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Hey, everybody, I’m Dan McClellan.

And I’m Dan Beecher.

And this is Data Over Dogma, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things today, Dan?

Things are good. We got a—we got a corker coming up. We—all right, we got a fireball coming at you with this one today. I think today’s show is going to be fun. The first part is “What’s That?”, and what we’re going to be talking about is the Great Commission. Or is it?

Is it all that great?

How great is it? I don’t know. We’re going to get to it. We’re going to—we’re going to figure out if you should actually be annoying people on planes about Jesus and then, oh, we’re going to get steamy, baby. It’s Data After Dark, because we’re going to talk about masturbation.

Yes. Not the hows and—and whys.

Yeah. This will not be instructional in nature.

Yes. But we are going to talk about what’s going on. Does the Bible have anything to say about this? Does the Bible care?

I am assured, or at least younger Dan was very much assured, that the Bible had stuff to say about this. So we’ll have to get into that in the second half of the show. But first, “What’s That?” All right, so the Great Commission is what we’re talking about, and we’ll expand on it. But I guess we’re starting in Matthew 28, is that right?

Yes, yes. Here we have the Great Commission is the title that is generally given for it. It’s an okay commission, really. I think the—you know, their earlier work was—was better. But anyway, this is the very end of the Gospel of Matthew. This is where they tie it all off with a neat little bow. And this happens after the—the crucifixion of Jesus and the resurrection, verse 16 of Matthew 28: “Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him, but they doubted.” Interesting little tidbit there because some translations say “but some doubted,” and others say “but they doubted.”

Yeah, it’s—maybe, maybe we’ll do a segment where we talk about that at some point.

There are some people who are like, “No, they saw the resurrected Jesus. They can’t all have doubted.” Yes, that would—that wouldn’t be right. But anyway, Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” So we’re—we’re riffing on Daniel 7. We’ve got this enthronement scene, basically. And Jesus in 19 and 20 says, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” And that is the end of the Gospel of Matthew. Thus passeth the Gospel of Matthew. So we get a nice little sign-off there with Jesus’s command to disciple or to make disciples of all nations.

So, and—and therein lies the—the grand—from the Great Commission to the grand annoyance, because, oh my gosh, I have—I can’t, like, I can’t open TikTok anymore or, you know, or Threads without seeing somebody in public at the gym or on—on a park bench or on an airplane standing up and just yelling at passersby about Jesus and—and you know what—how important he is to their lives and whatever.

Yeah. Because—because we live in a world where most people aren’t aware of this.

Right, right. You’re in the United States of America.

Yeah, we’ve heard.

Yeah, we got it.

I have not had that happen in an airplane. I have had it happen in an airport. I was—oh, gosh, it was last year. I think it was coming back from one of our book events, but I was standing by the—the luggage thing, waiting for my bags. And—and, you know, it was pretty significantly delayed. Everybody was just standing there waiting. And then some guy took the opportunity to start just evangelizing as loud as he could by luggage carousel nine at the Salt Lake International Airport. And I happened to be standing right next to the dude when he started doing this. And what’s really funny is that somebody was so amused by this—this sudden public evangelizing, they took a picture, and only when they posted the picture online were they like, “That’s Dan McClellan right next to him.”

And then started sharing this, this picture far and wide. And you see me arms crossed, just, like, boring a hole into the luggage carousel with my eyes. And so I have that, that memory preserved for time and all eternity.

And there you go. Okay, so is that, I guess one of my questions is just to start this off. I read that Great Commission. I read that moment, and Jesus is talking to 11 disciples. And in a time when no one had heard, you know what I mean, where that message had been not spread far and wide.

Right.

So one wonders if this was a, like, it’s never spoken as a commission for all good Christians to go and do. It’s spoken to these guys.

Yeah. At least in the Gospel of Matthew, it is their commission. But usually this is understood as a commission that is generalizable to all Christians, everyone who takes up the cross of following Jesus. And it’s been understood in different ways throughout the history of Christianity. And there are a couple things to note about it. The idea of making disciples, it’s usually represented as converting people, doing missionary work. But to make one a disciple doesn’t really, I mean, it means to cause one to be a pupil, which means to teach. Like, to make someone a pupil is just to create this relationship where I’m teaching someone. And so that doesn’t necessarily mean conversion per se.

I mean, you could make the argument that it means like a formation of someone, you’re turning them into a follower of Jesus, but that has more to do with their actions after conversion than it has to do with the actual act of conversion. But it’s a short command, and it’s definitely not saying you must take every opportunity to irritate passersby and people in public. And it is on the national level, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and Son of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. But it, it is taken up, you know, when you get into, like, the medieval period. And, and even before the medieval period, this is understood in, in some contexts as a martial command, like, we’re going to go into your country, we’re going to convert your king, and then your king is then going to coerce everyone in his kingdom to convert.

Like, that was, that was a more direct fulfillment of that commission, according to medieval Christians, I think.

Well, it’s a pretty effective way of doing. Yeah, yeah, you don’t want to be one-at-a-timing it. You just get that one guy and then he just, he just makes everybody do it.

Yeah, that’s the golden goose there. You want the, you want the ruler who then, you know, forcibly converts everybody else.

And. But yeah, this, this has become an identity marker in a lot of ways, and it has been an identity marker for a long time, but its fulfillment, I think, has taken different shapes. And so in the, like, 18th and 19th centuries, when we’ve had, we’ve had these Great Awakenings in the 1700s and then in the early 1800s, and there’s been this push to, to evangelize, and you’ve got revivals and, and all this kind of stuff. And, and now in the 20th and then 21st century, I think a lot of Christians feel like this is how their merit is tested. And it’s not just, are you willing to toe the line, but fundamentally it is, are you truly converted? Because if you’re, if you’re truly converted and you understand the stakes and you are committed to them, then you would ostensibly be willing to just wear out your life making sure that everyone else knows what’s at stake and is making good decisions in relation to what’s at stake.

Yeah. And that makes sense. One of the things that I see a lot online, again, is when someone posts their, you know, themselves hollering at strangers, and then someone else says, hey, don’t do that, please. The frequent rejoinder is except that I have to because I genuinely care. And, you know, for, for some of them, I don’t believe I like, for most of it, I think it’s about costly signaling, those kinds of things that we’ve talked about. But I, but for some, I, I honestly believe that some of them, it’s, to them a sense of, I’m trying to save people who, from an eternity in hell or from a, you know, from whatever imagined eternity there is. I’m just trying to get them on the right side of things as they see it. And there’s some nobility in that.

I can honor that, but it just doesn’t seem like the, the way. In the ways that I know that a lot of it is just the costly signaling is that they don’t concern themselves with how effective their message is.

Whether that is. Tactic of hollering at folks is actually helpful.

Yeah. It’s. It’s off their plate.

It’s not on me anymore.

Right.

Which. Which demonstrates that at least for those folks, it really isn’t about saving souls as much as it is about checking the box.

Right.

As much as it is about performing the. The concern. And when it comes to the folks who are so convicted of the importance of this, I think that’s kind of a situational thing. I think that’s a state of mind that is pretty rare. And when it happens, I think it’s the product of some kind of. I think people try to gin up that they try to force that mindset. But at the same time that’s not a healthy mindset. And I don’t think people are genuinely in that state of mind for long periods of time. I think it is acute small bursts of I gotta get everybody saved. Because that’s not a sustainable state of mind.

For it will drive you literally insane.

Even for a single day. You cannot sustain that state of mind. Which I think means that people are intentionally putting themselves in that state of mind. I think as a part of the costly signaling process. Because they want to feel like this is sincere.

And so they. They kind of steel themselves and they. They try to get in. Get that, you know, get the feeling flowing. And, and, and so I think it is something that they’re doing intentionally or if it’s just a mood that hits them from time to time. I think it’s probably as a result of. Of putting themselves in situations where. Where it’s more likely to happen. But. But yeah, that’s. That’s something you can’t sustain. You. You would drive yourself despondent just by how little it actually works. If you are just dedicating your waking hours and all your efforts and time talents and energies to saving people. Because you just cannot stand to think of people suffering the damnation of eternal hellfire. That. That will drive you out of your mind.

And it does. And people get really injured by this. I mean we have. We literally had one of our patrons. We on in our Patreon patrons-only content available for all patrons now on patreon.com but we had somebody literally write into us and just say, hey, I use. I’m still struggling with some of these ideas because it was implanted into me from a very young age that if I. Not only do I. Is it my job to go out and convert people, but. But if I fail at that, then it’s my fault that that person’s going to hell.

