Welcome to Part 4 of my book analysis of Dan McClellan’s book, The Bible Says So. Let’s just jump right back into Chapter 6 and see how far we get in this post.
6: The Bible Says God Had a Wife
The issue regarding whether or not the Bible says God had a wife is easy to answer. No, the Bible doesn’t say that. Still, such a claim is made by McClellan’s mentor, Francesca Stavrakopolou in her book God’s Anatomy. Well…kind of. Actually, both she and McClellan claim that those Jewish scribes who wrote and compiled the Old Testament during or after the Babylonian exile “edited out” the notion that Asherah was YHWH’s wife. Basically, no, the Bible we have today doesn’t say YHWH had a wife, but YHWH had a wife (Asherah) and the Jewish scribes tried to cover that fact up.
To be clear, there really is no data to support that claim. And, to his credit, McClellan has to admit this: “So, did the Bible say God had a wife before she was edited out? Maybe, but we don’t really have enough data to be able to say for sure” (89). Still, he spends most of the chapter arguing (in support of Stavrakopolou) that there was probably a cover-up by those exilic and post-exilic Jewish scribes.
To cut to the chase, here is what the actual data conclusively shows: (1) In the Old Testament, ancient Israel is often described as being guilty of worshipping foreign gods (like the goddess Asherah). This was routinely condemned by the prophets as a violation of Israel’s covenant with YHWH. (2) Still, as the OT clearly shows, ancient Israel really did worship foreign gods (including Asherah) anyway. This, according to the prophets, is the primary reason why the northern kingdom was destroyed and the southern kingdom ended up in exile. (3) We actually have archeological evidence of a drawing that depicts two figures and an inscription that read in part: “Yahweh of Teman and his asherah” (81). So yes, in ancient Israel many viewed Asherah has YHWH’s wife. And yes, the testimony of both the prophets and the Deuteronomistic history is that it was bad. McClellan acknowledges this: “The Bible itself seems to acknowledge that there was a time when Asherah was widely worshipped, even alongside Yahweh in the Jerusalem temple. The authors are not too enthusiastic about it, though” (82). That is the data that all scholars agree on.
Where I think McClellan (along with Stavrakopolou) goes wrong is in his claim that the condemnations of idol worship (particularly of Asherah) are an exilic/post-exilic invention. His view is basically this: (1) Before the exile (specifically before the reign of Josiah) everyone worshipped Asherah as a goddess, viewed her as YHWH’s wife, and no one had a problem with it; but (2) during the exile, Jewish scribes and other “elites” made up this notion that idol worship was bad and “demoted” Asherah from being a goddess worshipped alongside YHWH to an idolatrous abomination. To be clear, there is no data to support this. It is all speculation fueled by a very particular dogma within the academy.
What McClellan does is point to the very clear biblical passages that condemn Asherah worship (Deuteronomy 16:21; 1 Kings 15:13; 2 Kings 21; 2 Kings 22-23) and say, “Oh, but none of those biblical texts is dated before the reign of King Josiah” (640-609 BC). And what about the pre-exilic, 8th century prophets who also condemn Asherah worship (like Isaiah 27:9 and Micah 5:13)? Easy—with no “data” or evidence whatsoever, McClellan says they were just later insertions.
Two things: (1) It is believed that Deuteronomy was the “Book of the Law” found by Josiah around 628 BC, and that Joshua-II Kings (i.e. the Deuteronomic History) was compiled during the Babylonian exile. Those scribes who compiled those books, though, had earlier source material from which they drew, and were answering the question, “How did we, the people of YHWH, end up in exile?” You can either go the route of McClellan and Stavrakopolou and say, “Those scribes were just making a power grab to control the exilic/post-exilic community and were completely making up the idea that Israel had a covenant with YHWH and then broke it by worshipping idols,” OR you can say, “Clearly many in ancient Israel worshipped many gods alongside YHWH, but clearly there was a segment within ancient Israel who felt such worship was an abomination and a violation of the covenant with YHWH.” The first option has ZERO data to back it up, while the second option has ALL the data found in the ACTUAL TEXTS we have to support it.
But McClellan rejects the actual texts we have and claims they are just covering up what really happened in ancient Israel. He assumes the compilers of the Deuteronomistic History were being deceptive in order to serve their own interests to gain power and believes he has the ability to discern what they were really thinking when they wrote. Sorry, but when McClellan writes, “Most likely the worship of Asherah wasn’t considered much of a problem prior to the reign of Josiah, but it fell in the crosshairs of his campaign of cult centralization. The goddess would end up being demonized, and her worship would end up being outlawed. Scribes then wrote this demonization into the histories they were retelling about the earliest periods of Israel’s history” (84)—that is not “following the data.” That is “rejecting the data” and “following your own biased and prejudiced dogma.”
