What does the Bible really say? Are the words we hear and read today the same as they were 2,000 years ago or have the been twisted by time and temptation. Bible Scholar Dr. Daniel McClellan specializes in translating ancient Biblical text. We talk what the Bible really says, how translations have changed over time and Bible conspiracy theories. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Movie Runners.

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Interview with Bible Scholar Dr. Daniel McCellan

Nick VinZant 0:00

Welcome to Profoundly Pointless. My name is Nick VinZant. Coming up in this episode, the Bible and movie running,

Dr. Daniel McClellan 0:09

we read it in ways that make it meaningful to us. And that frequently means departing from how the author's originally wanted it to be read far too frequently, negotiations with the text take place so that someone can use the Bible as a weapon or a wedge, or as a wall of separation, or to structure power in favor of their own identities. There are a lot of conspiracy theorists who suggest that the Nephilim are still around that giants still walk the earth and they're hiding out in caves in Afghanistan,

Nick VinZant 0:44

I want to thank you so much for joining us, if you get a chance, subscribe, leave us a rating or review, we really appreciate it really helps us out. If you're a new listener, welcome to the show. If you're a longtime listener, thank you so much for all of your support. So our first guest studies the Bible, translating ancient texts, to find out what the Bible really says, what it doesn't, and what that means for today. Religion isn't something that we usually talk about on this show. So I want to just say that the goal of this episode isn't to invalidate or validate anything that anybody believes about religion. It's just to take a look at a historically significant book, and find out how it came together, what it originally said, and how that meaning has changed over time. I think it's important when we're talking about something that may have deep personal significance to people to disclose any biases that I might have. I was raised Roman Catholic, but I'm no longer religious. And I don't honestly even really know what I believe. This is Bible scholar and Bible translator, Dr. Dan McClellan. Does the Bible say what we generally think it says, or have translations been lost throughout time,

Dr. Daniel McClellan 2:14

people's readings of the Bible have changed throughout time. And if we work hard, we can do our best to try to reconstruct the interpretive lenses that they would have brought to the text ancient light to try to say, we think this is most likely what this text originally meant. But because most people approach the Bible devotionally as an authoritative spiritual document, they want it to be relevant, they want it to be meaningful. And if everybody read the Bible, according to what it meant 2000 or 2500 years ago, it wouldn't be incredibly meaningful, because the world has changed so much. And so we read it in ways that make it meaningful to us. And that frequently means departing from how the author's originally wanted it to be read and to function and how the original audiences wanted it to be read and function. And so yes, it's, it's changed throughout time, that's an inevitability. And we do our best to try to figure out what it originally meant. But that usually doesn't serve the interests of people who are approaching it devotionally just because frequently, it complicates their understanding of the Bible's nature and function and makes it less meaningful, makes it less useful to them. And so a lot of people prefer whatever makes it more meaningful and more useful to them. Would we be

Nick VinZant 3:41

better served then I guess that if we just kind of forgot about the words and focused on the message.

Dr. Daniel McClellan 3:49

I think there's a there's a degree to which we do that already, unconsciously. People aren't usually are not knowingly saying we're gonna twist this around. We're gonna say what we want it to say. But I think we do that. But yeah, I think there would be value in at least consciously being aware that we're negotiating with the text. And I think if people if people believe that the text is inspired, if people believe that this is God's voice speaking through the text in one way or another, then hopefully they can recognize that its meaning is going to change. That's an inevitability. And that's not a bad thing. And so I would advocate for consciously negotiating with the text with a desire to try to approximate what one believes God's Will might be. And hopefully that means more unity with other people. That means advancing the interests of marginalized suppressed minoritized groups, far too frequently, negotiations with the text take place so that someone can use the Bible as a weapon or a wedge, or as a wall of separation or To structure power in favor of their own identities.

Nick VinZant 5:05

Is that has that always been the case, though? Or is that more of a recent thing?

Dr. Daniel McClellan 5:09

I think it has always been the case, we can look in the Bible, and we can see places where authors are saying what they're saying, in order to structure power in favor of their own ethnic identities, or ideological identities, or, you know, we have priestly texts that are trying to structure power in favor of priests over and against the common people. Then we have other texts where the prophets are saying, No, the kings and the priests are wrong, and we're going to restructure power in our favor and over against the kings in the pre so you have these two perspectives in the Bible, for instance, one that Israel shouldn't have a king, that God is Israel's King, and then you have the other perspective is that no, the king is good. The King is God's agent on Earth. And so yeah, it's going on even originally, in the very text themselves.

Nick VinZant 5:59

Okay, I'm a big numbers person, it's just kind of how like my brain works. If you were to say, all right, 100%. Is this is what was meant at the time, whatever the time is. We're 10% off from what that is now. 20%? Like, how close would you say that we are to? This was what, at the time, again, whatever the time is, what was originally conceived,

Dr. Daniel McClellan 6:30

I'd say on a good day, maybe we just get past halfway, just get past 50%. But I think it differs depending on what kind of texts we're looking at. Because there are a lot of historical narratives where the text is not incredibly difficult to understand, we can read these these historical narratives and say, Okay, so in so did X to so and so and then went from x place to y place. And that's not incredibly difficult to understand. But in terms of what the significance of this is why the authors were writing it the way they were, right, why the figures were doing what they were doing, I would say we're lucky, if half the time we understand precisely what they were getting at. And I mean, just the general audience, I think scholars get a little closer. But we can't approach being 100% positive about 100% of the text not even remotely

Nick VinZant 7:25

for the stuff that we kind of get wrong in that aspect. Is it big differences in the sense that like, Okay, well, they said one, and we interpreted as 10, or they said six, and we thought it was 6.5? Like, are we making big mistakes, or just kind of like s six, one half a dozen, the other kind of mistakes?

Dr. Daniel McClellan 7:48

I think there are examples of both. And I think it, there is more of an incentive to be further off and to be okay with being further off, the more useful a text is for a given purpose that that we want it to serve. And so a lot of the hot button issues, I think, people are frequently far more off on by orders of magnitude, for instance, things that have to do with the LGBTQ plus community, things that have to do with abortion, things that have to do with slavery, things that have to do with the subjugation of women, these are these are things where people want certain ideologies to be present. And so they're more willing to, to be far away. Subconsciously, they're not knowingly being far away. But that's where I think the utility of the text pushes us further away from what was originally intended. And so I think the more prominent a text is, in debates going on today, the more likely we are pretty far off from from when it probably originally meant,

Nick VinZant 8:55

can we tell going back if it was supposed to be something that was followed to the letter or if it was always kind of more of you get the idea? Kind of a book?

Dr. Daniel McClellan 9:07

Yeah, I think for the Hebrew Bible, it was largely a, you get the idea. And a lot of these texts were written to be circulated within closed circles, like within the authoritative groups, and they probably weren't widely known, like the Torah was probably not widely known and widely followed until around the second or the first century BCE, which is, so the whole Hebrew Bible has been written by this period. And texts were still not functioning the way they function today at that time period. The kind of locus of authority was not in the text, but in the idea, and the text was just one iteration of it. It was just one version of it that has been materialized. And it's kind of the opposite. today. We place the authority in the physical text itself. And the idea that's behind it does not carry the same weight because that is malleable that has manipulable, that is changeable, whereas the text is the text and it's not changing. So there has been a shift in where we placed the authority between around the New Testament and today. And I think the the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment kind of played a significant role in the way we look at the authority of text today and thinking about the letter of the text rather than the spirit. But yeah, I would say for most of the Bible, it was really the spirit more than the letter.

Nick VinZant 10:34

Do you think that that shift that all has contributed to or caused kind of a shift away from religion that we have seen over the last decades or so that we're now taking a literal, literal interpretation of something that in times can be clearly wrong?

Dr. Daniel McClellan 10:57

I think that has contributed to some things that have accelerated that. When we come out of the Enlightenment, we've got these, these competing forces, this idea of a revealed religion, versus this idea of, of rational religion. And the revealed religion, in many ways adopted a lot of the hermeneutics, a lot of the epistemological framework. So how we know what we know, in order to try to prove to rational religion that revealed religion was rational and made sense. And so when we get into the 19th century, and we have debates about slavery, we have debates about evolution, and these kinds of things. This is where the idea of inerrancy is kind of ginned up within this debate, it's kind of a line drawn in the sand, as a way to distinguish the people who are really on our side versus the people who are not. But the problem is that is a very sharp, brittle line. And so I think a lot of people who are used to that kind of black and white conceptualization of biblical religion, because it's so brittle, it breaks so easily. And so as people come to understand the Bible better, as we are democratizing information about what the Bible says and what it originally meant using the Internet and other social media, that is snapping for a lot more people.

Nick VinZant 12:26

Like, when we look back at it, though, what would you say is kind of the big issue in translating, like this is what makes this difficult.

Dr. Daniel McClellan 12:35

For the longest time we think of translation as just kind of taking this set inherent meaning and then just spitting out a one to one correspondence to it in another language. And that's just not how language works. And so, I think that's in translation, now we're becoming aware that, you know, we have positionality, we are looking at these texts from perspective, even when we're translating them. And that influences how we translate them. And so we can really do our best to try to approximate what the original authors intended. But there's a degree to which we're always it's always just going to be a rough approximation. And one of the things that I usually say, when people talk about, oh, what translation is the closest to the original, what translation is the best is that's going to have a lot to do with how close you are to the source culture, and the source history and the source of language, as well as what you want to do with it. Because people will engage Bible translations for different reasons. And if you just want to understand what's being said, we can translate it one way to try to facilitate that. But we're gonna have to make a decision about how informed you are, or how informed we think you are about the text. So a metaphor, I may have to translate into something that's more native to the target audiences own society. So for instance, there's this famous story about Lamb of God being translated for some Inuit communities, where they don't know what a lamb is, and they don't know they so they have no concept that would not be a translation to render Lamb of God because they have no idea what that is. So they render seal of God because people are used to having and raising seals and eating seals for meat and using their skin and things like that. So that's a rough approximation. It doesn't match exactly how that metaphor is used in the New Testament. But it's a lot better than giving them a more literal translation that they have absolutely no concept of. And so, you know, a lot of that depends on on what they're approaching the text for. Is that a missionary tool? Is it an administrative tool? Is it supposed to help pastors? Is it supposed to help parents teach their children is it supposed to help children understand the text so we can have high quality translation? shins aimed at all of those functions, and they can all be very different. But yeah, it depends on who's reading it and why.

Nick VinZant 15:08

I know this is kind of a basic question. But as we've been talking about it, I've realized that like, I don't really know what the Bible is, in the sense that like, wait a minute, was written, like, when did we get the Bible? Was it a bunch of different books like what languages originally like? I don't know, where it came from, in that sense of like, alright, this is wasn't when it was put together, this is the language what was in, and this is who wrote it?

Dr. Daniel McClellan 15:36

Yeah, it's, it's phenomenally complex. And we don't have something we can call the Bible until around the fourth century CE II. So like after Nicaea, is when we first bring things together into a single text. And so everything before that is separate documents, that they could be grouped together, and they could circulate as a group. But that grouping could be different from time to time and from place to place. And so for the Hebrew Bible that's being written between around 1000, maybe a little earlier than 1000 BCE, all the way down to about 165 BCE, is probably the earliest to the latest layers of the text in there. And some of it is very early poetry being written by community leaders, some of it is legal texts that are being written by cultic and state authorities. Some of it is prophetic material being written by prophets. A lot of it is narrative historical narrative that's being written again by cultic. And state authorities in order to try to produce kind of a foundation myth about where we came from, that helps them kind of curate their own nation of what notion of what the state is. And so that comes together in a complex way, people are adding to it people are putting text together, people are editing the text, some of those texts are dropping off, some of those new texts are being added later. And around by around the end of the first century. See, so around the time the New Testament is being composed. The Hebrew Bible, as we understand it, today, was more or less settled, we see the last debates taking place, within rabbinic literature around the first century CE talking about mainly Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs as the only possible texts where they're like, we're not sure about these yet. But by 100 CE, that's pretty much settled. The New Testament is the earliest texts we have are the writings of Paul, and not all of the Pauline epistles were written by Paul, some of them were written decades after his death, but the earliest texts are First Thessalonians, Romans, things like that. And we have the Gospels being written after that we have other texts being written after that we probably have texts with a New Testament being composed into maybe getting close to 150 C. So in the second century, we still have some texts being composed. And then there are other texts that are being composed by other writers in the second century, particularly Gnostic authors that are kind of presenting an alternative perspective on on the Christian gospel. And we start to see debates about which of these texts are authoritative, which are not in the second century and then to the third century. And around the fourth century is when we see that debate kind of settling down and deciding on what's going to be in and around the end of the fourth century that we finally have the first kind of authoritative declaration of what's going to be in the Bible that more or less matches what we have today. But there are some interesting exceptions. For instance, the Ethiopian Orthodox towaco church has a canon that is significantly expanded, there are a lot more texts in that Canon than there are in most of the Christian canons. And that's because a version of the the Christian scriptures was brought down to what we now call Ethiopia at the time, that kingdom of ox zoom. And it was a Greek translation of the Septuagint. That included things like first Enoch, a very influential, famous text that most folks don't include in their Bible anymore. But yeah, it's it's complex, a lot of different people writing for a lot of different reasons. And it came together in a separate and complex manner. The Hebrew Bible came together in one way the Christian scriptures came together and another and then when we first can speak about a single Bible that's hundreds of years after the death of Jesus in the late fourth century CE. Do we know

Nick VinZant 19:51

why certain things were included and why certain things were left out?

Dr. Daniel McClellan 19:56

The so the idea that there were specific questions and specific criteria that determined what were in or out are actually kind of post hoc rationalizations. The driving factor was which texts were in the most widespread use within Christian congregations around Christendom. And a lot of that had to do with these debates about well, is this does this is this consistent with this? Is this likely authentic? Or is this not authentic? So I mentioned first Enoch, that was something that early Christian authors were like, Hey, this is really influential. However, it seems very unlikely that this text survived from before the flood. And it contradicts itself internally. And then it also contradicts some of the stuff we've got going on in the Gospels and elsewhere. And so that kind of fell out of favor because it couldn't really hang in, in those debates, and communities just stopped using it. And so what happens in the third and the fourth centuries is you have Christian leaders going around, and basically polling all the congregations to try to figure out what texts are considered authoritative, and are allowed to be read in our meetings and are considered divinely inspired. And then when that kind of started firming up, that's when you had people saying, Okay, well, let's identify what is shared between all these texts, oh, they're all have apostolic origins, or at least are based on apostolic authority, or, Oh, they all affirm this doctrine or something like that most of that was a leader rationalization. And it was really what was most in most widespread use. That was the driving factor in the canonization, at least of the New Testament.

Nick VinZant 21:38

I guess the way that I always think about it right in my imagination fills in all of the gaps is, I just imagined, like, there's 10 guys in a room at the Council of Nicaea. And they're like, alright, copy this part, put it over here, like copy and paste, like that's a this way, let's let's leave that part out. Right. Like that's, that. But that doesn't sound like that's really how it happened, necessarily.