And that’s a mind bender. That is awful.

That is straight up abuse. I think so to try to. And it’s all in an effort to try to convince people to take it seriously. But when it’s kids, you’re building the foundation of their worldview and doing so in a way that they can never meet. They can never rise to that standard.

Right.

And which means they are going to see themselves as failures. And that’s. I think we talked about this as well in the after party that we always record beforehand now that, you know, when you build up a worldview that has hell right at your door constantly right there as a perpetual threat just to try to make people feel like there are real stakes.

That is so phenomenally unhealthy. And that’s why you have so many people who are in such dire straits these days when it comes to, you know, their status before God, their standing, and particularly when with all that’s going on right now, like, we’re not living in a very stable country at the moment. And so this. This kind of increased stress is. Can definitely not be helpful. So it sounds like the. The modern evangelical witnessing, evangelism, conversion stuff. It sounds like we’re both pretty dedicated to the conclusion that. That the data indicate this is something that is used as an identity marker as a way to perform your belonging, as a way to perform your conviction, as a way to perform your commitment to the group and.

And its standards. But yeah, as. As you said, if you. If it meant so much to you that you were willing to give up all your time and your. Your energies and dedicate so much of your life to. Doesn’t make sense that you just accept and move on. Accept failure and move on so nonchalantly.

Well. Or that you do that you use tactics that very clearly no one around you is responding well. Yeah, like, that just seems. That just seems absurd.

You did say a word that I wanted to touch on, though.

And that is the word witness, because Matthew doesn’t say that word, but Acts does. And I think that that is an interesting thing, because in Acts—what am I in? I’m in Acts 1. Okay. Very first chapter of Acts, and it says, “But when you receive the power of the Holy Spirit, come when… but you will receive the power. Receive power.” I can’t. I’ll learn to read someday. “When the Holy Spirit has come upon you. And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.” And I thought to myself, you know, I hear evangelicals especially talk about witnessing to people, and I don’t think that the concept of witnessing or being a witness, at least as it’s spelled out here, it doesn’t feel to me like it’s evangelizing or it’s, you know, the same as the commission. It’s just when someone asks, you know what I mean?

Like, a witness is more—is far more passive than that. When you think about someone who is a witness in a—in a, you know, in a lawsuit or whatever.

You, you know, if someone says, “Hey, is Jesus cool?” You say, “Yes.” That’s the job of the witness.

Yeah. Always be ready to give an answer to those who—who ask.

Yeah. I feel like, you know what—

Do you know what the Greek word for witness is?

Martyr.

Oh, that’s interesting.

Yeah. Martus or martys; martyros is the genitive. But, yeah, that’s where the idea of a martyr comes from. This is somebody who has given their witness through the sacrifice of their life.

Oh, wow.

But, yeah, but you’re exactly right. It’s one who testifies.

In legal matters or just generally, one who attests, testifies, witnesses.

So. Yeah, I mean, I feel like that—that is a much more doable commission right there to, you know, if called upon, don’t deny it. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Well, there’s—there’s a—there’s a saying, and I don’t remember if it—I have heard it attributed to Ben Franklin. I’m—I’m pretty sure that’s not accurate, but maybe it was Ben Franklin. I don’t know. It said a good example is the best sermon. Like, there are a variety of ways to witness if giving up your life is—is like the quintessential way to witness. You don’t have to open your mouth to do that. You certainly don’t have to play a guitar on an airplane.

Right.

And so being a good example, why—why can’t that just be the way that you—you witness to people? Live your life in a way that people go, “Wow, they’ve—they’ve got something.”

There’s something special.

I want to know what it is. Yeah. I want to know what that something special is. That I—I think is more effective than irritating people so that you can show off, so you can record yourself and put it on social media or so that you can do it in front of your—your little mission group that you’re—that you’re traveling with or something like that. What we had April Ajoy talking about—they used to go to restaurants and they would try to get the server to pray with them.

And that was how they—

The sinner’s prayer or whatever. And then once they said that, whether it was sincere or not, that’s another soul for Jesus. They win.

The end or something.

And that—that should—that should be an adequate tip for your service.

Right.

Don’t get me started on that.

But, yeah, that’s true. You were a server for a long time.

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

You know, the sting of someone stiffing.

Yeah, no, that was the worst. There’s—I remember a couple of times we would—they had like little missionary tracts, like little pamphlets, but they were on a single piece of paper and half of one side looked like a $20 bill.

And so you folded it up and you stuck it like under the glass so it looked like there was a $20 bill sticking out from under the glass. And you open it up, the server would grab it and immediately be like, “Oh, it’s one of those.” And it would be like, “You know what’s worth more than $20? Your eternal soul.” And you know, and so, by the—

By the way, anyone out there who has ever done that, you owe someone something.

Don’t do that anymore. Because if there’s something that will send you to hell, stiffing a server and then by—by lying to them and pretending that there was a $20 bill there, that’s—that’s—that’s worthy. That’ll get you.

I think it’s interesting that there are—you know, when I was sort of prepping for this, one of the things that I looked at was a series of scriptures that basically said, listen, it’s not the people, or at least my interpretation, and I’d like to hear your thing, but it feels like it’s not the people that are doing the converting. You know, Paul in Corinthians says, “I planted, Apollos watered”—I don’t know what that is—“but God gave the growth,” or in Acts, “the Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul.” So it’s the Lord that’s doing the work, right? Yeah, it feels like that takes a lot of the pressure off.

Yeah, it does take a lot of the pressure off. The idea being the Spirit is what actually convicts, the Spirit is what converts. You’re just the facilitator. By getting up and playing your guitar in the middle of the flight, you’re bringing the Spirit in and then the people will be convicted. What baffles me, like, increasingly I’m seeing those kinds of videos on social media. It’s like, look, the only people who are not supremely irritated by you are the people who are already followers of Jesus. And so who are you performing for? Yeah, nobody’s like, “You know what, I’ve never thought about this, but she’s got a point.”

My goodness. You know, I was just—I was sitting next to someone and she started yelling at everybody and it just really convinced me.

Now I feel bad about watching The Boys on this flight. So I guess I should—I guess I should just go get tickets to see Reagan because now—now I’m a—I’m a—yeah, red-blooded patriot who suddenly doesn’t know how history works. But that’s beside the point. That’s the Christian nationalist part which so frequently attends a lot of what’s going on here is not—is not central to the Great Commission.

But so I guess—I guess part of the thing for me is if looking at the world as it is, especially the United States or you know, predominantly Christian societies—

—is the Great Commission even relevant to life here is one of my questions.

I think that it is. It is relevant because it is an important and a central identity marker. It is—I don’t think it is, particularly if we’re just looking at conversion rates and things like that. I don’t think there’s—I don’t think there’s a relationship. I don’t think there’s a correlation between that kind of witnessing and what’s going on. Because the most effective means of—I mean, talking about a good example being the best sermon—I mean the people who are converting lots of people these days are just famous people who begin to endorse Christianity ideas. You get Joe Rogan, you get Jordan Peterson, you get some of these people to just be like, “The Christians got a point.” And you get the—and you know, there’s—there’s definitely a political element to how that’s working.

But you know, that’s doing a lot more to convert all the cis hetero white men who—who feel like they’re not that special anymore than any amount of singing songs on airplanes and—and by Baggage Carousel number 10 at the Salt Lake International Airport.

So. So as a tool of boundary maintenance, as a tool of—as a credibility-enhancing display, I think it’s going to continue to be central. I don’t think it really plays a role in—in the spread of the gospel, at least as evangelicals understand it. And I don’t think it changes an awful lot of hearts so much as it changes commitment to social identities.

Well, and let’s be honest, it gets clicks. You know what I mean?

It’s like, it’s like half of it is just, you know, angry, angry people who want you to stop and other people who are—it gets engagement. Yeah. In, on, on the internet and that’s sort of, that, that may be the greater commission than Matthew’s is just, you know, get likes and, and comments.

I, I’ve been wondering if, if I were to just entirely abdicate my commitment to scholarly standards and my goals on social media. I have had people many times reach out to me and be like, you would be such an effective preacher if you just honored God on your channel and all this. And I’ve, I’ve been tickled by the thought of, like, how influential could I be if suddenly I turned into one of these folks who was, who was just out there preaching the word and using my, my channel to, to, you know, push Christ on, on everybody. I, I just have to laugh at, at the notion. But yeah, the question is who between.

