The Bible Says So Quotes

“Three very widespread and deeply embedded dogmas that I frequently run across when I talk with Bible believers are inspiration, inerrancy, and univocality. Not a single one of these is supported by any data.”
― Daniel McClellan, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues

“Oddly enough, for most Christians today, the concern doesn’t seem to be about figuring out what the Bible actually says as much as it seems to be about convincing others of what it says. Most Christian groups feel confident they already know precisely what the Bible says, and it’s just everybody else who needs to be brought up to speed.”
― Daniel McClellan, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues

“the Council of Nicea didn’t have anything at all to do with establishing the biblical canon. You can thank Dan Brown for popularizing that nonsense.”
― Daniel McClellan, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues

“I’m trying to communicate positions that are shared by the majority of biblical scholars who study and publish on the relevant research questions. What this does not mean is that I think the academic consensus determines truth (it doesn’t), or that it’s always right (it’s not).”
― Daniel McClellan, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues

“Anyone who knows much at all about my social media content as well as about Mormonism will have chuckled at the notion that I am engaged in Mormon apologetics, though.”
― Daniel McClellan, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues

“Another dogma I’ve only mentioned in passing relates to the authority of the Bible. This is the notion that what the Bible says goes—the Bible dictates our morality to us. According to this dogma, whatever the Bible says is right or wrong should govern what we understand to be right or wrong. This is problematic.”
― Daniel McClellan, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues

“Contrary to popular belief, the 1611 King James Version included the entire Apocrypha, although more compact editions of the KJV were frequently published without it. During the Second Great Awakening in the early nineteenth century CE, the American Bible Society and the British and Foreign Bible Society were pushing hard to distribute Bibles, and they began to omit the Apocrypha from their standard editions of the Bible, in part to make printing and distribution cheaper.”
― Daniel McClellan, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues

“People are curious, what does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?’ I said, ‘Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it.’ That’s my worldview, that’s what I believe.”5 Does Speaker Johnson really believe this? Even where it explicitly endorses chattel slavery? Even where it treats rape of a woman as a property crime against whatever man has rights over the victim’s body? Even where it acknowledges that the God of Israel demands child sacrifice? Even where it insists women aren’t allowed to teach and are supposed to just shut up because they were the ones who got duped by the talking snake? What about where it endorses communalism? What about where it says a man should gouge out his eye if that eye causes him to lust after a woman? What about where it says the most pious people will castrate themselves for the sake of the kingdom of heaven? Isn’t that what the Bible says?”
― Daniel McClellan, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues

“There's no one, consistent concept of Hell in the Bible. For the majority of the Bible, in fact, there's no concept of Hell at all. Notions of postmortem divine punishment can differ wildly from author to author, and even within individual books, and nothing like the modern conceptual package that is 'Hell' is articulated anywhere.”
― Dan McClellan, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues

“But if the Bible is going to remain an authority, and all indications are that it will, then I think a more productive and transparent approach for those who hold it up as an authority would be to acknowledge and criticize its harmful ideologies, and then to openly advocate for renegotiation.”
― Dan McClellan, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues

“The folks who wield the authority of the Bible most vehemently and belligerently are just as willing to negotiate with the Bible as anyone else.”
― Dan McClellan, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues

“Nobody in a position of influence over a community of Bible believers subordinates their needs and interests entirely to the Bible. There is no such thing as a 'Biblical literalist.' There are idealogical literalists, sure, but the Bible is secondary for those folks. No one derives their doctrines, their ethics, or their worldviews exclusively or even primarily from the Bible. Those things are derived from negotiations that take place between a group's past, its needs in the present, its goals for the future, and its interpretations of the Bible.”
― Dan McClellan, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues

“...a better argument is going to be made in the direction of more nuance and complexity, not less. A better argument is going to move the consensus further away from, not closer to, rhetorical utility for privileged and powerful groups seeking to weaponize the Bible to serve their own interests.”
― Dan McClellan, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues

“But the Bible says' is far too simple an evasion of the reader's responsibility. We can claim to be sharing what the Bible 'says' if we're just quoting it verbatim, but the instant we paraphrase those words or try to explain what they mean to modern events, circumstances, relationships, or identities, or how they should be applied, the Bible is no longer 'saying' anything at all; we're just using the Bible as a bullhorn to authorize, validate, and amplify what we're saying.”
― Dan McClellan, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues

“There's no one, consistent concept of Hell in the Bible. For the majority of the Bible, in fact, there's not concept of Hell at all. Notions of postmortem divine punishment can differ wildly from author to author, and even within individual books, and nothing like the modern conceptual package that is 'Hell' is articulated anywhere.”
― Dan McClellan, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues

“Apocalyptic imagery is often intentionally vague and imprecise, which means it can become interpretively flexible, allowing for application to all kinds of circumstances. And the more time passes, and the further away from the original context the text gets, the more it can merge with the prophetic genre and give license to all kinds of renegotiations and rhetorical deployments.

The influence the Bible has had on the world may have been drastically different, had the book of Revelation not wriggled its way into the canon right at the tail-end of the process of canonization.”
― Dan McClellan, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues

“The hypersexualization of the female body today is socially determined. It's not a transcultural or a transhistorical constant. Nudity in the Bible didn't carry near the same social significance that it does today. We've overwhelmingly coded nudity as a sexual event, but anciently, it was a far more common public event that could be associated with work (John 21:7), and even with public prophecy (Isaiah 20:2-3, Micah 1:8, 1 Samuel 19:24).”
― Dan McClellan, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues

“When people today insist Paul's sexual ethic must remain relevant, they're almost always referring to the condemnation of same-sex intercourse. They're almost never talking about celibacy, avoiding having kids, or passionless sex meant to keep the urges at bay.”
― Dan McClellan, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues

“...in 1 Corinithians 11:14... Paul rhetorically asks, 'Doesn't even nature itself teach that if a man wears long hair, it is dishonorable to him?"

No, Paul, it doesn't.”
― Dan McClellan, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues

“Across the modern Christian world, legal and moral personhood is only assigned to fetuses within the debate about the morality of abortion, and for ideologies directly influenced by that debate. Outside of that debate, they are consistently denied legal and moral personhood.”
― Dan McClellan, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues

“Contrary to popular belief, the 1611 King James Version included the entire apocrypha, although more compact editions of the KJV were frequently published without it.”
― Dan McClellan, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues

“The more meaningful and powerful a specific reading is today, the more careful we should be with that reading. It's actually less likely to be what was intended by the original authors... The more it feels like the Bible may be speaking directly to us... the more closely we need to interrogate our interpretations and what may be motivating them.”
― Dan McClellan, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues

“The more meaningful and powerful a specific reading is today, the more careful we should be with that reading. It's actually less likely to be what was intended by the original authors.”
― Dan McClellan, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues