Data Over Dogma

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 mu...

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'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 sh...

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...

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...

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 earl...

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.

...

This week, we're taking issue with Mark Driscoll, who recently explained that a wife is a garden, a husband is the gardener, and — out loud, on purpose — that the finished result is "beautiful property."

We dig into where that idea actually comes from: 1 Corinthians 11, the bride-price laws of Deuteronomy 22, ezer kenegdo, and an ancient world where a woman's social identity (and her virginity) belonged to whichever man held the deed.

Then: is the Bible the world's oldest game of telephone? If you mean translation, no — but when it comes to the transmission of the manuscripts, from t...

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 We...

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...

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...

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 fo...

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, an...

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.

S...

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 di...

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...

This week we crack open the Epistle of James — a letter that may claim to come from none other than James the brother of Jesus — and wade into one of Christianity's oldest arguments: faith versus works. Does James contradict Paul on how a person is saved, and is that why Martin Luther dismissed the whole book as an "epistle of straw"?

Then we go monster hunting for Leviathan, Rahab, and Behemoth, the primordial chaos beasts lurking in Job, the Psalms, and Isaiah — and find out that yes, there are dragons in the Bible, and they're far older than t...

This week the Dans try to count to twelve — and find that the number matters a lot more than the names. We dig into the twelve tribes of Israel: how Levi quietly drops out and Joseph splits into Ephraim and Manasseh to keep the total at twelve, why the Song of Deborah seems to remember only ten tribes (some with different names), and what it means that "Israel" may have begun as a confederation rather than one man's family tree.

Then, in History Is Mysteries, we ask who actually put the chapters and verses in your Bible — a th...

Senator Mike Lee keeps accusing his opponents of sacrificing children to Moloch, so this week we ask who — or what — Moloch actually was, why abortion and child sacrifice are not the same thing, and the uncomfortable places child sacrifice really does turn up in the Hebrew Bible. Then, after the Pentagon quietly declined to list the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as Christian, we dig into the bigger question underneath the fight: who actually gets to decide what counts as "Christian"? Turns out the answer is nobody — which makes the whole boundary-policing exercise a lot more about identi...

The sins of the fathers! It's a phrase you've heard a thousand times, but did you know it comes straight from the Bible? This week it's Bible versus Bible, and the topic is generational punishment: God visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children to the third and fourth generation. It's in the Ten Commandments. And the other Ten Commandments. So what did those poor great-grandkids do to deserve it? And how do you square that with a God who's "slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love"?

Then, is it canon? This week's contender has...

What happens when you're raised to be a militant Christian nationalist Supreme Court justice, but you decide to actually study church history instead?

This week, we are thrilled to welcome social media powerhouse, educator, and musician Monte Mader to the show! You probably know her from her viral videos expertly dismantling Christian nationalist talking points, but her story starts far from the internet spotlight.

Monte shares her harrowing and fascinating journey of growing up on a remote cattle ranch in Wyoming, steeped in extreme patriarchal theology, purity culture, and doomsday rhetoric. What was it like...

Most parents think their kids are pretty great. That makes sense. But if your son is the messianic savior of the world, the bragging rights are kind of through the roof. And that's what we get in Hebrews 1. The claim here is that God told the prophets about Jesus, and now all those awesome prophesies have come true.

And Hebrews 1 seems to be bringing receipts. It quotes from all over the Hebrew Bible to point to Jesus being the begotten son and to say that angels will worship him. The question is: is that...

Beloved novelist Clive Staples Lewis (Jack to his friends)(?) went through an atheist phase in his life. But that didn't last, and when he came back to Christianity, he came back HARD! Everyone who knows his work beyond life in a wardrobe is well aware of his obsession with the Bible and Christianity.

But though he was an academic, Lewis was careful to remind people he was not a Bible scholar. He relied on the scholarship of others when he wanted to explore biblical topics. Yet he wrote extensively. So how'd he do? Were...

Just when you think you have biblical theology figured out, they throw you a curveball! In this case, the curve in question is the character explicitly referred to in Jeremiah as the queen of heaven. "Wait!" you might be saying to yourself, "I know heaven has a king, which is God, but what's all this about a queen!" Well, apparently yes. And Jeremiah is none too pleased about it!

Then, we're tackling a claim that American Christian nationalists have been making all over the internet lately. Did the "founding fathers" of the United States...

For as long as there have been humans, there have been rituals. Every religion and spiritual practice has developed its own set of practices and rites, and attached sacred meaning to them. But behind the theology and mysticism, is there something happening that even the non-religious could benefit from?

This week, we welcome back Jeremy Steele to talk about his new book Rituals for Heretics, a guide to reclaiming ritual, meditation, and meaningful practices without needing to believe in magic, dogma, or blood sacrifice.

We explore questions like: What h...

Brace yourself, because your favorite Bible scholarship show is going to talk politics. It's not that we're veering out of our lane, though. Unfortunately, the politics have come careening out of their lane, and smashed headlong into us. It's not our fault!

So yes, we're going to talk about the recent giant Christian nationalist piety performance that was "America Reads the Bible". This was an event where dozens of prominent members of the Christian right took turns reading bits of the Bible until they had gotten through the whole thing. A week worth of...

This week we're taking something beloved and ruining it! Ok, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but we're definitely going to ruffle some feathers.

The King James Version of the Bible is treasured for its poetic, often florid language. Many even believe it to be the most accurate, truest version available in English. Those people are wrong. Or at least, we'll show you why that's a problematic stance.