The two of us, who could, who could get their, their, their online ministry for money better? Because, because the story of a former prominent atheist who then turns around and shills for Jesus. Yes, that plays in the pews, I’ll tell you right now.

Yeah, yeah. And, but, but also a prominent skeptic slash academic. Yeah, I imagine there’d be, there’d be.

Look for us to start a church sometime soon, y’all.

Yeah. If the inflation gets too bad and you know, be on the lookout because, because we might just have to turn heel and.

And go chase the, the Benjamins.

Don’t tell them about this episode, though. Don’t, don’t, don’t screw our thing over by letting, letting them know.

What’s funny is every, every time I, there are like a handful of content creators that like all their whole shtick is like, did we just prove God and we proved the Bible and all this kind of stuff. And, and every now and then I’ll respond to one of these videos and there will be a comment here and there from somebody who’s like, you know, I followed this person for years and they used to do another kind of content and then at some point they just pivoted.

And it’s like, I know what point it was. It was the point at which the dollar signs started going kaching, kaching, kaching in their eyeballs. So.

Well, there you go. You know, this whole conversation started because I was annoyed by a meme that I saw that was, you know, the, the, the Coexist thing where it’s, it’s, you know, all of the different religious symbols form the word coexist and that was crossed out and instead the word convert was, was highlighted.

And I just thought, no, that’s not the thing that.

Yeah, it’s that. So, yeah, I’m really annoyed by that. But, you know, this is going back to a kind of crusade-style Christianity where, oh, it looks like the Turks have the Holy Land. It’s time to go crusading again. Like, it’s a position. There’s been a lot of criticism of monotheism and monotheistic faiths on the ground that they don’t allow for pluriformity. Like, if you truly are committed to a monotheistic faith, then everybody has to get on your side, and you can’t allow people to not be on your side. That’s been a criticism that has been leveled by some folks. I don’t think it’s, it’s that accurate. But, you know, there is a logic to it. And when Christians do that kind of stuff, it kind of makes me sympathize with the people who get the ick from.

From the idea of monotheism. So.

Yeah, all right. Well, no, the answer is do coexist everyone, and don’t yell at anyone on airplanes, please. All right, well, let’s move on to Data After Dark. All right, Dan, the first thing that I thought of when we, when we, you know, when you suggested that we would do masturbation on the show. Not doing masturbation on the show, but rather discuss the concept of masturbation. Look for the Data. The Data over Dogma OnlyFans coming soon, but it’s not up yet. So, so we’ll, we’ll, we’ll just talk about the concept. And of course, my brain went immediately to Onan and Genesis 38. And I don’t, and, and I went and revisited that story.

And, you know, we’ve talked about Onan before on the show. It’s not about masturbation.

No, no, it’s not the problem. Although it is, I think that somebody said there are some languages where Onan has become a euphemism or the, the term to refer to masturbation.

Well, yeah. Onanism is masturbation. In sort of the parlance of our time.

He fixes the cable. Anyway, no. And yeah, the story is just not about that. And it has been used as a passage that is thought to prohibit coitus interruptus, to prohibit any kind of birth control, and to prohibit masturbation. It’s just not what the discussion is about.

Yeah, it’s nothing. It’s none of those things. We talked about Levirate marriage and his duty and the fact that he was not fulfilling his duty as a Levirate husband to his brother’s wife.

Yeah. When God was like, I’m gonna go peek in on Onan making sure everything’s going okay there and going, oh, I saw that the whole problem was that he wouldn’t give his new wife, his late brother’s widow, a child.

Right.

That’s the problem.

Right.

Cut and dry. And also it’s not masturbation to have sex with your wife.

Correct.

And then yeah, like I don’t, I’m, I’m. Somebody has to have looked into this or discussed the categories here. But I’m sure that completion outside of the spouse is, I’m not sure that even qualifies the pull-out method.

No. It’s generally not considered masturbatory.

Right. So yeah, it’s irrelevant when it comes to what the Bible thinks about masturbation. That is irrelevant. And in my opinion the Bible never addresses it. I don’t see anywhere in the Bible that can plausibly be argued to be talking about self-pleasure. And I think there are reasons for that. But one passage that comes up, I think in the past I’ve made a video or two where I’ve talked a bit about this, one passage that comes up is Matthew 5:30 and it says if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee, for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

Yeah, that came right after the, after Onan. If your eye.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean it, that is the part where it’s talking about, you know, if you look to lust.