Dr. Daniel McClellan 22:03

That's a that's a popular idea about how it happened. And one of the reasons is, because that serves a lot of structuring of power today, if we can frame what went on with the canonization of the Bible as basically an executive meeting that we might imagine taking place within some corporation today, then that allows us to kind of it to some degree vilify what was going on and say, we can, you know, their decisions were obviously corrupt, but that it's not really an accurate depiction of what went on. It was mainly Christian communities using these texts, and people going around and saying, Okay, well, it seems like these are the texts that most everybody's using. And then the council's basically said, approved. And so apart from the leadership, condemning certain authors and certain texts as heretical, and that was mainly the Gnostic literature. But there were other other texts as well. Apart from from that kind of explicit condemnation of those tax, everything else was was just what was most popular.

Nick VinZant 23:12

I keep thinking about like the NBA All Star game, like who the fans like, well, this is who they are. All right, well, let's put those ones in.

Dr. Daniel McClellan 23:21

And, and there's always debate at the margins as well, somebody's like, well, they shouldn't have made it in when we left this guy out. And it was very similar. The book of Revelation, for instance, was just kind of there. And everybody was like, Yeah, we love all these guys. And then there's revelation. And then it wasn't until around the time of the Reformation that the Roman Catholic Church finally said, Okay, we're formally making revelation canonical.

Nick VinZant 23:47

Are you ready for some harder slash listener submitted questions? Yeah, absolutely. What is Jesus's actual name?

Dr. Daniel McClellan 23:54

So here's another instance where we are the best we can do as a rough approximation. So the name in the Hebrew Bible, from which Jesus's name originates is Yahushua, which is Joshua. Now when we get into the Greco Roman period and into the Common Era, the period in which the New Testament is written, that name has kind of changed a little bit. And now it is this Aramaic name. That's was likely pronounced by a lot of people. Yeshua, or Yeshua. Now the interesting thing is there are dialectical differences between how these names are pronounced. For instance, my name is Daniel, that's how I pronounce it. But when I speak Spanish, it's not Daniel, is Danielle. And that's a that's a different way to pronounce my name and that has to do with language. But there are there are dialectical differences in how words were pronounced. anciently in the Shibboleth episode from the book of Judges is one example of that but people in Galilee pronounce ounces things differently and there is pretty good scholarship that indicates that they would not have pronounced the little a on the end. So whereas many people think it's Yeshua, Yeshua, they probably pronounced yay shoe. And so I think the best argument, the best closest approximation we can get right now is that somebody who grew up with Jesus, someone who lived in Nazareth probably would have referred to him as your shoe, or your shoe, or Yeshua, or something like that.

Nick VinZant 25:31

Was that a common name?

Dr. Daniel McClellan 25:34

It was a very common name. And we, it changes because as we go into different languages, we have to transliterate we use different ways of spelling things, so that people who are native in our language and not the language, the name is coming from know how to pronounce it. And so when it goes into Greek, it goes in as yay, Seuss. And that may represent the way it was pronounced in Galilee. But we also have that S on the end and then gets into Latin. It's EA Seuss. And then it was probably pronounced around the time that King James Version was translated probably something like yay, Seuss. And then the I pronunciation gave way to this J letter. And now we pronounced Jesus. And it is a transliteration of a transliteration of a transliteration of a transliteration. But it's still the same name, just like my name is the same whether someone can pronounce it the way I pronounce it, or was it whether they pronounce it as on yo, or some other way, because English is not their native language. Are there

Nick VinZant 26:41

any indications in any other kind of historical literature that mention him? Or is that too early for that time? You know, like, I can think of the example that I always think of is like, okay, back in the 1500s, or whatever, there was a huge volcanic eruption in India or wherever, somebody somewhere else may have also mentioned, like, hey, we saw these ash clouds in the sky. So is there any corroboration, I guess of, I'll use dramatic language, how big of a deal he was in any other kind of texts.

Dr. Daniel McClellan 27:19

There's nothing that's directly contemporaneous with his life. The closest we get to and outside at attestation of Jesus is probably Josephus, who is a Jewish writer wrote writing for a Roman audience at the very end of the first century CE, and he has two references to Jesus. And one of them has been significantly altered by later Christian writers where it's like praising Jesus as the Messiah, and as very clearly a corrupted text. But most scholars agree that it is probably expanding on an original reference to Jesus, who people called the Messiah. It doesn't really tell us much, except to say that he had a following, and the following is still around. So most of the corroborating data is going to come from 60 to 100 years after Jesus's life and really all at a test to is how quickly Christianity spread around the Roman Empire. How early Christians seem to have worshiped so we have this letter from a guy named plenty, who's writing home to Roman leadership saying, Hey, we found these Christians, I don't really know what to do with them, do I kill them? Do I just beat him a little bit and let him go? What's what kind of crime is Christianity? And we have the response, saying, you know, just smack him around a little bit, tell him that they're not allowed to, you know, they've got to worship the state gods and stuff like that, and then let them go. And if they do it again, then then you know, you've got to put them to death. But they plenty describes Christians gathering in the morning and singing hymns to Jesus as if to a god. So we can get a bit of a witness to how early Christianity was spreading and how it was functioning. But in terms of Jesus Himself, there's not really anything that's close to contemporary with his life.

Nick VinZant 29:17

Is that odd, though?

Dr. Daniel McClellan 29:20

Not really, this time and this place, we don't really have a ton of data. We don't have a ton of texts. The destruction of Jerusalem for one, around 70 ce between 60 and 70 ce destroyed a lot of a lot of records and people ran off and were in hiding for a long time. But we just don't have much to cover that period in that place. Anyway. There's a Jewish author named Philo and then Josephus are really our main sources of history for Judea in the first century. Philo is roughly contemporaneous with Jesus and Paul, and then Josephus is coming In decades after, but if we did not have those two authors, we would know next to nothing about the history of this period. So no, it's not incredibly unusual. People try to paint it as if, if this guy was real, we would know about it, we would have records we would have, you know, the Roman records of of crucifixion and stuff like that. And that's just not true.

Nick VinZant 30:21

Did he have any brothers or sisters? Was he married?

Dr. Daniel McClellan 30:24

regarding marriage, the text? Oddly, we would expect it to say something if he weren't married. And we also expect it to say something if he were married, based on the nature of the text, and it doesn't really say anything either way. And so yeah, we don't know for sure. I would say I personally, probably 55% to 45% think he probably would have been married. But at the same time, there are some parts of the gospels that seemed to prioritize celibacy. And and so maybe Jesus was like Paul, maybe Jesus was a celibate who swore off women and sexuality entirely? We don't know. And, yes, the indications are that Jesus had brothers and sisters, the texts indicate that and then Josephus refers to Jesus as the brother of this one, James, who was referred to in the New Testament. And so I think the preponderance of evidence indicates that Jesus did have brothers and sisters, you want to

Nick VinZant 31:29

do a fun one? Yeah. What's your favorite Bible conspiracy theory?

Dr. Daniel McClellan 31:37

My, I think the one that that baffles me the most, the one that I that just, I'm just amazed by it, is the idea that the Nephilim are giants that are that were discovered in Kandahar, in Afghanistan by US soldiers, and that are being hidden by the CIA. I think that's one that continues to amaze and astound me. That's a fun one. But yeah, there are. There are a lot of there are a lot of fun ones,

Nick VinZant 32:11

who are then the Nestle.

Dr. Daniel McClellan 32:14

So in, in Genesis six, we have this discussion of the Binay Elohim, the children of God who come down and marry the daughters of humanity and have children with them. And this is kind of set up as one of the reasons for the flood, why God is destroying humanity. But it says in that text, and there were Nephilim in the land in that day, and after, and Nephilim, that word only occurs one of the time in the book of Numbers, where the spies that Moses sent into the land, come back and say that their Nephilim and, and it is translated in the Septuagint. The ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible is giants. And so the Nephilim become giants. And then the Book of Enoch, it talks about the Nephilim is the offspring of the fallen angels and human women. And they're these grotesque giants who are basically the origin of evil in Greco Roman period Judaism, and so there's, there are a lot of conspiracy theorists who suggest that the Nephilim are still around that giants still walk the earth, and they're hiding out in caves in Afghanistan. And the US government is, is hiding knowledge of these giants. And we even had a couple of months ago, somebody in Canada took video driving down a road and they saw snow capped mountain top. And they saw what they thought was a giant at the top. And then they came back the next day. And they said they couldn't see it. And they said it was walking and it was really just a an antenna tower.

Nick VinZant 33:45

What does the Bible actually say about homosexuality?

Dr. Daniel McClellan 33:51

So homosexuality as a sexual orientation, is not addressed anywhere in the Bible, they had no concept of sexual orientation, as we understand it today. So the notion that someone would have this interior impulse in one of a few different directions across the spectrum, they had no understanding of that, that idea is something that developed in the 19th century. Now, they did know about same sex intercourse, but they accounted for it in different ways. So if if a man habitually wanted to have intercourse with other men, it was explained in different ways depending on whether they intended to be the active partner. Sometimes we refer euphemistically to the active partner as a way to refer to the insertive partner, the one doing the penetrating. And if someone habitually sought out the passive role, then that was explained in a different way as more of a pathological problem. So they had different ways to account for it, but in every place where it seems to be mentioned in the Bible, and that I'm mounts to about five places. Leviticus 1822, Leviticus 20, verse 13. And then we have Romans one verses 26 and 27. We have first Corinthians six. And we have a passage in First Timothy. It is condemned, but they're condemning specific acts. And they are limited acts, nobody is saying anytime anything like this happens, this is all bad. It's saying these guys over here, and these guys over here, and they're doing it for different reasons. In Leviticus, the idea is that these acts will pollute the land that this, like metaphysically generates contamination that will pollute the land, and so that must be accounted for. And when we look at the broader ancient southwest Asian worldview back then we can explain why they thought the way they did. And it largely had to do with social hierarchies of domination and penetration. Sex was primarily an act that a man did to a woman who was not considered an active autonomous partner in this mutual act, but was just considered the object of the man's sexual activity. And one of the one of the things that I point out as a way to illustrate that, particularly in Leviticus is that in Leviticus 18, and 20, you have a bunch of rules about appropriate and inappropriate sex. And every last rule is about who a man is allowed to have sex with. There's only one once in Leviticus 18, once in Leviticus 20, where it prohibits a woman from engaging in sexual activity with a specific partner. And that's with an animal, because an animal is the only not even person is the only entity on that hierarchy of domination, that the woman would be higher than. And so for everything, it's referring to what men are allowed to do, and the only time it refers to what women are allowed to do or not allowed to do. The partner has an animal. So this is about power. This is about domination. And it is associating the act of penetration with the power and the act of being penetrated with being subordinate, which was why men, for instance, at that time, were not supposed to be on the bottom. That was considered emasculating that was taking a passive or a submissive role. And so even if a man was having intercourse with his own wife, and everything else was totally copacetic, if he was on the bottom, that was a no, no. And we have ancient Mesopotamian Tet texts that say, you know, he'll be robbed of his masculine vitality for a month. And then we have a Talmudic text that says that, for a man to be on the bottom, we'll give him diarrhea. And so this, their sexual ethic was based on these concepts of domination and power asymmetries and things like that. So this is why same sex intercourse was considered problematic. And then we get into Paul. And Paul didn't like sex. Really, at all. Paul was a celibate he wanted everybody to be celebrated, recognizing that not everybody could hack it. And so he said, Look, you can get married if you need to, as long as you are only having enough sex to make you not want to have sex, and it was supposed to be passionless, he said that a man must possess his vessel. And that means possess his wife in honor and holiness, not with the desire of passion, like the Gentiles who do not know God. In other words, this was something that you did only so that you would not have a desire to do it more. So So Paul's sexual ethic was pretty bizarre to begin with. And it's not a surprise that he did not approve of same sex intercourse. But when we talk about negotiating with the text, which is something that everybody must do, I don't think that there's a great argument that we should hold on to that prohibition, while abandoning all the other aspects of the sexual ethics. Pretty much everybody who appeals to Romans one or two, First Corinthians six or those other texts to try to vilify or demonize same sex intercourse, is already rejecting other aspects of Paul's sexuality just because they don't care about it. But they care about this one. And so I think the only reason that people still use the Bible as a weapon against the LGBTQ plus community, is because they find some kind of value in doing so. As not because they're required by the Bible to because they're already rejecting other aspects of the Bible. So

Nick VinZant 39:52

was there was there a reason that they would have been against sex? Right, like maybe they fought it caused earthquakes or whatever, right? Was there some kind of reason that would have made sense at the time that they had these attitudes? Or was it just like, man, that's just there was just this guy he even like?

Dr. Daniel McClellan 40:16

I think the the idea is borrowed from a broader Greco Roman, philosophical ideas about sexual desire, and any kind of powerful sense of desire being something that could be corrosive. If it gets out of control, it can cause problems, because everybody recognized that, that there were ways that sex could be a problem. And so sexual desire was something that the philosopher suggested you had to keep under wraps. And depending on the philosophy, like Pythagoreans, thought it was, you know, everybody should be celibate. To some degree, the stoics felt the same way, but not as strictly and then platypus were a little different. But the idea was basically that sexual desire is something that we have to overcome, in order to overcome, you know, the vicissitudes of the flesh, the corruption of our corporeal world, so that we could transcend it spiritually and return to be with God. And so one of the things that developed from this idea was the ideal of celibacy. And that is a what's called a credibility enhancing display. It's a piece of costly signaling, it's a way to say, I care so much about our group's ideals, that I am going to incur this social cost, and in this case, abstaining from sex in order to put on display in order to signal to others how faithful I am to the group. And I think that's the world that Paul is in now, some people have mentioned that Paul may have been asexual himself, he may have not been he may have not been gender conforming, or something like that. And that's certainly perfectly plausible as well, but we won't really know for sure. But certainly celibacy had currency within certain groups as something that showed you are more committed to the group, the ideals and the philosophy.

Nick VinZant 42:17

Is there a Bible verse or a passage or a book or whatever that even among academics like what would you say is the most controversial aspect of the Bible? Aside from the controversial political hot button, stuff like that, that academics would be talking about?

Dr. Daniel McClellan 42:37

So there are a handful, and it depends on what field you're talking about, because there are a lot of different disciplines associated with the study of the Bible. So one that I think is interesting that I've talked about quite a few times on on my own channel is the idea of child sacrifice. In ancient Israel and the idea of Moloch as some kind of pagan deity to which people sacrifice their children. The debate is not as heated now as it was 1020 years ago, I think it's starting to settle down. But the position used to be that child sacrifice was only something that apostate Israelites did. But there's this passage, Exodus 2228, in the Hebrews, verse 29, in the English, but it seems to be God themselves, commanding Israel sacrifice their firstborn children. And a lot of people don't didn't like that interpretation. And now I would, I would say that the, the tide has kind of turned and most scholars now acknowledged or would acknowledge that yeah, this was probably a very early command of child sacrifice that was later renegotiated even anciently. And associated with that is this idea that people were offering children to Molek, some kind of pagan deity. And the tide has turned there as well toward understanding this word Molek, not to refer to a deity but just as a it's a noun that just refers to a specific type of sacrifice. And so rather than offering children to Molek, it is they're offering their children as a Moloch sacrifice. And one of the reasons that that's uncomfortable for a lot of folks is because the implication there is that the sacrifice is being offered to the God of Israel. So that's something that has been a big debate among Hebrew Bible, scholars of ancient Israelite religion that I think is starting to settle down now. And I think we're getting to the point where it's a consensus, although there will be people out there who would disagree with me. And then in the in the Christian scriptures, Paul was always a big deal. There was this idea about there's a new approach to Paul, where rather than seeing Paul as this Christian who is breaking from his earlier tradition, people wanted to understand, Paul within Judaism, how is Paul's Judaism informing Paul's? Presentation of Jesus and Jesus as gospel. But that was kind of appropriated for kind of a Protestant approach to understanding Paul and even had some anti semitic problems with it as well. So the new approach to Paul has been itself kind of controversial among scholars of the New Testament. But there are other ideas as well. One, there's one thing I'm working on a book right now on early Christology on how Jesus was understood to relate to the God of Israel, whether Jesus was understood to be God, during the composition of the New Testament, or if that was a later understanding that develop there are a lot of more conservative Christian authors who argue that Jesus was understood to be in some sense, God from the very beginning, and then there I am on the side of other scholars who would argue that the idea is something that developed in the second, third and fourth centuries. So Bart Ehrman wrote a book on this, for instance, called how Jesus became God. And then a handful of evangelical scholars got together and wrote a response called how God became Jesus. So that's, that's another debate that is kind of more in my wheelhouse that I'm actually participating in right now. And, and I've got a bunch of videos on that on my channel as well. And every time I post a video on that, I get a bunch of people upset with me. Yeah, I'm used to that.

