Where Dan Models True Scholarship

The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues by Daniel McClellan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is such a great book. Highly recommended. And not just for people interested in the Bible or the history of religion--but definitely for those guys, as well.

Dan is one of the best things to happen to the world during COVID. He has a wide web presence, but I know him from TikTok, and he's amazing over there. Everything he brings to this wide discussion on social media is present in this book, which is why I love it.

First of all, the topics here--whether god lies in the Bible, whether he had a wife in the Bible, what the Bible "says" about abortion or rape or Satan, and so on--are interesting to many of us. Even non-religious people are affected by the beliefs people hold on these topics, by the arguments they make about them, by the policies they support or oppose based on these beliefs. And for someone raised in a religious tradition, discovering that many things I thought were so were not so, actually--well, that's like finding a secret room in your attic or something. Surprising. Exciting. Strange. And Dan nails these topics, presenting amazing evidence from a wide variety of sources to support his positions.

But when you get down to it, the central theme of his writing is always "Data over Dogma," and that controls everything he puts out. It's not just "prove your point with better examples than the other guy;" it's more like "amend your belief to correspond to what is demonstrated by scholarship, whether or not it matches what you were raised to believe." Combined with that, he shows great restraint in his rhetoric, very rarely employing sarcasm or negativity even when *ahem* we all feel like he could. That is because, I think, he deeply believes in the worth of persons--even people he absolutely disagrees with. And in all his videos and writing, at every step, he demonstrates the way we might move forward in our divided culture if we agreed to interact in a more elevated, careful way. Showing respect to people he disagrees with is a powerful example. Standing with the disenfranchised and marginalized instead of the entrenched powers when the data is ambiguous is another. Taking care in his language to avoid offense is another. Dan doesn't want the conversation derailed by unkindness or anger. People come after him, but he doesn't take the bait emotionally.

Instead, he writes a great book.

There are surprising, fun things in this book. There is a ton of amazing research (from many people) and the best modern scholarship, all centered on exciting questions that I wanted answers to. All of that makes it worth reading, without doubt. The content is fantastic. But the example he sets here (and in regular life) is probably the bigger reason to look at this book. This is how academics should work. This is how we should talk to each other. This is how we incorporate new information into our lives, even if it contradicts things we always believed.

Highly recommended.

View all my reviews

Where Samson Does One Last Trick

Samson Agonistes by John Milton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I rather enjoy Milton, and Samson Agonistes is another work of his that I find interesting and engaging to read just for no reason at all. I am largely a genre fiction reader--fantasy, SF, mystery, pulp--and I'm not terribly patient with dry old poetry, but Milton, for some reason, is a pretty good fit. I'm trying to figure out why.

It's not like he's totally straightforward in his writing. There are so many obscure references and allusions that most of us could get pretty lost. But perhaps I'm fortunate in that I have enough of them in common with him (churchy childhood and all) that I get a lot of it, and the stuff I miss doesn't matter too much in terms of comprehension. Or enjoyment.

But these aren't stories that are hard to follow. IMO, the biggest hindrance to enjoyment of older literature is usually comprehension, and these are, of course, retellings of famous stories; that familiarity is a huge aid to comprehension. Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained are largely fictionalized, with a lot of added material, but the main contours of the story in Genesis are largely intact. This story, basically the last day in the life of Samson, the strongman from the Bible, hews a little closer to the original story, being much shorter, with fewer additional scenes or characters. And I think it works.

If you recall, Samson was an Israelite hero, defeating the Philistines in battle with his great strength. That was a gift from god, and it depended on him never cutting his hair. Delilah, his Philistine wife, eventually coaxed the secret out of him. She cut his hair, taking his strength away, and he was captured and blinded and made a slave. This poem (a Greek-style tragic play, actually) tells about his last day, when his father came to try to ransom him (invented detail), but he got dragged to the temple to perform feats of strength, which had largely returned to him. Then, when he gets the chance, he pushes the pillars down in the temple, burying huge numbers of Philistines and dying in the process.

Now, Milton likes to control women waaaay too much for me, spending a lot of time blaming them (and the men who don't control them) for being kicked out of Eden and for Samson being captured. But allowing for his Puritan attitudes a little bit, the story is generally entertaining and thought-provoking. This poem is just under 1800 lines, making it a little long for a single sitting, probably, but not too long to read in bits over several days. It's not meant to be performed like a regular play, but I like imagining how it could be realized as an animation or radio drama or some other thing...

Anyway, yeah, I liked it. Recommended for people who sometimes read epic poetry or adjacent literature.

View all my reviews