In this episode Trent gives his take on critical Bible scholar Dan McClellan.
Josephus’ testimony about Christ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxjqG5qDR0s
The Catholic Church and the Pro Life Movement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkbOEnDFKdc
Gavin Ortlund on Monotheism and Mclellan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgkKkJhTyak
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Trent Horn (00:00):
A lot of people have asked me to do a video responding to Dan McClellan, a popular biblical scholar on TikTok and YouTube. And to help me do that, I asked Dan to review the script for today’s episode to make sure that it’s fair and accurately represents his views. Now, Dan has over 2000 videos on his YouTube channel, so I can’t comprehensively examine his work. But I have watched three or four dozen of his videos and I read excerpts of his new book, The Bible Says So. I’m not going to engage the tone Dan uses in his videos because while it can be blunt or snarky, it’s not beyond the boundaries of civil discourse.
Dan Mclellan (00:32):
You just don’t have the first clue what you’re talking about.
Trent Horn (00:36):
We might not agree on how to address those we disagree with, even on extremely important issues related to human flourishing, but at least we can agree on the awesomeness of comic book t-shirts that Dan often sports in his videos. So here are my overall thoughts on Dan McClellan and my advice for how Christians should interact with his work and arguments. First, Dan’s work shows why Christians need to be aware of biblical scholarship and shouldn’t be anti-intellectual. Some people think scholarship is identical with polemics or arguments against Christianity, which isn’t true because some scholarship, even critical scholarship, supports key elements of the Christian faith. For example, as Bart Erman notes in his book, did Jesus exist? It’s the opinion of virtually every expert on the planet that Jesus existed. Now, many of these experts deny Jesus was God or deny certain historical aspects of his life, but they at least agree Christianity’s origins lie with an itinerant preacher named Jesus of Nazareth.
(01:31):
Mythicism in contrast is a fringe view, which says Jesus never existed at all and proponents of this view often act like photo negatives of religious apologists. In their zeal to defend atheism, they end up using bad arguments just because they like the arguments, conclusions. One example would be the unhistorical claim that Jesus was simply copied from the lives of pagan deities, a claim I’ve debunked and addressed in a previous episode. Dan has also criticized mythicism and also addresses other bizarre religious conspiracy theories, like that the star of David is a Satanic image or that the Pope’s hat is a symbol of the pagan God Dagon. Second, Dan’s work shows why Christians must be cautious when employing scholarship in defense of the faith. So while some Christians are fearful of modern scholarship, other Christians engage in the opposite behavior and they uncritically tout scholarship that they think proves Christianity is true when in many cases the scholarship turns out to be pseudo scholarship, or it is genuine, but it’s unrelated to the point they were defending.
(02:32):
One example would be this woman who thinks NASA proved the Bible is true by showing an eclipse occurred around the same time Jesus was crucified to explain the darkness of the crucifixion, but she failed to note that this was a lunar eclipse, not a solar eclipse. Dan has also addressed the false claim that we found remnants of sulfur from the destruction of sodom and gamora. And as a Catholic, I agree with Dan when he points out bad arguments Protestants make when they overread their theology into the biblical text. That includes this gentleman who incorrectly translates Jesus’s words on the cross. It is finished to telesty to mean it is paid in full in defense of a common evangelical view of salvation. Dan correctly knows that this is not what the word means, which I’ve also noted in previous episodes. You can also see this in Dan’s response to the Bible in context, a channel that posts lots of content that is critical of Catholicism, where Dan refutes his claim that Catholics have mistranslated John 3:16.
(03:30):
Dan also has a helpful response to Wes Huff on the canon of scripture showing this is something ecclesial authorities declared in the fourth century to settle theological disputes and that the canon is not something those authorities merely discovered or stumbled upon, which echoes points I’ve made in discussions with Protestants.
Dan Mclellan (03:47):
The notion that the New Testament canon was discovered as if they rubbed paper on books to see if it turned pink or dipped the books in acid to see what kind of reaction took place is absolutely laughable. The New Testament canon would not exist without that centralized ecclesiastical authority. In other words, without the church.
