Who Deserves to Eat?

Dan McClellan Does the context support that interpretation? I'm going to say, along with the majority of scholars, of course not, you jerk. 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 As good as can be expected, I think is the answer to that.

Dan McClellan All things considered, yeah.

Dan Beecher With- Weighing one thing against another- Yeah ... we're coasting on it. We're going just fine.

Dan McClellan In this economy- ... with a man in the White House, what else can you expect?

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Well, yeah.

Dan Beecher What can one do? We're doing okay. Today, we're going to be talking about some interesting stuff. I'm actually fascinated by a few of the things that we're going to be talking about.

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher First, we're going to do a chapter and verse. We're going to hit some 2 Thessalonians.

Dan McClellan Loving Thessalonians.

Dan Beecher Yeah. I like to write an epistle to a Thessalonian, if I can, every now and then. This is chapter three, and the way that it is used to be a jerk.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Very jerky behavior. This is one of the jerk passages.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher And then we're going to jump to Hyksos.

Dan McClellan The Hyksos, yes.

Dan Beecher And I have never heard of Hyksoses.

Dan McClellan The Hyksos- ...

Dan Beecher your various Hyksies.

Dan McClellan We're still trying to figure out the plural there, I guess.

Dan Beecher Yeah. I looked at it, but I'm excited to hear about it, and whether or not it actually helps us understand the Exodus, maybe Joseph.

Dan McClellan Joseph.

Dan Beecher There's so many things.

Dan McClellan Of Arimathea? Or, no, not that Joseph. That's much later.

Dan Beecher No.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Joseph fine. Just pick a Joseph. Pick a Joseph.

Dan McClellan Pick your Josephs, yeah.

Dan Beecher And Joseph Smith.

Dan McClellan You can't miss with a Joseph.

Dan Beecher Well- Right. We'll leave that one to lie, and we'll go on with our first thing, chapter and verse. And, as we said, this chapter and verse is 2 Thessalonians, chapter 3. We're going to do sort of a whole paragraph, basically.

Dan McClellan Yeah, a sense unit, if you will.

Dan Beecher A sense unit.

Dan McClellan Yes. Verses 6 through 13.

Dan Beecher There you go.

Dan McClellan We're going to really land on one verse, though, because- Oh, yeah ... this is the jerk verse. This is where if you bring this up, jerk, automatically.

Dan Beecher Yeah. If someone says Secolonians- Secolonians 3.

Dan McClellan Secolonians.

Dan Beecher 2 Thessalonians 3:10, you know you're about to get a really jerk argument.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Somebody's about to be a real piece of work for you. But let's dive in.

Dan McClellan We'll read through the thing.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And then I want to talk a little bit about context. I want to talk about what scholars think is going on here, and before we get into how people are leveraging this on social media.

Dan Beecher Well, since you mentioned context- Yeah ... this is an epistle from Paul. Is this one of the actual epistles, Pauline epistles?

Dan McClellan No.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan This is one of the disputed Pauline epistles.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So, I think it's more common among your critical scholars than among your apologists and your theologians to acknowledge this. It's not unheard of among the conservatives and the theologians, but most critical scholars would say that this was likely written by somebody pretending to be Paul after Paul's death.

Dan Beecher This isn't one of the ones that we're pretty sure.

Dan McClellan No. So, you've got the spurious, which is generally just the pastoral epistles, so that would be 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And these are the disputed.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So, we don't have as much of a consensus as we do with the pastoral epistles. And these would be Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, probably not written by Paul.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan But we're not going to put as big a punctuation mark on it as we are with the pastoral epistles.

Dan Beecher Was it actually sent to Thessalonians?

Dan McClellan Yeah. It probably was sent to- Okay ... or at least was circulated among the inhabitants of what we now refer to, at least when I was there, as Thessaloniki. So, up in the top portion- Of Greece ... yeah, of the Aegean. Nice little port city. Last time I was there, there was a TGI Fridays there. Don't know if it's still there.

Dan Beecher That is an interesting marker of civilization. I will say that. I'm not sure what it portends. I don't think it's good.

Dan McClellan No, probably not good, no.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan I spent much happier times in some of the ancient sites there in Thessaloniki.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But yeah, there was a European League basketball game on the TVs there.

Dan Beecher There you go.

Dan McClellan It was like going to Canada. You've been to Canada many times, and it's like going to Canada, and it's like, okay, they're speaking my language. I don't recognize the football teams- Right ... on the TV screen. Everybody says, "Eh."