Ironically, McClellan dismisses anyone who thinks otherwise as letting their assumptions cloud their judgment and being “folks who are dogmatically committed to the inspiration, inerrancy, and univocality of the Bible” (85). No, the “data” does not suggest Asherah worship was “unproblematic to Josiah” and that prohibitions and condemnations of it “originated with Josiah, although they were later inserted into stories about time periods before Josiah” (85). That very claim is pure biased dogma, with no data to support it.
Deep down, I think McClellan knows this when he says, “If we assume that Asherah was discussed somewhere in the records handed down from prior to Josiah’s reign, then we can speculate that those references were edited out over the course of his campaign of cult centralization, but we don’t have a ton of data to work with” (85).
In the rest of the chapter, McClellan makes very speculative arguments concerning certain biblical passages they may possibly be references to Asherah and Asherah poles. 2 Samuel 5:23-24? It could mean “the enclosure of the ‘Weeping’ Asherah” if you insert “asherah” in for “berashei.” Ezekiel 8:3? The participle hammaqneh is a form of the verb qanah; and a title for the goddess Athirat in Ugaritic literature is qnytilm (“creatress of the gods”), which uses a Ugaritic version of the Hebrew qanah. Therefore it could actually be a reference to Asherah.
What about Aaron’s budding staff in Numbers 17? It may have been re-written by priestly authors to cover up the existence of an Asherah pole in the Ark of the Covenant. (After all, a pole and a staff are both straight pieces of wood, I guess!). And then there is the Menorah in the Temple. Archeologists found a drawing of tree or pole that has branches coming out of it that kind of look like a menorah, and it had an inscription that said, “my lady the goddess.” It may be an early depiction of the menorah. Finally, Deuteronomy 33:2 reads, “and he came with ten thousands of saints: from his right hand went a fiery law (eshdat)for them.” Well, if you change the “d” in “eshdat” to a “r,” then it could read as “ashrot,” which is the plural form of “asherah.”
McClellan calls all these things “plausible reconstructions,” but I haven’t seen that many “may bes” “coulds” and “perhaps” since I visited Ken Ham’s Ark Encounter and all the explanations of what “could have happened” that would prove there was a historical worldwide flood a mere 4,000 years ago.
In any case, McClellan ends the chapter by begrudgingly admitted we can’t be sure of anything he proposed in the chapter. He’s correct when he says it is clear ancient Israelites before Josiah worshipped Asherah. He is wrong when he says, “there’s no indication there was any institutional opposition to this” (89). The data we have in both the prophets and the Deuteronomistic History says otherwise—McClellan just conveniently dismisses that data as being “later insertions.” He admits “there could have been prophets, priests, and others who didn’t like Asherah or her worship,” but then says, “if there was widespread opposition, it hasn’t left any footprints in the material remains” (89).
Well, there was opposition—it’s in the texts and data we have. The data reflects the tension over the worship of Asherah (along with other gods and goddesses) in ancient Israel.
7: The Bible Says Abortion is Murder
It seems my attempt to keep this book analysis series to five posts or so is going to fail unless I pick up the pace. When it comes to Chapter 7 and the question of whether or not the Bible says abortion is murder:
- McClellan inserts his own progressive rhetoric at the beginning of the chapter to insinuate that the anti-abortion movement in the United States really is just a conservative Evangelical attempt to gain political power when the original attempt to keep black students out of white schools. Can we say “poisoning the well”?
- Numbers 5:11-31 (the “ordeal of bitter waters”) probably isn’t an indication that the Bible approves of abortion. I agree with McClellan on this.
- Jeremiah 1:5 (“Before I formed you in the womb, I chose you”) also isn’t Scriptural proof that the fetus is a human being. It’s not commenting on that issue. It’s a rhetoric statement emphasizing YHWH’s calling and Jeremiah’s authority. Again, I agree with McClellan on this.
- Luke 1:41-44 (John the Baptist leaping in Elizabeth’s womb) also should not be used as “proof” that a fetus is a human being. Again, McClellan makes a good point.
- Greek philosophy had varying opinions regarding when the baby became a human being (first breath to conception).
- The early Christian opposition to abortion was a reaction to the “violent and dehumanizing systems within the Roman Empire, which led to a deeper concern for the human soul and its sanctity” (103).
