# It's a Jubilee!  ## Episode metadata - Episode title: It's a Jubilee! - Show: Data Over Dogma - Owner / Host: Daniel McClellan and Daniel Beecher - Episode publish date: 2025-11-17 - Episode AI description: Celebrate the fascinating Book of Jubilees, a unique retelling of Genesis with angelic narration and a new calendar! Discover how it smooths biblical tensions and proposes a 364-day year for festivals. Transitioning to a viral claim, the hosts dissect the concept of 63,779 perfect cross-references in the Bible. They reveal how these links are constructed, arguing against the notion of divine authorship while exploring how human composition shapes the text. Join in for a lively exploration of faith, history, and textual complexities! - Mentioned books: [Deuteronomy](https://share.snipd.com/book/e60fb607-5057-407f-b8c2-9215a321910e) by [Hubert Cunliffe-Jones](https://share.snipd.com/person/2c032076-acfb-4711-8b7a-3d5ee5718284), [First Enoch](https://share.snipd.com/book/7483ac57-5780-4db6-b7ec-b5e7ac53355c) by [Enoch](https://share.snipd.com/person/24fcd8e3-b007-4755-a4cd-70e470d410f7), [Isaiah](https://share.snipd.com/book/03338212-4d72-4e0c-9648-8ff2175591d0) by [Isaiah](https://share.snipd.com/person/aab4e149-f87d-4115-a8f4-30415ba949e0), [Jubilees](https://share.snipd.com/book/e84a615d-6624-42e7-8711-1fbfbdccaa3f) by [Moses](https://share.snipd.com/person/92d8b7e2-f1ea-4850-b65c-322d3e2837f4), [Genesis](https://share.snipd.com/book/b4913038-1497-4e78-a5aa-5f743e0ba111) by [Henry A. Kissinger](https://share.snipd.com/person/97014d6c-ef4d-44af-8412-5a505a6082a0), [Eric Schmidt](https://share.snipd.com/person/5c439f8e-85b9-4ec9-9fa3-3ed7fa2fa84d), [Craig Mundie](https://share.snipd.com/person/53e504f9-e409-4926-a68c-e3746c779a67), [Exodus](https://share.snipd.com/book/cd324995-ecf2-46dd-81d1-08ea42a44d2c) by [Leon Uris](https://share.snipd.com/person/38012684-c724-4b0c-a440-62d4b09aaa6e), [Joshua](https://share.snipd.com/book/ba0e7128-5b37-4c79-b443-4835bd9e8c2f) by [Georg Ebers](https://share.snipd.com/person/6167b381-d923-4703-878b-4dc9b45d64a8), [Daniel](https://share.snipd.com/book/efb27bb6-5fc1-4b50-bd4b-fcfa79698c2e) by [Daniel Boulud](https://share.snipd.com/person/60fc46ab-7cfb-4beb-911f-1d33ee9dab6b), [Galatians](https://share.snipd.com/book/edb05caa-fe1a-49f9-9f66-66d662535178) by [Scot McKnight](https://share.snipd.com/person/41594281-3857-413e-b32f-8b437e84c913), [Ezekiel](https://share.snipd.com/book/aa968d44-8515-4259-989f-39459a20091b) by [Walther Eichrodt](https://share.snipd.com/person/05703918-6065-46fe-be55-70c8c00a9805), [Chronicles](https://share.snipd.com/book/f5e31d99-2fa7-4c19-b112-ebf5f8e9e36c) by [Bob Dylan](https://share.snipd.com/person/82d28d31-20d6-4c0e-920a-1270cc9b8d96), [Numbers](https://share.snipd.com/book/17509445-b9a6-49e3-8d47-5f8da943ec4e) by [Moses](https://share.snipd.com/person/58abab2f-888c-4724-932b-178212d389b7), [Psalms](https://share.snipd.com/book/d6d301bd-c2a4-4971-9023-8aab386794f5) by [Asaph](https://share.snipd.com/person/abad2b31-006c-4ea3-aae6-9c5b33008513), [Heman](https://share.snipd.com/person/59ed9997-baf7-464d-9c70-e943db063812), [Ethan the Ezrahite](https://share.snipd.com/person/2c1a8127-764e-41d7-b38a-1c6d3fcda31a), [Moses](https://share.snipd.com/person/58abab2f-888c-4724-932b-178212d389b7), [King Solomon](https://share.snipd.com/person/22fd0d40-ed45-4fb2-9ab5-6f844f25b2f2), [King David](https://share.snipd.com/person/f263f20c-1fd6-4729-b91a-c29f39e0fe15), [Anonymous](https://share.snipd.com/person/b3ec3497-2cd0-4673-bc4e-8d01152b7e5b), [Sons of Korah](https://share.snipd.com/person/31793815-478c-4abd-9d24-60e73f9308a2) - Duration: 59:01 - Episode URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/episode/658e63f8-327c-4077-8ed7-ce1d3818b562) - Show URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/show/8153b1cc-d781-49fd-92d5-a4bef70d1be5) - Export date: 2026-02-17T23:27:25 ## Snips ### [Jubilees Rewrites Genesis With Angelic Frame](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b1961c2c-662a-4f0c-a68d-70955645ea74) 🎧 04:15 - 08:29 (04:13) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/bcab7d60-d79c-40b3-94e8-68b1143d57b6" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Jubilees is a Second Temple era retelling of Genesis that reframes stories through an angelic narrator. - It was likely written c.160–150 BCE and preserved in Ge'ez and at Qumran, showing substantial early influence. #### 💬 Quote > The angel of the presence... retells the entire book of Genesis. > — Dan McClellan Dan McClellan introducing the nature and authorship framing of Jubilees #### 📚 Transcript **Dan McClellan:** is. Just putting it out there. **Dan Beecher:** Oh, okay. There you go. So we'll get to Jubilees. And then in the second half of the show, we'll be asking ourselves, we'll be taking issue with