Dan Beecher Uh-huh.

Dan McClellan I'm like, "Wow, gas is pretty cheap." And they're like, "No, that's per liter."

Dan Beecher Per liter, yeah.

Dan McClellan And I'm like, "Ah."

Dan Beecher At one point, my mom lives up in Canada, and I wanted to translate- miles per gallon. I wanted to understand what her mileage on her car was.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And I was like, "Wait." Kilometers per liter. Kilometers per liter? I was mystified. And then to try and figure out how the gas prices- Yeah ... like Canadian dollars per liter versus American dollars per gallon, I was just like- Yeah ...

Dan McClellan "I give up.

Dan Beecher I am not doing this."

Dan McClellan That math is beyond me, yeah. There's no- I tried to do it in my head driving by a gas station, and was like- Yeah ...

Dan Beecher "I give up.

Dan McClellan I don't know." But anyway.

Dan Beecher There's literally no amount of math that can possibly figure that out.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It doesn't exist.

Dan McClellan We have not cracked the code yet.

Dan Beecher Anyway. So, 2 Thessalonians.

Dan McClellan Yes. We got chapter three here. And this is NRSVUE, as we are wont to default to.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan "Now we command you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to keep away from every brother or sister living irresponsibly, and not according to the tradition that they received from us." So, they're getting a little bit of a tongue-lashing, or a- Who's the we?

Dan Beecher It's not I, it's we.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Well, it would be Paul and whoever his companions- And yeah ... were, ostensibly.

Dan Beecher Various, Paul and the Paulettes.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher It was the Pips.

Dan McClellan Turtle was there. They probably had different members of his entourage.

Dan Beecher Yes. It was Scooby, Shaggy- ...

Dan McClellan Velma.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan All right. "For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us. We were not irresponsible when we were with you, and we did not eat anyone's bread without paying for it. But with toil and labor, we worked night and day so that we might not burden any of you. This was not because we do not have the right, but in order to give you an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: 'Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.'"

Dan Beecher Boom. For we hear- Put a sticker on that one.

Dan McClellan That's the one. We're going to come back to it. We'll circle back to that.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan "For we hear that some of you are living irresponsibly, mere busybodies, not doing any work. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right." So, the verse that gets wrenched out of context and quoted in Congress- Uh-huh ... that gets quoted on social media all over the place, "For even when we were with you, we gave you this command," and usually that's omitted, "Anyone unwilling to work should not eat." And this obviously recently has been salient because of the government shutdown and the threat of ending of SNAP benefits- Right ... for the poor and needy. And there were just an obscene number of people, some of them in positions of prominence, and power, and privilege, who were just tickled pink about the poor and the needy being denied SNAP benefits.

Dan Beecher It's shocking to me. The cruelty seems to be the point with these people.

Dan McClellan Oh, absolutely. I think there's an idea that poor people don't deserve- Right ... these things.

Dan Beecher Things like food and shelter.

Dan McClellan Food.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan You'll hear people be like, "They shouldn't be allowed to buy sodas- Yeah ... and things with sugar. It should just be meat, and bread, and milk, and stuff like that."

Dan Beecher They were buying delicious things. How dare they?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher They were buying food that they would enjoy instead of- Yeah ... just sustenance gruel.

Dan McClellan Things where they're going to get a lot of calories efficiently and quickly.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It's not going to take a long time to prepare, and it makes them feel good. I don't know how many people listening have lived in poverty. I grew up in, I would call it poverty conditions. There are some people out there who will get this, but I know the Bishop's Storehouse well.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan I love their salsa. They had a granola cereal I really, really loved. And sometimes you want a frozen pizza or a soda because it feels like you're treating yourself after a lot of hard work for not a lot of benefit.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And it makes you feel human. It makes you feel like you are a part of this grander society where all this amazing stuff is available. And if you are forced to subsist on gruel and bread, and bad meats, and things like that, it feels like you're being punished, that you don't merit the dignity of the right to choose to have something sweet or have something particularly savory, or fatty- Right ... or oily or whatever your poison is. So yeah, the cruelty's absolutely the point.

Dan Beecher The other thing I've been seeing is people who are like... I saw a thread just the other day that said, "Jobs that deserve 20 something dollars an hour," and it listed EMT and blah, blah, blah. And then, "Jobs that don't, McDonald's worker." And I was like, "What are you talking about?"

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher That person works just as hard. It's so weird to me that there's this hunger to keep people poor and miserable.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan You also get a lot of the, "Well, a McDonald's job, that's intended for high school kids."

