Data Over Dogma

Daniel McClellan and Daniel Beecher
  • 4.7 (1.5K)
  • Society & Culture
  • Weekly

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. 3d ago

    No One Can See God and Live… Except These 74 Guys

    This week, we're finally reading a chapter verse by verse, and Exodus 24 does not make it easy: in just 18 verses, Moses climbs a mountain, wanders off to write everything down and splash the people with blood, climbs again, and somehow keeps finding more mountain. Along the way, seventy-four people look straight at the God of Israel (feet, sapphire pavement, and all) nine chapters before God insists no one can see him and live, and the seams between the chapter's multiple sources start showing. Then, we lay out the timeline behind all those terms Dan M keeps throwing around, like "Late Bronze," "Iron Age," and "post-exilic," starting with the Bronze Age collapse and the moment a people called Israel first shows up in the record. Explore every episode, searchable transcripts, and our book recommendations on the Data Over Dogma website: https://www.dataoverdogmapod.com 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. Oct 26

    You Can't Out-Bible the Pope

    Pope Leo XIV called the death penalty "inadmissible," and the internet promptly told him to go read his Bible—the one that prescribes execution for everything from kidnapping to picking up sticks on the Sabbath. But the Pope is making the same image-of-God argument from Genesis 1:27 that abolitionists used to argue their way past the Bible's acceptance of slavery, and the Gospel of Matthew can't seem to decide whether Jesus overturned "eye for an eye" or still invoked the death penalty. Then, in Thicker Than Water, we finally tackle animal sacrifice: why Israel's temple offerings look so much like the meals people left for their dead, and Jacob Milgrom's theory that sacrificial blood was a ritual detergent for the sanctuary, not the sinner. Thanks for supporting Data Over Dogma! Explore every episode, searchable transcripts, and our book recommendations on the Data Over Dogma website: https://www.dataoverdogmapod.com 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. Oct 19

    How Lady Wisdom Became Flesh with Dustin Smith

    In the beginning was the Word, but what if the Word was Wisdom all along? This week we welcome Dustin Smith, New Testament scholar at Spartanburg Methodist College and host of the Biblical Unitarian Podcast, to talk about his book Wisdom Christology in the Gospel of John, which traces how John's portrait of Jesus draws on Lady Wisdom from Proverbs, Sirach, and the wider Jewish wisdom tradition. Was Jesus a consciously preexistent Son, or the embodiment of a personified attribute of God? And why are the women of John's gospel the ones who actually get it, while the twelve remain the "duh disciples"? 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. Oct 12

    Hexegesis and Sexist Jesus?

    It's the most spookiest time of the year, so we're debuting a brand-new segment: Hexegesis! Did King James really slip "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" into Exodus because he hated witches, or does the trouble go all the way back to the Hebrew—and why does a Bible that bans divination keep showing its heroes doing it (as long as they're authorized, aiming at the right God, and conveniently male)? Then we're Taking Issue with one of Jesus' roughest moments, when he compares a Syrophoenician woman to a dog, and ask why she has to beg for crumbs while a Samaritan woman at a well gets offered living water. 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. Oct 5

    Noah's Ark: 100% Unconfirmed

    The Daily Mail says the resting place of Noah's Ark has been "100% confirmed" on a hillside in Turkey, so we're lacing up our hiking boots to check the radar scans, the fundraising pitch, and what happened the last time someone drilled into this very same formation (spoiler: bedrock). Then, what exactly is a messiah? Long before the word meant one savior at the end of the world, it just meant someone who'd had oil poured on their head, which is how kings, priests, and even a Persian emperor ended up with the title, and why Dr. Dan thinks the whole job description had to be rewritten after Jesus was executed. 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. Sep 28

    Old Testament God Bad, New Testament God Good?

    Open an English Bible and you'll mostly see "God" and "Lord," but underneath is a whole divine vocabulary: El, Eloah, Elohim, the tetragrammaton, and a few choice insults, including gillulim, which likely comes from a word for dung (shit gods, basically). First, we sort out which plural belongs to which singular (spoiler: Elohim isn't the plural of El), why Deuteronomy uses Elohim more than any other book, and how the Shema's "your God" quietly assumes other gods are out there. Then we take issue with the old line that the Old Testament God is wrathful and the New Testament God is all love—where it came from (hello, Marcion), why its roots are antisemitic, and why it falls apart once you notice where eternal torment actually shows 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/ 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. Sep 21

    Dan Tells Dan About Tel Dan

    This week, Paul finally gets his day in court — several of them, actually, and he spends nearly all of them in custody. We're going chapter and verse through Acts 23 to 26, where Paul lobs the word "resurrection" into a room full of Pharisees and Sadducees like a rhetorical grenade, forty-plus men swear off food and drink until they can kill him, and one well-timed nephew sets off a midnight cavalry escort to Caesarea. Then it's artifacts and fiction, where Dan tells Dan about the Tel Dan Stele — a ninth-century BCE Aramaic brag-in-stone that gives us our earliest extrabiblical mention of the "House of David," and also names a killer for two kings that neither Kings nor Chronicles agrees with. 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

  8. Sep 14

    Vancepocalypse Now (and Paul's Spiritual Gifts)

    This week we're taking issue with a Vice President! JD Vance recently sat down with a very young podcaster to discuss his lifelong fascination with end-times prophecy, his suspicion that the Antichrist may already be walking among us, and his willingness to shrug if doing "God's work" happens to bring on the eschaton — so, after being fairly fair to him, we're looking at what his newly adopted church actually teaches about hastening the end, what Matthew 24 was really promising and to whom, and why every flood and drought now arrives with a prophecy hot take attached. Then, at a listener's request, it's the gifts of the Spirit: what Paul was actually arguing back in 1 Corinthians 12, why the list works nothing like leveling up in D&D, and whether celibacy (or its opposite) counts as a charisma. 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

4.7
out of 5
1,501 Ratings

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
    187
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2023

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