a bunch of correlations. We're going to correlate and see if it means everything and something and anything. Probably not. Probably not. But first, is it canon? Yes. All right, so we said it. We're getting into jubilees here. Jubilees. The word jubilee is interesting. I myself attended the diamond jubilee of Her Highness the Queen of England back in her days. I didn't attend it. I sat on the banks of the Thames and watched as the giant flotilla floated by, which sounds super exciting. The largest flotilla that has ever floated the Thames. It sounds very exciting until you realize it's just boats going slowly past you. One of which contained the queen who waved in my direction. I hear she's good at waving. She was good at waving. Not as good anymore. And the other jubilee that I know of is that this year, the year of our Lord 2025, is a jubilee year for the Catholics. The Pope, before he died, declared this year to be a jubilee year. Indeed. So I don't know what that means, but what I do know is there is also a book that was not in my Bible called Jubilees, and I don't **Dan McClellan:** know anything about it. Well, it is generally considered a pseudographical text. It is non-canonical for the overwhelming majority of Christianity as well as Judaism. There is a movement, a Jewish movement that is associated with the Christian movement that has it in the canon, that also has it in the canon. So the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewakado Church has jubilees in the canon. In their inclusion of the Book of Jubilees in the canon is the only reason we can claim to have a full copy of the Book of Jubilees, because it was only preserved in Ge'ez manuscripts for a long, long time until we discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls. And I think there's a little bit of a Latin translation from like the 5th century. So **Dan Beecher:** the last time we met the Ethiopian Orthodox Tawahado people, church, we were talking about First Enoch and how they include that also in their canon. Is that correct? **Dan McClellan:** Yes, yes, and this is closely related. In fact, Jubilees is probably basing some of its text on 1 Enoch, and so these are both texts that were written in the Hellenistic period. Most scholars would say Jubilees was probably written somewhere between 160 to 150 BCE. Okay. So this is just after the Maccabean period. This is during the Hasmonean kingdom. And it was probably originally written in Hebrew and then probably translated into Syriac somewhere along the way. Also translated from Hebrew into Greek and then from Greek into Latin and into Ge'ez, because Jubilees was probably brought down to the kingdom of Aksum, modern-day Ethiopia, by folks who had copies of the Septuagint, so the Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures, including 1 Enoch and Jubilees. And then I think the oldest existing Ge'ez or Ethiopic manuscript of Jubilees from the 14th century, but there are like 50 or so manuscripts of Jubilees preserved in Ge'ez. And based on the manuscripts of Jubilees that were discovered at Qumran among the Dead Sea Scrolls, there are more than --- ### [Preservation Through Ethiopian Canon](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6488db25-97ca-4742-9fa9-a534bf62de57) 🎧 08:21 - 10:29 (02:07) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/5fbd05aa-5882-49a1-9a12-056d6a803a32" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Dan notes that Jubilees and 1 Enoch have more manuscripts at Qumran than most biblical books, indicating popularity. - He highlights that Ethiopian canon preservation is why we have a full Jubilees text today. #### 💬 Quote > In their inclusion of the Book of Jubilees in the canon is the only reason we can claim to have a full copy of the Book of Jubilees. > — Dan McClellan Dan McClellan on why Jubilees survives in full via the Ethiopian Orthodox canon #### 📚 Transcript **Dan McClellan:** And based on the manuscripts of Jubilees that were discovered at Qumran among the Dead Sea Scrolls, there are more than a dozen different manuscripts of jubilees, which puts it alongside First Enoch, outnumbering the number of manuscripts of every other book of the Bible, except for Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, and Psalms. Wow. So jubilees and First Enoch were quite influential. **Dan Beecher:** Yeah, so if I'm understanding you, let me just say it in my own way just to make sure I'm getting it. But if there were that many copies of that in the Dead Sea Scrolls, in and among the Dead Sea Scrolls, then at least the people who were keeping those records near the Dead Sea, lo, those many years ago, anciently, clearly it must have been very important. It must have been as important to them as, as you say, those other books, as Exodus, or whatever ones you listed. **Dan McClellan:** Yeah, they definitely weren't the core of what was considered scripture for Judaism, but they seem to have been even more influential than books like Ezekiel and Daniel and Numbers and Joshua and stuff like that. So it was influential if we take the number of manuscripts preserved among the Dead Sea Scrolls as a proxy for how important the text was. But we also see its influence on later rabbinic literature. We even see some stuff in the New Testament that seems to be reflecting, not necessarily saying, hey, here's something I took from Jubilees, but references to traditions that look at those traditions in ways they are presented in Jubilees and not really anywhere else. Okay. So indicating that they're familiar with and they are influenced by the tradition as preserved in Jubilees. But in short, Jubilees is basically a rewriting of the book of --- ### [Calendar Reform Shapes Jubilees Narrative](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4c001b91-5a91-4282-bbed-6ece835b56ab) 🎧 12:31 - 20:27 (07:56) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/1c8d346f-84c6-4db3-a201-2c74c993a9b9" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - The author of Jubilees imposes a strict jubilee-based chronology and a 364-day solar year onto Genesis events. - This reveals early concerns about calendrical reform and aligning festivals to a predictable year. #### 💬 Quote > Now you command the Israelites to keep the years in this number, 364 days. > — Dan McClellan Dan McClellan on Jubilees' prescription of a 364-day year and calendrical concerns #### 📚 Transcript **Dan McClellan:** So a jubilee is 49 years, according to the Hebrew Bible. You have seven years, the seventh year is the Sabbath year, but every seven sets of seven years is the 49th year, that's the jubilee year. And so basically we're imposing this chronological framework of sets of seven and jubilees and everything upon the book of Genesis. And so a lot of the chapters begin where the angel of the presence is speaking to Moses and says, so anyway, during the fifth year of the fourth week of this Jubilee, in the third month, in the middle of the month, Abram celebrated the festival of the first fruits in the wheat harvest. And it's kind of a way to say this history is already written. It's playing out according to this very regimented chronology. Everything important happens on jubilee years or in a way that can be measured against these jubilee years. And you get updates and you get changes and you get corrections and stuff like that. I want to read a couple of examples of some of the things that, some of the ways they're retelling the story. But first, this is the very end of the first chapter. There are two sections to the book of Jubilees. Chapter one is one section, and then the other section is chapters two through 50. Oh, okay. And there are only 50 chapters in Jubilees. Those are **Dan Beecher:** not evenly measured sections. **Dan McClellan:** It is definitely heavy. And the first chapter is just kind of this narrative explaining what's going on, where Moses is like, what? Why? Who? Okay. And anyway, verse 29 of the first chapter, it's a long verse. The angel of the presence, who was going along in front of the Israelite camp took the tablets that told of the divisions of the years from the time the law and the testimony were created for the weeks of their jubilees year by year in their full number and their jubilees from the time of the first creation until the time of the new creation when the heavens, the earth, and all their creatures will be renewed like the powers of the sky and like all the creatures of the earth until the time when the temple of the Lord will be created in Jerusalem on Mount Zion. So that's the explanation of what the angel of the presence is about to drop on Moses. And so you have in chapter two, you have Adam and Eve, you have this whole creation, and then you have this statement, there were 22 leaders of humanity from Adam until him, and 22 kinds of works were made until the seventh day. So we've got another division into these very symbolic numbers, and 22 is symbolic. Do you have any idea where 22 might be symbolic? 22 and 24 both pop up a number of times in early Judaism. I know the significance of six, seven, but I don't know the other ones. No, you don't. Nobody does. I'm the only one. 22 and 24 are significant. 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, 24 letters in the Greek alphabet. And so once you get into first century CE, you have texts and folks, people like Josephus and other texts that say, oh yeah, are sacred scriptures number 22? Or are they number 24? That's how many books are in there, because that is symbolic. And if you like Greek, then you go with 24. If you prefer Hebrew, then you go with 22. So that's what's going on with these symbolic numbers. And there's an interesting tradition that has its origin in the book of Jubilees that might surprise some people. So I've made videos before where I've said, hey, the first lie in the Bible is not the serpent talking to Eve. It actually comes before that. Genesis 17, where God tells Adam, on the day you eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will certainly die. He doesn't die. What's going on there? One of the responses to this, there are two main responses. One is to say, well, he didn't mean die, die. He meant die as in not die. The other response is to say, well, a day to the Lord is a thousand years. Right. And this is based on, there's a passage in, I always screw it up, I don't know why. It's either Psalms or Proverbs where it says a day is like a thousand, or a thousand years are like a day to the Lord, or like a watch in the night, which would be like three or four hours. And I've always found that a rather silly argument, but it originates in the book of Jubilees. So Jubilees chapter 4, we're getting to the end of the story of Adam. He was the first to be buried in the ground. And then verse 30, he lacked 70 years from 1,000 years because 1,000 years are one day in the testimony of heaven. For this reason, it was written regarding the tree of knowledge, on the day that you eat from it, you will die. Therefore, he did not complete the years of this day because he died during it. Okay. So we've got the apologetic built in. Yes. One of the first apologists going through and rewriting the text and smoothing out the problems and being like, you thought that was a contradiction, didn't you? We got you. And so this is doing, it's very similar to Samuel and Kings and then Chronicles, where Chronicles is retelling a lot of the same stuff, but altering it and fixing it. And like, wait a minute, we got to have our Levites here. Okay, drop some Levites in. We'll throw some Levites over there. We'll sprinkle some Levites on the ark. And in Jubilees, they're doing a very similar thing, retelling the book of Genesis. And so in a lot of ways, it is kind of like one of the first commentaries on the Bible, because it's basically telling us what was important to them at the time and how they wanted to think about it. We could do the same thing today. If someone were to rewrite the book of Genesis and somebody was like, hey man, go nuts. You have all the authority you need. Just do what you need to do to make it work for you. And they would be like, oh, okay, I'm going to put some more angels over here and do this, that, and the other thing. It would be the exact same thing. And then something that is very important here, remember this is being written probably by a rather well-educated Jewish individual. They also have a concern for calendars. And they say in chapter 6, here the angel of the presence is talking to Moses and says, Now you command the Israelites to keep the years in this number, 364 days. Then the year will be complete and it will not disturb its time from its days or from its festivals because everything will happen in harmony with their testimony. They will neither omit a day nor disturb a festival. So we're getting **Dan Beecher:** pretty close, **Dan McClellan:** pretty close. We're getting close. Yeah. We're moving away from a Luna solar calendar to a strictly solar calendar. Right. 364 days, not exactly getting us all the way there. It'll work for a while. It'll work for a good long while. There's going to be some drift, but we're not going to be alive to see it, so why don't we care? --- ### [Jubilees As Early Apologetic Rewriter](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8ed2dd92-886d-4edf-ab69-0db93a470177) 🎧 16:28 - 18:17 (01:49) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/70dd9073-381f-41e7-8635-95771f19e856" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Jubilees provides early apologetic explanations, e.g., treating 'a day is like a thousand years' to reconcile Genesis 2:17. - The text smooths perceived contradictions and reshapes problematic portrayals of God and characters. #### 💬 Quote > For this reason, it was written regarding the tree of knowledge, on the day that you eat from it, you will die. Therefore, he did not complete the years of this day because he died during it. > — Dan McClellan Dan McClellan explaining Jubilees' solution to Adam's 'day' in Genesis #### 📚 Transcript **Dan McClellan:** So I've made videos before where I've said, hey, the first lie in the Bible is not the serpent talking to Eve. It actually comes before that. 2, 17, where God tells Adam, on the day you eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will certainly die. He doesn't die. What's going on there? One of the responses to this, there are two main responses. One is to say, well, he didn't mean