Dan Beecher That's- Right ...

Dan McClellan that's intended for part-time high school kids so they can have a little walking around money or something like that. And I think this is overwhelmingly coming from people who live in very nice areas where maybe their McDonald's is populated primarily by high school kids.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan There are plenty of places where it is.

Dan Beecher Because you can't afford in that neighborhood to live there and on the subsistence salaries that they- Yeah ... choose to pay.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And the whole idea of minimum wage, when you go back to when it was established, it was supposed to be a living wage, and explicitly not merely a subsistence living.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But a dignified living wage.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And it objectively has not been that for many, many years.

Dan Beecher For decades.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So anyway- 30, 40 years, something like that?

Dan McClellan Yeah. And so just the fact that there were a lot of people, and particularly people in ecclesiastical positions- Yeah ... who were just licking their chops at the opportunity to see people go without.

Dan Beecher And they had this- This passage ...

Dan McClellan passage- Yeah ...

Dan Beecher in their back pocket ready to whip out.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And so does the context support that interpretation? I'm going to say, along with the majority of scholars , of course not, you jerk. And you can quote me on that.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan That is the formal academic- The formal ...

Dan Beecher term.

Dan McClellan Response, yeah.

Dan Beecher And we'll make that the official position of the podcast as well.

Dan McClellan Yes. There are a couple of different readings of this that I think are interesting. One is the consensus reading. This is where if you look in commentaries, this is overwhelmingly going to be the one that is preferred by the majority of scholars. There's another one that is a bit more of a minority reading, but I think is attractive.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And I'll start with the minority reading just because I think it makes better sense of the verses that come before. The author, pretending to be Paul, talking about when Paul was there, and is like, "I had a right to demand the food, but I didn't- Right ... because I was working for my wages."

Dan Beecher I was being a good little worker bee.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Specifically to teach all of you how to be good little worker bees.

Dan McClellan To set an example.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so the idea here is that he was someone who had an ecclesiastical office, and he was fulfilling duties associated with that office. But rather than treat the fulfillment of those duties as meriting payment through the resources provided by the community, food being the main one, he said, "No, no, no. My duties towards the church, I'm not charging for. I'm going to work to earn the food that I am served and fed." So the reading that I find attractive, just for me, unfortunately is not the majority reading, is that Paul here is talking about people who actually have responsibilities within the governing body of the church. People who hold offices within the church- Right ... who are like, "Well, I'm a bishop, I'm an overseer, I'm a pastor, I'm a teacher, I'm an evangelist, whatever. Therefore, I don't need to go out and get a day job. My work for the church should be enough for me to be able to enjoy the resources provided by the congregation."

Dan Beecher It's weird that modern ecclesiastical leaders don't prefer that particular reading of this. I don't know why they wouldn't. It seems so strange that they wouldn't want everyone to think that they should also have to have a day job.

Dan McClellan Yes. Well, we've merged the day job with the ecclesiastical- Right ... duties within most Christian traditions, denominations.

Dan Beecher Well, that's true. Your tradition does not do that.

Dan McClellan Kind of, yeah. Once you get into central leadership, there is- Yeah ...

Dan Beecher there is a stipend that is- Yeah, the higher-ups get paid, but- Yeah ... the parish leader, the bishop of the ward- Yeah ...

Dan McClellan he gets bupkis.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And that's because he has a day job.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan He's getting nothing. It's volunteer.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It's the lay clergy is what they call it. And then the higher-ups, that is their only job that they have- There you go ... which is the rationalization for the stipend. Whether or not you think the stipend is fair or exorbitant or whatever is going to depend on other factors. But- Yeah ... one way to understand this is, hey, these are people who are working for the church and then saying, "I shouldn't have to have a day job." And the passage is saying, "No, if you're going to eat the church's food, you need to earn it." So it's not talking about the poor and the needy. It's not saying that when the people come into the soup kitchen, and it's like, "How many hours did you work down at the shipyard?"

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan "But before I ladle your soup into your bowl," that's not what it's saying at all. It's saying, "Hey, don't be a lazy apostle."

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan You've got to have your day job. So that's- That's one reading ...

Dan Beecher interpretation number one.

Dan McClellan The more common reading is based on the understanding that this is coming when people are like, "Ooh, Second Coming any day now."

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan Any day now. And that was the historical Paul, was like, "Don't even bother getting married. Don't bother having kids if you don't have kids because it's coming any day now."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So you don't want to be stuck in some kind of transition period. You don't want to be having to go through your orientation videos when the Lord comes.