After a woman. Yeah, yeah.

Then you’ve committed adultery in your heart. Which I think is a problematic theology anyway.

Yeah, yeah. And you know somebody, if they really want to parse that, they might be able to be like look, I mean you’re usually thinking about something when you’re trying to get that engine revving, you’re looking at something or you’re thinking about something, but either way you’re doing what is being referenced there. Maybe it’s not your right hand. Maybe you’re left-handed. Maybe you have some kind of supplementation that you’re using. Our good Vice President is known to patronize furniture from what I’ve heard.

But allegedly. Allegedly.

Yeah. But it still counts. I think if we want to read it that way. I don’t think the author was trying to say that yes, this is buried in a context of sex, but it is primarily with a woman. And this brings up a point about all this. When we look at what kinds of sexual activities are prohibited throughout the Bible, overwhelmingly they have to do with prohibited unions. What types of people are not allowed to get together? And I think the reason that masturbation didn’t even qualify and is not even brought up is because we tend to think of sex as anything that has the goal of trying to achieve orgasm or arousal or something like that. They didn’t think about it that way in the ancient world. Like, sex, what was it?

I think one of the things that was always understood to be involved was a penis. Have to have a penis. Okay.

Right. Which we now know that doesn’t have to be a.

No, it doesn’t need to be in the room. But when we look at Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, where we have the prohibition on a man taking the insertive role in an act of male same-sex intercourse, the very next thing that is addressed is bestiality. And the authors say women are also prohibited from this. But that doesn’t say anything about women when it comes to the same-sex stuff.

Right.

And so I think the reason there are a lot of scholars who have talked about this is that if there’s no penis involved, then it doesn’t even count as sex. And so lesbian, female, same-sex intercourse doesn’t even count. It isn’t even a concern at least for the Hebrew Bible worldview.

Yeah, I was gonna get to that because there’s a lot. I was shocked when I dove into this how much I found about like purity of like, like how you, how you are made impure by an ejaculation. Like how much impurity and how many rules there are surrounding this, you know, the discharge of seed.

Yes. And that the, the only thing that we get in Leviticus is, is a nocturnal emission, which is at least in terms of—yeah, there’s, there’s impurity associated with discharge, just like there’s impurity associated with a woman’s menstrual cycle.

Right.

But you do have the, the references to a nocturnal emission, which is something where you’re not even cognizant of what’s going on. That’s not something going on intentionally unless you have, unless you have an admirable grip on your, you know, lucid dreaming.

Right. Yeah.

In which case, congratulations.

But that sounds amazing.

But yeah, and then it talks about impurities associated with that. But that’s not a prohibition on the act.

And so you can’t really read masturbation into that and say therefore masturbation would be considered unclean or prohibited,

when that’s clearly not what’s going on.

Well, and when, you know, I’m looking at Leviticus 15 and it’s saying when any man has a discharge from his member, his discharge makes him unclean. But that includes in the marriage bed. You know what I mean? Like that includes any kind of thing.

And so. And obviously sex within a marital context is not going to be prohibited or, or sinful. So it, so yeah, I mean it. The fact that there is ritual impurity or uncleanness doesn’t denote sin.

Right. And that’s a very important point to make about impurity. The ritual impurity does not impute wrongdoing. It’s just this is a state that requires a specific ritual act to, to resolve. And so, yeah, there’s no prohibition involved there. And people have, scholars have pointed out when it comes to getting back to the same-sex intercourse thing, if the issue was the wasting of seed and potential progeny, we would expect masturbation to be quite explicitly prohibited because that could ostensibly be one of the most wasteful activities that an Israelite man could engage in when it comes to potential progeny. So you would expect that to be prohibited. And it is not even addressed.

Which is why I think the waste, wasting seed argument doesn’t really, doesn’t really obtain when it comes to the prohibitions on same-sex intercourse.

That’s interesting because I have read like what Aristotle said about semen and what a bunch of—in the ancient world there were lots of different theories about what semen was. And you know, what, what, what it purported, you know, a lot of times it was, it was vitality, it was life force or whatever.

Oh my gosh, that’s—

Oh gosh, that’s a deeply problematic view on. I mean, get over yourself, dude.