Trent Horn (04:11):
In fact, in Dan’s book, he says that the normative principle in using scripture isn’t scripture itself, but what the community says scripture means. He writes, “The tradition is the real authority. The Bible is just the proof text.” What’s interesting is this echoes Saint Jerome who said, “The essence of the scriptures is not the letter, but the meaning. Otherwise, if we follow the letter, we too can concoct a new dogma and assert that such persons as wear shoes and have two coats must not be received into the church. A reference to Jesus’ instructions to the 12 disciples in Matthew 10:10. Dan is also critical of Catholic apologists who employ the Bible beyond what he thinks it means, but he’s less critical of them than evangelicals, which he seems to engage more with. And I would probably find common ground with Dan in being annoyed at biblical fundamentalists who say, “I don’t interpret the biblical text.
(05:04):
I just read it. ” That’s silly because all reading involves interpretation, a fact which shows why it would make sense that if God revealed himself, then he might leave an interpretive authority along with the written words in his revelation. Finally, I would urge those who take a more skeptical view of biblical texts like Dan does to practice consistency and not give a presumption of truth to mundane historical details in non-biblical accounts, but heap endless skepticism towards even mundane historical details in the biblical accounts, like the year and season when Jesus is crucified, for example. For more on that, see the back and forth between Dan and my colleague, Jimmy Aiken on Jesus’ crucifixion. Third, Dan’s work shows why Christians should critically receive what critical scholars assert. Dan often talks in his videos about Christian claims that contradict scholarly consensus. In some cases, when Christians hear this, they may think their faith is false when it turns out the only thing that was false was a non-essential part of their Christian worldview that should be rejected.
(06:08):
This happens to some young earth creationists who think either atheism is true or young earth creationism is true. So if they come to believe the earth really is billions of years old, they irrationally reject Christianity as a whole and ignore other middle ground positions like old earth creationism or theistic evolution. Likewise, when Dan says the scholarly consensus is that a certain biblical event never happened, that doesn’t mean Christianity is false. At worst, that would only mean certain forms of biblical inerrancy are false. It may not even mean the Bible has errors since the text might not be presenting the event as a literal historical episode. Pope St. John Paul II said, for example, that quote, “The books of Tobit, Judith and Esther, although dealing with the history of the chosen people have the character of allegorical and moral narrative rather than history properly so- called.” And the Pontifical Biblical Commission says, “There are different ways of writing history, which is not always an objective chronicle.
(07:04):
Lyric poetry does not express what is found in an epic poem and so forth. This is valid also for the literature of the ancient near East and the Hellenistic world. The narrative Genesis one through 11, the traditions dealing with the patriarchs and the conquest of the land of Israel, the stories of the kings down to the Maccabian revolt certainly contain truths, but they do not intend to propose a historical chronicle of the people of Israel. To see an example of non-literal history, consider this video where Dan says the Bible’s descriptions of ancient figures living for hundreds of years is fiction inspired by ancient kinglists.
Dan Mclellan (07:39):
It’s fiction. It’s not historical. It is a literary invention. It’s the exact same reason that Galadriel lived for as long as she did. These texts were written by Judahite scribes who were being influenced by traditions from Mesopotamia about ancient kinglists. These originate in the third millennium BCE and they record kings who reigned for thousands and tens of thousands of years before the flood. And then after the flood, those reigns tapered off down to the thousands and the hundreds.
Trent Horn (08:09):
Galadriel is an L from the Lord of the Rings. So the response implies that these ancient descriptions are just as made up and not in any way historical. But there is a third option between strict history and totally made up characters. Some of these figures could have been historical and their ages were a literary device for ascribing greatness to them. What Dan left out in his video is that some of the figures in the Sumerian King’s list were historical, even though they were given multiple century lifespans. Enmabergacy was said to have lived for 900 years, and his son, Agave of Kish, was said to live for 625 years. Yet scholars agree there’s good evidence these individuals existed, just not for that literal amount of time. I’m not saying we have similar evidence for the figures in Genesis five as we do for Samarian Kings. I’m just saying it’s hasty to say these individuals in Genesis five did not exist or compare them to someone like Sam Wise Gamji because they were said to have lived for centuries, given that some ancient historical figures in that period were described in this way.