Nick VinZant 46:24

Yeah, I would imagine this is gonna be a controversial field, people, people tend to take religion quite seriously. Yeah, what TV show or movie drives you nuts.

Dr. Daniel McClellan 46:39

I joke about the prince of Egypt. Because my, that was a movie that my, my wife really enjoys. And I enjoy the music and the prince of Egypt. But it was kind of a running joke for a long time that every time we watched the prince of Egypt, I was like, Ah, no, they got the, the wrong the wrong side of the river, and you know, all that kind of silly stuff. I think there's people are starting to do a better job of understanding the ancient world. The Davinci Code was awful. And that has, that has caused a lot of misunderstandings about a lot of things. So that's one that drives me nuts. But like moon night, did you watch moon night did? Yeah. So one of the funniest things about being in a academic community made up of a bunch of people who, you know, their Egyptologists and other things like that, in my social circles was the next day seeing them on Twitter saying, Here's what the hieroglyphs or the demotic text, or that inscription that they showed on moon night, last night, actually says, and there, and it's clear that they're actually starting to incorporate consultants who know what they're talking about as they design these things. So it's been fun to see. A lot of the, these creators of movies and television shows get better and better informed about the ancient world.

Nick VinZant 48:03

Oscar Isaac, Oh, fantastic job in that.

Dr. Daniel McClellan 48:06

Yeah, he's an incredible actor, I would say there is one Netflix special that just came out. And for the life of me, I can't remember what it's called. But I do remember hearing about it. And I know it's from someone who is not a reputable scholar, but it got a lot of attention.

Nick VinZant 48:21

I think I know which one you're talking about. Just save this one for last, this is the biggest question. What are the what are the chances we got this all wrong?

Dr. Daniel McClellan 48:33

Um, hi, I think there if we, if time travel became a reality, and we were able to go back into this into the world of the composition of the Hebrew Bible of the world, and the composition of the New Testament, and we were able to learn the language and communicate, I think we would be shocked at how different everything is from what we expect it to be. And I think if we brought people from the past to today, they would be shocked at what everything became. And and I think there was probably a lot more disagreement anciently that regarding you know how this is all supposed to work? I think many of the authors of the New Testament vehemently disagreed with each other. Fact, we talked about the Epistle of James, I think the Epistle of James is telling Paul, he's wrong, and is directly saying no, Paul, you're wrong. It is not faith, faith without works. It is, you know, it is by works that, that our faith is made whole. So I think there's a lot of disagreement, and I think it is would be very different from how it is today and how even scholars have reconstructed it. I wish that that would be a possibility at some point but but but yeah, that's always going to be a dream.

Nick VinZant 49:54

That's pretty much all the questions we got what's kind of coming up next for you. How can people find out more connect with you? that kind of stuff.

Dr. Daniel McClellan 50:01

Yeah, so I go by McLellan on all my social media channels. So that's a phonetic spelling of my last name that I used when I was living in South America. Because Spanish speakers aren't fond of last names that begin with four consonants in a row. So I spell it Ma k L, E, L, A N. So on YouTube, on Twitter, on Instagram on on tick tock. I'm going to be recording the first episode of a new podcast that I'm starting today. So I am hoping to see that launch the first week of March, it'll be called the data over dogma podcast. And we are hoping to have at least three or four episodes come out in March and and we'll be rolling, we'll be off to the races. So I'm very excited about that.

Nick VinZant 50:48

Cool, man. Congratulations. Yeah. I want to thank Dr. McClellan so much for joining us, if you want to connect with him, we have linked to him on our social media sites. We're Profoundly Pointless on Twitter, tick, tock, Instagram, and YouTube. And we have also included his information. In the episode description, he does a great job on some of his content, about breaking down biblical passages. And also, it can be really entertaining when he takes a look at some of the conspiracy theories that are out there. So if you want to hear more from him, like he mentioned, he's just launched a new podcast, and any of his social media channels are worth checking out if you're interested. Okay, now, let's bring in John Shaw, and get to the point was part of the show. Could you hold up what you consider to be your first finger? Yes, there. Okay. So for the record, you have held up your index finger Correct? Where you said my first finger, right? Yeah, but that's your index finger. Right? It should be because the thumb technically isn't counted as a finger. So and then how many fingers? Would you say that you have?

John Shull 52:03

So that's where it gets a little tricky. Because I'm pretty sure I would say five fingers. But you asked me to hold up my first finger. Right? I still think it's my first finger. But I definitely think I have five fingers. If that makes sense.

Nick VinZant 52:19

That's what I mean, right? Like you're holding up your index finger as your first finger, but it's not your first fifth, and you wouldn't have to only if you consider that to be your first finger, then you only have eight fingers. You don't have 10 fingers.

John Shull 52:33

So what if I held up my pinky first,

Nick VinZant 52:37

that throws the whole thing off, I just had to count on the fact that you wouldn't, no one considers the pinky to be their first finger. You would hold up either the thumb if you consider the thumb to be a finger or your index finger.

John Shull 52:52

What if you held up your middle finger as then you're really throwing the game off,

Nick VinZant 52:56

then you're just kind of then you're kind of like, Alright, then my response would be like, okay, but hold up what you really think is your first finger. I'm actually proud of you that you didn't hold up your middle finger. I generally don't. That's one of my pet peeves is people who flip off the camera in pictures.

John Shull 53:14

I mean, listen, I was an annoying picture taker for a long time, I would not take a picture without opening my mouth or you know, or sticking on my tongue. It just, it just ruins it. i Yeah, so I agree with you. I'm not a big fan of people who now like as I get older, but not a big fan of people who purposefully ruin photos.

Nick VinZant 53:32

Mm hmm. Yeah. But I am also a photo ruin, or I don't usually like to have my picture taken.

John Shull 53:39

You are an enigma. I'm not sure we have any photos together outside of wedding photos.

Nick VinZant 53:44

How many pictures of yourself? Do you have? I would I would make a strong argument that unless it revolves around somebody's job in a certain way. I wouldn't make an argument that most men have maybe five pictures of themselves. Not not with other people. Just a picture of them.

John Shull 54:08

I think it's less than that. I don't have any photos just of me like that are printed out. You're ready to go. I've zero I mean, why? Why? What I?

Nick VinZant 54:18

Yeah, I don't have any. I have a headshot photo that everybody gets right. Like when you start a new job. But other than that, I don't have a single picture of just myself.

John Shull 54:30

actually thinking of it. I'm pretty sure that I have more photos of other men than I do of myself.

Nick VinZant 54:39

Oh, yeah. I have way more pictures of other men than I do in myself.

