“God’s Propaganda” by Kipp Davis: A New Book Analysis Series (Part 1: A Backstory and an Overview)

Earlier this month, an online friend texted me and, in light of my book analysis of Dan McClellan’s The Bible Says So a few months ago, asked me if I was going to do a book analysis of Kipp Davis’ new book, God’s Propaganda. Because I tend to be a glutton for punishment, I couldn’t resist. I went on Amazon, shelled out $28 for the paperback version, and by doing so, contributed to Kipp Davis’ financial well-being. I fully expect some sort of thank you. Now, as of this morning, I still have two chapters to go, but I thought I’d get going on my book analysis this weekend.

As he states on the back cover, Davis is a “public facing biblical scholar” who “promotes critical scholarship” through his YouTube channel.” In addition, I have a bit of a backstory with Davis, and it is because of that backstory that I have contributed to Davis’ financial well-being and am writing this book analysis. And so, in this first post, I thought I would share some of that backstory and then provide a brief overview of the book itself.

A Backstory…It All Goes Back to Falk and Stavrakopoulou
Back in February of 2023, there was a bit of a social media dust-up over some comments Egyptologist David Falk made about the biblical scholar Francesca Stavrakopoulou on his YouTube channel. It boiled down to the following: (1) he was asked about his views on Stavrakopoulou’s work; (2) he said he thought it was horrible and fringe scholarship; (3) he then noted that the BBC often had her on their shows that talk about the Bible, and suggested that part of the reason for that was probably she was attractive. TV shows often pick more attractive people on their shows because it is a visual medium, and that happens all the time. But then he made the obviously insulting and unprofessional comment that the BBC “shouldn’t be doing theology by cup size.”

I found out about that because Dan McClellan made a video responding to it, and he was livid about it. Stavrakopoulou had been his mentor in his PhD program, and he found the comment to be horribly misogynistic and hateful, etc. The people who left comments on his video vehemently agreed. Over the course of a week, that video kept popping up in my feed, and people’s comments just kept on coming—the level of outrage surprised me. Yes, I thought what Falk said was insulting and unprofessional, but at the same time, it was pretty clear he wasn’t saying Stavrakopoulou was a bad scholar because she was a woman. He wasn’t saying women can’t be good scholars. He was criticizing the BBC for basically being shallow. Again, yes, a pretty juvenile comment, but…did it really warrant the sheer amount of vitriol I was seeing?

I thought the response was quite the overreaction. And so, I left a couple comments on my own, saying that yes, although Falk’s comment was insulting and unprofessional, it was maybe a “3” on a misogyny scale, and the reactions I was seeing seemed incredible overreactions. I didn’t defend Falk. I didn’t agree with the comment at all. I just said I thought people were over-reacting.

For that, oh my, did I get attacked! I won’t go into all of it, but the onslaught went on for a week. It got so bad that I was getting private messages asking if I was okay and how I was holding up. Now, none of the attacks bothered me. I found the insanity of what I deemed the “Twitter hyenas” to be hilarious. Nevertheless, things were written about me. One goon wrote an incredibly long blog post accusing me of being a transphobic misogynist who also was guilty of plagiarism in one academic article I wrote ten years prior. This person actually contacted the journal and made a formal complaint. It wasn’t plagiarism, of course. I was summarizing the comments of Brevard Childs regarding another German scholar, and I clearly cited Child’s work, and even included the bibliographical information of the German scholar he was discussing.

In any case, the level of unhinged lunacy made me want to read Stavrakopoulou’s book! I did. I found it to be incredibly bad—not because she was a woman, but because I found the arguments laughable. I ended up writing a 10-part book analysis series on her book, God’s Anatomy, where I simply went through, chapter by chapter, summarizing her arguments and claims and then explaining why I thought they were bad. While I was reading it, though, I posted a few of her claims on “X”—one of which was her claim that in Isaiah 6,  when Isaiah saw a vision of YHWH in the Temple, it wasn’t YHWH’s “hem of his robe” that filled the Temple, but rather His enormous penis. My comment was something like, “Ha ha, how did I miss that in graduate school?”

That’s when I met Kipp. It turned out he, Dan McClellan, and I all happened to get a MA from the same graduate school, Trinity Western University. All at different times, of course, but what a small world!

