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LDS TikTok star debunks Bible conspiracies, misinformation


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29 minutes ago, Eschaton said:

Interesting article about LDS scholar Dan McClellan’s work on social media debunking misconceptions and conspiracy theories related to the Bible:

https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2022/12/10/jana-riess-lds-tiktok-star/

I'm not on TikTok but I've been following him on Youtube. It's great when people with a firm grasp on Biblical scholarship put information out in a way that's easy for lay people to grasp. Academic Biblical scholarship is one area that for decades has really been poorly understood outside of specialists in the field. There aren't a ton of Bill Nyes or Neil deGrasse Tyson types out there making Biblical scholarship accessible to the rest of us. 

 

Nice article, thanks for bringing that to our attention.

I know some non-LDS Christians that buy in to a lot of those conspiracy theories and Bible misconceptions, and unfortunately their same mindset will also dismiss Dan's videos simply because he is a Latter-day Saint.  

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19 minutes ago, InCognitus said:

I know some non-LDS Christians that buy in to a lot of those conspiracy theories and Bible misconceptions

I know a lot of LDS Christians with the same problem. 

I wouldn't be surprised if I have many misconceptions that I am not even aware of.  That's why I appreciate Dan's efforts to educate us lay folk in easily understandable and accessible ways - well, except for the fact that I don't/won't do tiktok. 

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I wonder if Dan’s TikToks have been noticed by church leadership, and he has had to clean up his act in order to keep his job.  Just about all of his content involves telling Christians why everything they believe is wrong.  The last few days he's switched up his usual game, and has spent a few videos telling non-Christians that what they believe is wrong.  It's a little refreshing, I wonder if it will last.

 

Edited by LoudmouthMormon
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4 hours ago, InCognitus said:

Nice article, thanks for bringing that to our attention.

I know some non-LDS Christians that buy in to a lot of those conspiracy theories and Bible misconceptions, and unfortunately their same mindset will also dismiss Dan's videos simply because he is a Latter-day Saint.  

I know plenty of LDSaints who buy into them as well. In fact, I think it's a safe bet that most general church leaders buy into a lot of the claims that Dan critiques--particularly when it comes to scripture origins and exegesis.

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1 hour ago, JustAnAustralian said:

Will be interesting to see if people's opinions on his TikToks change after this upcoming session 

Why would it?  His last session was on El and YHVH, and how they started out as two totally separate storm deities, and got merged into one.

No really - Eschaton's link shows us a Dan McLellan we rarely see.

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10 hours ago, LoudmouthMormon said:

Why would it?  His last session was on El and YHVH, and how they started out as two totally separate storm deities, and got merged into one.

No really - Eschaton's link shows us a Dan McLellan we rarely see.

YHWH was a storm deity from the South, but not El. Prior to the adoption of YHWH Israel worshiped El, Baal and others. Baal was also a storm god, very similar to Yahweh. Interestingly Baal came to be outright rejected in favor of Yahweh. Psalm 29 is thought to have originally been a hymn to Baal. Yahweh was eventually conflated with El, but they never rejected El. Mark Smith is pretty much the preeminent expert on that period, you can hear him say the same things as Dan in this podcast. 

https://thebiblefornormalpeople.podbean.com/e/episode-60-mark-smith-who-is-yahweh-where-did-yahweh-come-from/

Edited by Eschaton
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1 hour ago, Eschaton said:

YHWH was a storm deity from the South, but not El. Prior to the adoption of YHWH Israel worshiped El, Baal and others. Baal was also a storm god, very similar to Yahweh. Interestingly Baal came to be outright rejected in favor of Yahweh. Psalm 29 is thought to have originally been a hymn to Baal. Yahweh was eventually conflated with El, but they never rejected El. Mark Smith is pretty much the preeminent expert on that period, you can hear him say the same things as Dan in this podcast. 