John Shull 54:43

How if you take my baseball card collection alone, I have 1000s of photos of other men and I have zero have me. Do you have

Nick VinZant 54:49

1000s of baseball cards? You're going to trade that in one day for $6

John Shull 54:54

i I wish I could. What's the what's the phrase I'm going For I wish I could

Nick VinZant 55:01

get all that money back.

John Shull 55:03

Yeah, yeah, it is it is kind of a scam. I'm not gonna lie to you. Yeah, that's

Nick VinZant 55:07

a pretty big waste of money. Um, can we go back to the fingers thing. So you consider you believe that you have 10 fingers, even though you consider your first even though you don't count the thumb to be your finger.

John Shull 55:19

Yeah, but that doesn't make any sense when you say it like that because and I make no sense in saying that. So really, it's all me but I look at the thumb as a finger. But I know there's going to be educated people out there who are listening to this who are going to say you only have eight fingers and two thumbs,

Nick VinZant 55:37

the thumb is the first finger on your hand. That's what I'm gonna go ahead and write that on my tombstone I want I'm going to make a shirt that says the thumb is the first finger on your hand. If anybody would actually buy a shirt that says the thumb is the first finger on your hand, we'd make them. But I don't feel that way about toes. I think all my tests are the same. I don't look at the big toe as being any special.

John Shull 56:03

I have for a man, I've been told I have very nice feet. But I think it's because literally all of my toe like obviously I have a big toe and a little toe. But the three metal toes are literally the same. They look the same. They're the same length.

Nick VinZant 56:19

Who told you that you had nice feet?

John Shull 56:24

I mean, I've been told in multiple times by different women, some who were with me and some who were not that I have nice, nice toes and feet, then I think about like, does the rest of me look that bad that they have to look at my feet.

Nick VinZant 56:40

Hmm, yeah, they're going they're really sizing you up. So either they're completely sizing you up, like, Oh, I better check all of him out. Or they're like looking for the one ray of sunshine or otherwise dark day.

John Shull 56:54

Yeah, I think that they're trying to part the seas and try to get to the dock to go all the way to the foot. They're starting at the top and if they get that far down, that's the only compliment. That's Oof.

Nick VinZant 57:10

Have you ever been told by a man that you have nice feet?

John Shull 57:14

No, if ever I get an honest compliment from a man, it's usually about my hair. Or my eyebrows or something? Usually something to do with like, how much hair I have on my head.

Nick VinZant 57:27

Hmm. I have been complimented by other men about my calves and my eyes. Like oh, you do have nice eyes.

John Shull 57:38

You do you do have those European like Icelandic guys, that's for sure. Like a blue Gatorade bottle just echoing in the soft tail of an ocean just fly by

Nick VinZant 57:49

I appreciate the fact that you refer to Gatorade. I didn't I thought that you wouldn't do that, that you would refer to it by its actual name and not by the color, which is the accepted way to really refer to any kind of flavored drink.

John Shull 58:02

Well you refer to as though I think my name I think the name of these drinks are idiotic, but yes, I will call it blue Gatorade because that's what it is if it's Gatorade, so if you call it Gatorade is Gatorade is lemon lime, right lemon lime flavor, because that's the original data.

Nick VinZant 58:19

I know it's yellow flavors. Right, exactly. Looking at the color like a normal person. Yeah, I'm

John Shull 58:28

with you, man. Give me blue Cool raspberry all day.

Nick VinZant 58:32

See, but even there. Um, just give me the blue one.

John Shull 58:35

Give me the red one white glacier.

Nick VinZant 58:37

I do have actually I would say that the white cherry. I know it's called whites here because my wife likes and she's like, Oh get white cherry and I'm like what? What the hell is that? Is that the red one or the white one? She's like No, what's the white ones for now? I know that that's called White cherry.

John Shull 58:50

Yeah, why would the red one be called White cherry? Well,

Nick VinZant 58:53

it's got a cherry in it.

John Shull 58:55

You have a why would it be the red ones fruit punch

Nick VinZant 58:58

you ever seen a white peach? It's still peach colored?

John Shull 59:01

You think I've seen a white peach?

Nick VinZant 59:05

No think done look No. Like a man who spends a lot of time in the produce section of the grocery store.

John Shull 59:11

Unless vegetables and some fruit but even meet

Nick VinZant 59:15

me. I've actually started eating vegetables. It's not that bad.

John Shull 59:19

I went to a bocce this past weekend. I forgot how much I appreciate and love hibachi it's fantastic.

Nick VinZant 59:26

I don't actually know what it is. Is how Bochy, just the thing with the guys with all the knives and he's throwing stuff at you.

John Shull 59:34

It's not throwing it at you. It's basically they have a hot top and they cook you know they cook your food in front of you and they put on a little show. You know, we took our my daughters who had never been and they loved it and it was it was just a really good time.

Nick VinZant 59:48

Wait a minute, how expensive is hamachi cool.

John Shull 59:51

I don't want to I don't want to get into but I can tell you is over three digits.

Nick VinZant 59:57

I'm not taking my children anywhere where Are they can't eat for less than $6

John Shull 1:00:04

There's nowhere I can let you go fast food where they can eat for under $6 Yeah, that's

Nick VinZant 1:00:09

the only place I'm taking my children to go eat. I'm not taking them to fine dining over there moneybags.

John Shull 1:00:15

I mean, listen, you gotta you gotta you know, you play. You work hard and you play hard with your four year old and two year old at hibachi.

Nick VinZant 1:00:23

Right? I would imagine that. That sounds that sounds awful. Okay, my

John Shull 1:00:26

goddamn life is gone.

Nick VinZant 1:00:29

It's a sad ending for a man with such great toes.

John Shull 1:00:33

I do have pretty fantastic toes. All right, let's give some shout outs here. All right, Teresa white, Jennifer Finley, Brad Simpson. Ahmed bouquet, Thomas Frazier. Dylan Weaver. Chance brand. Chances are interesting name. I like that one.

Nick VinZant 1:00:55

It's good. It's rare, but it has to be rare. Can't have a lot of them can only have two chances.

John Shull 1:01:01

Michael Atkinson, Ben Bolton, and Jacob Walters. Y'all get the shout outs for the Okay. All right. What would you rather travel around in a yacht? A fancy bus. Or a fancy airplane?

Nick VinZant 1:01:25

Well, fancy airplane. Because I could go the most places. I understand the appeal of being on a fancy boat. Like that would be pretty nice. But ultimately, it takes kind of a while to get around. I'd rather much rather just travel around in a fancy airplane. Mostly simply because of the efficiency of the means of transportation.

John Shull 1:01:44

What would be worst, worse off to you falling out of an airplane? Drowning on a cruise ship? Or falling off a cruise ship rather than drowning? I should say. Or being in a, you know, in a bus accident. Just being a passenger in a gigantic bus accident.

Nick VinZant 1:02:01

Well, I mean, am I gonna die? Because in the first two circumstances, it sounds like I'm pretty much gonna die.

John Shull 1:02:06

Oh, yeah, you're dead? There's no way getting out of this one. Whoa,

Nick VinZant 1:02:11

where am I at on the bus? Am I gonna linger for a little bit? Or is it instant dead? Yeah.

John Shull 1:02:15

Yeah, you're gonna linger in all of them. Like you're gonna know what's happening.

Nick VinZant 1:02:22

There's no possibility of me being saved.

John Shull 1:02:25

No, not not in this scenario, because I don't want that to happen.

Nick VinZant 1:02:29

Huh? That's kind of tough man. Is my family with me? My mom, whoa, I

John Shull 1:02:36

don't want to be morbid. No, you're alone. So I'd say I'll be next to you. It's me and you going out together?

Nick VinZant 1:02:43

Oh, well, then falling out of an airplane.

John Shull 1:02:46

Why it was so easy to make that decision of I don't

Nick VinZant 1:02:49

know, it seems like if you're gonna die, and you know, you're going to die at least like, Hey, see some sights? On the way down? At least get a good view. Right? You could at least would? Here's the question. If you were falling to death out of an airplane, if you fell out of an airplane, would you look at the ground or look at the sky?