Oh, it still goes on today.

I know.

If you’ve seen what’s—

Dr. Strange—

Dr. Strangelove. Yeah.

You know that I deny them my essence. Oh, I saw a video, I saw a video today, just this morning. Somebody, somebody sent it to me and it was this guy who was talking about. Here’s this thing. His idea was, “Do not cast pearls before swine.” He was like, in ancient Aramaic, the word pearl was used as a metaphor for semen. So that passage. And, and he was like, so meant.

And it was so funny. His video starts off—I, I can’t remember exactly what it says. I’ve got to do a response to this video. But his video starts off with something about how your dick matters. That’s how the video started off. And I was like, I’m in. I’m hooked. I’m locked in. Tell me why.

I was really hoping it was don’t masturbate on pigs, but. Okay, fine.

Oh, gosh, now you’re making me. What’s the show? Black Mirror. I saw exactly one episode of that, and it was that episode, and I was like, pass.

I’m done. This is over.

But no, he was like, don’t cast your pearls before digital swine.

Oh, my.

Was where he was going with it. But. But yeah, that’s. That’s. And it’s. And the word is margalita, marganita. Like, there are a bunch of different ways it’s spelled in Aramaic. And I was looking at everything I could find on how this was used metaphorically in the ancient world. And the closest anyone ever got to what he was saying was that as a pearl is something precious, and therefore it was used metaphorically to refer to precious things, which usually meant good ideas, precious thoughts. The Gospel, virginity, was the closest anyone ever got to something related to this guy’s semen.

But yeah, obviously the. And. And he. He went through the whole, this is your vitality. This is your power. This is your manliness. This is your essence. And. And, you know, don’t waste it, and they can rob you of it and all this kind of stuff, and it’s just laughably. Laughably bad. I’ve got to do a response to that video.

Yeah. It’s so funny how. I mean, I get it in the sense that feels good to lionize and make yourself seem cool and big.

And make. And so important.

And for the. And for millennia, women were considered vessels, and this emission from men was considered the life force. And so the man was the one who was responsible for this other human being placed into this vessel.

And I think it was a real blow to a lot of people when we finally, shockingly recently figured out, oh, she contributes half, he contributes half. It’s a 50/50 split.

Well, and. And the overwhelming majority of it goes on in her body.

All of it goes on in her. Yeah, exactly. Like all of the important moments go on in her body. And actually, you know, her stuff. Yeah, it’s. But it’s so funny how the ancient world especially, you know, if you ever want to have some fun, look up what a homunculus was in the ancient world. But. But yeah, it’s. It’s just such a. It’s so. It’s such an aggrandizement of. Of the male thing when the female thing is just. When a. The male thing is just. It’s just goo. It’s not. Yeah, it’s not magic.

Yes. Your body’s gonna expel it into your sheets if. If you’re not doing it anyway. So it’s not. It’s not anything all that special. And so if you. If you really want there to be a verse about masturbation in the Bible, just sign off on that guy’s asinine theory about what pearls are. Are representing. But, yeah, other than that, I think. I don’t think there’s anything in there. Now. I, I will say this, though. In the New Testament, in Paul, in Matthew, you do get the sense that sexual desire is something that is. You know, you’re better off without it. You exercise discipline, overcome these urges because they’re the, you know, they’re the artifacts of the baser urges of living in a fleshly body, and we’re trying to transcend the flesh. It’s a very kind of middle Platonic view of the function of sex.

And so I think someone like a Paul or an author of Matthew would be like, yeah, maybe put the stroke books away. Maybe that’s not a good idea, because all it’s doing is satisfying those baser urges. So I think there’s a make. There’s a. There’s a mace to cake. No, there’s a case to make—the dyslexia bubbles to the surface every now and then, if that. If that counts as dyslexia. But there’s a case to make that those authors, if you ask them about masturbation, would have been like, ooh, no. But at the same time, there’s a case to make that when it came to what you were doing with your own self in your own shower, that it was nobody else’s business but your own.

And for every bit of sort of Pauline prudishness, you also have to contend with the fact that Song of Songs made it into the. Made the final cut. You know what I mean? Sexuality is not a decided thing, I don’t think.