In any case, Davis took offense at my post about Stavrakopoulou’s take on Isaiah 6 and said he thought Stavrakopolou’s claim had a lot of merit. For the next few months, we had several back and forths, in which he would often personally insult me, and I would return by joking about his beard and beanie made him look like a skate-boarder who was still hoping that Pearl Jam would call and ask him to be their new lead guitarist. He even wrote an incredibly long blog post of his own, supporting Stavrakopoulou’s book, and accusing me of misrepresenting Stavrakopoulou’s work. I found that an odd critique, given the fact that most of my posts consisted of simply providing an overview of her claims, complete with countless quotations from the book. In any case, I didn’t mind. I was just humorously mystified how people (both the “Twitter hyenas” and Kipp) could get so angry and worked up simply because I dared say I said I didn’t like Stavrakopoulou’s book.

Nevertheless, at some point in all that, Kipp informed me that he was writing a book and he was going to be sure to put me in it. I’m sure he meant it as some kind of dig, but I thought, “Great! My name in print! I’m gonna be somebody!”

And now, here in September of 2025, I get to read God’s Propaganda. And, spoiler alert, yes, I do make an appearance in it (more on that when we get to chapter 7). If this backstory piques your interest, well…good.

Brief Overview and General Comments
The full title of Davis’ book is, God’s Propaganda: Pulling back the Curtain on What the Bible Wants You to See. That title pretty much crystallizes Davis’ view regarding the Bible. That being said, the book largely focuses on the Old Testament. His view of the Bible largely coincides with that of the likes of Stavrakopoulou and McClellan, namely this: What we read in the Old Testament really are later attempts to cover up what really happened in Biblical History. You can’t trust what the biblical text claims because the biblical text is…propaganda. To be clear, as I am reading the book, I get the feeling that Davis is not so much setting out to prove the biblical text is propaganda, as he simply going off the assumption that it is.

The book is divided into four sections: (1) “The Known World” (four chapters); (2) “Universal Truths” (four chapters); (3) “Institutions” (five chapters); and (4) “Ritual Space and Knowledge” (four chapters). I’ll provide a summary and analysis of each section and chapter in the course of this book analysis. Hopefully, no one will feel I misinterpret anything.

At this point, though, let me just make a few general remarks. Let’s start with two positives:

1. Davis includes in his book a number of illustrations that clearly he has done by hand. Although a couple of charts are much too small, the illustrations are well done. You can contrast Davis’ artwork with my own lame drawings in Blue-Collar Bible Scholar: Reader’s Guides to the Old and New Testaments. (Here’s a link to the NT Guide and the OT Guides, Part1 and Part 2). I willingly acknowledge that Kipp has much better fine motor skills. I’m assuming his handwriting is much nicer than mine, too.
2. Throughout the book, many of his takes on a number of biblical passages are quite good. As a caveat, I should include “…up to a point.” What I mean by that is I feel the conclusions he draws from those reading are questionable, but I found myself writing “Yes” many times in the margins regarding some exegetical points and insights he makes.

That being said, here are a few general negative observations:

1. Much of the book is just tedious and boring. Many times, I found myself thinking (and writing in the margins), “Get to the point” and “Boring.” Simply put, much of it reads like the “Background” section in many textbooks. Is it relevant? Yes, to an extent. But droning on about the topography of the Jordan River Valley for pages on end, well, it’s pretty dry.
2. Speaking now as just an English teacher, dear reader, there is another thing about Davis’ writing that got old. What I’m talking about, dear reader, is Davis’ tendency to throw in certain phrases, dear reader, to remind you, dear reader, that he is writing to you, dear reader. (Of course, he doesn’t do that, “dear reader” multiple times in a sentence, but it is evident he really like that phrase…dear reader).
3. Finally, as it should come as no surprise, given his fundamental approach to the biblical text, I find many of his interpretations and assertions to be, to be kind, simply not convincing. Most of this book analysis series will focus on those instances and tease them out.

All in all, God’s Propaganda isn’t so much a book that is making an argument that the Bible is “God’s propaganda,” it is a collection of readings and interpretations of various biblical texts that are rooted in the assumption that the Bible is a propagandist work of later scribes. Therefore, since their work is “propaganda,” Davis (like Stavrakopoulou and McClellan) claims to “get behind that curtain,” so to speak, and reveal what really happened. Not surprisingly, many of his interpretive readings are, let’s just say, quite a stretch.

Davis’ book is almost 500 pages of very small font size (I’m guessing 10-point), so I’m obviously not going to cover everything. I’ll do my best to acknowledge what I feel are good insights (and yes, they’re in the book), but I’m also going to take issue with other claims that I feel are wrong. And yes, I probably will make a few jokes here and there, but at no point am I going to be purposely insulting or mean. Even in this initial post, my comments about Davis are meant to be taken in a humorous way. With that said, enjoy!