You Starve ... Glory Be To God?

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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Dan McClellan (1:02)

In three days, we've had 250 people either swallowed by the earth or consumed by fire. And then the next day, we all got zombified and 14,700 people died. And now we're playing with sticks. It just it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher (1:29)

And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan (1:30)

This is Data Over Dogma, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same, at least as long as our Internet's working.

Dan Beecher (1:42)

We are, we are slaves to the world wide web.

Dan McClellan (1:48)

Yes, we are.

We had some technical difficulties getting started, but you don't care about any of that. We're here now.

SPEAKER_1 (1:54)

That's what's important.

Dan Beecher (1:55)

I mean, our YouTube viewers will know that we had some type of technical difficulties last week as well. And that's just a thing that happens, people.

We're not millionaires over here with their fancy whatevers. I don't know what you have. Recording in person and stuff. Yeah, man. Okay. All right. Well, we got a fun show coming up. I'm excited about it. We got two things. So last week at some point, we talked about numbers 17

Yeah, which was a fun a fun discussion. But when we discussed it, I was like, but what about numbers 16 because I had read that and it felt like it informed it. But also it felt like a big story that maybe we could just do on its own. So we're going to start with numbers 16 That's our chapter and verse. And then we're going to take issue. And who, daddy, it is. We're taking issue. And I believe that most of our listeners slash viewers will also take pretty severe issue with some comments by one Joel Webbin, who is a real peach of a fella.

He's a pastor, I guess, right? He's a...

Dan McClellan (3:18)

Something like that.

Dan Beecher (3:20)

He's a talking head and a real piece of work. So that will be on the second half of the show. And you're not going to want to miss that because some fireworks are going to fly. But first, let's dive into chapter and verse.

And the chapter and verse, okay, we're in numbers 16 now. And this is kind of crazy. This is, I mean, it's like the Battle of the Levites. It's the... There's a bunch of grumbling happening. And it is, it's nuts. The consequences of grumbling are, I'm just going to say, extreme.

Dan McClellan (4:07)

Little harsh.

Dan Beecher (4:10)

You know, last week when Aaron became the priest over everybody, it was done through a nice way. It was like, look, your stick is prettier than everyone else's stick. And that, I think, is a lovely way of indicating who should be in charge.

Dan McClellan (4:29)

Yeah. It's following after the Korah episode. However, it is, the juxtaposition is a little jarring.

Dan Beecher (4:39)

It's extreme. So we should just talk first about who Korah is.

We've got Korah, that's K-O-R-A-H. It's not like C-O-R-A. Korah, Dathan, and Abiram.

Dan McClellan (4:56)

Well, we've also got On. Yeah, that's true. If we're starting in number 16-1, and here's where we're gonna start to see that something peculiar is going on here, because verse one says now Korah, son of Izhar, son of Kohath, son of Levi, along with Dathan and Abiram, sons of Eliab, and On, son of Peleth, son of Reuben.

On disappears from the narrative.

Dan Beecher (5:20)

Yeah, On just goes away.

Dan McClellan (5:23)

Yeah, there's no more On.

Dan Beecher (5:24)

We are off.

Dan McClellan (5:25)

It is, which suggests in the mind of a lot of scholars, the composite nature of this story, that we've probably got different traditions that were woven together or separated out. And so we are looking at the end result of the accumulation and redaction and editing of a few different stories. And we're gonna get it, and we're gonna highlight places where we seem to be getting one story and not another. So, yeah, take note of that right off the bat. On Son of Pelech, Son of Reuben seems to be there to kind of indicate a connection with Reuben, but then boop is blips right out of the story.