Blasphemy

6 Episodes

Blasphemy is speech or conduct understood to dishonor, insult, or profane a deity, divine name, or sacred reality. In biblical and early Jewish and Christian texts, it can cover more than direct insults to God, including claims, accusations, or forms of speech judged to diminish divine status, agency, or holiness.

Why this topic matters

Blasphemy keeps resurfacing because it exposes how unstable supposedly obvious religious boundaries can be. On the show, the term often opens into questions about what ancient authors thought counted as insulting God, profaning the divine name, or wrongly attributing divine power. That matters especially in discussions of the so-called unforgivable sin, where the text is more context-bound and ambiguous than later doctrinal certainty usually admits.

Debates over blasphemy also illuminate how flexible divine categories were in antiquity. Episodes on Jesus, divine agency, and early Jewish belief use blasphemy to show that accusations of impiety did not always mean someone was claiming to be the one God of Israel in a later creedal sense; they could also reflect anxiety about humans, angels, or other figures crossing lines around divine status, sacred speech, and authorized representation.

Where to start

Start here for the best in-depth listening on Blasphemy: featured segments, featured episodes, and the episode with the most mentions.

Quotes from the Data

“It seems like the original setting, the original context for this notion of an unforgivable sin is the fact that what these folks are doing is basically blaspheming the work of the Holy Spirit through Jesus, saying what Jesus does is inspired and controlled by Satan. No, it's actually the Holy Spirit. How dare you call the Holy Spirit Satan?”

Dan McClellan Episode 148

“It is a bit ambiguous. It's not clear, which I think supports the notion that it's not like a specific word or sentence or statement. It's not like, "I declare blasphemy against the Holy Spirit," and then it's like, "Okay, well, you've done it."”

Dan McClellan Episode 148

“This is a claim to being this exalted human or this name-bearing angel. And this is akin to saying I'm divine, which is a type of blasphemy. And so a lot of people will say they wouldn't have tried to stone him for any other reason but claiming to be God. But blasphemy includes so many more things than just claiming to be God, right?”

Dan McClellan Episode 42

“When you're reading the Greek of Exodus in the synagogue and it says, don't blaspheme God. In Hebrew, when Elohim is translated into the Greek, it's the gods—that is, theoi, plural. Like, don't blaspheme the gods.”

David A. Burnett Episode 19

Top episodes

Ranked by mentions of Blasphemy across the transcript. Start with the top mention above, then keep going here.

All episodes

Every episode currently tagged with Blasphemy.