On the “objective standard of God’s word”

Dan is misogynist. The only thing he'll claim the Bible actually says is that men are supposed to be dominant over women in some kind of dominance-penetration sociosexual hierarchy. But if someone claims the Bible says anything else, suddenly there's no univocality and it doesn't say anything. Dan's interpretation isn't in scripture either, but comes from later talmudic interpretation, and is debunked by that if a woman lay with an animal she still doesn't penetrate it. My superior theory is that it's about a general taboo against being with a male, regardless of either dominance penetration. The truth of what he says here is that scripture is like a genetic code, and interpretive corpi like Talmud, catechism, and analogous things are like epigenetics: determining the phenotype of each church according to how it cherry picks through the master code, activating some genes but not others. If someone bases a belief on a verse nobody noticed for five hundred years it is atavism reactivation.

Even through hard times as Christians it’s vital to trust God. That’s why love compassion and prayers are all we truly need. I have fallen on difficult times since covid. And I’m ashamed. I lost my job for declining the vaccine. My health is why I declined. I suffer from heart disease and lupus. I tried to get my job back but Forsyth hospital but they still prefer vaccinated employees vs unvaccinated. I’m now waitressing and I’m so thankful but not making nearly enough. I struggle every month to pay rent and to buy groceries. I have two beautiful children, both suffer from autism. I’m overwhelmed but I’m choosing to keep faith. Walking with faith is the most important thing us christian’s must do. So as I struggle I Thank you Heavenly Father and I thank you Yeshua I will keep faith! Amen! Please keep me and my children in your prayers. God bless you. ❤

driving by to shill @digitalhammurabi's "Did the Old Testament Endorse Slavery? 2nd Edition" ! It discusses all this and more!

Exodus 21 actually does specify conditions under which the female slave goes free. Dan's oversimplification of this passage amounts to a false representation. Not great when you're lecturing about whether or not there is anything objective in the bible -- it is an objective assertion that Exodus 21:11 states that the woman goes free under some circumstances, so the representation made by Dan about Exodus 21 is objectively false.

Edit: alternately, if the matter is specifically sex slavery, i.e. when the master has "betrothed" the girl, then Deuteronomy 15 is potentially irrelevant because it does not make that distinction. Dan would have to argue why one passage that speaks about something specific should be compared to another that does not speak about it.

Thank you so much for your efforts Dan!

Good and bad ,light or darkness,pick a side it's bad to steal from your neighbor, it's good not too steal from your neighbor, or kill,etc the standard is choice and freewill, society is a product of civilization we did not obtain thru the natural process of evolution, that's the core problem = "old wine in new new bottles" = mingling with living creatures who evolved over millions of years not of this earth, or should I say they tried playing god , mingling with us ,Civilized man is less than 20,000 years old ,the true curse is their inherited civil wars between the (north and south) on their home planet ,are the reason we as a race of human beings are in so much discord once Enki and Enlil made the 2 clans , that's where our problems began ,made in the image of Tiamat's rogue offspring rather than evolving the natural way is the problem,we were not made in the image of the infinite All's image Genesis 1 verse 3 = 4.5 billion years ago = great war in heaven that, living Waters separated was not confined just to earth the Annunaki's serpent like traits ,the same root matter gave rise to the early dinosaurs of the earth ,the same crossings of planet 10 took out the dinosaurs 65 million years and also wiped out the woolly mammoths and camels of north America 12,000 ,666 = 3 Calamities before the last one 12,000 years ago in the days of ATLANTIS = 3 layers of advanced megalithic foundation stones is what 666 stands for the creation of man by the Annunaki,not God/infinite All, hence Universal Law = love thy neighbor as Enki loved us as his own, that is how we survived when we should have perrished with the rest ,we are natives of the earth he was not ,but that is what universal law is looks like in practice,Enki was a good shepherd, and son so was Christ one material offspring and one material offspring ,and he and his wife are mankind's celestial missing Link in the universal evolutionary timeline or tree of life , the 7 hill are the 7 sins brought to earth by the Annunaki who are not the son's of the infinite All ,who has one son and daughter,the Evening and Mourning Star or real Adam and Eve= 14 billion - 4.5 billion years ago...then the Annunaki 4.5 billion years ago - 445,000 - 12,000 = first contact with our Celestial missing Link ,my favorite saying is (if you don't know where you came from,you don't know where you going, therefore lost) follow me back home no longer being lost but found and uncounfounded

Data Over Dogma
Context Over Prooftext

I don't know much about theology but I'll disagree with the idea that meaning is entirely within the reader's mind. This is a little too metaphysical to represent reality and clings far too hard to the process of attempting to neatly bifurcate into false dichotomies, as was the standard form of analysis prior to the 21st century. Meaning isn't just some metaphysical encoding of information, it's also the form of the communication. We extract different meaning based on the form of the communication. A sentence spoken has a different meaning than one written, sometimes because of subjective context and sometimes because language may have two different structures between its written and spoken forms. So it is not this convenient bifurcation into form (or message) and meaning as separate objects. They come together, at the same time, and it's a continuous process of interpretation and re-interpretation of a message (and messages produced from interpreting the message and so on...) from which we derive meaning.

