Daniel McClellan > Quotes

“Three very widespread and deeply embedded dogmas that I frequently run across when I talk with Bible believers are inspiration, inerrancy, and univocality. Not a single one of these is supported by any data.”
― Daniel McClellan, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues

“the Council of Nicea didn’t have anything at all to do with establishing the biblical canon. You can thank Dan Brown for popularizing that nonsense.”
― Daniel McClellan, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues

“Another dogma I’ve only mentioned in passing relates to the authority of the Bible. This is the notion that what the Bible says goes—the Bible dictates our morality to us. According to this dogma, whatever the Bible says is right or wrong should govern what we understand to be right or wrong. This is problematic.”
― Daniel McClellan, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues

“Nor do I think it’s consistent to dismiss the harmful ideology as the product of the authors’ own time while simultaneously maintaining the inerrancy, inspiration, and authority of the words themselves.”
― Daniel McClellan, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues

“Oddly enough, for most Christians today, the concern doesn’t seem to be about figuring out what the Bible actually says as much as it seems to be about convincing others of what it says. Most Christian groups feel confident they already know precisely what the Bible says, and it’s just everybody else who needs to be brought up to speed.”
― Daniel McClellan, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues

“Contrary to popular belief, the 1611 King James Version included the entire Apocrypha, although more compact editions of the KJV were frequently published without it. During the Second Great Awakening in the early nineteenth century CE, the American Bible Society and the British and Foreign Bible Society were pushing hard to distribute Bibles, and they began to omit the Apocrypha from their standard editions of the Bible, in part to make printing and distribution cheaper.”
― Daniel McClellan, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues

“People are curious, what does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?’ I said, ‘Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it.’ That’s my worldview, that’s what I believe.”5 Does Speaker Johnson really believe this? Even where it explicitly endorses chattel slavery? Even where it treats rape of a woman as a property crime against whatever man has rights over the victim’s body? Even where it acknowledges that the God of Israel demands child sacrifice? Even where it insists women aren’t allowed to teach and are supposed to just shut up because they were the ones who got duped by the talking snake? What about where it endorses communalism? What about where it says a man should gouge out his eye if that eye causes him to lust after a woman? What about where it says the most pious people will castrate themselves for the sake of the kingdom of heaven? Isn’t that what the Bible says?”
― Daniel McClellan, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues

“I’m trying to communicate positions that are shared by the majority of biblical scholars who study and publish on the relevant research questions. What this does not mean is that I think the academic consensus determines truth (it doesn’t), or that it’s always right (it’s not).”
― Daniel McClellan, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues

“Anyone who knows much at all about my social media content as well as about Mormonism will have chuckled at the notion that I am engaged in Mormon apologetics, though.”
― Daniel McClellan, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues