A Beatitude Adjustment for Jordan Peterson

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

Are you interested in the parts of history that remain a mystery? Do you want to learn more about the historical myths and misconceptions used to prop up belief today? I'm Nathaniel Lloyd. In my podcast, Historical Blindness, I delve into all of these topics, sharing puzzling tales from the past, and examining hoaxes, conspiracy theories, and misremembered events that provide insight into modern politics and religion.

New episodes every two weeks find historical blindness on most podcast players and platforms.

Daniel Beecher (0:36)

Hi everybody. Well, we just wanted to come on real quick and explain a few changes you may have noticed. There are a couple changes, things happening on the show. We wanted to explain to you what's going on so that you're on board with us.

Daniel McClellan (0:50)

We recently signed on with a podcast network that is going to significantly increase the reach and the scope of our podcast. And part of that means that we're going to begin to run ads on our program. Some of these we will read, some of them will be slotted into specific places in the podcast by the podcast network itself.

Daniel Beecher (1:15)

That's right. So we are part of Airwave Media. We're very pleased to be a part of Airwave. It's going to be great. You know, the ads that you hear, you just know we don't have a lot of control over which ones they are. We have chosen broad categories to exclude, but hopefully you'll hear only ads that you like.

If you want an ad-free version of the show, that's still available over on Patreon. Our patrons, for now, all of our patrons, get an ad-free version of the show. Otherwise, thanks for being with us and we're excited about this opportunity.

And here's the show.

Daniel McClellan (1:53)

This is the case of someone trying to leverage the authority of the Bible to give permission to their specific group of followers to be monsters because he knows they want to be monsters and they want Jesus' blessing. And you don't have Jesus' blessing to be a monster.

Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Daniel Beecher (2:17)

And I'm Dan Beecher.

Daniel McClellan (2:18)

And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast where we try to increase the public's access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about the same. And today we're going to be doing some of said combating, aren't we, Dan?

Daniel Beecher (2:34)

Oh my gosh. This is going to be some fun combatting.

Daniel McClellan (2:39)

Rhetorical combat, just to be clear.

Daniel Beecher (2:43)

I'll tell you what, we're going after Jordan Peterson, friends. It's, you know, you don't want to bury the lead on this one. The second half of our show, we're coming for you, JP.

And we'll see how good a job he does. Yeah. Cause he has been wading around on your turf. I got to say.

Daniel McClellan (3:04)

There is some trampling of my purview, yeah, that has occurred. And I'm not happy about it.

Daniel Beecher (3:14)

But before that, let's do a chapter and verse.

Daniel McClellan (3:17)

Excellent. And which chapter and what verse shall we engage?

Daniel Beecher (3:25)

Well, we're going to probably talk about a couple of chapters and definitely several verses. We're going with Beatitudes.

Daniel McClellan (3:31)

The Beatitudes.

Daniel Beecher (3:33)

Which I recently learned is a word, I never knew what that word meant. I had always heard it in reference to the Sermon on the Mount, but I didn't know what Beatitude meant. But I have a thing called Wikipedia that is very useful.

And it turns out that it's from the Latin Vulgate. The word blessings or blessed that begins each of these little verses is Beati in the Latin, which means the plural adjective. But I got to say, I'm disappointed with something, which is that in the original Greek, it's macarioi, and it is a missed opportunity that these are not the macarioids. That's all I'm saying.

Daniel McClellan (4:23)

Well, some scholars refer to them as macarisms.

Daniel Beecher (4:28)

Oh, okay.

Daniel McClellan (4:29)

So that is an English word.

Daniel Beecher (4:31)

I feel like sayings that you say should be mac somethingisms.

Daniel McClellan (4:38)

Well, I get Danisms is what I've heard, but...

Daniel Beecher (4:42)

There you go. Anyway, let's talk about the Beatitudes. The Sermon on the Mount, as a sermon, is kind of unique in form and in content for Jesus.

Wouldn't you say?

Daniel McClellan (4:57)

Yeah, there's only one gospel in which we have what we know formally as the Sermon on the Mount, and that is the gospel of Matthew. We have a lot of parallel comments in Luke chapter six in a sermon, which is generally referred to as a sermon on the plane, so it is not-