Dan Beecher With a kid on your side.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher That's just going to bug everybody.

Dan McClellan And so based on that, most scholars today suggest that this is a reference to people who, again, are not poor, are not needy, are relatively well-off, who are deciding they're just going to coast into the eschaton. "The church has everything I need. I don't need to continue with my day job because Jesus is coming back too soon anyway." So that's the more popular reading, that this is about folks who have the means to work, who have the resources, but are deciding, "You know what? I'm going to put my feet up, and I'm just going to let the church prop me up until Jesus arrives."

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So it's an eschatological laziness- Right ... that is being condemned in verse 10, according to what seems to me to be far and away the most common reading of this passage.

Dan Beecher What weirds me out about that is, if the eschaton is coming, why not coast?

Dan McClellan Let them coast.

Dan Beecher What are we doing here? Look, it's all over in just a little bit. Well- If you have the means to coast, feels like coast, baby. Have fun.

Dan McClellan Well, and that is a question that you would bring up if maybe this were actually written by Paul.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But that's one of the reasons probably for the post-Pauline authorship of this text, is the delayed parousia, the delayed eschaton. "Hey, it hasn't come yet. Generations are passing on. It was supposed to be here." And that's when you get- Back to work.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan That's when you get people going, "Okay, back to having kids."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan "Back to work. We can't just rest on our laurels and just wait for this thing to happen. We've got to knuckle down and support ourselves."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So that may be the reason that this is in this passage, is because people were doing that. People were like, "I thought y'all said it was going to be any day now, so I decided to cancel my contracts and this work trip," and all that kind of stuff. And they're going, "Well, we need to do something about this. We'll write another letter."

Dan Beecher And, "Okay.

Dan McClellan Well, what are we going to say?" "Well, tell them that if they don't get their asses back to work, they're not going to eat." "The bishop's storehouse is going to close."

Dan Beecher That's right.

Dan McClellan So, I think that's the more popular reading.

Dan Beecher I can- Don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding.

Dan McClellan Okay. I don't want to quote more of the song. You have made me paranoid.

Dan Beecher How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat? That's all I'm saying.

Dan McClellan Anyway- How can I be expected to speak naturally when I'm not allowed to sing? And I'm an awful singer, so that's part of it. So I think that's the most common reading, and that still does not validate the folks who are slinging this passage around to demonize and to try to deny SNAP benefits to the poor and the needy, demanding they have work requirements and- Uh-huh ... things like that. And we've seen that kind of rhetoric from a number of prominent evangelical Christians.

Dan Beecher Very much so.

Dan McClellan Eric Hovind is one who has- Mm-hmm ... come out and said this. Somebody named Pastor Joseph Hall. I'm not familiar with Pastor Hall. Christopher Arps is another.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And then there's a guy on social media, I wish I could remember his name, but he does a lot of videos where he's in Disney World or Disneyland wearing a MAGA hat.

Dan Beecher Uh-huh.

Dan McClellan And he'll be like, "Ha-ha," and film people's reactions to him being a jerk in public and then make fun of them. But he likes to dance off beats and- ... have anti-woke slogans on the screen.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And he was doing the same thing. And this is an example of someone, he's doing this celebratory dance. "Yay, kids are going to go hungry."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan "That's how Christian I am."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And it- I- Go ahead ...

Dan Beecher I also see it used by people talking about, "Here's why you don't be a socialist," and blah, blah, blah. And often in the context of people pointing out that likely, Jesus would've been considered a socialist now, considering some of what he said. I don't know that that's correct. We should get into that at some point.

Dan McClellan Ooh, yeah. That would be a great topic for a show.

Dan Beecher But I do think that it is... Because here's the thing.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher I believe you that scholars have those different potential perspectives on this passage, but it does seem to me that a plain reading of the passage feels to me pretty clear. It feels like it is a valid interpretation of this passage to say, "If you don't work, or if you're unwilling to work, you should not eat."

Dan McClellan Hmm.

Dan Beecher Now, unwillingness is a very slippery slope concept, especially considering the fact that it doesn't take into account mental illness. It doesn't take into account inability- Disability ...

Dan McClellan to work.