(09:10):
Here’s another example of Dan discussing an episode in scripture where he leaves the viewer with just two options, a literal historical recording or pure fiction. That episode was the mocking of Alicia in two kings and the she bears which killed the boys who mocked him.
Dan Mclellan (09:25):
So it’s a prophetic tale. You might think of it as something grandmothers would tell to their grandchildren, kind of respect your elders and don’t mock the authority of the prophet kind of story. And yes, it is about little boys being killed by she bears because they were mocking the prophet. And the final thing to say about it is that it is not historical. It’s just a story. It is just something that someone made up in order to serve their rhetorical interests related to these stories they’re telling about the prophets and their authority in probably around the end of the first half of the first millennium BCE.
Trent Horn (10:05):
First, I agree with Dan’s criticism earlier in the video that Christians shouldn’t overcrank the text and try to make the Hebrew word for boys in the passage only refer to men in their early 20s. They were probably young boys, maybe between nine to 12 years old. However, the text never says God sent the bears to kill the boys as a punishment. It simply says Alicia cursed the boys and then the bears attacked the boys. Saying God sent the bears is an interpretation of the text. And Dan often says, we must be careful of hasty interpretations that might come from modern assumptions about a text. God could have chosen to not stop bears, which were naturally present in the area rather than actively send them. The language isn’t present in the same way that we see the biblical text describing God sending plagues in Exodus, or Elijah shutting up rain and causing a drought at the command of his word.
(10:59):
Indeed, the detail about the bear attack is unusual in its restraint and brevity compared to the explicit description of Alicia acting with divine authority to cleanse the waters of Bethel a few verses earlier. So the text doesn’t say God sent the bears as a punishment, and it’s also not warranted to say that it’s obvious the event never happened at all. Eric Ziekowski wrote in his study of this episode that, “Perhaps a mauling incident near Bethel really happened, not as a supernatural result of a curse or his divine punishment, but as a natural calamity coinciding with Alicia’s visit, of which this tale expresses a guilt-written recollection.” Julie Parker, in her study of children in the Bible during the time of Alicia writes, “Many scholars read two Kings 2:23- 25 as a didactic story intended for a youthful audience. The Old Testament scholar, John Gray, suggests that this tale recalled a bygone disaster and was told by the locals to awe their children.” So we could have in two Kings a real historical incident of Alicia’s encounters near Bethel and the children who interacted with him.
(12:02):
Their tragic fate was then preserved in the genre of a warning tale to future readers. The possibility should at least be put under consideration and not rejected out of hand. I do appreciate that in one of his clips, Dan rejects the view that millions of Hebrews left during the Exodus, but he does say the story could be based on an actual, though much smaller number of Hebrew ancestors fleeing the region. In fact, this makes better sense than ancient Israel simply fabricating the story of the Exodus. After all, if they were going to fabricate an origin story, you’d think they’d come up with something that would have given them a greater claim to ownership and residence in the land of Canaan. John 8:33 even seems to record a desire among Second Temple Jews to ignore their ancestors shameful slavery. Now let’s go to number four. Dan’s work shows why Christians should be willing to challenge critical scholars.
(12:52):
Any claim, Christian or non-Christian isn’t automatically false just because it contradicts scholarly consensus. However, when listening to Dan’s videos, it would be easy for someone to walk away with thinking that someone must be in the wrong because he or she contradicted the consensus of scholars. But Dan writes the following in his book. When I say this is the consensus, I’m not saying therefore this is true. I’m just saying, therefore, this is what the majority of scholars believe is most likely true based on the data that are available to us at this time. Where I don’t agree with the consensus view, I’ll let you know. On X, Dan defended the claim that John’s gospel does not teach Jesus’ God and acknowledged his view is not part of scholarly consensus, as can be seen in secular scholars like Bart Erman who says, “The gospel of John in which Jesus does make such divine claims does indeed portray him as God.
(13:45):
Scholarship, including biblical scholarship, can be mistaken and once rigid conclusions have been undermined through the work of diligent scholars holding minority positions. For example, in the early 20th century, there was almost universal acceptance of the existence of a written document called Q that was believed to be the original source for material common to Matthew and Luke’s gospels, but not found in Mark’s gospel. However, biblical scholar Mark Goodaker’s research has undermined this consensus. And now the idea of Q is more nuanced and is often reduced to a layered oral tradition rather than a lost written quasi gospel. So anyone, Dan included, can say, Here’s why scholars are wrong about X. But if you’re going to say that, then you should recognize you have a high evidentiary bar to clear. So to clear it, you should be able to accurately summarize the evidence scholars cite and then put forward your own perspective.
(14:39):
Ideally, under the review of experts in the field who can at the very least point out if you made a major blunder. So the next time you hear Dan say a Christian truth claim contradicts scholarly consensus, ask yourself, one, is that claim essential to the Christian faith or is it a non-essential, popular tradition that can be discarded? And two, are the scholars correct or is there new evidence or new interpretations they haven’t considered? My recent episode on the new evidence for the reliability of Josephus’s testimony about Christ would be an example of that linked in the scription below. Finally, remember that even well-read scholars are not infallible and things can become shaky when they opine on areas outside of their wheelhouse. For example, Dan says the Bible never suggests that abortion is murder, and he claims the modern pro- life movement’s ideology is more a product of 1970’s evangelical politics than the Bible or church history.
(15:34):
I’ll fully address Dan’s case in a future episode, and you can see my previous episode on how the Catholic Church gave birth to the pro- life movement in the link below. But in one part of his book, Dan writes, “Except for special regulations about abortion, fetuses have never been given rights associated with legal personhood within nations like the United States that have been governed or heavily influenced by Christianity. Even within conservative Christian religious traditions today, miscarried fetuses are only assigned personhood by groups that use such assignments to advance an anti-abortion agenda. However, in 38 states and under federal law, unborn children are treated as legal victims and their killers can be charged with first degree murder. This makes fetuses de facto persons under the law in those jurisdictions since only legal persons can be victims of murder, or at the very least, these children are treated as having rights associated with persons such as the right to not be murdered.
(16:29):
And these laws are not merely special regulations about abortion since they involve a wide variety of crimes committed against human fetuses. And when it comes to conservative Christian religious traditions today, including those of the Catholic church, they primarily assign personhood to the unborn because of concern for their salvation and a desire to help families who grieve the death of unborn children. Pastors spend much more of their time counseling families whose unborn children die or are stillborn than promoting anti-abortion legislation. Indeed, the Catholic Church offers funeral rights for children who die before birth and teaches about hope for their salvation, neither of which would make sense if the church denied the personhood of the unborn or only cynically used it to advance anti-abortion legislation. Finally, number five, Dan’s work shows why we should always watch out for our own biases. It’s easy when you get involved in scholarship to want to undercut ideological opponents and do everything you can to help ideological allies.
(17:26):
So I appreciate that Dan, who seems to believe same-sex sexual conduct is morally good, or at least not morally evil, is honest about the Bible condemning this kind of behavior and not just condemning pederacity as some revisionist scholar’s claim. Other people have criticized Dan for not being as tough on the Book of Mormon as he is on the Bible because Dan identifies as a Mormon. However, I’ve seen Dan on multiple occasions say the Book of Mormon makes more sense as a product of the 19th century than as a book of ancient records about Jewish immigrants to the new world.
Dan Mclellan (17:58):
I have repeatedly and consistently on my channel and in other social media appearances pointed out that the data do not support an ancient origin for the Book of Mormon, and that if we want to understand what it’s saying, we don’t do that by back translating it into Mayan or Egyptian or Hebrew. We do that by situating it within its early to mid 19th century literary and linguistic and rhetorical context. And I have published research doing precisely that.
Trent Horn (18:25):
Dan’s also said there’s no evidence for angels or demons, which is interesting for a Mormon to say who believes that an angel gave a message to Joseph Smith.
Dan Mclellan (18:32):
There are no data that support the reality of supernatural beings like angels and demons.