die, die. He meant die as in not die. The other response is to say, well, a day to the Lord is a thousand years. Right. And this is based on, there's a passage in, I always screw it up, I don't know why. It's either Psalms or Proverbs where it says a day is like a thousand, or a thousand years are like a day to the Lord, or like a watch in the night, which would be like three or four hours. And I've always found that a rather silly argument, but it originates in the book of Jubilees. So Jubilees chapter 4, we're getting to the end of the story of Adam. He was the first to be buried in the ground. And then verse 30, he lacked 70 years from 1,000 years because 1,000 years are one day in the testimony of heaven. For this reason, it was written regarding the tree of knowledge, on the day that you eat from it, you will die. Therefore, he did not complete the years of this day because he died during it. Okay. So we've got the apologetic built in. Yes. One of the first apologists going through and rewriting the text and smoothing out the problems and being like, you thought that was a contradiction, didn't you? We got you. --- ### [Cross-Reference Count Isn't Proof](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9df9d5bd-30db-4eab-911d-d34aa36ddb33) 🎧 36:01 - 38:35 (02:33) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/33c5f174-768f-4320-acc1-0301b52347a7" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - The '63,779 cross-references' chart counts conceptual links, not author-intended references, so it proves little about divine authorship. - Many links are thin associations (shared words or themes) and sometimes include contradictions. #### 💬 Quote > Cross-references are conceptual links between verses, connecting locations, people, phrases, et cetera, found in different parts of the Bible. > — Dan McClellan Dan McClellan quoting Chris Harrison's definition of cross-references and critiquing its evidential value #### 📚 Transcript **Dan Beecher:** A beautiful chart that was built a while ago called the cross-reference visualization. And it was done by a guy named Chris Harrison, I think. Yes. Yes, Chris Harrison. And basically what it purported to be was imagine a horizon line, essentially, a line in the lower third of the image. And below it are these lines, just so **Dan McClellan:** many lines. of vertical lines of different lengths that are descending down **Dan Beecher:** from the horizon line. And I guess those are the chapters of the Bible, is that right? Yes. And then above it are these big, beautiful curves and multicolors, and it's very pretty. And the curves go from one vertical line below all up and over to some other vertical line. And it's just interconnecting all of these different chapters. And what it purports to be, if I understand this correctly, is a visualization of all the ways that the Bible, all the verses in the Bible that correlate with each other. **Dan McClellan:** Yes, it is the Bible cross-references chart that began as a collaboration between a pastor named Christoph Rommeld and Chris Harrison in 2007. They claim to have cataloged 63,779 cross-references in the Bible. Okay. And this is a visualization of those 63,779 cross-references. And as you mentioned earlier, while we were discussing what we were talking about tonight, there was a very popular kind of mimicking version of this chart that is Bible contradictions. Yes. Now, the handy thing about the Bible contradictions chart is that it actually catalogs all the actual contradictions. Chris Harrison's chart, to my knowledge, I think somebody has tried to recreate it in an interactive way so you can actually see the verses. But in addition to the fact that it does not include all 63,779 cross-references, it doesn't even tell you what verse. --- ### [Verify Charts Before Accepting Claims](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b09eed18-a78e-4c03-a1bb-0a1b3d2f5474) 🎧 40:14 - 45:44 (05:30) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/80ba27b2-7dac-4156-9660-503046e8d770" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Don't accept visual claims without checking sources and definitions; a pretty chart can hide dubious methodology. - Use reverse image search and read examples to verify what a chart actually represents before sharing it. #### 💬 Quote > If you just do a reverse image search... it took me to a website called Adam Lambert full circle moments and firsts. > — Dan McClellan Dan McClellan explaining how he traced misleading visualizations using reverse image search #### 📚 Transcript **Dan McClellan:** And here's the way Chris Harrison defines cross-reference. Okay. Cross-references are conceptual links between verses, connecting locations, people, phrases, et cetera, found in different parts of the Bible. Great. That, however, does not tell us who