Data Over Dogma

Daniel McClellan and Daniel Beecher

This ain't your pastor's Bible podcast. This is a deep interrogation of the book, and we're bringing receipts. Bible scholar Dr. Dan McClellan and atheist podcaster Dan Beecher team up to discover what the Bible actually says, what it decidedly doesn't say (even if everyone thinks it does), and explore the history of the most popular book of all time.

  1. 1 day ago

    You Starve ... Glory Be To God?

    In three days, the earth opens up and swallows a household whole, fire consumes 250 men, and a plague takes 14,700 more — and then the very next chapter expects us to be impressed by a dead stick growing flowers. This week we're going chapter and verse with Numbers 16, where a rebellion that names four ringleaders forgets one of them entirely by verse two, can't keep straight which of the rest are actually standing there, and somehow leaves the sons of Korah alive to write a whole run of Psalms. Then we're taking issue with Christian nationalist Joel Webbin, who says the church's job is to look a childless 65-year-old woman in the eye and tell her "you starve, glory be to God" — which runs headlong into the Good Samaritan, the prophetic critique, and the entire point of the thing he claims to believe. Support Data Over Dogma and get every episode early and ad-free, plus exclusive bonus content — become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/DataOverDogma Get your Data Over Dogma merch at our online store: https://data-over-dogma-shop.fourthwall.com/ Watch every episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dataoverdogma Follow us: Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/dataoverdogmapod TikTok — https://www.tiktok.com/@data.over.dogma.pod Threads — https://www.threads.com/@dataoverdogmapod X — https://x.com/data_over_dogma Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/DataOverDogmaPod Get Dan McClellan's New York Times bestselling book, The Bible Says So: https://static.macmillan.com/static/smp/bible-says-so-9781250347466/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  2. 24 Aug

    Rod Almighty!

    Get your mind out of the gutter — this week it's Aaron's rod, the staff that sprouted buds, blossoms, and ripe almonds overnight to settle once and for all who was in charge. But the text is oddly insistent that it sat in FRONT of the ark rather than inside it, which raises a fascinating possibility: was this flowering stick in the holy of holies an Asherah pole that the priestly writers needed to explain away — and did Moses forfeit the promised land not for striking a rock, but for striking it with this pole? Then it's chapter and verse in 2 Maccabees 6, where a ninety-year-old scribe named Eliezer is offered a very easy out (bring your own meat, we'll all say it was pork) and chooses the rack instead. This, followed by a dying speech that is remarkably well-punctuated for a man having his bones broken. Support Data Over Dogma and get every episode early and ad-free, plus exclusive bonus content — become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/DataOverDogma Get your Data Over Dogma merch at our online store: https://data-over-dogma-shop.fourthwall.com/ Watch every episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dataoverdogma Follow us: Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/dataoverdogmapod TikTok — https://www.tiktok.com/@data.over.dogma.pod Threads — https://www.threads.com/@dataoverdogmapod X — https://x.com/data_over_dogma Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/DataOverDogmaPod Get Dan McClellan's New York Times bestselling book, The Bible Says So: https://static.macmillan.com/static/smp/bible-says-so-9781250347466/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  3. 17 Aug

    The Grandfather of the Hebrew Bible (and What Is Zion?)

    In 1929, a farmer in French-occupied Syria hit a rock with his plow and accidentally uncovered the lost city of Ugarit — and with it, a library of Bronze Age tablets that has been quietly reshaping how scholars read the Hebrew Bible ever since. This week, we're diving into the Baal Cycle: an elderly patriarchal high god named El, a youthful storm-riding warrior who fights the chaotic sea (and then, memorably, drinks him), a goddess who winnows Death himself like grain, and a whole pantheon that ought to look awfully familiar. Then, in History's Mysteries, we tackle a word Dan B has used his entire life without ever quite knowing what it means: Zion. Where did it come from, why does it seem to start out as a dry rocky stronghold, and how did it stretch into a portable, symbolic, cosmic idea that runs from Jerusalem all the way to Jackson County, Missouri? Support Data Over Dogma and get every episode early and ad-free, plus exclusive bonus content — become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/DataOverDogma Get your Data Over Dogma merch at our online store: https://data-over-dogma-shop.fourthwall.com/ Watch every episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dataoverdogma Follow us: Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/dataoverdogmapod TikTok — https://www.tiktok.com/@data.over.dogma.pod Threads — https://www.threads.com/@dataoverdogmapod X — https://x.com/data_over_dogma Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/DataOverDogmaPod Get Dan McClellan's New York Times bestselling book, The Bible Says So: https://static.macmillan.com/static/smp/bible-says-so-9781250347466/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  4. 10 Aug

    66 Books, 40 Authors, Zero Contradictions?

    You've seen the claim: 66 books, 40 authors, 1,500 years, three continents, three languages — and not one contradiction. This week we take that apologetic apart piece by piece, from the canon that was never fixed, to the authorship traditions nobody can source, to the "three continents" you could fit inside a circle smaller than the Mediterranean. Then it's Twisted Scripture, where Mark Driscoll insists you can't be a Bible-believing Christian and a socialist, so we look at what the eighth-century prophets, Deuteronomy, Jesus, and the book of Acts actually say about wealth, debt, and who's on the hook for taking care of the poor. Support Data Over Dogma and get every episode early and ad-free, plus exclusive bonus content — become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/DataOverDogma Get your Data Over Dogma merch at our online store: https://data-over-dogma-shop.fourthwall.com/ Watch every episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dataoverdogma Follow us: Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/dataoverdogmapod TikTok — https://www.tiktok.com/@data.over.dogma.pod Threads — https://www.threads.com/@dataoverdogmapod X — https://x.com/data_over_dogma Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/DataOverDogmaPod Get Dan McClellan's New York Times bestselling book, The Bible Says So: https://static.macmillan.com/static/smp/bible-says-so-9781250347466/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  5. 3 Aug