Well, and, and a lot of the, the Pauline prudishness and, and the author of the Gospel of Matthew saying some make themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Like all of that is reflecting the influence of Greco-Roman convention and philosophy. Like when without that influence. Yeah, we’re, we’re definitely treating sex as something natural or at least more so. You know, Judaism had its own before Judaism. I would say Judaism doesn’t exist prior to the Greco-Roman period. But Judean and ancient Israelite and Judahite thought didn’t really treat sex as something that was that sacrosanct. It was really relationships that were considered the most important thing. And a lot of those relationships were related to property rights, which is why women were expected to be virgins when they got married. Men, not so, not so much.

It didn’t really matter. Like the, the standards were different because there were kind of social contracts that were, that were at play here and the values and standards surrounding sex reflected those, those social contracts and values and things like that. So. Which is, yeah, I think why masturbation probably wasn’t a big deal for anyone in prior to Greco-Roman period Judaism.

Well, I wish someone had told 12-year-old me that because I gotta say I, that is not the messaging that I received.

Well, and that’s, and that’s part of the, the 12-year-old you was not a pre-Greco-Roman Judean. You’re a 20th century, not as late 20th century as me, but a late 20th century child in America. We’re, we’re looking back through countless interpretive lenses that have been shellacked over the top of those ancient Judean ideologies. And that I think goes to show just how much we’re negotiating with everything. When you’ve got the pre-Greek philosophical ideas and the Greek philosophical ideas in the Bible, which one takes precedence? You got to figure out one of them’s going to win out over the other.

It’s whichever one makes a little kid feel real, real bad. Because I feel like what’s happening, yeah,

The rhetorical utility, the utility of the dogma to your boundary maintenance, to your identity politics is usually going to be the deciding factor in which part of the Bible gets to be in charge and which part has to be reinterpreted.

Right.

And so I, I think that’s what’s going on in you know, high-demand religions in those religious traditions that have very, very firm boundaries and where most of what they’re doing is curating those boundaries. And Mormonism in a lot of ways qualifies as one of those kinds of religions.

Every opportunity you get to try to draw up a costly signal is going to be exploited. And so for that reason, for a long time, masturbation has been just straight. No, no. Now when you look in early Mormonism, nobody seems to care. Nobody’s talking about it, nobody’s telling their kids, hey, stop touching that. It’s really in the 20th century. I think that it, that it becomes very acute, reaches a, a climax, so to speak. My apologies, but.

Damn it.

But, but I think in, in recent years you’ve seen a pulling back, a pulling out, so to speak.

Again, my apologies, an onanism, if you will.

Related to the emphasis on this kind of stuff. And, and I, and I hope it’s because people are realizing it’s unhealthy, it’s harmful, it’s not a healthy way to think about your body and about sex. And you know, we have stories of people who’ve taken their own lives, children who have taken their own lives because they couldn’t stop doing this thing that their church leaders and their families had convinced them made them as bad as a murderer.

Or convince them that they were. Be better off dead.

And that’s so phenomenally stupid.

It’s pretty rough. It’s pretty rough to, to, to put that on anybody but a kid especially is. Yeah. Is ill-equipped to deal with that kind. That kind. And ill-equipped to not do that. Let me tell you something.

Ill-equipped to not do what they’re equipped to do.

Puberty, that was, I was, I was not gonna not do it. That’s just, I mean, I tried, I tried for real, real hard, but that’s a losing battle, at least for me. So there you go. All right. Well, I, I’m glad to hear that. Our conclusion is that it’s the, that the Bible is at least neutral on the, on the topic.

Silence on it. Yeah.

True. It’s certainly not condemnatory.

Yeah. Don’t, don’t make, don’t go out and make kids feel bad or, or adults. Don’t make anybody feel bad about this one. All right, well, if you would like to become a part of making this show go, you can head over to patreon.com/dataoverdogma, which is where you can sign up and give us a little bit of your money. And in return, you’ll get access to an ad-free early version of every episode as well as you can get access to the After/Before Party, which is bonus content that Dan and I do every single week. And we, you know, you can ask us your questions, you’re likely to get an answer. So that’s, that’s probably the only way that you’re likely to get an answer from us. We’re terrible in every other way. So, so that’s, that’s your best bet right there. Thanks so much to Roger Gowdy for editing the show. Thanks to Sam for being our right-hand man, and we will talk to you again next time.

Bye, everybody.

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