The Bible Has No Problem With Magic. Just With Who Does It.

Dan McClellan Hey, everybody. I'm Dan McClellan. And

Dan Beecher I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan 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. And Dan, there's a chill in the air, the leaves are turning orange-ish- Yeah ... and we're about to have a bunch of brats coming to my door bugging me for candy. Which can only mean- It's spooky season. It's spooky time.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Happy Samhain, everybody. Uh- ... th- we, uh, we have decided to lean in on the spooky stuff. Uh, we're gonna be, we're gonna be going heavy on witches, which I think is a lot of fun- Mm-hmm ... uh, in our new segment that we're calling Hexegesis. So, witches, Dan.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Uh, it, it's, uh, it's, they're spooky. Uh, we all, we're, we're all terrified of 'em. Uh-

Dan McClellan Th- th- they're absolutely kooky. And, uh, and all the other things. They're serious

Dan Beecher and ooky.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Yeah. Um, and what I hear all the time on social media, tell me if you've ever heard this, somebody says that King James changed the Bible to, because of how much he hated witches. And-

Dan Beecher I have heard, I, I, I mean, here's the thing. I come from a theater background.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher So I have heard a lot of, uh, sort of relating King James to witches.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher In part because we know that, uh, Shakespeare wrote Macbeth dur- r- right when James ascended the throne.

Dan McClellan Mm.

Dan Beecher And it's said that it was to appeal to King James, who was Scottish.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher Uh, and it, it heavily features witches. So I know, so, like, I can see that there has been a James and witch thing.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So, but n- but, uh, talk to me about, uh, witchcraft, the Bible, and King James.

Dan McClellan So, so King James famously was, uh, quite anti-witch.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan Um, and, and anti-women in certain ways. Um, inside and outside the bedroom. Um-

Dan Beecher I was gonna say, the- Yeah ... there's one way that we're all specifically thinking of, but- But- Okay ...

Dan McClellan but there, there's a claim that he added a verse to the Book of Exodus.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan The, the claim is that Exodus 22:18 is added by King James, which reads, and the, oh, I, I don't even have the King James Version up, but the King James Version says, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."

Dan Beecher Correct.

Dan McClellan And so, the, I've seen this claim many times on social media, and it's just entirely false. It's entirely made up, because the verse actually doesn't change at all from the source text. Because the King James Version is a very conservative revision of a translation that already existed, specifically the Bishop's Bible.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And you can go back to the Bishop's Bible, you can go back to the Geneva Bible, you can go back to the Great Bible, you can go back to the Matthew's Bible, you can go all the way back to Tyndale, who did translate Exodus into, into English, and it all says more or less, you, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." Uh, so that is, is in keeping with the, the longstanding tradition of, uh, of misogyny that- ... uh, that we have in, in, uh- Well- ... in Bible translation, uh, that still goes on down to this very day. But, um, it is-

Dan Beecher Indeed. But- Yes ... I w- so, so, okay, first question for me is, uh, did they get it wrong?

Dan McClellan Not really, because we do have this in the Hebrew. It's actually Exodus 22 verse 17 in the Hebrew, because chapter 22 of Exodus is, is off by a verse between the Hebrew and the English.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan But the Hebrew there is

Dan Beecher Dumbledore. No.

Dan McClellan Yeah, the wizards. Um, "You shall not suffer them to live," or, uh, peripides, peripiesite, which comes from, uh- Peripueo, to preserve, keep safe, keep alive. So you're being told not to keep them safe. And, and this is interesting. Does, does the word pharmakos, uh, which the, the masculine singular is pharmakos. Does that sound like anything to you?

Dan Beecher Yeah, phar- like, like pharmacy or-

Dan McClellan Yeah

Dan Beecher ... or f-

Dan McClellan yeah. Yeah, pharmacy. Pharmakia is a Greek word that, uh, later on gets adopted into Latin and then into English as a reference to someone who works with, uh, drugs and things like that. In the ancient w- Potions and powders and- Potions and powders and, un- uh, unctions and, um-

Dan Beecher Unctions, yes

Dan McClellan ... ointments and, and, uh, various libations and all that kind of stuff. But, uh, in the ancient world, that could, that just referred generically to anybody who kinda mixed things together, whether it was for harm or for good. Uh, but here, obviously the context is suggestive of understanding this as someone who's doing it, uh, for harm. Although, who knows? I mean, women were probably helping each other with their, with their, you know, periods or something in the medieval-

Dan Beecher Yeah

Dan McClellan ... period and were being accused of being witches, so.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Uh, so I think-

Dan Beecher Or they, or-

Dan McClellan ... the lines were probably blurred, uh, with like the-

Dan Beecher Or they were paying attention to what made people feel better when they ate and drank it, and then suddenly it's-

Dan McClellan Yeah, or they learned to read or something. Um-

Dan Beecher How dare they?

Dan McClellan Yeah. So-

Dan Beecher Yeah

Dan McClellan ... so we do have a change from feminine singular to masculine plural, and then a lot of people, you know, it, it... People are already on their, their conspiracy kick when they're, when they're thinking about King James inserting this, being like, "I got a great idea. You know how I hate witches?" "Let's just make up a verse that, uh, that says we gotta kill witches."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Uh, but then people look at pharmakos and pharmakia, and they, they see it in the Book of Revelation as well. The word occurs there as well. And, and obviously the more conspiratorial-minded folks are just having a field day with what this means when it comes to vaccinating your children or-

Dan Beecher Oh, no.

Dan McClellan ... or yourself or, or, or things like that. So we're-

Dan Beecher Thou shalt not suffer a pharmacist to live.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Particularly if they're working on mtDNA stuff, you know, 'cause then, you know, you gotta-

Dan Beecher Yeah

Dan McClellan ... you gotta, uh... Yeah, they're, they're obviously working for the, the devil.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Uh, if they're trying to save lives, um, but-

Dan Beecher Well, that's, so this is an interesting thing that I bumped up against. Uh, since you-

Dan McClellan Okay

Dan Beecher ... brought up the devil, I wanna just-

Dan McClellan As I am wont to do

Dan Beecher ... as is, as is your wont.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Uh, a- and y- and you won't. Um, but I, I... So as I was poking around on this, uh, it became very clear to me that the European tradition of witchcraft-

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm

Dan Beecher ... which goes back, which predates Wycliffe, you know what I mean? It goes, it goes back a long ways. It, it, generally speaking, is sort of, sort of combines being in league with Satan.

Dan McClellan Oh, yeah.

Dan Beecher Being in league with the devil, a pact-

Dan McClellan Yeah

Dan Beecher ... with the devil. You've got covens that, you know, s- you know, "I saw Goody Proctor with the devil" sort of thing. Uh, but that made me realize that, like, we've talked about the devil, and that's, the devil as w- as we, as a modern thinker or even a medieval thinker thinks of this personage of the devil-

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm

Dan Beecher ... wasn't really present when Exodus was written.

Dan McClellan Oh, no. Not remotely.

Dan Beecher So, so is it, so the concept of a witch that, that, you know, that, that King James was worried about is entirely different than what the authors of Exodus was, were t- was talking about.

Dan McClellan Oh, yeah. Absolutely. The, the idea of Satan is, is pri- well, the idea of Satan as we understand it is primarily an invention of, of Christianity. Now, Christianity is getting it from Greco-Roman period Judaism, which is developing it from the interaction of earlier Jewish texts and Greco-Roman traditions, and, and specifically Greek ideas about daimons and, and things like that. But yeah, there's no, there's no Satan that is, you know, ta- taking over, possessing these people who are, who are being referred to as, well, what we would translate witches. And the, and the word in, the masculine plural form of the word, so in Exodus 22:17, it's machashaphah. You have the machashaphim in Exodus, the, the magicians.

Dan Beecher Oh, right.