What happens within a reader's mind necessarily begins with observing something external, and the internal meaning reproduced within the reader's mind will necessarily be influenced by the external form of the message. There're many steps in deriving meaning, but the last step of arriving at meaning is validating the internally-produced context against the external context of the message. And we know that happens because we can observe behavior, like cognitive dissonance or even a simple misunderstanding between speakers, that demonstrates the internal context failing the validation check against external context. You affirm this yourself when you speak about how the Bible is renegotiated to fit social values across time - that is nothing more than a process of validating meaning against an external context. When the previous context of the world changed, it required a renegotiation of the meaning that the author/audience system had previously produced.

Another issue I have with this argument is this idea that authors play such a limited role in communication that you would say meaning is entirely within the mind of the reader in the first place. Authors have an intended meaning when they write and edit, and you affirm this multiple times. You go on to say even that it's necessary to attempt to recreate the context around what was written and what edits were made so that you can critically interpret the text in a more complete way. I think it's much more accurate how you describe it when you say that meaning is like a negotiation between author and audience. And that negotiation is contained by the context created between and around the author and the audience.

Yes, it might be difficult to arrange the necessary context in which meaning exists, but all communication happens within a context which structures and provides limits to the meaning. If it didn't, we couldn't communicate at all. We'd have no process by which to decode the information stored in the message. But we do decode information, regularly and so effectively that billions of people successfully communicate across cultural, historical, and geopolitical barriers every single day. So it must be the case that context gives a limited set of intended meanings, or at least a way by which we can reduce the size of the set of intended meanings to something that's not only tractable but quite easy for us to deal with. Our massive, global economy would grind to halt if this weren't the case.

Exactly like how message and meaning cannot be conveniently separated, neither can author and audience. There is no meaning at all without both sides of the communication - that's a tree falling in a forest with no one to hear it. So, it's not the case that meaning is entirely within the reader's mind. Like you said, meaning is the result of a negotiation, it's not housed entirely on either side of a message but is produced in the process of validating an internal context against an external one. You effectively state this already, but you're trying to split a single object into multiple simply because it's convenient to do so. It's not a "this or that" situation. It's both, at the same time, in a continuous (i.e. non-discrete) process.

"What seems most likely", even in statistics something that has a zero likely occurance can rarely occur. Even something that seems to occur all the time, might not occur some of the time.

I thing the base of the problem in biblical studies is the assumption that the text is fixed based on assumptions that are not true. Going backwards.
1. Depending on how you look at it the hebrew bible was written in the 10th to 14th century CE
2. The new testament was not canonized until the 5th centuries
3. There is substantial evidence that the New Testament was altered in its meaning during translation
4. The exact dating of the writing and the authors of the greek old testament is not clear.
5. Texts from the old and new testament have been eliminate.
6. Texts used by christians in the first 3 century have been suppressed
7. The Dead Sea Scrolls were written before the Hebrew bible and even text written by that community disagree
8. There are authors writing text claiming or appearing to be other people (9 epistles, certain Psalms, Daniel)
9. Certain text made to look old and authoriative were actually written 100 to 1000 years after the time of claimed authority (Psalms, Genesis, Leviticus, Exodus, chronicals, Daniel)
10. Text are borrowing from other older text from other beliefs and associating them with new gods.

Within in this category of textual fluidity is made apparent when we compare biblical history with archeaology and non-biblical history and the fact that different biblical accounts contradict each other.

Reconstructing what happened simply based on the best and most careful hebrew reading is not going to be able illuminate what happened because the texts are so fluid.

A good example of this is deuteronomy 32:8 and the difference in interpretation between older versions of the old testament. From the surrounding cultural mileau Elohim meant the children of the god, mostly refering to El [some title signifying his highness] who was the implanted mesopotamian head after the near eastern dynastic period began. Jacobs alotment is Yahweh's among the other children of the high god.
Even this understanding, however corrected represents an anachronistic association. As pointed out by Ross Nichols there appears to be a much older shorter version of Deuteronomy from before the period were most of the text were written AND if that did not create sufficient uncertainty, the deuteronomistc texts were originally pinned around the time of King Yosiah some 900 years after the time Moses was to have lived.


But when on considers the text and its fluidity we rarely interogate the substrate itself and yet the LBAC, a near eastern dark age, demands we do just that, what were Yahudite scribes actually writing, granting there was a Yahu tribe, what COULD they write?
There is another problem with the text amd that is buried in the torah itself and it not trivial. The mosaic law was not the first written law upon the land, that law was hammurabi's law and was uncovered from 18th century BCE in Hazor and was written in cuneiform. Certainly Moses could have written his law in cuneiform, but how much cunieform would a man who lived in Egypt for a couple of decades and fled to Arabia know. And its certainly a possibility that the law tablets were made of clay, but then how come there is no record of this, cunieform tablets are rather resilient.
The alternative is the mosiac law was originally pinned in in protoSiniatic. But there is a problem with that hypothesis, all the inscriptions that we have do not show sophisticated linguistic structure. They are basically small to medium phrases. it appears to have been an egyptian shopkeepers language. In as much as phonecian began to develope from the 13th century, akkadian cuneiform was still the lingua franca of the literate world until the middle of the LBAC. When we actually get to inscriptions about YHWH in a paleo hebrew we are in the 10th century, and those incriptions are nothing like what we see in the Hebrew Bible. And so the intuition about the scribal problem is correct, there is no cogent system of transmission for anything before the LBAC. And if we look at the historical period after the LBAC we have one source attached to a story that might roughly be historic "the song of deborah" is either the oldest or second oldest source in the hebrew bible. It competitor, the "song of the sea" is associated with a story that is either entirely mythical or highly embellished legend.

And given the distance between early judges, about 1100 BCE and King Yosiah it represents a period of 500 years before which oral accounts as sources for written texts cannot be relied upon. And Judges itself shows evidence of extensive alterations in its sources. The story of Samson and delialah appears to be borrowed from epic literatire of the NE mediterannean, Yahweh appears to be inserted into the text/oral accounts that was referring to other gods. More over there appears to be considerable theological differences between the books of Judges and Samuel versus later second temple theology.

We can only extract piecemeal from these texts a very granular picture of history and theology even when braced by notions from the surrounding canaanite literature. It gives enough to tell us how abrahamic religion has changed but not enough to disclose some very important processes in that evolution.

Most devout believers will say you are from the devil.

I watched someone else respond to that video. I agree with your choice to not discuss it.

This is overwhelmingly correct (even if it is my own argument against you in various videos), but has two issues:
(1) If the Christians can't use it to "proof text" their modern morality, neither should those who have an alternative modern moral ideal. The text should be read historically (keeping in mind this is approached and never reached).
(2) You at the end separate "society" (which you reified) and "the Bible" (also reified) as if they are completely separate "things". Obviously this isn't the case, since there is no reified "Bible" then of course it can't change society, but those who have internalized it do, so this isn't a dualistic category.

Interesting video

Dan, would you please get straight to the point and show people explicitly that there is NO SUCH THING as the "Word of God."
This delusion has caused and continues to cause endless problems and justify entirely human evils.

To even begin to get any spiritual value whatsoever out of the Bible (or any other religious books) is to first acknowledge that they are fallible human creations.

So well explained, thank you.

You phrase it so well, Dan! Thank you very much! Please keep doing what you're doing.

Starting to think Dan isnt univocal

I am also noticing a flaw with Dan's channel .

He's asking us to take his word a lot of the time .

Get specific and present your actual case so it can be critiqued

Present the scholarship.

In a nutshell : God does not make mistakes change mind about eternal covenant made on Sinai and instead sends a man god idol Trinity pagan human sacrifice Calvary to replace Torah laws with a Greek new testament 1500+- years later..

If that "god" did such it is not my "god"...
שלום

P-3DO: everyone's least favorite droid

Wish I could have the opportunity to study biblical academics...

Going from "the Bible is multivocal and is subject to competing interpretations" to, as Dan says, "the Bible has nothing to say" is a wild, nihilistic leap. What a sad way to look at the world and the Bible.

Video summed up - people use the bible as a tool to justify whatever they want.

Objective meaning is an oxymoron. The Bible presents universal meaning. This is simple to understand when you consider that everyone reading it has a brain with cognitive function, which has necessary characteristics. Meaning is not arbitrary. Also, deity exists.

You make an excellent case for the superiority of Secular Humanism as a superior moral framework over one based on the Bible. =)

if there was no 'inherent' meaning to the text we wouldn't be able to say anything about it. we certainly wouldn't be able to point out that it often contradicts the moral values that people want to use it to uphold (e.g. slavery).

Brilliant. Does anyone know of anyone doing this sort of work and commentary regarding other belief systems? Thank you

Just remember any Christians passing thru, Dan is NOT a Christian
He's in that fake mormon cult and appears to actually be an atheist who doesn't believe anything in the bible
Milking the mormon cult to run as a woke dem in Utah for the 3rd time in 2024
There's prob no Christians here but just in case, that's who he is... there's plenty of Christian theologians who disagree with his biased takes

"I am the way, the truth, and the life." Is that not objective? Static?

wow

How many people are going to do a video on this fool on the TikTok live. Gods Nature is an objective standard not the Bible…otherwise the people who lived before the Bible had no objective moral standard…

So what I hear you saying is that we can't help but wrest the scriptures every time we open them up, but there are those who recognize that that's what they're doing.

This is so refreshing.

This guy is insidious. "You can't tell what the Bible teaches because it contradicts... Society... Original meaning..." Ok. "You need an objective scholar like me to tell you time place meaning...." Ok... Proceeds to use the modern concept and taints his view with "sell your daughter into sex slavery" yeah... I'm done.

As an athiest who loves studying religion these are great videos to reinforce the falacies in reading into text.

He talks about contradictions but then immediately contradicts himself with his second point. He says that the Bible has no meaning because it's just arbitrary symbols but then in his third point tells the meaning of the text he quotes and judges it as wrong even though it supposedly doesn't mean anything

You can't understand the scriptures because you don't have the Holy Spirit. A burning in the bosom (a Mormon thing) won't help. You need to repent of your countless heresies and come to Christ.

So if the words in the Bible have no meaning, why did you assign the meaning of sex-slave to the word maidservant?

I am so glad I found your channel... It's like having a master counter apologist on hand to reference 24/7. Thanks and please keep up the good work.

Hahahaha thanks for the laughs!!!

This is the antithesis of the “No notes” videos. Watching “Did God Create Hell…” then this gave me whiplash 😂 thanks for the range of content Dan!

PERFECTLY SAID!!!

Dan, other than historical interest, what value does the Bible have for you? Or, which parts of it resonate with your values, or what aspects of it would you promote, or what interpretive mode would you impose on it as a member of a Christian sect?

The Torah was written by the Israelites, about the Israelites and for the Israelites. Their laws and their morals.

No problem at all. We can simply conclude morality has changed and we think many of their morals are immoral today. End of story.

The problem started when they invented their religions Yahwism, with Yahweh as head of the pantheon, and judaism, with Yahweh as the only god. That made Yahweh complicit to and even responsible for their immoral laws.

When Jesus started his cult he couldn't just start a completely new religion because that wouldn't be accepted at all so he, and the people that later on created Christianity, had to use the framework of Judaism and use the Torah. And they needed the Torah to make it look like Jesus fulfilled "prophecies".

But Judaism was never meant to be the base of other world religions, it was solely a tribal/national religion.

That's why the Christians have to defend and/or downplay the immoral god Yahweh or cherry pick to try to claim god is good and the source of morality.

The Bible has so many interpretations you can give to it that's in my mind why there are so many different sections of Christianity... If it was a True Religion there would truly only need to be one 🤔
Then the excuse of you don't know scripture is BS way of saying I don't want to believe what you're saying... Why don't you go to your ancestors and look up with their gods were doing and never mind what oh no Israeli God is doing, because what if the Israeli God isn't the only God and what if he isn't God of all the World 🤔💭 Has any of these Christians ever had any of these questions about that book?
I know Christianity isn't true because if it was you wouldn't have over $140,000 different sections of one religion and if it was true you all would agree and no reason to want to kill each other, and you wouldn't kill other people who don't follow your religion Protestants are just like Catholics they all want to kill and and her children and demonize woman in order for their men to feel like men.

Want me to save yall some time in graduate school? Apply this argument to economics and you have a concise summary of Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation. Your welcome!

The Law is summed up with this, Love your neighbor as yourself.

You'd think the idea that texts do not have mouths, do not have brains, do not have tongues, cannot say ANYTHING would be obvious, but sadly we are having to argue for it time and time and time again :T :T :T

And the Bible is along for the ride...Amen.

The Bible makes one statement about itself, and that through Jesus. It is that God's word is truth (John 17:17). "Word" does not mean the Bible. It means what God says.

That begs the question how we know what God says. It is not a question for scholars, btw. It is a question for those who attend to God.

Those who attend to God know when it is God who is speaking because God speaks to the spirit. Jesus said that the Spirit whom he would send would lead us into all truth, and that has always been true. God speaks in many ways (Hebrews 1:1-2) but in every case when God speaks the Spirit affirms that as God's voice.

Paul (or whomever Dan thinks wrote Timothy) says that the scriptures were God-breathed (θεόπνευστος It is interesting that this word includes the word for spirit.) and are profitable. All who attend to God know that to be true. As we read and open ourselves to the Spirit are spoken to through the scriptures. It is that word that we can say speaks with one voice. It is that word that is inerrant.