Help Meet, Not Help Yourself  🔗 **Source:** [Help Meet, Not Help Yourself](https://share.snipd.com/episode/09a5cc12-ccde-4228-9f38-f1c4857def80) ## Highlights - **The Garden Metaphor Turns Wives Into Property** - Mark Driscoll’s garden metaphor portrays a wife as a husband’s cultivated property rather than an autonomous partner. - His language emphasizes male leadership, ownership, public display, and the husband’s authorship of the wife’s supposed beauty. Transcript: Dan McClellan Yes. So Mark Driscoll, quote, and so I always say, you know, it's no problem being married to a strong woman. It's a big problem being married to an independent woman. And there's a big difference between a woman who's independent and a woman who's strong. A woman who's strong comes along and she strengthens you. An independent woman, she's fighting you and she's exhausting you. And what most guys don't really consider is it says in 1 Corinthians 11, it says that the woman is the glory of the man. So I always use this analogy that the woman is like a garden and the man is like a gardener. And a lot of guys look at a married woman. They're like, I wish I could find a girl like that. That's like looking at a piece of land that nobody's, you know, ever worked on versus looking at a place where for 30 years, a guy's been cultivating his land and and you look at the land And you're like look at that beautiful property oh my god okay sorry i just i've heard this before and i'm still like reacting viscerally yeah yeah like you know how much work that guy Put in to take it from raw land to beautiful garden that's marriage like you marry a woman and it's like is she going to follow my leadership will she allow me to love her and serve her and Disciple her and walk with her and cultivate her so that she becomes more fruitful and more beautiful over time. And so most guys, they're looking for a park. That's an odd statement. Somebody's already dressed it up for them. They're not looking for a woman who's willing to be led. And if you get a woman that's willing to follow your leadership and you're willing to put in the work, then eventually what you realize is we have a fruitful marriage and have a beautiful Wife. ([Time 0:05:43](https://share.snipd.com/snip/07af44e8-955b-4dfe-a51a-dce2f796fc1a)) - **How Patriarchy Erases Female Identity** - The ancient household system defined women through a male head of household, leaving them without independent social identity. - Dan McClellan argues Driscoll’s rejection of independent women reproduces that subordinate social structure. Transcript: Dan McClellan Yes. So to begin, 1 Corinthians 11, this is this idea that the—and people have seen a drawing of three umbrellas, one on top of the other. Right. Each one below is a smaller umbrella. The classic. And the woman is at the bottom. Yeah. This is the idea that Jesus is the head of the man, man is the head of the woman, and the woman is the glory of the man. Dan Beecher Never mind the fact that that drawing never understood how umbrellas work. Dan McClellan But there you go. Yeah. Well, the idea there is that a woman exists basically as a supplement to a man, as an accoutrement of a man. The woman's identity is found in the man's identity. And this goes back to the ancient world where a woman's social identity was literally subordinate to the identity of the paterfamilias of the household of which she was a part, whether That was her father or an older brother or her master if she was enslaved or her husband. The man was the one with the identity and the woman had no independent social identity. And here it sounds like Mark is endorsing precisely that. She's not independent. You don't want an independent woman. You don't want a woman with her own identity. You want a woman who is willing to be basically a supplement to your identity. Dan Beecher You want a robot that you get to program. Yeah. Dan McClellan And this is a way that weak men and small men can protect their self-esteem. Because if you are married to an independent woman, then she has her own identity that is not reliant on you. And that makes folks like Mark feel lesser. It's so funny. Have they don't really have a full, complete self until they have a woman that they can consider their subordinate that they can consider. Dan Beecher Something of her own to the table. As he said, he, he sees that an independent woman, she's fighting you and she's exhausting you or she's contributing. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, what are you talking about? The, his whole garden metaphor just mystifies me because you know who gardens a woman the best, the woman, like, you know, you're a garden too. If we're going to make a human a garden, we're all gardens. And we all, although that's a dumb metaphor. Yeah. Dan McClellan Well, I think the part that really allows what's under the surface to bubble to the surface is when he says, look at that beautiful property. Right. And he means property in the sense of real property land. Right. But really, he's betraying that he believes a woman is a man's property. Yeah. That this is something I possess and own. This is not someone with their own personhood and agency. This is just someone who exists to complement and supplement me and my agency and identity. ([Time 0:08:25](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a788e0c4-e634-49c4-a676-19918f766804)) - **Bride Price Reveals The Bible’s Property Logic** - Deuteronomy’s sexual-violence laws focus economically on which man possesses the woman, not primarily on the woman’s harm. - Bride-price rules reveal virginity as a property concern tied to sexual access and inheritance. Transcript: Dan McClellan And for me, this goes back to, again, the ancient world. I made a video recently where I talked about virginity, which is a biologically meaningless thing. It's a social construct. Yeah. And it is something that we frequently see talked about on social media, you know, body counts. You've seen guys talk about body counts. Yes. Dan Beecher Don't do that, by the way. Yeah. Just as a data over dogma PSA, don't talk about body count. Dan McClellan That's gross. Grow the hell up. But all of that is rooted in the perception of a woman as a commodity to be bought and sold. Because when we look in the Bible and we see this— Or at very least a commodity to be used. Well, I'm going to argue that it is rooted in the economic transmission of a woman's body, specifically her sexual availability and her procreative capacities. Because we see this in the Bible. I'm pretty sure we've talked about it on the program, Deuteronomy 22, 28, and 29, where we have, well, actually, verse 22 all the way through 29, we've got these laws about what happens If a man is found sleeping with the wife of another man. It's death penalty for both of them. What happens when a man finds a virgin who is betrothed? And then it gives two examples where he sexually assaults her and another where it seems to be consensual based on the stupid logic of the Deuteronomistic author there. And it's the death of the man in both cases and the death of the girl if they think it's consensual. And then what to do if a man sexually assaults a virgin who is not betrothed. And then it's a fine. And the guy marries her and he's never allowed to divorce her and the what's what's so ridiculous about this is that the punishment is different depending on the uh who has possession Of the woman right if it's a husband who has possession of the woman that's a sacrosanct relationship the violation of which incurs the death penalty if it's a father really all he's Out is a bride price. So that's how you make the victim whole, is you have the perpetrator pay the bride price. The victim not being the woman. Right. The primary victim is the owner of the woman, the one who stood to benefit monetarily from marrying her off. And in a where a woman was a commodity to be bought and sold, when you purchase that commodity, you expect to be the first one to set foot in to cross the threshold, so to speak. And you expect that woman to have a shiny new car smell and to be in pristine condition. That's where, like, that's the, at root, what's going on with this idea of virginity. The only sense in which virginity could possibly be socially relevant is in the sense that, well, I don't want anyone to have been there before me. Right. I'm getting this thing and I want to be the first one to have broken ground, to use Mark's garden metaphor. ([Time 0:11:51](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e43f2f6a-974d-407e-ba88-b235e638d3a9)) - **Biblical Defensibility Does Not Equal Moral Defensibility** - A position can be biblically defensible while still being morally wrong by contemporary standards. - The hosts argue that modern knowledge allows people to reject biblical teachings on slavery and gender rather than excuse them. Transcript: Dan Beecher About this discussion is that mark driscoll as we you know you he referred to corinthians you're talking about deuteronomy it's a biblically defensible position that he's taking Oh yeah yeah and that's tricky that i mean that's obviously rough because we are explicitly saying the Bible gets this very wrong in a bunch of places. Like the Bible is kind of awful about that. And that's funny. You know, you're still a believer. But I think that that's part of the way that this show works, right? Is that we have to say, we have to be willing if we're going to be honestly engaging with the Bible to say, we actually know better now. We actually know stuff that, that the authors of the Bible didn't know. And we can do a better job than the authors of the Bible did. Dan McClellan And there are certainly things about which even somebody like Mark Driscoll, if he were forced to be honest about things, would say, yeah, we know better. When it comes to slavery, we know better. That's just not up for serious debate. The notion that the Bible is accurate on its, or at least is morally defensible on its perspective regarding slavery is a deeply unserious position. ([Time 0:15:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/44d6c891-5879-4777-b85f-1a7695b0ac03)) - **Ezer Kenegdo Means A Matching Partner** - Genesis’s “helper” need not