McClellan couldn't have picked a worse medium to work on since TikTok is the worst, and he won't be getting me on there to discuss this stuff, but YHWH was not a storm diety from the south. El was not an individual god, but is a generic semitic title, much like the English word "god." It meant something like "the power" and was in many titles and names. It predated the Hebrew language which was a form that came out of Israel's isolation and stay in Egypt. As the Caananites were semitic, you see El used in their word Ba el which appears in the Bible as Bael or  Baal. In the Bible YHVH is called El Shaddai, El Gibbor, El Elyon or Elyon the Most High Power. These are actually two different beings, which the early Romanized Christianity and perhaps the disciples themselves did not realize. YHVH was not a storm god, but was a name actually born out of the Hebrew language. The letters of the early Hebrew were actually born out of the Egyptian hieroglyph system, and are still represented in our English alphabet today - for instance the letter A, which was the Hebrew aleph, which became the Greek Alpha. The Hebrew beit became the Greek bet. We still use the Greek names in the word Alphabet, but then we go on to teach our kids new names for each letter. We can actually credit the Hebrews for our own alphabet, as God used them to give us a superior writing system. The invention of the alphabet spread to the Phoenicians and Greeks, and eventually all the Mideast, and then Europe. As I said each of the Hebrew letters had a name and meaning. The letters of YHVH mean Behold/look the hand, behold/look the nail. This was not some foreign name adopted by Israel. The name of God is embedded in the very language of Hebrew, and is unique to them in ancient languages - and by the way it is not Yahweh. It is Yehovah. The German spelling was Jehovah because they would pronounce the J with our Y sound. The Hebrew had no hard J sound. There is no ancient Hebrew spelling Yahweh. Once the Hebrews adopted diacritical marks they had developed a custom of not pronouncing the name, but Karaite Jews did not follow that custom, and would often write the name as Yehovah, which even appears in the oldest Masoretic texts penned by Karaites by the way, and many other Hebrew works, which is how we ended up with the Jehovah spelling in the German works. Myth busted. Enjoy.

Edited by RevTestament
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11 minutes ago, RevTestament said:

McClellan couldn't have picked a worse medium to work on since TikTok is the worst, and he won't be getting me on there to discuss this stuff, but YHWH was not a storm diety from the south. El was not an individual god, but is a generic semitic title, much like the English word "god." It meant something like "the power" and was in many titles and names. It predated the Hebrew language which was a form that came out of Israel's isolation and stay in Egypt. As the Caananites were semitic, you see El used in their word Ba el which appears in the Bible as Bael or  Baal. In the Bible YHVH is called El Shaddai, El Gibbor, El Elyon or Elyon the Most High Power. These are actually two different beings, which the early Romanized Christianity and perhaps the disciples themselves did not realize. YHVH was not a storm god, but was a name actually born out of the Hebrew language. The letters of the early Hebrew were actually born out of the Egyptian hieroglyph system, and are still represented in our English alphabet today - for instance the letter A, which was the Hebrew aleph, which became the Greek Alpha. The Hebrew beit became the Greek bet. We still use the Greek names in the word Alphabet, but then we go on to teach our kids new names for each letter. We can actually credit the Hebrews for our own alphabet, as God used them to give us a superior writing system. The invention of the alphabet spread to the Phoenicians and Greeks, and eventually all the Mideast, and then Europe. As I said each of the Hebrew letters had a name and meaning. The letters of YHVH mean Behold/look the hand, behold/look the nail. This was not some foreign name adopted by Israel. The name of God is embedded in the very language of Hebrew, and is unique to them in ancient languages - and by the way it is not Yahweh. It is Yehovah. The German spelling was Jehovah because they would pronounce the J with our Y sound. The Hebrew had no hard J sound. There is no ancient Hebrew spelling Yahweh. Once the Hebrews adopted diacritical marks they had developed a custom of not pronouncing the name, but Karaite Jews did not follow that custom, and would often write the name as Yehovah, which even appears in the oldest Masoretic texts penned by Karaites by the way, and many other Hebrew works, which is how we ended up with the Jehovah spelling in the German works. Myth busted. Enjoy.

El is both a specific God and a generic word for God. We know that Israel originally worshipped the Canaanite El because we find buried within the text the features of that God - the pantheon that included Asherah, Baal, and so forth, the 70 sons of El who ruled the 70 nations, and so forth. We find many and various references to Yahweh/Baal as a Storm God. We see that here:

Psalm 29

1 Give to Yahweh, you heavenly beings.
    Give to Yahweh glory and power.
2 Give to Yahweh the glory his name deserves.
    Worship Yahweh in his holy splendor.

3 The voice of Yahweh rolls over the water.
    The El of glory thunders.
        Yahweh shouts over raging water.
4 The voice of Yahweh is powerful.
    The voice of Yahweh is majestic.
5 The voice of Yahweh breaks the cedars.
    Yahweh splinters the cedars of Lebanon.
6         He makes Lebanon skip along like a calf
            and Mount Sirion like a wild ox.
7 The voice of Yahweh strikes with flashes of lightning.
8 The voice of Yahweh makes the wilderness tremble.
    Yahweh makes the wilderness of Kadesh tremble.
9 The voice of Yahweh splits the oaks[a]
    and strips the trees of the forests bare.
        Everyone in his temple is saying, “Glory!”