Dan McClellan Pharaoh, Pharaoh's magicians. That's machashaphim in Hebrew. That's the masculine plural form of that word. And so-

Dan Beecher Okay. So, so those magicians, Pharaoh's magicians, are the same th- thing as thou shalt not suffer a female version of this-

Dan McClellan Right

Dan Beecher ... to live.

Dan McClellan Yeah, which i- which is kinda peculiar 'cause it's almost like, look, we're okay with the male versions. We just w- you know, I'm, I'm thinking of, uh, Blazing Saddles, but we don't want the Irish.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan We don't, we don't want the womenfolk.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Um, which is, you know, again, deeply, uh, patriarchal society. But you've got a, you've got a handful of, of references to the machashaph, uh, in the Hebrew Bible, uh, and they get translated a variety of different ways. Sorcerers is how, uh, it's translated in Malachi 3. Uh, Deuteronomy 18:10 has a, has a few different things to refer to, and none of these are in any way being represented as, you know, the puppets of Satan.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Um, this is not, um... Oh, gosh. What is the name of that Mystery Science Theater 3000? T- uh, the Ha- no, it's not, it's not Hand of Satan. It's not Touch of Satan. Ar, I forget what, what it is, but- One, it's about a witch. It's one of the funniest, uh, MS, uh, K- T- Oh, my gosh. MST3K, uh, videos. But anyway, Deuteronomy 18:10, "No one shall be found among you who makes a son or daughter pass through fire," so that would be the, uh, child sacrificers, "or who practices divination," and that would be, um... And, and here we're gonna talk in a future episode about magic in the New Testament with a specialist on magic in early Christianity, which is gonna be a fascinating discussion. But, but I think it's hilarious that you have other parts of the Hebrew Bible that are like, "Here's how you do divination."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And then you have this part that's like, "By the way, don't do divination."

Dan Beecher Yeah. We-

Dan McClellan And-

Dan Beecher Yeah. I was gonna say, like, part of what has baffled me as I've sort of looked into this is how many of the things are like, "Don't ever do this," and then later somebody's doing it and it's totally cool.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So I don't... Like, I mean, and we've talked about, you know, the, uh, the, uh, the Ewok of Endor- ... and, uh, and how she-

Dan McClellan The necromancer

Dan Beecher ... r- Oh, that's what it was. Yes. Yes. The, the, the necromancer/frequently called the Witch of Endor. Like, very-

Dan McClellan Yes. Witch-

Dan Beecher ... very f- which is wrong ... which is wrong. Uh, she's not a pharmacist, so everybody calm down. But she, she does her thing, but, like, she's upset because she's being made to do it, uh, and it's illegal. But no one's upset that it's, like, immoral or against God or something, and she's successful at it.

Dan McClellan Or, or that it doesn't work. Yeah, yeah.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan The, the, throughout the text, the presupposition is that this is real and it does work.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And it's not necessarily that, oh, you're tapping into demonic influences, it's just that God said not to do this.

Dan Beecher Right. Right.

Dan McClellan And it, and it's, and because you are, you are making use of divine agency beyond our deity. But it's not because, you know, they're evil, it's just because God is a jealous God, and we're only supposed to be... We're subscribed to his channel- ... only allowed to watch his programming.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so, uh, yeah, s- uh, divination is really just saying there's a, the act itself is okay, as long as the person is authorized and the, the ultimate, uh, target of the divination is the God of Israel. If the perthon, per- the perthon is not authorized, sorry. If the person is not authorized and the target is some other divine agency beyond the God of Israel, then not only is it no, a no-no, it's punishable by death. Which really just shows-

Dan Beecher So-

Dan McClellan ... how, how much of a petty and, uh, jealous deity the God of Israel was.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan He's like, "No one has to be me."

Dan Beecher So an authorized person, an authorized person would be, like, a priest or a prophet-

Dan McClellan Right. Someone-

Dan Beecher ... of God

Dan McClellan ... someone who has been authorized, set apart, uh, to do this Anointed. Yes. Anointed, if you will.