- Early 2nd-century Christian texts (Didache, Barnabas) condemned abortion as immoral, equated it with the exposure of infants, but it wasn’t always considered murder.
Overall, McClellan is correct on those points. While early Christian writings universally condemn abortion, certain Church Fathers recognized the murkiness and complexity of whether or not it was “murder” and whether or not the woman should be held guilty—because back then, most of the time it was the men who were forcing women to get abortions.
8: The Bible Says Rape Victims Must Marry Their Rapists
Great, another simple issue! This chapter largely focuses on passages like Deuteronomy 22:28-29, that talks about how if a man is caught having sex with a young woman, but they’re not married, he must marry her and isn’t allowed to divorce her. Is this suggesting he was raping her, and is this saying she is forced to marry her rapist?
Right before that, Deuteronomy 22:23-27 talks about the penalties for certain acts. If a man is caught having sex with a married woman in town, both are to be killed. But if they are found in the country, the man is to be killed, and the woman is not found guilty. Why? Because she may have been crying out because she was being raped and no one would have been around to hear her. But if it happened in town, she could have cried out and been heard; but if she wasn’t crying out, it implies she was willingly consenting to adultery.
In reaction to Deuteronomy 22:23-27, McClellan is not impressed with the law. First, he says the notion of “consent” doesn’t really apply because women’s bodies were just seen as commodities and property of their fathers and husbands. Besides, he finds the legislation too vague. He suggests, “it very clearly wasn’t based on or intended for actual jurisprudence. It’s intended to paint a rather superficial rhetorical picture of careful and detailed oversight by a God of justice and order, even as it neglects actual care and detail” (109). He then says that “there’s no indication any court from anywhere near the composition of these texts relied on or were bound to these laws. They are not the foundations of the actual legal experiences of ancient Israelites and Judahites” (113) and were just really just propaganda. I don’t know how he knows all that, (and I don’t know why he would think that ancient Israel was equivalent to Taliban rule), but there are a lot of blanket statements throughout the book.
It seems to me that McClellan is treating Torah legislation as if it were the same as modern American jurisprudence. In his book, The Lost World of the Torah, John Walton makes the convincing argument that (I’m simplifying here) that the Torah is laying out broad principles of what justice looks like in certain situations, so that the judge can use his wisdom and discernment to assess any case that is brought before him.
The point in this passage, it seems clear to me, to be quite clear: Adultery is punishable by death, but in certain circumstances the benefit of the doubt is given to the woman because she might have been being raped. As for the two unmarried people having sex, they have to get married and it is the man’s responsibility to take care of her. In that ancient culture, this legislation was trying to look out for the security and well-being of the woman.
McClellan’s conclusion is odd. First, he clearly indicates he does think Deuteronomy 22:28-29 is about a woman victim being forced to marry her rapist, and says the legislation, though appearing to display divine mercy and justice, really “erases the personhood and the agency of the actual victim of the rape” (113). But then he says, “…does the Bible require rape victims marry their rapists? Kinda, but not really,” and goes on to say that “apologists” who claim Deuteronomy 22:28-29 isn’t about rape (and is just about a young man and young woman getting caught having consensual sex) “have no compelling case to make” and are just “arguing for the conclusion they need to cling to in spite of the data” (114). But then he says that the passage “…demands that a rapist of an unengaged virgin marry the victim at an inflated bride price and then care for her for the rest of his life” (114).
McClellan’s bias and dogma are showing again. An “apologist” who tries to say Deuteronomy 22:28-29 unequivocally is not about rape is overstating the case. Likewise, McClellan who says it is unequivocally about rape also overstates the case. It is ambiguous. The basic point (similar to how things have always been up until the past half century or so!) is this: “If two young people have sex…you’re getting married!” It may not have been rape; maybe it was—but since Torah legislation lays out basic principles, it would be up to the judge (and the parents) to determine how to apply that legislation to the two young people caught having sex.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLAhsrokDjE is a very helpful discussion on abortion I think. Dr. Imes has some great insights.
Is it just me or does Dan act and believe he is the Objective “critical” Scholar while everyone else is ignorant and dogmatic. There’s a strong sense in his videos as if he’s talking down to people he’s speaking too.
That is precisely my thought. Yes, what he puts out in his videos and the books IS held by SOME scholars, but 9.99 times out of 10, those scholars (like McClellan) drive a very specific progressive “dogma” pretty hard, and it colors their scholarship.
McClellan’s book presents 19 very short chapters on a whole range of topics, so it is somewhat unfair to expect an all encompassing defence or justification of every single assertion made. You do a similar thing in this article when you “over-simplify” Walton’s views regarding the function of Torah (which, I note in passing, is a point of view asserted by conservative evangelical theologians who, no doubt, have their own set of dogmatic presuppositions in mind as they seek to defend the text from its critics, primarily for a conservative evangelical audience (rather than for the academy).
I find it interesting that you claim to be able to see the “dogma” of others but are perhaps less able to recognise and acknowledge your own? I can see that you have been educated within conservative evangelicalism although you are now are of Orthodox persuasion. My understanding (which I hope is correct – see the quote below) is that some of the implications of the Orthodox “theanthropic” doctrine of scripture are that scripture is infallible, inerrant (with qualifications) and must be interpreted harmoniously? I can’t help but wonder how these dogma, or your other conservative traditions, shape your own thinking and critique? Isn’t this just pot and kettle?
“It is the faith of the Orthodox Church that the Bible, as the inspired Word of God in the words of men, contains no formal or inner contradictions concerning the relationship between God and the world. There may be incidental inaccuracies of a non-essential character in the Bible” Father Thomas Hopko, OCA.
All Christian traditions propound their own dogma, and create their own unifying frameworks, based on their fundamental assumptions regarding scripture, theology, praxis, and ecclesiology. These theological dogmas are frequently used to scaffold the text; often in ways which make any interpretations of any text consistent (harmonious?) with the chosen framework, ultimately subordinating the text to that framework. Those inside any theological or ecclesiastical tradition may find it harder to accept their own preconceived notions and the biases they introduce. Admitting these is different matter.
From my knowledge of critical Biblical scholarship, McClellan’s views seem rather mainstream on most topics, and so largely unobjectionable; the only real dissenters are those scholars in conservative, and often evangelical, traditions who are not at all representative of the academy.
Having moved from Reformed Confessionalism to a more liberal Anglicanism, I cannot, after years of study and reflection, continue to endorse notions such as plenary, verbal inspiration, infallibility or inerrancy (however defined). As a collection of texts, the scriptures are multi-vocal. As an ANE text, they are thoroughly patriarchal, at times misogynist, violent, and endorse slavery, genocide, and sexual exploitation – see Numbers 31 – some at the direct command of God).
I disagree with your conclusion about the laws in Deut 22. My understanding is that this is rape – even the conservative and evangelical NIV translates this text as “rape” (see also Clines); perhaps only (male) motivated reasoning within a patriarchal tradition, attempt to categorise the Hebrew in this context as consensual sex? Clines notes that he did not find any text in the OT that uses the language of mutuality for any sexual act. He is not saying that there was no mutuality in ancient Israel but that there is no language expressing it in the OT with respect to the sexual act itself.
Rape marriage (see the female prisoner of war laws as an example in Deuteronomy 21), transactional marriage, polygyny, and rape within marriage, are all described, and, in some cases, Divinely sanctioned. A man could sell his daughter as a sex slave (Exodus 21). David raped Bathsheba. I could go on.
The work of David Clines on the ubiquitous language of violence in the Bible, Johanna Stiebert’s Divinely sanctioned violence and women and Trible’s Texts of Terror are all very instructive.
The scriptures are what they are, not what we would like them to be. It simply does not do to try and sanitise or bowdlerise the text or to attempt to exonerate it and adjust our dogmas to fit the text, not the reverse. We need to face it head on and be prepared to condemn it when necessary.
Like the Rabbis, we have to struggle with the text so that we can attempt a deliberative process of textual re-negotiation and re-interpretation. We can see some of these processes at work in the text itself (as in the laws regarding slavery change from Exodus to Leviticus).
Of course, YMMV (your mileage may vary).
I think you’re reading quite a lot into my criticism of McClellan. My main “beef” with him is that while he routinely accuses anyone who disagrees with him of “clinging to their dogmas,” he seemingly cannot see that he himself is pushing a very particular dogma of his own. His very approach to the biblical text is that the “final product” that we have is to be rejected in order to “read between the lines” and “get behind the text.” And, surprise surprise, the conclusions he always finds line up very nicely within his obviously “progressive” dogma that he imposes on the text.
I don’t really know what “the Orthodox “theanthropic” doctrine of scripture” is. I’ve never heard of it. In my graduate work, I was taught that the goal of biblical exegesis is to get to the intended meaning of the text. It isn’t to try to dissect it into speculative, hypothetical sources. I want to know, for example, what the text of Isaiah is getting at, given its historical context. That requires some historical research. It also requires understanding how to read it as literature. That is the extent of what I try to do when I come to the biblical text.
Unfortunately (as you’ve done…and I don’t mean that in a mean way), when I criticize someone like McClellan, a lot of the immediate pushback is to assume I am some kind of hardcore Evangelical who is doing all I can to hang on to some rigid, Evangelical notion of “inerrancy.” I’m not. I believe the Bible is inspire, but “inerrancy” or “infallibility” is a worthless designation. All I care about is understanding the intended meaning of any given text. McClellan, quite obviously, does not. All he does is dissect the original context of the texts we have in order to read into his hypothetical “source material” (of which we have no actual texts) his own liberal, progressive suppositions and dogmas.
Thanks for replying. It’s good to be able to have a conservation. Some fair discussion points – I’m glad to hear your view of scripture is flexible.
To be fair though, I think you read more into my criticism of your view than I actually wrote. I did not assume anything about you personally – I asked questions and was attempting to tease out your presuppositions from what I could discern from your writing, background, and education. I did not for a moment believe or assert that you personally were some kind of “hardline evangelical” – you are clearly not (I’ve read quite a lot of your blog articles) – but I think it would be fair to say that you appear to align with a more conservative position on scripture; this is suggested suggested by your writing, your education, your preferred current ecclesiastical tradition (Orthodoxy) and your clear expression of distaste for viewpoints you pejoratively label as liberal or progressive dogma.
I was simply trying to suggest that your stance on the text is not as neutral and objective as you would like to believe. Thank you for confirming this in your reply.
If I have understood you correctly, one of your premises is that you are primarily concerned with the final text/canonical form. Another is that you do not like the so-called liberal and progressive agenda that you believe is driving McClellan’s exegetical agenda; you are therefore of a more of a traditionalist. Another is that you don’t align with rigid notions of infallibility and inerrancy -again, thank you for clarifying this.
I don’t really know what you mean by “inspired” as this term can cover a multitude of perspectives, and in your earlier critique of McClellan on inspiration, you do not provide any real insight into your own interpretation of 2 Tim 3:16 other than it’s “a Holy Spirit thing” (not actually that dissimilar to McClellan when considered contextually and canonically. You prefer to decide that a neologism used only once in scripture in a very marginal text, in a context discussing the usefulness of scripture (not its ontology), to an indeterminate “scripture” a text only accepted as canonical later on in the process of canonisation, and most likely not written by Paul (majority view) must be translated based on its compound root etymology rather than its philology. Given the reception history of this text, and the theological monoliths that have been built on it (eg by the Princeton school and Warfield in particular) perhaps a little more caution in its translation would be welcome (in my view).
You also seem averse to the idea that any author of Scripture might have less than ideal motives in their reasons for their writing, that biblical writers are somehow immune from personal bias, power plays, political agendas, the re-enforcement of patriarchal norms – just as a few possible examples (conflicts over the legitimate priesthood, the accession narratives, Josiah’s religious reforms, the Conquest narratives, and so on).
I would agree that a synchronic understanding any text in its final form is important in testing exegetical interpretations. But one has to have some notion of the diachronic history of the text – the notion of sources is not at all controversial – close reading of the canonical text suggests this, starting with the early chapters of Genesis and is not hard to see in the gospels (James Barr makes this point time and time again). From what I’ve read of McClellan’s work, I think your view that he is not at all concerned with the meaning of the final text is harsh and over-stated – I do not get this impression from his work. You do spend a lot of time attacking McClellans alleged motives and biases for which you provide little evidence. In my academic career I found this to be an unhelpful and ad hominem approach – “don’t just attack the work, attack the motives that I seem to be able infallibly impute to the author”. Don’t get me wrong, I have my own concerns with McClellan’s work so I am no fan-boy acolyte!
Study of sources, form, and redaction enrich exegesis even when we don’t have the putative sources. This affects our understanding of the final text; I would be most surprised if your notion of scripture, especially in a book like Isaiah, was that it came to us as whole cloth from a single author. If we want to understand what an author means, one has to know who the author is, and which author we are discussing, as this may impact the historical context in which we locate both it and the author. Both synchronic and diachronic approaches enrich our understanding of the text as we have received it.
Lastly, the theanthropic notion of Scripture, church, Christ is easy to see in much Orthodox theological discussion – I’ve read many of them myself over quite some time now.
Thank you for your time. This will be my final contribution here as the comments section is not always the ideal setting for discussion, and I don’t wish to do more than raise some points to consider. I have appreciated the interaction.