10 Yahweh sat enthroned over the flood.
    Yahweh sits enthroned as Melek forever.
11 Yahweh will give power to his people.
    Yahweh will bless his people with peace.

One of the landmark academic works that talks about this is the Early History of God, by Mark Smith (Eerdmans). 

Psalm 68:4 calls YHWH the "rider on the clouds" which had previously been an epithet for Baal in the Ugaritic texts.

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35 minutes ago, Eschaton said:

El is both a specific God and a generic word for God. We know that Israel originally worshipped the Canaanite El because we find buried within the text the features of that God - the pantheon that included Asherah, Baal, and so forth, the 70 sons of El who ruled the 70 nations, and so forth. We find many and various references to Yahweh/Baal as a Storm God. We see that here:

Psalm 29

1 Give to Yahweh, you heavenly beings.
    Give to Yahweh glory and power.
2 Give to Yahweh the glory his name deserves.
    Worship Yahweh in his holy splendor.

3 The voice of Yahweh rolls over the water.
    The El of glory thunders.
        Yahweh shouts over raging water.
4 The voice of Yahweh is powerful.
    The voice of Yahweh is majestic.
5 The voice of Yahweh breaks the cedars.
    Yahweh splinters the cedars of Lebanon.
6         He makes Lebanon skip along like a calf
            and Mount Sirion like a wild ox.
7 The voice of Yahweh strikes with flashes of lightning.
8 The voice of Yahweh makes the wilderness tremble.
    Yahweh makes the wilderness of Kadesh tremble.
9 The voice of Yahweh splits the oaks[a]
    and strips the trees of the forests bare.
        Everyone in his temple is saying, “Glory!”

10 Yahweh sat enthroned over the flood.
    Yahweh sits enthroned as Melek forever.
11 Yahweh will give power to his people.
    Yahweh will bless his people with peace.

One of the landmark academic works that talks about this is the Early History of God, by Mark Smith (Eerdmans). 

Psalm 68:4 calls YHWH the "rider on the clouds" which had previously been an epithet for Baal in the Ugaritic texts.

The OT is filled with poetic allusions about God. Picking just one out to prove He was a storm God is silly. I can agree that Yehovah was a heavenly God, so is depicted with heavenly allusions such as "rider on the clouds." We have to deal with the fairly small vocabulary of the Hebrew language, which doesn't even really have a word for spirit, but pictures the spirit in the form of wind... thus, all the allusions to nature depicted in the wind splintering the cedars of Lebanon, blowing the waters, etc. Unlike Caananite gods, Yehovah never allowed the people to depict Him in His House, exactly because He was not a storm god, nor a god of any of those aspects of nature. If anything, the closest He comes to describing Himself is as the sun. And thus Christ is as the brightness of the Sun, but He is not the Sun, and does not want us worshipping the sun. He is as the Sun, in that He gives us life. Many other religions have sun gods because Satan is always trying to steal Christ's glory, but Christ never asked us to worship the sun despite the many biblical allusions to Him as the sun, including His own. Confusing Biblical allusions with pagan ideas is faulty scholarship.

 

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3 minutes ago, RevTestament said:

The OT is filled with poetic allusions about God. Picking just one out to prove He was a storm God is silly. I can agree that Yehovah was a heavenly God, so is depicted with heavenly allusions such as "rider on the clouds." We have to deal with the fairly small vocabulary of the Hebrew language, which doesn't even really have a word for spirit, but pictures the spirit in the form of wind... thus, all the allusions to nature depicted in the wind splintering the cedars of Lebanon, blowing the waters, etc. Unlike Caananite gods, Yehovah never allowed the people to depict Him in His House, exactly because He was not a storm god, nor a god of any of those aspects of nature. If anything, the closest He comes to describing Himself is as the sun. And thus Christ is as the brightness of the Sun, but He is not the Sun, and does not want us worshipping the sun. He is as the Sun, in that He gives us life. Many other religions have sun gods because Satan is always trying to steal Christ's glory, but Christ never asked us to worship the sun despite the many biblical allusions to Him as the sun, including His own. Confusing Biblical allusions with pagan ideas is faulty scholarship.

 

I just gave you two examples of YHWH described as a storm god in the Bible. Instead of just brushing them off without argument, I'd suggest picking up Smith's book. There's lots more there. 

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3 minutes ago, Peppermint Patty said:

I guess my point is that Dan probably isn’t too concerned about his job. I’m proud of Dan for building such a large audience. His audience and influence for good will continue to grow. I don’t think the LDS Church has every seen an apologist have this much success and influence before. Welcome to the digital age.

Has Dan ever done apologetics? I'm just familiar with his social media stuff, which isn't apologetic in nature. 

Edited by Eschaton
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6 minutes ago, Peppermint Patty said:

Maybe you might feel better with the term “educator” instead?

Yeah, apologetics starts with a belief and then seeks to find it in the text. What Dan does is critical biblical scholarship which seeks to understand how a text’s author most likely viewed themselves and what their intent was in writing. 

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8 minutes ago, Peppermint Patty said:

Maybe you might feel better with the term “educator” instead?

Yes, I would say he's a popular educator on what could be termed variously as academic Biblical scholarship, critical scholarship, historical criticism, etc. On top of his translation work of course. 

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21 minutes ago, Eschaton said:

I just gave you two examples of YHWH described as a storm god in the Bible. Instead of just brushing them off without argument, I'd suggest picking up Smith's book. There's lots more there. 

Gonna keep playing... 

Here is some more from David, who you claim is worshiping God as a storm god.

“Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings.” (Psa. 17:8)

“… I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed.” (Psa. 57:1)

“He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge …” (Psa. 91:4)

So is David worshiping God as a bird here? Is God a bird god? Is that why He didn't want the Jews depicting Him in the temple? He appears to be by your logic... He is a bird god and a storm god....

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31 minutes ago, RevTestament said:

Gonna keep playing... 

Here is some more from David, who you claim is worshiping God as a storm god.

“Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings.” (Psa. 17:8)

“… I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed.” (Psa. 57:1)

“He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge …” (Psa. 91:4)

So is David worshiping God as a bird here? Is God a bird god? Is that why He didn't want the Jews depicting Him in the temple? He appears to be by your logic... He is a bird god and a storm god....

We don't have any writings from David. Psalms is a collection of poems and hymns from various sources and time periods. As Dan would say, the Bible doesn't have univocity - it's a collection of many texts from many sources with many different beliefs. 

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21 hours ago, pogi said:

I know a lot of LDS Christians with the same problem. 

I wouldn't be surprised if I have many misconceptions that I am not even aware of.  That's why I appreciate Dan's efforts to educate us lay folk in easily understandable and accessible ways - well, except for the fact that I don't/won't do tiktok. 

I am not frightened by not knowing something, what frightens me is all of the stuff that I know that happens to be wrong. 

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1 hour ago, Eschaton said:

Has Dan ever done apologetics? I'm just familiar with his social media stuff, which isn't apologetic in nature. 

He was a member of FAIR for a time. That is how I know him.

Edited by Calm
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1 hour ago, Eschaton said:

We don't have any writings from David. Psalms is a collection of poems and hymns from various sources and time periods. As Dan would say, the Bible doesn't have univocity - it's a collection of many texts from many sources with many different beliefs. 

Christ Himself inferred David had written a certain Psalm, and many Psalms are attributed to him. Although perhaps not all. I beg to differ from you. I believe David is responsible for "writing" the Torah. Before him, it was oral, and the alphabet  was not concrete enough. David was the first who had the willingness and the means to hire scribes to do it, and noted it in the Torah, in Deut which states it is the duty of the King to write the law. The scriptures attribute many of the Psalms to David, and they are written that way. Clearly, David would not have allowed something to get written and kept which was not properly attributed to him. BTW nice dodge... but no cigar. 

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15 minutes ago, carbon dioxide said:

One goes where the people are.   However he is also on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/user/maklelan

I can actually understand that, but from what I have seen thus far, it is the blind leading the blind, while making a mint. I actually do have a facebook account, although to date I haven't used it much. I believe Musk's plan is to grow Twitter into an all/everything app, which will be available on his phone, and used around the world through his satellites - even outdoing Facebook and TikTok combined - we shall see. If that happens, I will probably be using that. At present I actually kind of like Musk, but time will tell. Power and wealth typically corrupt. Maybe he will get something going before that happens...

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