Dan Beecher Yeah. You know what I mean? Not all- Yeah ... disability is visible.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It's easy to say, "Oh, yeah, the guy in the wheelchair probably shouldn't be made to do construction or whatever." But it's not easy to see everyone's disability, and not everybody's capable of work.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher However, so I think it's a valid thing to say, "Look, it says anyone unwilling to work should not eat." It says that. But it seems to me that there are many passages, red letter passages at that- Mm-hmm ... that quickly refute it.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And if you're willing to ignore passages that are quotations of Jesus Christ himself in favor of a potentially pseudepigraphical Pauline epistle, it feels like you're on the wrong track.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And there are plenty of passages where Jesus talks about the need to provide for the poor and the needy without adding any qualifications to it.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And you have a lot of Christians today who will talk about... And this is particularly popular among the folks who confuse Jesus for a libertarian. Surprisingly common. But people who are like, "In the New Testament, Jesus was all about your own liberty and didn't want to force anybody to do anything." And it's like, have you read the New Testament?

Dan Beecher Right. Jesus was all about forcing everyone to do his thing.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And then they do the whole, the role of the government is just to protect the rights of the people. Everything else is the role of the individual. It's like that's an Enlightenment era at very best idea.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It's developed more in the 19th century, but that's like Austrian School libertarianism, not the New Testament.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And they appeal to this in order to obviously defend not funding or not supporting welfare programs, a strong, robust social safety net. As if you could make the plausible case that when you look in the New Testament, Jesus is like, "Look, my priority is not that they get fed. It's just that the correct mechanism is used- ... if they are going to get fed."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan The notion that Jesus would be like, "Look, it doesn't matter if they end up with food. If it's going to go through the government, because I don't want it to go through the government."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan That's asinine. That's just laughable. And then they say, "No, it's our responsibility. We got to do this." Nobody's been stopping you.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And this is not to say Christians and atheists and Jewish folks and Muslims and Buddhists and Hindu and pagans and other traditions and non-traditions don't give generously. There are generous givers across all of those social identities.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But Christians have not been stopped from solving themselves the problem of poverty.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And oddly enough, it hasn't been solved.

Dan Beecher Yeah. That is a funny question. If someone's like, "That should be up to the individual."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Okay. Well, are you doing it?

Dan McClellan Yeah. If not- What are you doing?

Dan Beecher ... then shut up.

Dan McClellan Yeah, because what did Jesus say in Luke, chapter 12? The commandment, sell your possessions- Right ... give the money to the poor.

Dan Beecher That's right.

Dan McClellan You can dismiss the rich young ruler as like, oh, that was just the sidebar where he was like, "This is just for you. This is what I'm going to tell you and nobody else. Don't write this down. This is just for you." But Luke 12, you don't really have that option. Jesus is like- Yeah ...

Dan Beecher "All y'all.

Dan McClellan All y'all."

Dan Beecher Whoever has two coats must share with another who has none.

Dan McClellan Whoever has food must give- Slightly different context there, but yes.

Dan Beecher I don't know. It just seems like a thing, right?

Dan McClellan I don't know.

Dan Beecher But- I have two coats, I should probably give one away.

Dan McClellan But the point is that rhetoric is very clearly intended to absolve them of the responsibility to do it, because they're saying, "We got to do it ourselves." You're not doing it. And guess what? You couldn't possibly do it.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Without the government, you cannot, as a group of Christians, no matter how many you are, you cannot and you will not- Yeah ... solve the problem.

Dan Beecher And that's the real issue. That was pointed out. Anyone who has been on TikTok over the last three weeks or whatever, has seen that that- Oh, gosh.

Dan McClellan The experiment?

Dan Beecher The experiment. The woman who- The experiment ... she went and started calling churches, all kinds of churches, and then a mosque- Other religions.

Dan McClellan Yeah ...

Dan Beecher and a Buddhist temple and whatever, asking for a thing of formula- Baby formula.

Dan McClellan Yeah ...

Dan Beecher for her nonexistent baby. She claimed that she had a baby. She had run out of food, and her baby needed to eat, and she just said, "Can you help me?" And of the something like 40 churches that she called- Mm-hmm ... I think nine said yes, including the Islamic center and the Buddhist center and stuff.

Dan McClellan It was rough.

Dan Beecher If you listen to those- Yeah ... conversations, you hear people just outright saying, "Oh, yeah. No, we don't do that."

Dan McClellan Yeah. And there's a degree to which the receptionist or whoever it is, and I don't know if she was like, "Put me in touch with your boss," if she was getting up to decision-makers or if it was just whoever answered the phone. And some of them have mechanisms for that.

Dan Beecher Sure.