    No Originals, No Mercy

    There isn't a single surviving original manuscript for any book of the Bible, so how do scholars decide what the earliest recoverable text actually said? This week, it's a primer on textual criticism: why King James onlyists despise it (despite the KJV being a product of it), what Erasmus did when he ran out of Greek manuscripts for the last chapter of Revelation, and how one scribe's wandering eye can quietly delete an entire paragraph from Samuel. Then it's chapter and verse on Zephaniah — three short chapters of unrelenting doom that promise to sweep humans, animals, birds, and fish off the face of the earth, before pivoting rather abruptly to "sing aloud, O daughter Zion." Support Data Over Dogma and get every episode early and ad-free, plus exclusive bonus content — become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/DataOverDogma Get your Data Over Dogma merch at our online store: https://data-over-dogma-shop.fourthwall.com/ Watch every episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dataoverdogma Follow us: Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/dataoverdogmapod TikTok — https://www.tiktok.com/@data.over.dogma.pod Threads — https://www.threads.com/@dataoverdogmapod X — https://x.com/data_over_dogma Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/DataOverDogmaPod Get Dan McClellan's New York Times bestselling book, The Bible Says So: https://static.macmillan.com/static/smp/bible-says-so-9781250347466/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  6. 27 Jul

    Don't be a jerk...off?

    This week it's a "What's That?" double feature! First, we take on the Great Commission. Does Matthew 28 really command every believer to accost strangers on airplanes and by the baggage carousel, or is "make disciples" a whole lot narrower (and quieter) than the modern evangelists think? Then it's time for Data After Dark, where we ask whether the Bible has anything at all to say about masturbation. Spoiler: Onan isn't your guy, ritual impurity isn't the same as sin, and that "wasting seed" argument really doesn't hold up.   Support Data Over Dogma and get every episode early and ad-free, plus exclusive bonus content — become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/DataOverDogma   Get your Data Over Dogma merch at our online store: https://data-over-dogma-shop.fourthwall.com/   Shop our classic collection before our old store closes: https://datadoverdogma.printful.me   Watch every episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dataoverdogma Follow us: Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/dataoverdogmapod TikTok — https://www.tiktok.com/@data.over.dogma.pod Threads — https://www.threads.com/@dataoverdogmapod X — https://x.com/data_over_dogma Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/DataOverDogmaPod   Get Dan McClellan's New York Times bestselling book, The Bible Says So: https://static.macmillan.com/static/smp/bible-says-so-9781250347466/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  7. 20 Jul

    A Trickster God and the Worst Wedding Ever

    This week, Christian nationalist Joel Webbin says the quiet part out loud: lie to voters about your theocratic goals until you've got the power to enact them. It's grotesque and profoundly un-American — but is deception, weirdly, the one piece of the playbook that's actually biblical? Then we wrestle with the baffling parable of the wedding banquet, where a king burns a city, fills the hall with strangers, and casts one guest into outer darkness over a missing robe — a story Matthew, Luke, and even the Gospel of Thomas each tell differently, all while pointing the finger at a different villain.   Support Data Over Dogma and get every episode early and ad-free, plus exclusive bonus content — become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/DataOverDogma   Get your Data Over Dogma merch at our online store: https://data-over-dogma-shop.fourthwall.com/   Shop our classic collection before our old store closes: https://datadoverdogma.printful.me   Watch every episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dataoverdogma   Follow us: Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/dataoverdogmapod TikTok — https://www.tiktok.com/@data.over.dogma.pod Threads — https://www.threads.com/@dataoverdogmapod X — https://x.com/data_over_dogma Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/DataOverDogmaPod   Get Dan McClellan's New York Times bestselling book, The Bible Says So: https://static.macmillan.com/static/smp/bible-says-so-9781250347466/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  8. 13 Jul

    Lean Not on Your Own Understanding (and Other Conversation-Enders)

    This week we're taking on the thought-stopping cliché to end all thought-stopping clichés: "trust in the Lord, and lean not on your own understanding." Is "reading with the Holy Spirit" a special line to God that us dirty scholars just can't access, or is it John Lennox's red Ferrari parked right next to an invisible dragon nobody else can see? Then we wade into the online cottage industry of "secret" Hebrew letter codes—the ones that supposedly smuggle Jesus into the very first word of the Bible—and explain why Aleph-Tav, the Eth Cepher Bible, and every last appeal to Strong's tells you a lot more about the decoder than it does about the text. Support Data Over Dogma and get every episode early and ad-free, plus exclusive bonus content — become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/DataOverDogma Get your Data Over Dogma merch at our online store: https://data-over-dogma-shop.fourthwall.com/ Watch every episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dataoverdogma Follow us: Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/dataoverdogmapod TikTok — https://www.tiktok.com/@data.over.dogma.pod Threads — https://www.threads.com/@dataoverdogmapod X — https://x.com/data_over_dogma Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/DataOverDogmaPod Get Dan McClellan's New York Times bestselling book, The Bible Says So: https://static.macmillan.com/static/smp/bible-says-so-9781250347466/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hosts & Guests

About

This ain't your pastor's Bible podcast. This is a deep interrogation of the book, and we're bringing receipts. Bible scholar Dr. Dan McClellan and atheist podcaster Dan Beecher team up to discover what the Bible actually says, what it decidedly doesn't say (even if everyone thinks it does), and explore the history of the most popular book of all time.

Information

  • Creator
    Daniel McClellan and Daniel Beecher
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    178
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2023

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