mean subordinate because ezer kenegdo suggests a matching or corresponding partner. - Dan McClellan notes that ezer also describes God, undermining the idea that help inherently signals inferiority. Transcript: Dan Beecher Well, and you're right to point out that like, that's why trading, that's why these men, like, they're willing to cast out a woman that has, you know, really given a lot of time and effort And her whole life to this guy because she, you know, she aged and now the garden looks different than he wants her to look. I also think that the garden metaphor is particularly interesting because the Bible has a garden. Like we have a very famous biblical garden and very famously in that the gardener is not the man. The gardener is God or is the man, but then the woman is brought in as a quote helper and partner. Like she's not she's also a gardener like i think the idea the entire idea of the garden metaphor is these two people are meant to garden together and and build something with each other You know what i mean like it's a partner it's explicitly a partnership. Dan McClellan Yeah. And the word that gets translated in the KJV help meet, the idea is that this is someone who's equivalent to. Right. It's not necessarily equivalent to so much as it is adequate for or something like that. But the idea is the word is kinegdo, is across from him. In other words, you and I are right across from each other. Right. And the idea there is matching, sufficient, equivalent, something like that. But the helper is not necessarily the subordinate. The helper is—God is called a helper in many places. In fact, I think the Ezra helper, I think that's applied to God more than it is to humans. ([Time 0:28:27](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e095df83-78a6-4a15-92e6-c36e33abcc62)) - **Control Can Create A Presentable Miserable Marriage** - Driscoll’s model prioritizes control and public image, producing a marriage that looks successful while remaining miserable. - The hosts connect domineering leadership with insecurity, narcissism, and avoidance of accountability. Transcript: Dan Beecher You know, you said it earlier and it, it just, what it, it's so clear that this, this kind of, uh, of an aesthetic, this kind of idea erupts out of deep insecurity. Like, like it's this sense that like if i can't control everything it's going to get away from me or i'm going to lose it or i'm not value i'm not worthy if i'm not the one in control right And and yeah it becomes very obvious you know you you look at modern uh psychology you look at attachment theory you look at all of these things, and it becomes very clear that this is not The pathway to a happy marriage. It's the pathway to a good presenting marriage that's going to be miserable. Dan McClellan Well, and you'll notice that so much of what Mark's concerned for is how his marriage looks to other people. Right. And what it makes other people think about him. It's very much preying on the street corner. It's very much trying to put on display your piety through this notion that your wife is supposed to be your window dressing or something. And when you look at Mark's rap sheet, what did he get in trouble for? Domineering leadership. Right. Like all of the trappings of an abusive control freak and a narcissist. That's why, you know, and he hasn't changed. No. Because it's not like he took accountability for and repented of all of the things that he was accused of doing. Right. Dan Beecher He never he never came out and said, I've gone to so much therapy about this. And and I see now why what I did was bad. Dan McClellan He just skedaddled and found a group that would let him take over. And, and which shows that all he's doing is preaching the same stuff that got him in trouble. And he's just found a group that will allow him to do that. ([Time 0:31:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1af37e58-b445-4791-8481-b236efb8ab2d)) - **The Bible’s Telephone Game Is Transmission Not Translation** - Biblical translations usually return to Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek rather than repeatedly translating earlier translations. - The hosts distinguish translation problems from manuscript-transmission problems, where textual changes genuinely occurred. Transcript: Dan McClellan Well, you get this. I think there are two dimensions in which people talk about the Bible as the world's oldest or longest game of telephone. And I think there's one dimension that's a little more accurate than the other, because sometimes people will say, it's been translated so many times that we can't know what it was saying. And this is something that a lot of people are vaguely aware that the Bible exists in a variety of language and that Hebrew and Greek and Latin and English are relevant to that whole process. And they imagine that what we have today are translations of translations of translations of translations. Dan Beecher Which, if anybody has ever taken a piece of text and put it into Google Translate and had it translated into one language and then take that and translate it into another