Dan McClellan They were like, "Oh, yeah. We work with this organization. You just need to call them, and they will get you the stuff."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan There was an example where... And she was like, "Oh, I called them, and they said no." And they were like, "Well, they actually have been closed today, and here's the person. I know them personally, and there's no way they told you no." So I think that- There are mechanisms in place for a lot of these organizations. A lot of them were just being straight-up jerks, though.

Dan Beecher Yeah. To me, I don't care if the organization that your church has set up to provide things is closed today. If there's a baby that's not going to eat unless you help, if I'm the receptionist, I'll go in pocket. That's okay.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It's absurd to me that anyone would say no to that. But all of these churches that purport to be following Jesus with all of the commands from Jesus, again, red letter commands about, "I was hungry and you gave me food."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher "In as much as you do it to the least of these, you did it to me." That seems like the most important mandate possible.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And she wasn't asking for money. She made it very clear, "I just want the formula."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Crazy. It was nuts to me.

Dan McClellan And there have been videos of sermons that were preached where people brought this up.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And criticized and condemned the woman.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Somebody called her a witch.

Dan Beecher She was casting spells on all the people, making them not be nice.

Dan McClellan She turned me into a newt. But then there's this pastor named Steven Anderson.

Dan Beecher Oh, gosh. Oh, I know who Steve- You know this guy? Oh, I am familiar with Steven Anderson.

Dan McClellan Here's what he posted.

Dan Beecher He's banned from many countries. Did you know that?

Dan McClellan I did not know that.

Dan Beecher He's literally not allowed to go to dozens of countries.

Dan McClellan Yeah, and he's just downright a jerk.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan I've responded to a bunch of his videos. He does not have the first clue what he's talking about.

Dan Beecher Oh, no.

Dan McClellan He gets everything wrong.

Dan Beecher Of course.

Dan McClellan But he posted on Twitter, "I would be pissed if I donated to a church and found out that they were giving," content warning, by the way, "they were giving the Lord's money to single mother whores. I would want it to go to the Lord's work or towards helping godly Christians who are in need. Churches should not be funding fornicators and their bastards."

Dan Beecher Who does he think- Yeah.

Dan McClellan The Lord's work.

Dan Beecher What does he think the Lord's work is?

Dan McClellan Yeah. Is that- The Good Samaritan.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Remember? That was the people that they were supposed to hate.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Who was his neighbor? Oh, it was the people we hate because he treated him well. Famously, also, Jesus dealt well with prostitutes.

Dan Beecher Yeah. A, a single mother is not a whore, but B, if she were a sex worker, guess what Jesus would want you to do. Guess how he would want you-- Look at how he responded to the sex workers, and maybe go thou and do likewise.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Go read Les Mis.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And, you know.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So there you go.

Dan McClellan So you got a lot of people who are trying to dig through the Bible to find excuses to not help other people, find excuses to literally demonize, in some cases, the poor.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Find excuses to basically hoard more of their money and not share it with the poor and the needy, which is repeatedly commanded of followers of Jesus in the New Testament. So, 2 Thessalonians 3:10, I get the appeal on the surface. It certainly sounds like, "Hey, we could use this to demand work requirements if you want SNAP benefits." But if you understand the context, you can see it's not addressing that at all. And if you actually consider it within the broader context of the New Testament as a whole, you can see that kind of undermines and directly contradicts the spirit of the command to love your neighbor.

Dan Beecher So- Yeah ... go thou and do likewise- Yeah ...

Dan McClellan is the official position of the Data Over Dogma podcast.

Dan Beecher Indeed.

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher Let's jump into Taking Issue. And we're taking issue with Hyksos.

Dan McClellan The Hyksos.

Dan Beecher Okay, let's start by explaining- Flammables, yeah ... who/what are/is Hyksos?

Dan McClellan So Hyksos is a term that we get from the Greek, and I think probably from Manetho, who was a third-century BCE author-historian who wrote about ancient Egypt.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And he referred to these as, oh, where is the... Hyksoṣ would be the Greek.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And so that has come into English probably through Latin as Hyksos. And this is a Greek transliteration of an Egyptian phrase that is actually, and I know people who know how to pronounce Egyptian are probably going to be like, "Dan."

Dan Beecher Oh, dear.

Dan McClellan Hekau khasut. And this means foreign rulers or foreign lords or something like that.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan That is where the Egyptian seems to come from. But Josephus, another Greek writer, a Jewish-Greek writer toward the end of the first century CE, he came up with a different etymology.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan Shepherd kings.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan So you can see where he's going with this. Because this is a group of what scholars generally refer to as West Asians. These are people who are from the land of and around Israel, but probably mostly north of Israel, Amorite territory, moving east to northern Mesopotamia. So they are Semitic peoples.