Trent Horn (18:38):
First, it’s overreaching to say there is no evidence for these things. People claiming to see angels and demons is at least some evidence they exist. Dan’s next comments seem to be that this data doesn’t count because witness accounts vary between cultures, but that’s just one way of explaining the data. The data still exists and must be accounted for, and you’d think a Mormon would believe in angels because one allegedly appeared to Joseph Smith. But even though Dan identifies as a Mormon, he doesn’t affirm the truth of the fundamental tenets of the Mormon religion. Mormon apologist Jacob Hansen had this to say about him.
Jacob Hansen (19:14):
If you want my honest opinion, Dan doesn’t believe in any of the fundamental truth claims of the church.
(19:19):
I’m not sure why he remains or claims to be a Latter Day Saint, and maybe this is a little bit frank, but I’d be happy to have Dan on my show. Dan, you’re welcome to come on my show anytime and talk about your beliefs. He never talks about them, but when he does talk about them, he says that the data doesn’t support Latter Day Saint beliefs. And then he says, you should believe the data over the dogma. So just put two and two together there. And he doesn’t believe in the Christian claims. He doesn’t believe that … He said explicitly that the data doesn’t support the resurrection of Jesus. It’s like, I’m sitting there going, Dan, you’re saying that the data supports atheism and you’re saying we should trust the data over the dogma. So it’s not very hard to make the inference of what you actually believe here.
(20:02):
Now, again, if I’m wrong about this, and obviously I’m on your show here, Dan, you are welcome to come on my show anytime.
Trent Horn (20:10):
I would also love to see two very different self-professed Mormons discuss what they think is true regarding the Bible and the book of Mormon. I’d also point out that Dan’s discussions about the likelihood of different explanations for Christ’s resurrection is not an exercise in biblical scholarship, but an exercise in philosophical reasoning. And I find many of Dan’s arguments in this regard on par with typical atheistic objections of the resurrection that I’ve responded to in other episodes. Finally, I’d like to discuss a motto Dan is helped popularize data over dogma. That can mean a few different things based on what you mean by dogma. For most people, dogma is a pejorative term that refers to established human opinions that cannot be questioned, like political dogma. In that case, I agree we should follow data over dogma and question our assumptions when the evidence suggests otherwise.
(21:02):
Some people think all religious doctrine is dogma, but Catholics actually reserve the term dogma for a narrow set of doctrine the church has infallibly defined to be part of divine revelation. That means even some religious doctrines may have to be revised in light of new data, and this isn’t a liberal modernist idea. For example, St. Thomas Aquinas rejected the view that God intended to teach in Genesis one: six, that the firmament held literal water, which is why he said Moses was speaking to ignorant people and that out of condescension to their weakness, he put before them only such things as are apparent to sense. Thomas also said that if a physical theory about the world that comes from an interpretation of scripture can be shown to be false by solid reasons, then it cannot be held to be the sense of holy scripture. But where Dan and I would disagree is that I do believe there are some genuine dogmas.
(21:57):
If Christ did rise from the dead and establish a church that teaches with his authority, then that church has the ability in some instances to teach without error what God revealed to humanity. In those cases, no data can refute those dogmas and no such data exists. At the very least, I think Dan would agree with me that you should not take what he says as dogma. Just consider it data and use it alongside other data in your pursuit of truth, like data from Catholic biblical scholars like Brant Petri, John Bergsma, or Skahan, or moderate scholars even like Daniel Harrington. Just remember that the claim, the only data that matters for determining truth is empirical or academic in nature is itself a secular dogma that one should question. We should follow the advice of one Thessalonians 5:22. Test everything, retain what is good. One example of engaging Dan’s work with rigor and charity can be found in the back and forth responses between him and Gavin Ortland on monotheism in the Bible that I’ll link to in the description below.
(22:59):
As I said before, there’s a lot more I could say about Dan McClellan’s arguments and there’s some issues he’s raised I might spend an entire episode addressing, such as whether Christians can be pro- choice. So stay tuned for more on that. And if you’d like to learn more about some of the issues Dan raised, see my book, Hard Sayings: A Catholic Approach to Answering Bible Difficulties and the resources in the description below. Thank you so much for watching and I hope you have a very blessed day.