Dan Beecher Your vari- your var- your various dousings, your various-

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher ... whatevers. Um-

Dan McClellan Yes. Var- various and sundry, uh, anointings and, and washings.

Dan Beecher Settings apart.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan Um-

Dan Beecher Um, yeah, so, like you mentioned the Deuteronomy 18 thing.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Divination, soothsaying, augury, sorcery, casting s-

Dan McClellan Augury. Augury's such a great term we don't use.

Dan Beecher Well, yeah.

Dan McClellan You, you, you know what, you know what august means, right?

Dan Beecher N- no.

Dan McClellan The, you know this august body?

Dan Beecher Oh, august. Yes.

Dan McClellan And, and Augustus? Yes.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Uh, it means, uh, it, it means, uh, sanctioned or authorized by augury.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Interesting.

Dan McClellan Which is the, uh, divination based on the, the, if I recall, the flight paths of birds.

Dan Beecher Of birds, right.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan There, uh, uh, there's, there are so many cool different kinds of divination. My favorite is extispicy.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan Are you familiar with extispicy?

Dan Beecher No. You've exposed me to a new word.

Dan McClellan Yes. This is one you've gotta try the next time you're in a high school science class. Uh, which, which will be frequently, obviously.

Dan Beecher Happens to me all the time.

Dan McClellan Yes. This is, uh, where you cut the liver out of a sheep-

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm

Dan McClellan ... and then you study its color, its contours, and its shape, and then you can divine the future based on that. Extispicy, ladies and gentlemen, is-

Dan Beecher Extispicy

Dan McClellan ... yes, is a very-

Dan Beecher Okay

Dan McClellan ... uh, a very common one, so-

Dan Beecher It sounds messy.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher I don't like it.

Dan McClellan Yes. We, we-

Dan Beecher I don't, I don't-

Dan McClellan ... prefer to say this august body rather than this extispicious body. Um-

Dan Beecher Extispicious. Yeah, exactly.

Dan McClellan Yeah, yeah.

Dan Beecher Um, I, I like, I like also that Deuteronomy goes on to say, "casting spells," which is interesting.

Dan McClellan Mm.

Dan Beecher Uh, and consulting ghosts or spirits, something about that. Uh-

Dan McClellan Yeah. Well, and, and that is, I'm, I'm looking for the, the exact word we have. Qosem, qasamim. Uh, well, that's, that's divination.

Dan Beecher Yeah. I mean, the-

Dan McClellan Practice divination

Dan Beecher ... it does feel like this is, uh, the... like, there's some crossover to these, some of these.

Dan McClellan Yeah. These, these are mo- These- ... these are, like, synonyms, basically.

Dan Beecher Yeah. It's, it's a little repetitious.

Dan McClellan Yeah, because you do have, I don't see it in this verse, but you do have the ov is, like, the ghost or what we, we call the familiar spirit, if you are reading from the King James Version. And a lot of people think familiar spirit, and they think, "Ah, it's a spirit that I recognize. I know you."

Dan Beecher No, no, no.

Dan McClellan "Weren't you at my, weren't you at my sleepover that one time?" No.

Dan Beecher This is, this is, this is vampire familiars.

Dan McClellan Uh, kinda. It is f- familial.

Dan Beecher Yeah, okay.

Dan McClellan Uh, so it's, it's really, like, uh, ancestors.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay. Yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher All right.

Dan McClellan Yeah, yeah.

Dan Beecher Sure.

Dan McClellan So, oh-

Dan Beecher Okay

Dan McClellan ... um, uh, Harvey, I don't know if, at FanX, the guy who played, uh, Guillermo-

Dan Beecher Oh, okay

Dan McClellan ... was, was there as well. Sorry. We were talking about this in, uh, in our-

Dan Beecher Yeah. If you become a patron of our, uh, of, of the show, you can go and, and listen to our patrons only- Yes ... uh, content.