John Shull 1:03:08

Well, I don't think you're gonna really know, right? Because now making light of people who have perished in plane crashes, I'm pretty sure that you pass out before you get close enough to the ground before impact. So you're gonna pass out? At some point, I would think now if you're unfortunate and stay awake, I'd probably rather be looking at the ground. Because I mean, I wouldn't want to see my death. Like, I just would want it to come. You know what I mean? If that makes any sense.

Nick VinZant 1:03:37

So if you were looking at the ground, though, you would see it coming. I would want to be looking up at the sky and just being like, oh, and then boom, you wouldn't even know it. Me. And you could just be thinking about like, oh,

John Shull 1:03:51

no, I would you know, knowing it's gonna happen. I would just close my eyes and just wait, wait for the impact. I mean, there's nothing else to do. Like there's no, that has to be the worst one of the worst feelings you can ever possibly Oh, obviously you're gonna die. That's gonna be one of the worst feelings imaginable. It's just knowing there's no way out. Like is gonna happen.

Nick VinZant 1:04:10

I am Ryan. Ironically, I was reading a book. No, you weren't? No, I was I actually was reading a book. I don't remember the name of the body or something a guide for occupants. And the author was talking about there's actually been a surprising number of people who have fallen out of airplanes and lived. Like, like, okay, like more than say that? Well, I mean, he didn't provide statistics about it. But it has happened several times throughout the past. I would honestly make an argument that if you fell off of falling out of an airplane that if you were to compare falling out of an airplane and falling off of a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean. I bet you have better odds of surviving falling out of the airplane.

John Shull 1:04:57

I mean, woof wha I mean, I see of 0% Either way, but I guess, yeah, we give them a nudge to falling out of an airplane because you fall overboard and a cruise ship. I mean, yeah, I think less, they get you within 10 minutes. The ships gone. Your, your undercurrent plus, most of those chips are 10. You know, 12 stories up. If you follow that high into the water, you're probably going to break your back or your neck or whatever, or Oh, yeah, I

Nick VinZant 1:05:29

think you're done. I think you're done before you hit the water.

John Shull 1:05:32

So the choice is this week to talk about. Apparently you're going to be able to buy Narcan over the counter. That sounds like a great idea. Tom Sizemore Narcan, Naloxone, it's what they give the police and fire and EMTs give drug overdoses to bring them back.

Nick VinZant 1:05:53

Yeah, it's I mean, drug overdoses are a huge problem. I think the United States crossed like 110,000 in the last couple of months in the last year to be prompt probably sounds like a good idea to be giving people Narcan to be honest with you.

John Shull 1:06:05

Yeah, I mean, it's it's pretty powerful. But let's you know, whatever. I'm sure it'll be regulated. Tom Sizemore dying.

Nick VinZant 1:06:12

Who knows to Tom Sizemore? Jesus Have

John Shull 1:06:16

you ever seen Saving Private Ryan?

Nick VinZant 1:06:19

Yeah.

John Shull 1:06:21

So he was like Tom Hanks is like best friend or best you know, army buddy. Yeah, just terrible. Also a Detroit native. So

Nick VinZant 1:06:30

there we go. Is everybody from Detroit is more important than anybody else.

John Shull 1:06:35

last choice that did not win was creed three. Which, you know, apparently it's been getting good reviews and check it out. I guess I haven't seen it. I still haven't seen cocaine bear which I want to see. So.

Nick VinZant 1:06:48

Cocaine bear sounds amazing. I haven't seen any of the Rocky movies past rocky four. Right? If you see the height of civilization, you don't need to see the decline.

John Shull 1:06:57

I mean, listen, I think it's great what they did with the franchise. I mean, if they wanted to keep it going, this was the suitable way. And that brings it full circle because I tried doing the rocky Sun thing didn't work out at all. So why not give Apollo Creed the son of chance? And Michael B. Jordan, just amazing in general. So

Nick VinZant 1:07:16

the other dude in there who I think is also Kang is massive, like, Whoa, man. He's been lifted, and probably do some other stuff. But yeah, okay, so what actually one?

John Shull 1:07:29

So apparently, you can now live on a cruise ship for 30 grand a year.

Nick VinZant 1:07:39

Food included?

John Shull 1:07:41

Yeah, everything. Essentially, it's, it's a three year voyage. It's 101 130,000 miles that you travel cumulatively, for $30,000 per person. per year, you do not have to obviously, what's the word I'm looking for? Dedicate or say you're going to go for all three years. But if you want to go for one year, it's 30,000. And you visit 135 countries, 375 ports. And you go all around the world naturally. And yeah, everything's, everything's included just a regular cruise ship ticket, except it's for an entire year and you visit. Literally more than half of the world's countries

Nick VinZant 1:08:32

actually sounds fairly cheap for that. I would think that would be more expensive. I mean, $30,000 a year for food and lodging.

John Shull 1:08:42

Yeah, so it's the M V. Gemini. It's the Life at Sea cruises is the I guess the company that is responsible for the ship. Lesson I would do it. If I had 30 grand to spend. I would do it. I love cruising.

Nick VinZant 1:08:58

I had a bad experience. I didn't enjoy it. There's two kinds of cruising, there's cruising to go see places like you're taking a cruise to Alaska. You're taking a cruise around Europe. And then there's like getting on a Carnival Cruise and going to like the Bahamas and just basically, essentially it's the part. There's like, traveling, cruising. And then there's like, Hey, this is a party on a boat cruising. And I was not too big of a fan of the party on the boat cruising.

John Shull 1:09:23

Okay. I mean, I loved it all. I've been on multiple multiple cruises at least six and I love every second of it.

Nick VinZant 1:09:31

Wow. Are you ready?

John Shull 1:09:33

Are you ready for a tough? Yeah, I'm, I'm actually kind of I did some research on this. And not surprisingly, it wasn't difficult. So let's let's get to it.

Nick VinZant 1:09:42

So because we had kind of a fairly serious guest. We decided to come up with something a little bit ridiculous for our top five. So it's top five running actors.

John Shull 1:09:53

Alright, so I think I'm low balling this performance, but um, I want to put my number five as Robert We're Patrick as T two from the Terminator two.

Nick VinZant 1:10:03

Are you serious?

John Shull 1:10:05

I know, right? I know I. But I'm telling you, and maybe you have these but it's, it's a loaded top five in terms of runners. I mean, there was lots of actors that have had lots of good roles running and I didn't want to put him at five. But I'm confident in my other four.

Nick VinZant 1:10:25

Okay, I think that's a ridiculous place to place him. I have a much higher on the list. My number five is Johnny Depp. Really only for Jack Sparrow? Not a good runner. Obviously not a good runner, but it is a memorable run. The most the most memorable movie run since Jim Carrey as Ace Ventura pet detective as an unorthodox running says style.

John Shull 1:10:53

I will say I will agree with you that he that is known. He's actually all my honorable mention. But I I think there are other scenes and other runners that maybe don't get the acclaim that he got, but they are much. They're just much better scenes and runners. I think so. It's insane that unless you have something else to say,

Nick VinZant 1:11:16

Who do you think though is the better goofy runner? Johnny Depp or Jim Carrey?

John Shull 1:11:23

I mean, I don't really recall. Jim Carrey being like a wacky runner. You know, I but I recall Johnny Depp. So I'm gonna say Johnny Depp.

Nick VinZant 1:11:33

I think that really the Johnny Depp is the more recent one. But if you think back to the ACE venture or running, you can like oh, he was the original. He may have been the better weird runner. Anyway, what's your what's your number for?

John Shull 1:11:48

Harrison Ford from Raiders of the Lost Ark?

Nick VinZant 1:11:52

Oh, yeah. Okay.