is making these links. Right. And this is my biggest problem with this. There is nothing that supports the notion that these links are inherent to the text, native to the text, understood and intended by any of the authors and editors. Sure. These links are often so thin and so ambiguous as to be pretty meaningless. There's a partial list of these cross-references that I found where somebody was like, 1-1 talks about the creation of the heavens and the earth, and so this cross-references with every single passage in the Bible that uses a word for create. It's like, no, it doesn't. Or heaven or earth. Yeah. That's not indicative of intent or cognizance on the part of any of the authors. That is us saying, I **Dan Beecher:** matched these two. Right. Well, and not only that, but like not for nothing, later books had the previous books to reference. The authors were familiar with the work going before. So a reference doesn't mean like, you know, if guy who writes Spider-Man 211 also read Spider-Man 3. Yeah. See number three. Yeah. It doesn't, that doesn't prove anything divine happening. Right. The family that vacations together stays together. At least that was the plan. Except now **Dan McClellan:** the dastardly desk clerk is saying he can't confirm your connecting rooms. Wait, what? That's right, ma'am. You have rooms 201 and 709. No, we cannot be five floors away from our kids. Eh, the doors have double locks. They'll be fine. When you want connecting rooms confirmed before you arrive, it matters where you stay. Welcome to Hilton. I see **Dan Beecher:** your connecting rooms are already confirmed. Hilton **Dan McClellan:** for this day. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate seat. to Indeed data, sponsored jobs have four times more applicants than non-sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. When **Dan Beecher:** cool, creamy ranch meets tangy, bold buffalo, the whole is greater than the sum of its sauce. Say howdy, partner, to new Buffalo Ranch sauce only at McDonald's for a limited time. At participating McDonald's. The Bible is **Dan McClellan:** unique in a lot of ways. It is an anthology of texts for a community that lasted a lot longer than The ways. other communities have lasted. It shouldn't have lasted as long as it has. But because it lasted as long as it did, because the authoritative literature accumulated for as long as it did, and every layer that was added to it had the benefit of looking back at some, if not all, of what came before, you have a lot of intentional illusion and paraphrase and even direct quotation of the things that came before. And so it is a uniquely self-referential text, but not in a way that is implausibly human curated. The uniqueness of the circumstances contributes to the uniqueness of the features of the text, and definitely not in a supernatural way. Right. But it gets even worse for Chris's explanation, because in addition to the fact that what this is basically saying is, I can create links 63,779 times, which says nothing about what the text itself intended. Like, I can take Lord of the Rings and Hellboy and the Bible, and I bet you I can create thousands of cross-references as well. Look, we got a reference to mountains over here. We got a reference to mountains over here. Boom, cross-reference, roasted. Like, it doesn't mean much. But Chris goes on in where he's selling versions of this chart. He says, cross-references are included in the margins or footnotes of some Bibles. And then he says, example here, and there's a hyperlink to a version of a Bible that has in the margins a bunch of cross-references. And I'm like, great. I want to look at the cross-references that Chris chose to show us as an example of cross-references to see what a prototypical cross-reference in the mind of Chris Harrison is. And it is the page that is linked to is Acts chapter one. --- ### [Human Processes Create Self-Reference](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9e0bc901-ed8b-478c-a696-880d94e569f9) 🎧 43:21 - 44:58 (01:36) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/cc768457-da34-4a2b-a97a-0c415a474eb1" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - The Bible's self-referential nature arises from layered composition and later authors quoting or paraphrasing earlier texts. - That unique historical process explains abundant internal links without invoking the supernatural. #### 💬 Quote > Because the authoritative literature accumulated for as long as it did, and every layer that was added to it had the benefit of looking back at some, if not all, of what came before, you have a lot of intentional allusion and paraphrase. > — Dan McClellan Dan McClellan on how the Bible's layered composition produces many intertextual links #### 📚 Transcript **Dan McClellan:** It is an anthology of texts