle. It's a quick- Get the kibosh ... it's a quick pivot.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It says, "When people began to multiply on the face of the ground," and it literally says that. "Al panai ha'adamah," the face of the ground. "The sons of God," the bene Elohim. Oh, it says, "Daughters were born to them."

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan And then it says, "The sons of God- Daughters were born to the people. To the people, who were multiplying like rabbits- Yes, exactly ... on the face of the ground. The sons of God saw that they were fair, and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose." So the bene ha'elohim, or bene Elohim, if you're nasty, that is what we're talking about here. But Genesis 6:3 says then, "Adonai, the Lord, said, 'My spirit shall not abide in mortals forever. For they are flesh. Their days shall be 120 years.'"

Dan Beecher And this actually- Which is a weird thing to say- Yeah ... in chapters before Noah.

Dan McClellan Because it did not turn out to be 120 years.

Dan Beecher Because yeah, he theoretically lived way longer than that.

Dan McClellan As did all the patriarchs.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Except for one. I forget which one it was.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But it might be Isaac or somebody, I forget. But somebody was like, "Oh, darn it." They didn't get to live as long. And then we get to verse four, which is the peculiar verse. "The Nephilim," or nephilim, if you're nasty. No, if you're wrong.

Dan Beecher If you're wrong.

Dan McClellan I see people tag me in videos where people are like, "I'm going to drop some knowledge on y'all about the nephilim." And then it's like, is this a battery that you... "They were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God went into the daughters of humans who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown." And so here's a peculiar thing about this passage, which I think is unclear both in the English and in the Hebrew. It does not say that the Nephilim were the offspring- Yeah ... of the union of the sons of God, and I think Benot HaAdam, the daughters of humanity.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It just says they were there.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It's like, this was when those weirdos were around.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so it does not necessarily say that. It gets interpreted that way by an awful lot of folks, but it's not clear to me that this text is stating that the Nephilim were the offspring of the sons of god and the daughters of humans. That is how first Enoch takes it.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan So, that is the traditional reading. I don't think it's necessarily there.

Dan Beecher Now, and here's the- But there may have been a cultural understanding of who these people were- Well, and- ... that isn't present in this text.

Dan McClellan Right. And we may have a little hat tip in the direction of a similar cultural understanding, because it says the Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterwards. We have a little parenthetical- Yeah ... a little interjection there, and this is kind of a nod to the fact that Nephilim are mentioned in one other verse- Yeah ... in all the Hebrew Bible. And I mentioned to Dan earlier, you know things are about to get wild when they say, "Open up the Book of Numbers."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So, Numbers 13:33, the word Nephilim occurs twice there, and this is part of the, what do they call it?

Dan Beecher The wicked report?

Dan McClellan The bad report?

Dan Beecher If that's not the title of someone's TikTok channel, The Wicked Report, I- Somebody's missing out.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So that is when the spies are sent into the land, and they come back and they're like, "Oh, yeah, it sucks. It all sucks. We shouldn't go in there."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan "We should go back to Egypt." But one of the things they say is that they saw the Nephilim, and we were like grasshoppers to them.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And this is, I think, where we get the idea that Nephilim means giants. Because the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, renders gigantes. Or I think I might be slurring my Spanish and my English together. It's probably not gigantes. "When they, in those days..." No, that was right.

Dan Beecher Gigantes.

Dan McClellan Okay. So, they translate Nephilim as giants, and Nephilim does not mean giants. Our best bet is that it means fallen ones, and probably is a reference to some kind of postmortem fallen warrior race- Oh ... or class or something like that.

Dan Beecher They're zombies?

Dan McClellan Something like that.

Dan Beecher Yeah. I like it. They are zombies.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And so they get translated as giants, and I think probably because of the other story where the spies come back and they're like, "Oh, we were like little grasshoppers to them."

Dan Beecher Which- Yeah ...

Dan McClellan is probably hyperbole.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan They probably weren't like, literally they're 300 feet tall.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan We average 5'4", they were at least 10 and a half feet tall.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan I don't know that that verse ought to be taken so literally. And they link them with the, what was it?

Dan Beecher The- The Anakites ...

Dan McClellan Anakites?

Dan Beecher Yeah. Which is interesting. The other interesting problem here is that this is theoretically post-diluvian. We're after the flood- Yeah ... in this moment.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So presumably, the Nephilim either were drowned- ... so how could the Anakites come from them? Or they had snorkels.

Dan McClellan Yeah, they drowned in the flood.

Dan Beecher They're so giant that their heads were above water the whole time, and they just waited it out.

Dan McClellan I always want to point out, be like, "Yeah, they drowned in the flood." Trailing off, and I'm thinking of Frank Drebin- ... when he's like, got the evidence that so and so was involved in all these crimes, and he's like, "And where is this evidence?" And he said, "Well, it burned in the fire." So yeah. But that's what verse four is, parenthetically they're like, "Oh, and they were there afterwards, too."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan "Well, we're not going to tell you how," because according to the flood tradition, everything that drew breath, everything that had the breath of life in it, was snuffed out.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Was destroyed. So they should not have survived. And this is one of the clues that combines with a number of other clues to convince, I think, most critical scholars that the flood tradition is a secondary insertion into the primeval history.

Dan Beecher How dare you. So- How dare you, sir.