Dan Beecher I saw the word Levantine.

Dan McClellan Levantine, yes. The Levant is the fertile crescent, which would include Mesopotamia up over and down to the eastern Mediterranean shores.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So Syria, it would be Lebanon, it would be Israel, down to the Sinai Peninsula, but then also Mesopotamia. So that seems to be where these people are from, but they were rulers in Egypt. In fact, they took over a portion of Egypt from the native Egyptian rulers. And this happened 1650 to 1550 BCE, somewhere in there, 15th dynasty. This is what is known as the Second Intermediate Period, and intermediate periods in Egyptian history are kind of where things got really shaky, and then there was a power vacuum or rule broke down or something like that. And so you have foreign rulers who come in and take over rule of Lower Egypt, and particularly the Nile Delta.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And here's one of the confusing things about Egyptology. We're used to thinking about countries on a map. Lower Egypt is north of Upper Egypt.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Because it's a reference to geography and- To the direction of the flow of the river ... of the flow of the Nile River, right.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So Upper Egypt is higher Egypt.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And Lower Egypt is lower Egypt, the Nile Delta. So there was a city, Avaris, that is considered to have been the capital of Egypt, Lower Egypt during this period. And there were more native, Native Egyptian is kind of an odd term because the Egyptians, their ethnicity has always been kind of complex. But about 500 miles south of the Mediterranean Sea on the Nile is Thebes, and that's where there was another dynasty that was ruling, and they were like, "No!" They were shaking their fist at the foreign rulers.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And we have little scarab seals- Mm-hmm ... where some people adopt, they would identify themselves as the Hyksos, as foreign rulers- Oh, interesting ... during that period of rule. And for a while, people were using the Egyptian literature that said, "These people came in and conquered, and they were bloodthirsty, and they were vicious, and nah. And they just took over, and then we kicked them out. One of our heroes rose up and was able to expel the bloodthirsty heathens from the land."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Sounds like the way a lot of people talk about immigrants to the United States today. But, that is not what happened. Based on archeological and other data, we know that they actually had been, not infiltrating, but they had been moving into the land and settling and intermarrying and just getting along just fine for centuries prior to the rise of their dynasty, their rule. And their rule was probably something that was pretty organic. They were like, "Hey, we'll take over while you're trying to get things figured out. Until you get back on your feet- ... we'll go ahead and we'll be in charge." And while there does seem to be some kind of uprising against them, there were still Semitic, West Asian people all over that area for centuries afterwards as well. So a lot of rhetoric and propaganda tries to reduce things to simple binaries.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And then vilify one side, glorify the other side, and that is what was probably going on in Egypt, but- Right ... the reason we bring up the Hyksos is because I've been seeing a lot of people trying to argue that the Hyksos represent evidence that the Hebrews were enslaved in Egypt, or that this was the context for Joseph's rise to power in the Book of Genesis. And there have been folks who have argued that, well, if there was already a Semitic administration in power, that makes it so much more likely that they would've elevated this other Semite.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan Even though, yeah. And in the Book of Genesis, when Joseph invites his family to come to Egypt, he says, "Tell them you're shepherds." And then Egyptians hate shepherds. They'll tell you, "Ooh, go over, take that land over there." And then they get Goshen. And so for Josephus to call them shepherd kings- Okay ... is kind of, hmm, yeah, suggesting, oh, these are people associated with Joseph and Jacob's family. And so, the timelines don't really work out, though.

Dan Beecher That's a problem if we take the- So when are we thinking, you mentioned that the Hyksos were sort of 16, mid 1600s to mid- Yeah ... 1500s BCE.

Dan McClellan Yeah. 17th to 16th centuries BCE.

Dan Beecher And then, so when would Joseph theoretically have been supposed to have been alive?

Dan McClellan Well, it- Okay.

Dan Beecher So- That's fair ...

Dan McClellan it depends on when you date the Exodus.

Dan Beecher They were supposed to have been- But Joseph was before the Exodus, right?

Dan McClellan Yes. Joseph was well before the Exodus.

Dan Beecher So- I mean, I know Genesis is before Exodus, but I don't know how, if it's supposed to be chronological in that way.

Dan McClellan Yes. It is supposed to be.

Dan Beecher And- Okay ...

Dan McClellan Joseph gets sold into slavery in Egypt, and then the family comes to Egypt to escape famine. Joseph is in power. Joseph says, "Hey, stay with me." And then that is supposed to explain how it is that the Hebrews became located in Egypt.

Dan Beecher And then- Oh, okay ...

Dan McClellan another king rose up that did not know Joseph, and he was like, "Hey, there are a lot of these Hebrews around. Let's enslave them."

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan Precisely as Columbus did when he arrived- ... in 1442 or '92 and said, "Hey, we could enslave all these people."

Dan Beecher Right. "There doesn't seem to be any gold, but look at all these people we could just decide we own."

Dan McClellan Yeah. They're like money.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So, if you date the Exodus to the 1400s BCE, which is what a lot of folks do, they'll say, "Oh, this is Amenhotep II. That was the Pharaoh. 1440 to 1420, somewhere around there, is the date of the Exodus." That only gives max a little over 200 years from Joseph to Moses, which doesn't really make sense. They were supposed to have been in Egypt for around 400 years.

Dan Beecher Well, and there were millions of them.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Two to five million participating in the Exodus based on calculations- Right ... from what the text says.

Dan Beecher If- So that, it feels like to go from Joseph's family to two to four million people- ...

Dan McClellan in 200 years- 200 years is- ...

Dan Beecher that feels like a stretch.

Dan McClellan Yeah. It is enthusiastic, definitely.

Dan Beecher They were enthusiastic, if that's what- But this is folks like Ron Wyatt, folks like Chuck Missler, folks who- Ron Wyatt's a favorite of the podcast.

Dan McClellan Yes. And even actual archaeologists like Bryant Wood, who is somebody who gets appealed to a lot when it comes to Jericho.

Dan Beecher Mm. He's one of the ones who provided this argument against Kenyon and the consensus view that the big walls fell down around 1550 BCE.

Dan McClellan He was like, "No, it's closer to 1400 BCE." But even he, while being a little more cautious, was like, "It could've been when Joseph showed up." But that only works if you date the Exodus to the late 1200s BCE.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan Which some people do and say, "Well, that's Ramses, and you got the city Pi-Ramses as one of the cities that they built. So, the 1200s must work better." None of them work. Like the- Yeah. Well- Neither of those dates works, so.

Dan Beecher And as we've talked about, there was no exodus.

Dan McClellan Correct.

Dan Beecher We can also just say, yes, we're entertaining the thought so that we can just sort of follow the logical thing through, but- Yes ... the thing is that we do have evidence of the Hyksos, but we don't have evidence of any of the rest of this stuff.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And just the- Other than the Bible itself ...

Dan McClellan and just the fact that they were Semitic peoples, they came from West Asia, is not enough.

Dan Beecher No.

Dan McClellan Because there were lots of Semitic peoples, and I think most scholars think that they were probably further north. They were probably coming from areas of Syria and around there, and into Mesopotamia, because there seems to be some cuneiform, Acadian influence, and stuff like that.

Dan Beecher Mm. So- I mean, it makes sense, right? There's a land bridge there. You can just go from Israel to Egypt. You just go there. So, it makes sense that if there was a power vacuum in Egypt, and there were a bunch of people who were powerful in Israel, you could just go. You know what I mean?

Dan McClellan Like- Yeah ...

Dan Beecher it doesn't seem like it needs anything greater than that.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And there was a lot of genetic admixture. You had people going into Egypt from elsewhere, just like same with the US.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And they didn't even have border patrol back then.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan You could just walk in, and you might be treated quite differently as a foreigner.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But yeah. They wouldn't say, "Hey, where are your papes, your papers?"

Dan Beecher Right. They might say- And- ... "Hey, what are you doing here?" And if you say- ... "I have an army and/or look at how much money I have, look at how much goods and gold I have to trade-" Yeah. Say, "Hey, welcome to the show" ... you might get welcomed.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Or robbed.

Dan McClellan Or robbed. So yeah, attempts to find Joseph, Jacob, the enslaved Hebrews, Moses, those folks in the Hyksos is misguided at best.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And does not work, and please, anybody out there- ... if you hear somebody say, "Well, there's a canal called Joseph's Canal in Egypt-" Please.

Dan Beecher That is- Is there such a canal?

Dan McClellan There is such a canal. However, that name is only a few hundred years old.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And that canal, it connects the Nile to the Faiyum, but it is basically a deepening of a natural- Waterway ... not constant waterway.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Sure. That broke through in the Pleistocene.