for a community that lasted a lot longer than The ways. other communities have lasted. It shouldn't have lasted as long as it has. But because it lasted as long as it did, because the authoritative literature accumulated for as long as it did, and every layer that was added to it had the benefit of looking back at some, if not all, of what came before, you have a lot of intentional illusion and paraphrase and even direct quotation of the things that came before. And so it is a uniquely self-referential text, but not in a way that is implausibly human curated. The uniqueness of the circumstances contributes to the uniqueness of the features of the text, and definitely not in a supernatural way. Right. But it gets even worse for Chris's explanation, because in addition to the fact that what this is basically saying is, I can create links 63,779 times, which says nothing about what the text itself intended. Like, I can take Lord of the Rings and Hellboy and the Bible, and I bet you I can create thousands of cross-references as well. --- ### [Example Cross-Reference Reveals Contradiction](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c0f1425a-5c0d-40c6-8f51-324987cfb541) 🎧 45:13 - 48:00 (02:47) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/6bda5877-0298-4787-9010-780a4204990b" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Dan inspects Chris Harrison's example cross-references and finds Acts 1:18 linked to Matthew 27:3–10, a clear contradiction. - He points out that using such examples undermines the chart's claim of perfect harmony. #### 💬 Quote > When you look at the first cross-reference of the example... what do you find? A contradiction in the Bible. > — Dan McClellan Dan McClellan critiquing Harrison's exemplar cross-reference between Acts and Matthew #### 📚 Transcript **Dan McClellan:** He says, cross-references are included in the margins or footnotes of some Bibles. And then he says, example here, and there's a hyperlink to a version of a Bible that has in the margins a bunch of cross-references. And I'm like, great. I want to look at the cross-references that Chris chose to show us as an example of cross-references to see what a prototypical cross-reference in the mind of Chris Harrison is. And it is the page that is linked to is Acts chapter one. And the cross-reference that is in the dead center is Acts chapter 1 verse 18, which describes the death of Judas. The first cross reference is Matthew 27, 3 through 10, which is the contradictory account of the death of Judas. So when you look at the first cross-reference of the example of cross-references provided by Chris Harrison, what do you find? A contradiction in the Bible. And we've gone over this contradiction before. I think we have. Have we talked about the death yeah, yeah. We did the **Dan Beecher:** various Judas's exploding in whatever way he's going to explode. **Dan McClellan:** And, you know, we know that if you need these texts to both be accurate descriptions of a single event, you can force them through the square hole. Right. But for anybody capable of abstract and critical thought, these very clearly contradict each other. And so I think it's funny to try to use this as evidence of something when your evidence directly refutes and contradicts your claim. And then the other references are Matthew 18, 7, 26, 14, 15, 24, Mark 14. And these are references to Jesus basically lamenting Judas's destiny. Yeah. And so, okay, great. You've got Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all talking about Judas because they're four different tellings of the same story. Right. So it's like these- That's a pretty solid and easy to correlate. Yeah, that's pretty low-hanging fruit. That's an accident of having four different tellings of the same story. Nothing's supernatural about anything yet. Right. And so the fact that when I look at that one verse, I see one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight cross-references in the one verse. One of them's a contradiction, and the others are just the same story told four different times by the four different authors. --- ### [Images Get Repurposed To Mislead](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1a47345c-ec65-4012-8d19-e9a6140d4fdb) 🎧 51:50 - 53:58 (02:07) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/1c53e257-bade-442d-98bd-52df2a1739e5" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Misattributed or repurposed images circulate quickly; a visualization of Adam Lambert's timeline was relabeled as Quran cross-references. - This shows how visual similarity plus blur can be weaponized to make false comparative claims. #### 💬 Quote > I saved the image and then did a reverse image search... it took me to a website called Adam Lambert full circle moments and firsts. > — Dan McClellan Dan McClellan