Biblical Sex Toys???
Data Over Dogma
September 22, 2025
Or rather- the Bible got a little naughty (maybe), and we're just talking about it. First, though, we're going to talk about one of those famous "judges" that the book of Judges was named for. It's the story of Gideon, and it has a lot going on! Did Gideon see God or an angel?
Speakers Dan McClellan, Dan Beecher
TopicsSociety & CultureHistory
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Dan McClellan (0:56)
His son, Gideon, was beating out wheat in the wine press, which is just what they called it.
Dan Beecher (1:01)
Don't mix your grains and your grapes. We don't need to do that in the same place. There's plenty of room. What are we doing?
Dan McClellan (1:09)
You're not beating out your wheat there in the wine press again, are you, Gideon?
Dan Beecher (1:13)
These boys have been beating out wheat in the wine press.
SPEAKER_5 (1:19)
Damn it, Gideon.
Dan Beecher (1:21)
Been whacking in my camper. Okay, we need to go on.
Dan McClellan (1:34)
Hey, everybody. I'm Dan McClellan.
Dan Beecher (1:36)
And I'm Dan Beecher.
Dan McClellan (1:37)
And you're listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How go things today, Dan?
Dan Beecher (1:51)
Things are good. It's a beautiful day. You went golfing. I went for a lovely walk. Excellent. Now it's time to combat some misinformation. Actually, we're not going to do a lot of misinformation combating right this week. We're just going to have some fun with the Bible.
Dan McClellan (2:10)
We're going to lean in to the first part of our mission statement. We're going to increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion by addressing a couple of passages from the Hebrew Bible.
Dan Beecher (2:21)
Yes, indeed. The first thing we're going to talk about, we're going to hit a judge, one of the judges of judges.
SPEAKER_5 (2:29)
Yes.
Dan Beecher (2:30)
And that'll be fun. We're going to talk about Gideon. And I'll tell you what, when you first type Gideon into... If you type Gideon into Google, you don't... I thought I was going to be clever and type Gideon Bible into the Google. And that is a whole other thing. The Gideon Bible is its own thing. So you have to type Gideon in the Bible, and then you get judges six. So we'll get to that. That's our chapter and verse. And then in the latter half of the show, you're going to want to stick around for this. It's our twisted scripture segment. And I'll just say that we teased it a few weeks ago. We talked about it. We said we were going to look into it. It is in Ezekiel, and it's naughty. So you're going to want to stay tuned for that action. But first, let's do a chapter and verse.
And this chapter and verse, like I said, we're in Judges chapter six through eight.
Dan McClellan (3:34)
Six through eight, yeah.
Dan Beecher (3:35)
We're talking about this Gideon fellow, although he gets another name partway through.
Dan McClellan (3:42)
Well, and this is interesting because the narrative is like, he gets another name, but a lot of scholars are like, it sounds like that was his name originally. And they just wrote a narrative to explain why he has a name that seems dedicated to a problematic deity. But we'll get to that.
Dan Beecher (4:02)
Yeah, because it ends... I don't want to give too much away, but his name is something something Ball, as in the god Baal.
Dan McClellan (4:12)
Baal, yes. Anyway, get those nasty Baals out of your mouth.
Dan Beecher (4:20)
That's the second segment of the show, Dan, come on. Okay, so let's start out with who was this guy?
Dan McClellan (4:28)
Well, Gideon was the son of Joe Ash, but I want to start at the beginning of chapter six, because we have... chapter five ends with, and the land had rest forty years. Everybody's able to... the land is able to relax and take a breath.
Dan Beecher (4:47)
Everybody chills. Forty years is about the right amount of time for everybody to sort of forget all of the good lessons that they've learned.
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