Dan McClellan Dare. That's another, not too deep a cut, but dare I say, dare. That's Blazing Saddles. Excuse me. But yeah, this is probably why the Nephilim were there before and after, because there was no flood.

Dan Beecher Right. And then- Do you think that that phrase, the parenthetical and also afterward phrase, was inserted later when somebody was like, "Oh, wait. We mentioned that also in Numbers.

Dan McClellan Crap.

Dan Beecher Let me just chuck this in here real quick just to cover our butts."

Dan McClellan It certainly could be.

Dan Beecher It reads like that to me.

Dan McClellan Yeah. It does. It's kind of like your Book of Mormon. "Oh, and by the way, you're thinking that this actually means this, but here's a little clue so that you are not led astray by what I just said."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It sounds like an afterthought, but something that was inserted in there later. We certainly don't have, as far as I'm aware, any textual evidence of that, but I think there are certainly scholars who would raise an eyebrow or two about the integrity of this passage. And you also have some folks who think that this whole story about the bene Elohim is inserted in here secondarily, because it seems like it's supposed to be motivation for God to send the flood, but it doesn't really have a connection to what the next verse says catalyzed the flood. "The Lord saw that the wickedness of humans was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their heart was only evil continually."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And it's like, well, but what about these demigods that are evidently roaming all over the place? They're setting it up as if the reason everything's going wrong is because the bene Elohim were causing trouble, but then this verse is like, "Oh, the silly humans."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And if you take out the Nephilim account, then it doesn't feel like the problem is big enough to merit killing everything. Because then it's just like, "And God looked at humans and they're mad at everything. Look at them, they got anxiety." All it says is, "Oh, every inclination of the thought of their hearts was evil continually. Oh, I guess I'll just destroy them all." That doesn't sound adequate. That doesn't sound like a just reason for the deluge. And so maybe somebody was like, "Well, pro-" I have bad news for you.

Dan Beecher Nothing sounds like a just reason- Yeah.

Dan McClellan No ...

Dan Beecher for the deluge.

Dan McClellan But somebody at some point was like, "What if we threw the Nephilim in there?"

Dan Beecher What if we threw these guys?

Dan McClellan The bene Elohim.

Dan Beecher Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about these- Who them are? What's that?

Dan McClellan Who them are?

Dan Beecher Yeah. Who are them?

Dan McClellan The bene Elohim.

Dan Beecher Yes. These sons of God, who aren't Jesus.

Dan McClellan No. They're plural.

Dan Beecher And ain't us.

Dan McClellan Yes. We've got a few different phrases that we see throughout the Hebrew Bible. Here we have bene Elohim, which is literally sons of the God, or sons of the gods, and then elsewhere, it's just bene Elohim, sons of God, or gods, because Elohim can be plural or singular. This is what you see in Job 1:6, in Job chapter 2, where the sons of God come prancing before God's throne to present themselves, ta-da, and ha-satan, the Satan, is among them. In Job, what is it, 37 or 38, the sons of God shouted for joy with all the stars at the foundation of the Earth. I think you have bene elim, which would also be sons of gods, but more explicitly plural, in Psalm 29 and in a few other places. And then you have bene Elyon, sons of the Most High, in Psalm 82, which is probably a callback to Deuteronomy 32:8 and 9, where Elyon divides up the nations according to the number of the sons of God.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And there's a long history of interpretation here, which I would argue begins in hoary antiquity with the conceptualization of the gods of the divine council as the offspring, the literal children, of the high deity and the high deity's consort, partner, or wife. We see this in the Ugaritic literature, where El is the high deity, Athirat is the consort, partner, or wife of El, and then all of the gods of the divine council are referred to as the children of El or the 70 sons of Athirat. And so, this is probably the tradition that's influencing what's going on here. So, in the earliest conceptualization, the bene Elohim would've been the literal offspring of the divine couple, the children of God.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And that would've constituted the various patron deities of the different nations of the earth and the various members of the divine council. So that, I think, is the oldest conceptualization.

Dan Beecher And this would've been written at a time when the... This was before Yahwism. Is that correct? This is before that got conflated with El, or do we know?

Dan McClellan So these hierarchies and structures, yes, predate Adonai's arrival into the area. Now, their use in the Hebrew Bible probably does not.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Right. But the Deuteronomy 32:8 and 9, I and many other scholars think preserves an early understanding of Adonai as one of the bene Elohim, as one of the children of God.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so Elyon would be a separate deity, the Most High, and then Adonai would have been one of the bene Elohim who was given Israel as their inheritance. That was the nation that they inherited from Elyon, which is why Israel is repeatedly referred to as Adonai's inheritance in the Hebrew Bible.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan But that meant that Adonai's purview and sovereignty, geopolitically speaking, was limited to the land of Israel, which we've talked about many times on this channel.

Dan Beecher So theoretically, what we could be talking about then is other patron deities, or at least entities of that level- Mm-hmm ... whether they were given a patronage or not. Deciding to live here on Earth and grab them one of those pretty human girls that seem so fun.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And this story, there's no good place to slot this into the rest of the narratives that we find in the Hebrew Bible or in other literature. There aren't a lot of traditions of demigods running around the different nations of the Earth because they are the offspring of their patron deity and human women.

Dan Beecher Yeah. It really does seem like it's just thrown away.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It's like they dropped this bomb at the beginning of this chapter and then just, "Nah, never mind."