describing finding the original source of a falsely labeled chart via reverse image search #### 📚 Transcript **Dan McClellan:** and our book is real. Yeah. And the first time I saw this, I was like, that doesn't look right. Like the Quran has an awful lot of cross-references. And you can even find books published on cross-references in the Quran. There are a lot of them. And so I did something that the overwhelming majority of the people on the internet don't seem capable of. I saved the image and then did a reverse image search. Uh-oh. For those of you out there who don't know about this, go to like tineye.com or you can even just go to Google Images and you plop in the image and it will tell you where this is found on the internet. TinEye I like because it will tell you can sort them according to date. So it will give you the earliest occurrence of this image anywhere on the internet. Drop it in there. I took this chart, I dropped it in there, and it took me to a website called Adam Lambert full circle moments and firsts. What this is, is a timeline of the life of the American idol singer, Adam Lambert with life events. And when they like come around again or capitulate or whatever and so you can and and the people who say cross-references in the karam it's a it's a fuzzy chart you can't really tell what's going on there you can't read anything but if you just you know do a reverse image search or you go to that website you can see that the events are like American Idol Audition, San Francisco, California, July 17th, 2008. And then 2009, Meeting Madonna, Madonna's Home, New York City, New York, May 27th, 2009. Ring of Fire, Glam Nation Tour, Ryman Auditorium, Nashville, Tennessee, July 7th, 2010. Somebody found a chart that looked similar, but had significantly fewer connections, and were like, I'm taking this. --- ### [Selective Readings Fuel Religious Hostility](https://share.snipd.com/snip/32dd2725-9161-48f8-95d6-64bce23752d5) 🎧 55:32 - 58:01 (02:28) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/c4955d40-3aff-49a7-9493-cda7a1dc64d6" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Dan and Dan note modern religious polemics often weaponize selective textual readings to demonize other faiths. - They argue both Bible and Quran contain violent passages that can be and are selectively used for political ends. #### 💬 Quote > If people find meaning in the more violent parts of the text and decide they're going to go out and do something desperate... that's going to happen. > — Dan McClellan Dan McClellan on how selective engagement with violent texts can lead to real-world violence #### 📚 Transcript **Dan Beecher:** And I was like, really? That's, that's so like the desire to just, just full on slander Islam with no knowledge, just, just invective is amazing. **Dan McClellan:** And a lot of them will be outraged at anything remotely similar coming from non-Christian religions. Like, have you ever seen people who are like, the Talmud says Jesus is boiling in a pot of feces for eternity. It's like, well, you just said Muslims worship Satan. Right. On what grounds do you say what you're saying is appropriate and what this 2,000 text said is inappropriate? And I don't know if anyone has noticed, but there has been an increase in Islamophobic rhetoric on the part of evangelical Christians online recently. there's been a, like, there are influencers who are like, Islam is the next mountain that we're going to conquer. And so there is an intentional and a concerted effort to turn everyone's sights on Islam. So there's going to be a lot of Islamophobic crap on the internet. Push back against that, folks. Yeah. We'll see that. And especially if people are using like Sam Harris post-2011 Islamophobic pseudo-scholarship. That stuff's no good. But you have like Ali Beth Stuckey coming out and saying literally 99% of the world's terrorism is, is rooted in Islam. It's a, it's a uniquely and inherently violent religion. It's like, you've got more violent passages in the Bible than you do in the Quran. And they'll be like, well, obviously Jesus, you know, said this, that, and the other. And like, okay, that doesn't make those passages go away. Yeah. That is just you renegotiating what you think the Bible is telling you. And guess what? People do the same thing with the Quran. Right. Which is why you **Dan Beecher:** have... Do you want us to find messages of peace and love in the Quran? Because we can find them. Yeah. They're there. Yeah. And they'll be like, no, no, they have to interpret **Dan McClellan:** it this way. And it's like, well, nobody, you don't think you have to interpret the Bible that way. Everybody's going to engage with their texts in ways that make them meaningful and useful. --- Created with [Snipd](https://www.snipd.com) | Highlight & Take Notes from Podcasts