Then, when is God not actually God? Buckle up, because we're letting linguistic nerdom take us on a fascinating...

The world of ancient holy texts is shrouded in mystery. Where did texts come from? How were they transmitted? Were they altered, and if so, by whom?

First this week, we'll be talking about 1 Esdras. It's a book you won't find in most Bibles these days, yet you will find most of the stories it contains. And if Esdras sounds a lot like the name of another Biblical book to you, that's not a coincidence. So what is Esdras? Why is it different from its biblical cousin, and why was one chosen over the...

This week we're taking two topics that we've skimmed the surface of, and we're diving deep!

First, we're going to figure out what the heck a Maccabee is. That is, we're covering both history and a couple of books in the apocrypha. That's right: we're discussing the Maccabean revolt.

What do we know about the actual historical event? Who were the main players, and how did it all shake out? Is the story presented in the books of Maccabees true to the history? What's a Seleucid?

<...

This week, we're really into bondage, but not in a fun way.

First, we're talking about Hagar, the enslaved handmaiden of Sarai (and later of Sarah). Being enslaved is never a good thing, despite what some apologists might have you believe, but Hagar is done pretty dirty in a few ways. We'll explore not just her nonconsensual heir-making with Abraham, but also her ejection from their house leading to the almost-death of her and her... 17 year old toddler?

Next it's something that is in your Bible... but isn't. Multiple...

There have been some disturbing things happening in the world lately, and some of the people most heavily involved in those things are invoking even more disturbing parts of the Bible as a rallying call. When world leaders remind us of biblical genocide when they go to war, you know we're in trouble.

So this week, we're discussing Amalek, and the Israelite encounters with the people who bear his name. There is no love lost between the Amalekites and the Israelites. As a matter of fact, Jewish people to this day vow to remember...

If you've listened to this show for any amount of time, you know what the Septuagint is (if you haven't, don't worry- it's just the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible). But do you know where that name came from? Or the legend of its creation?

This episode, we're diving deep into the lore of this very important document, and yes- there is LORE! The most important of which is a very long letter from a man calling himself Aristeas, which tells a fascinating (and spurious) tale of the Septuagint's origin. What do we...

Look out, romance novelists, because the Bible is coming for your jobs! That's right: Data Over Dogma is finally covering the Song of Songs, and it's fifty shades of ancient erotic poetry hotness!

But wait- isn't it supposed to be read as an allegory for the love between God and Israel? Or between Jesus and the church? And isn't it called Song of Solomon? Maybe. But maybe not. Maybe it's just supposed to be sexy love poems with no higher purpose than that. You'll have to decide.

Then, we're...

We've talked a lot on this show about issues like scribal errors, where a scribe copying a text gets one little thing wrong, and changes the meaning of something forever. But how can we know when something like that has happened? Especially if it happened almost two thousand years ago, and we don't have any older source texts to compare it to?

This episode of Data Over Dogma, we welcome Lincoln Blumell, a scholar who has made a fascinating argument about 2 John. A single short, confusing passage from the translated writings of a first...

This week we're diving in to some deep controversy, and we gotta say: come on in, the water's fine.

First, we're looking at biblical literalism. There are a lot of Christians out there these days who claim that they believe that the Bible is to be taken exactly at face value. It's literally true exactly as it is, no interpretation needed. Well, if you've been with us for any amount of time, you already know that's a position that's not going to work around here.

But what is biblical...

Most people who talk about the Bible are pretty sure they know what it is they're talking about. But do they? Do you? How sure are you that when you say "the Bible" you're talking about the same thing as the person next to you?

Today, we're diving into the surprisingly broad category of books that all bear the name "Bible". We'll explore who believes which canon, and why certain texts made certain cuts, while others were excluded. You'll never look at your Bible the same!

Then... Woof. When...

This week, it's a double-feature! Two totally different topics, both coming from the same chapter in Acts. So open your Bibles to Acts chapter 7, and let's dive in.

First, we're looking at a fascinating little twist of linguistics that gives us insight into who the author of acts was. Or more accurately, who he wasn't. It's a mystery that can only be puzzled out by comparing ancient versions of the Hebrew Bible in semitic languages (Hebrew or Aramaic) and the septuagint in Greek. What does all this tell us about who wrote this book? And was that...

This week we're serving up two of the most charming authors you'll ever meet! Listeners may recognize the brilliant Aaron Higashi from past episodes, but this time he's bringing along the brilliant Jennifer Garcia Bashaw. Together they are the authors of the new book Serving Up Scripture: How to Interpret the Bible for Yourself and Others.

We've talked many times on Data Over Dogma about the fact that, regardless of what people often say, the Bible doesn't mean anything on it's own. In order to find meaning, you must interpret it. In their book...

Did you know that there is a sin so awful, so egregious, so outrageous that even God would not be able to forgive it? If you answered yes, then we're sorry. That probably means you've been needlessly traumatized.

But before we get to that, we're going to introduce you to a book you've almost certainly never heard of. It's a book that didn't make it into the modern biblical canon, but very well could have. And if it had, WHOO DADDY! Things would be different today.

This is the...

This week we're talking about showing off your love for God, and whether that might not be a such great idea. And our example of not mentioning God comes straight from the Bible??

First, we're looking at the book of Esther. It's a story with all the twists and turns of a Disney animated movie (complete with cartoon villain), and about as much plausibility. It's a wild ride, and by the end someone's going to be killed on a fifty-cubit pole. But something important is missing...

Then, should Christians...