Dan McClellan Our, our, our FanX successes and failures. Uh- ... or at least successes on Dan's part and failures on my part. Oh,

Dan Beecher so sad.

Dan McClellan But, um, but the, uh, yeah, you have this, uh, Ove is the, the familiar spirit who is consulted, uh, for things because the dead are deities. And- Right ... and that's what happens with the necromancer of En Dor. Saul shows up and ge- says, "Gimme Samuel." And, and then the, the necromancer freaks out co- and says, you know, "I see Elohim rising up from the underworld or from the earth." And Saul says, "What does he look like?" And says, "It's this old dude in a robe. This is- ... this is Samuel." So, and, and precisely so that Saul can be informed about what's gonna happen in the future. So divination, uh, which is outlawed, but the story is really trying to show, "Look, the God of Israel is in control of all of this."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Even if you pull up the ghost of Samuel, uh, Samuel is doing God's bidding. So, uh, it all works, but it's not sanctioned. It's not authorized. Uh, so but, but I don't see that in Deuteronomy 18:10. By the way, if anybody's interested, there's a phenomenal book, I think I've talked about it before on the show, by our good friend Esther Hamori called Women's Divination in Biblical Literature: Prophecy, Necromancy, and Other Arts of Knowledge.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan That if you really wanna get into something that would have earned, uh, Esther a, a trip to the gallows, uh, had she written this book in the medieval period- ... uh, like that- that's a phenomenal book. I highly recommend that. There's a whole chapter on the necromancer of En Dor. Uh, and-

Dan Beecher Well, we're just dumb for not having her on for this episode.

Dan McClellan We've, we've, yeah, we, we've talked with, uh, with her about it. We gotta, we gotta revisit that discussion.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But, um, yeah, and, and then there's a chapter on Huldah. You remember Huldah? Hu-

Dan Beecher No. Wait. Hul- Yes. No. Help me out. Huldah's

Dan McClellan the prophetess that King Josiah brings the text of the law to after it has been discovered- Yes ... in the temple, and she's the one who basically goes, "Ooh, you, you've been getting it wrong all this time." Yeah. But, uh-

Dan Beecher She's the Pam Bondi of the- ... uh, of, of that administration.

Dan McClellan Oh, and there's a, there's another cool story about the mother of Micah and the teraphim from- Ooh ... uh, the Book of Judges. I think Judges 18 is, is where it talks about it, where, where Micah brings home a bunch of silver and gives it to his mom, and his mom, uh, or is it the other way around? Uh, somebody, uh, spits out a bunch of, uh, divine images from, from all this silver. But, uh-

Dan Beecher Well, I mean, so we have a lot of examples of various sort of sanctioned, totally fine divination.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Uh, uh, including by women, right? Or, or is it, uh, like I'm just trying to-

Dan McClellan Like, like Huldah would be, uh, would seem to be as close as we get, I think, to, uh, sanctioned divination because- Right ... I was about to draw the, the, or make the point that when we see inappropriate divination, frequently it's women who are doing it.

Dan Beecher Okay. That's true. There you go.

Dan McClellan And so I, I think there is another bubbling to the surface of the, the fundamental misogyny of the way they're structuring their- Yeah ... um, their society in this time period, where if we want to point at someone who's doing it wrong, find the woman.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And, and that's the one who's doing it wrong, which may be why Exodus 22:17 is using the feminine singular, because the men, maybe the men who are doing it, we, we presume that they're doing it appropriately or something like that. But if a- Right ... woman's doing it, uh, you know, so-

Dan Beecher You know what happened? She was better than they were-

Dan McClellan Yeah, yeah ...

Dan Beecher and they were mad about it. And, uh, and so they just decided, "Nope. We're, if you do that, we're gonna kill you."

Dan McClellan Yeah. So, so they, they probably in their time period would've talked about, uh, diviners and then female diviners- Mm ... uh, rather than diviners and then male diviners.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Uh, you know, like you, like, like female doctor or female pilot or something like that-

Dan Beecher Yeah, yeah ...

