Spare the Rod... Please!

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Dan McClellan (0:54)

Once you build up this this brittle foundation of it's all perfect and all true and all inspired, any problem with it just just brings the whole thing crumbling down. It is a house of cards and you just kind of have to ignore that you already have taken cards out and just hope that it stays together. Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher (1:20)

And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan (1:21)

And you are 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 are things today, Dan?

Dan Beecher (1:34)

Things are good. It was it was it was Thanksgiving. I gave some thanks for us. It's been a minute for the for the listeners and viewers since Thanksgiving. But but you and I just had our Thanksgiving and I had a lovely time.

Dan McClellan (1:50)

I had a lovely time as well. We'll talk about this in our in our after party.

Dan Beecher (1:55)

But yeah, well, we'll hear the travails of the McClellan family in the land of the magic mouse.

Dan McClellan (2:02)

And yes. And what a what a land it is.

Dan Beecher (2:06)

It is one for sure. It's it's actually several lands of all the lands.

Dan McClellan (2:10)

It is definitely one of them. Yeah, actually, you're right. It is several of them. So.

Dan Beecher (2:16)

But for for the for those of you who aren't our patrons, we're just going to have to dive into some some Bible stuff. So first, we are going to do a we're going to take issue with with something in the Bible. Well, we're in our segment taking issue. We're going to be talking a little bit about it. You know what? The whole show is about punishment. We're just talking about punishment sort of as a concept. We'll we'll keep it in the family for the first part and and then go sort of a wider view of punishment.

Dan McClellan (2:49)

There's some within the family stuff that's part of the reason there's a punishment in the second one. But we'll get to that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Beecher (2:56)

Oh, that's true. Wow. All right. Well, with all of that mystery, let's dive into taking issue.

So we're going to take issue with something. It's it's a pretty common thing. You know, it's funny, because when we were talking about this, you said, hey, there's this thing in Proverbs. Do you want to look at that? And I was like, sure. And it was and you said, it's about the, you know, the hitting of children or whatever. And I said, is that the spare the rod, spoil the child thing? And you said, well, that's a, that's not the actual biblical phrase. It does have the phrase spare the rod. The thing that freaked me out when I actually got to Proverbs, what is it? 13?

Dan McClellan (3:46)

13, 24, yep.

Dan Beecher (3:48)

Is that it sounds worse than spare the rod, spoil the child. It's like way, it's like way harsher than that.

Dan McClellan (3:57)

Yeah.

Dan Beecher (3:57)

So let's talk about those who spare the rod, hate their children.

Dan McClellan (4:04)

Yeah.

And just to kind of fill in the blanks for the people who are like, what's this spare the rod, spoil the child thing? That's the idiom that everybody has heard, which does not come from Proverbs. It's obviously inspired by Proverbs, but that actually comes from a poem that was published between 1663 and 1678 called Hudebras by a gentleman named Samuel Butler. And it is a satirical poem written in a mock heroic style. And a lot of people who quote the spare the rod, spoil the child part are probably not aware of the context, because it's actually one line of four lines that are talking about how to spice up a problematic sex life. Where it says, What medicine else can cure the fits of lovers when they lose their wits? Love is a boy, by poets styled, and spare the rod and spoil the child. And the idea here seems to be drawing from the Proverbs thing. He who spares the rod hates his child. In other words, beat your kids vigorously. But here the idea is, if your love life has gotten a little lackluster, maybe try spanking.