#2562 - Dan McClellan

Dan McClellan, a biblical scholar with a PhD in cognitive science of religion, sat down with Joe Rogan and brought along a replica of his favorite ancient artifact: a fragment of a jar from around 800 BCE found at Kuntillet Ajrud in the Sinai Peninsula. The inscription on it asks for blessings by "Yahweh of Samaria and his Asherah," which the majority of scholars interpret as evidence that the god of Israel was understood to have a wife. This single object opened a conversation that ranged across the entire history of the Bible, the evolution of God, the psychology of belief, and the mechanics of how ancient texts were written, edited, and weaponized.

How the Bible Was Actually Written

McClellan’s core argument is that every text in the Bible was written by specific people in specific historical circumstances to achieve specific goals. The texts are not timeless, univocal documents. They are propaganda, political theology, and attempts to make sense of suffering. The story of Moses being set adrift in a basket, for example, is a direct borrowing from the earlier tradition of Sargon the Great, a Mesopotamian ruler. This was not plagiarism in the modern sense; it was a competitive move. "You got your guy, we got ours. Our guy did it better," McClellan explained. The same dynamic appears in the New Testament, where Jesus is depicted doing things that echo the expectations of