language, and Then you keep doing that, and then eventually you try to come back to English, and it's fun. Oh, boy. Dan McClellan Yeah, no, it's a mess. Yeah. And a lot of people think that that's what's going on and that we can't trust translations of the Bible these days because of that. And there's just zero truth to that. Well, I'll say it. As a game of telephone, there's zero truth to that. But I do want to talk about some of the nuances of reliance on translations in translation. But whenever we get a new translation of the Bible, particularly into English, but in most languages, there are languages where there are exceptions, but for the most part into English, A new translation of the Bible is going to be a translation of some version of the Hebrew, the Aramaic, or the Greek. In other words, we always try to go back to the source languages. So we can skip over the Arabic and the Latin and the Gothic and the Syriac and the other translations and go back to Hebrew and Greek. Is thinking that the Bible has been translated so many times that we're really, you know, helplessly de-connected, discoupled from the source texts or the source languages, at least. That's just not true. There's no truth to that. Dan Beecher Right. It's not like it was translated into the Latin and then the Latin was translated into the French and then the French was translated into the German and then the German was translated Into the English and never once did anybody look back several steps to check in to see if like how we're doing on this it's yeah that's not what happened and that's and that's actually Dan McClellan Part of what is responsible for the Protestant Reformation was a bunch of people going, hey, what if instead of just translating the Latin Vulgate, we went back to the Greek and Hebrew? And that's what folks like Desiderius Erasmus and William Tyndall and Martin Luther all did. Was Erasmus prepared an edition of the Greek New Testament that was Greek rather than the Latin. And then a bunch of people went, whoa, wait a minute, we can translate the New Testament directly from the Greek now. And ever since then, we've been trying to figure out what the earliest recoverable shape of the New Testament was using Greek manuscripts. So, like, that was an issue. But it was really Latin was the only language that was in the way. And even some of the Catholic editions of the Bible that used to be translated from the Latin, they now translate them from the Greek and the Hebrew as well. So we got around that obstacle. ([Time 0:36:31](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1a772382-232d-45aa-9e6c-3efa26256b18)) - **Earlier Manuscripts Expose Later New Testament Additions** - Earlier manuscripts and patristic quotations expose later additions and omissions in the New Testament. - Modern editions omit roughly sixteen verses because surviving evidence indicates those passages entered the text later. Transcript: Dan McClellan But the dimension where this is more accurate, I think, is when it comes to the transmission of manuscripts. When we look back at the history of Bible translation, Desiderius Erasmus was starting from manuscripts that dated to between the 1100s and the 1500s. Right. Like that's very recent compared to, you know, the 1,000 years, 1500 years earlier. Right. We have since found a lot of much earlier manuscripts. And so now we can cobble together a version of the Greek New Testament that we think is more reliable. And this is where we have verses that are just entirely cut out of modern translations because we've managed to recover better versions of the New Testament, for instance. And so our New Testaments today will omit, usually about 16 verses. So we've done a really good job of making up for that gap. But when we go back to our earliest manuscripts of every last verse of the New Testament, let's say, we have a bunch of manuscripts and a bunch of quotations from patristic authors dating To between the 2nd century CE and then even following after the invention of the printing press. Dan Beecher Sorry, you said patristic authors, and I almost let it slide, and then I realized I don't even know what patristic means. Church fathers. Dan McClellan So this would be the very influential, authoritative, early Christian thinkers and writers. So from the second century, you have like Justin Martyr and Tertullian. And from the third century, you have folks like Origen and people like that. So those folks are quoting an awful lot from the Bible. And so we can use their quotations to kind of triangulate what the manuscripts they were looking at may have looked like, even if we don't have an actual manuscript from that time period. Which we don't. For most of the texts of the New Testament, I would say, well, maybe not most. I think you certainly don't get a full, you can't cobble together every last verse of the New Testament until you get to the great unseal manuscripts of the fourth century. So like Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus, those are the first, those allow us to fill in every single gap. Prior to that, you probably have between the