Dan McClellan today. You got your regular pilot, and then- And then this- ... you got your female pilot- Right ... and who is- Yeah ... irregular.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Uh, so maybe that's what's going on with Exodus 22's concern only for the female, uh, mechashaf or mechashafah.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Uh, so yeah. And then we have the, uh, in the Book of Daniel, we also have the king, uh, commands the magicians, the enchanters, and the mechashafim, and as we know, that includes Gallagher. Um, so- That's a bit of an ins-

Dan Beecher He was the best one.

Dan McClellan That,

Dan Beecher he was the

Dan McClellan best one. Best one. That, that thing he did with the watermelon. Uh- It was amazing ... yeah. And then the, uh-

Dan Beecher I don't know if you, I don't know if you've learned the divination of a watermelon rind- Right, yeah ... but it is one of the better ways of divining. It's much better than a sheep's stomach. I'll have a sheep liver, I'll tell

Dan McClellan you. 'Cause then you get to, then you get to eat it, and you don't have to cook it or anything. Um, what was the, uh, the name of that movie that, this

Dan Beecher was just-

Dan McClellan This is

Dan Beecher just called Daniel, wasn't it? It

Dan McClellan was just

Dan Beecher called Daniel, wasn't it? Or The Book of Daniel. Maybe it was The Book of Da-

Dan McClellan Was it the book of-

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Was it from, uh, 2013, or was it a more recent one?

Dan Beecher I don't know.

Dan McClellan Yeah. We, we watched this ridiculous movie called The Book of Daniel, uh, a while ago for, uh, to go on a podcast to, to mock it.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And, uh, literally Gallagher portrayed one of Nebuchadnezzar's- Amazing ... uh, sorcerers who came out to-

Dan Beecher If you don't know the name Gallagher, if you're, if you're confused, young person- ... uh, Gallagher was a goofball comedian, if you can call him that. I guess that's what passed for a comedian back in the- ... uh, the '80s and- ... maybe into the '90s.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Uh- And, uh, yeah, don't look up his later stuff 'cause, uh- Oof.

Dan Beecher Half of it's his brother anyway.

Dan McClellan It got, it gets a little blue,

Dan Beecher uh- Ah ...

Dan McClellan which is not the correct, uh, description of it.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But, uh, he went off the deep end. Anywho.

Dan Beecher Anywho. I, I just wanted to talk a little bit about, uh, some of the various divination that wa- like, I'm thinking of the Urim and Thummim.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher I'm thinking of... Like, there were, there are all kinds of oracles, all kinds of ways in which these very, uh, acts are, are sanctioned and stuff.

Dan McClellan Uh-huh.

Dan Beecher So I... Moses's staff is magical. Aaron's staff is magical. Uh, what are some other things? I'm trying to think of some other, some other fun, good-

Dan McClellan Well, one, one interesting way, and, and this is not so much divination as sympathetic magic. Like, if you wanna talk about witchcraft, this gets a little closer to that. When Jacob wants to take off and leave- Oh ... Laban.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan And Laban is like, "Okay, you get all this kind of sheep. I'm gonna take that kind of sheep." And he was like, "Ooh, I'm gonna get you." And then-

Dan Beecher Let me just- ...

Dan McClellan he takes the-

Dan Beecher Let me just show him some sticks.

Dan McClellan Yeah. We, we take some sticks, and he peels some of the bark off to create these striped and, and sticks. And he puts them in the water so that when, when, uh, certain sheep come to drink, they see these sticks, and then they give birth to the, the strong, uh, like, mottled or, or striped or spotted or whatever sheep. And, and basically the idea is he's using sympathetic magic so that everything that Laban said belonged to him was all the strong and, and good, uh, offspring.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And then everything that stays with Laban is all the sickly and weak offspring. And then, uh, Jacob goes on to say basically that, that God is the one who inspired him to do it, uh, which is part of my, my friend, um, uh, John Anderson has a book called Jacob and the Divine Trickster, which is about a theology of deception- Hmm ... in the Jacob cycle. But this is one of the stories that kind of manifests this idea where God's, God's gonna play the trickster in order to ensure that their promises to the patriarchs are fulfilled, even if that means using some sympathetic magic to screw over, uh, Laban so that Jacob can get wealthier on his way out the door.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Uh, so, so that's an, that's an interesting one. We got, you got some examples like that. Casting lots is a great one.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan 'Cause that you see in the Hebrew Bible. You even see it in the New Testament.

Dan Beecher J- for those who don't understand what casting lots is, it's, it's, it's like a roll of the dice technically.

Dan McClellan Yeah, yeah.

Dan Beecher Like, basically.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It's, it's y- y- they have some sort of implements or, you know, some sort of little doo- d- doodads.

Dan McClellan Could be knuckle bones. Could be, could be s- rocks. Could be g- uh, you know, something that they shaped out of clay. Um, yeah.

Dan Beecher And then, and then somehow if it lands X way, then it means one thing, and if it lands Y way, then it means a different thing.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But that, but that was used quite a bit.

Dan McClellan Yeah. That was-

Dan Beecher Casting lots.

Dan McClellan Yeah, and there, and there doesn't seem to be any problem with it- Yeah ... uh, in the, in the stories that, that talk about it. Again, as long as, as you're doing it for God, and you're authorized to do it, it, it seems like you can do-

Dan Beecher And you've got a penis.

Dan McClellan Yes, right. That's, that's very important. The, the testes are kind of the- ... the, uh, the powerhouse of the divination cell. So, um, yeah, you've got... But-

Dan Beecher It's just so, it's just so weird the, the... It does seem that, like, the, the missing link, the obvi- the, the thing that this one does have that this one doesn't is just the gender thing.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Uh, so that... I mean, I don't think that that was helpful for when you get, when you, when you, you know, say something to King James about it. I don't... I... You know what I mean?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Like, I feel like this didn't, this did not go well for women throughout centuries.

Dan McClellan Yeah, yeah. And even, even down to, uh, you know, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. And then Robin Hood: Men in Tights. I mean, the witch kinda gets her way at the end of Robin Hood: Men in Tights with, uh, with Prince John, but, uh- ... uh, yeah. What, what does he-

Dan Beecher I just-

Dan McClellan What does he call her in, uh, Prince of Thieves? Crone, right? Uh-

Dan Beecher Probably.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Like, y- look, my knowledge of the '90s stuff is- ... is not as afresh in my mind as yours is. Uh-

Dan McClellan I wanted to watch that movie a couple weeks ago, and my kids were like, "Ugh." "Come on, Dad."

Dan Beecher All right. Well, uh, don't persecute any women who are doing, uh, spooky stuff, especially not now. This, this is, this is the month where we allow it. So everybody be cool with the witchy people, uh, men or women. It, uh... You know, get out there and, uh, and get some moon water going and throw- ... cast some lots and read the tea leaves 'cause it's fun. Uh- Yeah ... and I, and it's not Satanic. That's, that is clear. Well, that's it for today. Thank you so much for joining us. If you would like to become a part of keeping this show rocking and rolling, uh, and making sure that we pave the way for witches everywhere, please, uh, consider becoming a member here on YouTube. That's where you hit the little join button, and then you can get exclusive things, like access to the live that you and I did just a couple weeks ago that was great, and that we will continue to do more and more frequently, I think- Mm-hmm ... 'cause it was a lot of fun. And, you know, we got to interact with you, our, our listeners, our viewers, uh, so that's always fun. Or you can become a patron over on patreon.com/dataoverdogma, where you can get early and ad-free access to every episode. You can get our weekly, uh, bonus content, uh, at the right level. Uh, and it's just... A good time was had by all, so consider doing that if you got some extra change hanging around. Thanks so much to Roger Gowdy for editing the show. Say- thanks to Sam for being our right-hand man, and thanks to all y'all for tuning in. We'll talk to you again next time. Bye, everybody.