patristic quotations and New Testament manuscripts, you can probably account for like 95% of the New Testament text. But there are only four fragmentary manuscripts of the New Testament that are even dated anywhere in the second century CE. And then I think when you get into the third century CE, it's like five or six. And those are just either a fragment of a single book or maybe fragments of a collection of Pauline epistles or something like that. So it's not large percentages of the New Testament. But then you've got a black hole between those earliest manuscripts and whenever these texts were written. And that's where the telephone game is a live option because that's where you have people passing these manuscripts along and copying them. And the closer you get to their original composition, it seems to me, the more likely there is to be change and the least likely that change is to be detectable. And so we don't know who was on the other end of the line after the message got passed on from whoever wrote it. And we don't know how much they changed that message. And I think we can probably say we're pretty close when it comes to the New Testament. But we have all kinds of theories about changes that were introduced. Dan Beecher Well, like you say, we know there's a whole bunch of verses that we now eliminate because they showed up later and we have earlier versions that don't have them. So we know that this is happening. That's, that's kind of like sort of proof of concept. ([Time 0:41:05](https://share.snipd.com/snip/70c5cbdd-32d2-4cdf-9e9f-f16c82111662)) - **Jeremiah Shows How Biblical Books Expanded** - Hebrew Bible transmission shows substantial variation, including a Septuagint Jeremiah roughly one-sixth shorter than the Masoretic version. - Different editions and additions indicate that biblical books developed through extended compositional histories. Transcript: Dan McClellan But then when we get to the Hebrew Bible, it's even significantly worse for a number of reasons, including the fact that a lot of these texts were written many centuries prior to our earliest Manuscript. Right. Dead Sea Scrolls, we have manuscripts of very, very fragmentary manuscripts, just a handful of verses that match up with the Septuagint version of Jeremiah over and against the Masoretic Text. And the Septuagint version has things in a different order, and it also eliminates some things. And the Septuagint's book of Jeremiah is about one-sixth shorter than the Masoretic text version of the book of Jeremiah. But the Dead Sea Scrolls would suggest that that one-sixth shorter version of Jeremiah was in circulation in Hebrew very, very early. And so it certainly sounds like somebody has added a bunch of texts to Jeremiah. And then we get into Pentateuchal source criticism. How did the five books of Moses come together? We got all kinds of theories about that. And there are texts that make it really clear that at some point, these stories look much different than how we have them. So for instance, Exodus 6, 3. In Exodus 3, God has already introduced themselves to Moses and said, you know, my name is Echia, share Echia, you shall tell them Echia sent you. And then in Exodus six, God comes back and says, Hey, it's me. I am Adonai. But Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob knew me as El Shaddai, and they did not know me by my name Adonai. But you can go look at Genesis 15, 7, where God says to Abraham, hey, man, my name's Adonai. And Abraham goes, oh, Adonai. And so where is the author of Exodus 6 getting this idea that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob didn't know the name Adonai? Most likely they had versions of these stories before them that did not have those stories or did not have the name Adonai in them. And so Deutero-Isaiah, Isaiah, the original book of Isaiah was probably at absolute most Isaiah 1 through 39, 40 through 55 added later, despite what Dan Ellsworth may think about Dan Beecher The strength of that argument. That is a reference to a conversation that we had in our patrons only content. Dan McClellan Check it out over on patreon.com. And then Isaiah 56 through 66, even later. That's an example of the telephone game where the stories are getting added to. They're accreting more details as they go. ([Time 0:51:57](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6f407fc4-c213-4b67-82f5-0e03f4265123)) - **Writing Preserves Stories Without Freezing Them** - Oral traditions change as people retell stories, while writing preserves an imprint without preventing later alteration. - Scribes could modify a manuscript and destroy the original, allowing one altered copy to generate a new textual tradition. Transcript: Dan Beecher This doesn't diminish its value but the thing that we have has changed dramatically over time I mean, half of these stories were probably oral traditions for decades, centuries before They were even written down. Yeah. And we're honed and refined through that process because it was, so it was literally a game of telephone where one guy, you know, he's telling the story to his people and then somebody Else hears it and goes and transmits it to his people with his own flourishes and whatever. We know how that goes. Dan McClellan Yeah. And a lot of people, there are a lot of people out there that are under the misapprehension that primarily oral cultures somehow magically have the ability to transmit complex stories Over centuries without error. And that's just demonstrably not true. We have tested this over and over and over and over again, and oral traditions change, period. There's no other option. Of course. And so, yeah, that's going to happen. And then when you commit it to text, what that does is kind of leaves an imprint of what was supposed to have been said, an imprint that will remain as long as the text remains. And so that does provide a little more accountability, a little more permanence, but it doesn't prevent people from altering stuff. People can still alter things all the time. If you get a manuscript and it says something, you can change that manuscript and then destroy the original. And then unless ([Time 1:00:35](https://share.snipd.com/snip/13978ac7-a49f-47e8-b449-da16c745a58f)) - **Family Stories Demonstrate The Telephone Game** - Dan Beecher compares biblical transmission with family stories that acquire conflicting versions within only two generations. - The hosts use false memories to show that even one person’s recollection can change each time it is reconstructed. Transcript: Dan Beecher I'm going back a little bit, but you were talking about how people are claiming that oral transmission, transmission of stories could be perfect or whatever. And that's so like, I, you know, there's family stories in my family that were passed down and, you know, it's grandma and grandpa's story about this, that, and the other. And then I talk, you know, I check in with my cousins about it and they have a totally different version of that story than I have. And that's just like two generations. So the thought that it can't, you know, that something could make it not only two generations, but centuries. Even within the same generation. Dan McClellan Yeah, longer than that yeah that we it's absurd my family watched the episodes episode of bob's burgers the other night where the pigeon gets into the restaurant and bob is terrified Of the pigeon right and tells the story about how he was attacked by the the pigeons terrified him and they were like that wasn't you That was Tippi Hedren in Bird. That's right. And he was like, oh. And it was just a false memory. Yeah. That movie traumatized him to the degree that he internalized that scene and thought that that was a real memory of his. And that happens. Dan Beecher That totally happens all the time. And that's how human brains work our brains are are uh they're great for a lot of things but yeah look perfection is not what they do that's not that's not how our brains work there's another Dan McClellan One i forget the show but there was a show where a guy was like oh i'm i'm going to see this guy that i knew when i was younger and I need to apologize to him because I bullied him when we were Kids. And I remember this event where I did this and tied him up and da, da, da, da, da. And then he confronts him and the guy was like, is this supposed to be a joke? And he was like, no, what are you talking about? And the other guy was like, I bullied you. I was the one who did that to you. And he was like, oh, and yeah, human memory is so bizarre. And part of it is the fact that we don't, we're not like capturing and storing memories. Every time we remember something, we're actually generating it based on the last time that we generated it. Yeah. And that's precisely the telephone game. ([Time 1:02:41](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2a8b927d-7145-43e8-8fe4-7004e7ef2a50)) - **Memory Reconstructs Rather Than Retrieves** - Human memory reconstructs rather than retrieves experiences, so each recollection can reshape the next one. - This mechanism helps explain why centuries of oral and scribal transmission inevitably produce changes. Transcript: Dan McClellan And part of it is the fact that we don't, we're not like capturing and storing memories. Every time we remember something, we're actually generating it based on the last time that we generated it. Yeah. And that's precisely the telephone game. Right. If you generate it falsely, that's going to influence how you generate it every single time into the future until you have some kind of corrective. Dan Beecher And what's amazing about that is if the telephone game is operational in our own brains, just like not even like me to someone else to someone else, but me to me, then yeah. I think it's safe to say that a book that is a collection of writings over many centuries, you know, that it was passed down and transmitted by, you know, one scribe does it and then another Scribe copies that. Yeah, we're going to have some changes. We're going to have some transmission errors or improvements or whatever you want to call it. Dan McClellan Yeah. ([Time 1:04:47](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a71aeac3-6c3c-475a-8381-d2592933031e))