John Shull 1:11:55

I mean, how can you forget that scene and he looks, he just looks. I mean, he was awesome as Indiana Jones. I mean, if you haven't seen those movies, specifically Raiders of the Lost Ark, which you should because they are amazing. They're fantastic. Okay,

Nick VinZant 1:12:09

I did not have Harrison Ford on any of those lists, but I can now that you think of it, I can make picture him running quite well. Um, my number four is all from one movie franchise. I think there's a lot of good candidates for it. But ultimately, my number four is Carl Weathers.

John Shull 1:12:26

Okay. Think of obviously I know, I know the one.

Nick VinZant 1:12:30

Right, but he he was an effortless runner. He had to try to like you could clearly tell that he was a much better rock runner than Rocky. The other one I could put from that franchise is Dolph Lundgren. Remember in Rocky four where he's running around the track, he's like, Oh, he's running. He looked like they both looked like Stallone looked like a guy trying to run. Carl Weathers and Dolph Lundgren look like athletes.

John Shull 1:12:59

Okay, well, I'll get to the Rocky series. I have it a little higher up on my list. So okay,

Nick VinZant 1:13:05

if you're going to put rocky up there, I'm going to have to shoot it down because Carl Weathers was clearly the better runner.

John Shull 1:13:11

All right. All right. Well, you're gonna hit you're not going to like this number three then for me, okay. Okay. Okay. My number three is Tom Hanks from Forrest Gump.

Nick VinZant 1:13:20

Okay. It's a good it's a very memorable scene. I didn't have it on my list, but I thought about it really hard.

John Shull 1:13:30

I, I think whether or not he looks like a good runner. He plays it well. And it's I mean, that's a large part of the movie and he doesn't he doesn't really well, I think he you know, I think Tom Hanks has said that he hates running. But he lost all the weight. He got into running and he looked he looked natural. I

Nick VinZant 1:13:49

think. Now which running scene though? Do you remember the most? Do you remember the one with him as a kid? The one with him as a football player? With the one with him running in the war? The one with him running across country?

John Shull 1:14:04

Yeah, so it's the one that I like if you were to ask me like you just did to pick out one scene. It would for sure be the word. He's running cross country. And it's raining and the person gives them the t shirt is muddy. And he I eat maybe a car splashes mud on him. I don't remember the finer details. His face off. And it's the smiley face Have a nice day slogan.

Nick VinZant 1:14:28

The one that stands out to me the most is where he finishes running. And he's like, I'm gonna go home now. But only because I lived in Arizona and people would always take pictures of that spot. So you always see it come across like your feet of people taking pictures in that spot. My number three is Tom Cruise.

John Shull 1:14:48

I didn't put him on my list. And I know I should have I didn't for the for the fact that he I don't think he looks like a cool runner. I I think kind of what you had said earlier about somebody like, looking like they don't run well. He just, he doesn't look like he runs. I mean, I would say this and this is also my honorable mention, but what's his face? From the Bourne Ultimatum? Matthew? meant Damon Damon, Matt Damon? Like, yeah, they are great action actors. And those scenes are fantastic, but they just don't look natural to me.

Nick VinZant 1:15:28

No, no one runs like that. Like, no one actually runs like that. There is a level of intensity or trying too hard that no one who's a good runner actually looks like that. Like, have you ever watched like an Olympic sprinter? Like, they don't look like they're really trying to run that hard. Good runners don't look like they're trying

John Shull 1:15:47

fucking insane. Usain Bolt that, you know, turns around during the 100 meter dash at the guy coming in second in the Olympic final. I mean, what are you doing?

Nick VinZant 1:15:56

Right? You got it? You got it. Okay. Are you Is it your number two are my number two.

John Shull 1:16:02

So I believe it's my number two. And I think I know this isn't going to make any sense. But I'm gonna stand by it. My number two is going to be Brad Pitt from Troy. Specifically, the fighting scene with him and Eric bhana, where they're running around each other, and doing all these cool jumps and runs. And I mean, come on, doesn't get any cooler than Brad Pitt. And he looked so natural doing doing it.

Nick VinZant 1:16:30

I don't remember it at all. And I've seen that movie, which to me automatically should signify that it shouldn't be on the list.

John Shull 1:16:37

Yeah, I wouldn't. I wouldn't necessarily say it's a running scene. It's more of an athletic scene. But he he's definitely running in it. And that'd be that's how he kills Eric Bonner at the end as he like, doesn't let it run thing and Toro, okay.

Nick VinZant 1:16:50

Spirit unusual, unusual choice. My number two is Chris Evans.

John Shull 1:16:55

Oh, I should have known. He's

Nick VinZant 1:16:57

a good runner. He makes it. That to me is like the gist of the running. Right? Were like, Oh, you're going pretty fast. You look like you're running pretty hard, but it doesn't look like you're running like okay. All right. Yeah, that's good running. I think Chris Evans has great running form.

John Shull 1:17:13

I mean, unless you didn't say the guy that plays in the New Jurassic Park's can't remember his name, the guy who was married to Anna Faris.

Nick VinZant 1:17:20

That's Chris Pratt. I

John Shull 1:17:21

think, yeah, thank God, you didn't say him.

Nick VinZant 1:17:23

Now. He's see now he's an example of what I think that Tom Cruise is, in which they're trying to convince you that they're athletic and a good runner. But not Tom Cruise runs, like a person who has been taught. Tom Cruise runs like a person acting like they can run. He doesn't run like someone who can actually run. It's why I can't be up high on the list. And he's only there because he's known for it. I don't think he's actually a good runner.

John Shull 1:17:50

I would I would be I mean, he's so little too. I would I don't really think he's much of an athlete, though. He's played predominantly masculine roles, his whole career.

Nick VinZant 1:17:58

They had a casting director that we had on very early on in this show, who said the irony about big time moving stars is that to be a big time male movie stars, you basically basically have to be a small man with a big head. That looks the best on TV is people who are like 545 with big heads.

John Shull 1:18:20

Well, you would No wonder you're doing so well.

Nick VinZant 1:18:23

I gotta get the head bigger, man. Gotta get some head big operations I've got I'm actually too big, too. So that's my problem. Who's your number one gonna be are you gonna say it's Rocky? Who's your number one gonna be? Rocky? Which movie

John Shull 1:18:41

The first the original montage the best running scene for him solo you know when he's running through the streets and a sweats and he runs up the steps and you know, starts punching at the air you know, blah, blah blah. But I will say that the the montage and rocky for with him and off. Lundgren is just as amazing as well. But I'm not giving any love to Dolph Lundgren. So goes all the semester, Simone.

Nick VinZant 1:19:09

My difficulty was putting Sylvester Stallone in that particular movie high is that when he walks out of the house, he jumps over the railing, which no person would actually do. You wouldn't jump over the railing. And that just sets the tone for the whole thing being like it's not that's not accurate. You're not jumping over the railing. You're gonna walk down the steps. You're gonna warm up a little bit. You got to watch your knees. You got to take care of your body so you're not taking care of his body.

John Shull 1:19:40

I I mean, I stand by I think it's a you have to at least admit, I mean, you have it on your list, that it's one of the top five iconic running roles in cinema history.

Nick VinZant 1:19:53

I don't think that he's the best runner in that series. I think Carl Weathers is a better runner than he is. And I think the dove Lundgren is a better writer than he is.

John Shull 1:20:02

I would have no problem giving the props to either of those guys, if they were the main characters, but obviously they weren't. They were great supportive characters. But they were not main characters.

Nick VinZant 1:20:13

My number one is Robert Patrick. I think the guy from Germany will be flip flop for minor. Yeah, I think the guy from t to the T 1000. Or whatever his number is. I think that he is hands down the best runner in movies. Because he looked like someone he looked like somebody who number one could run number two, he was gonna catch you

John Shull 1:20:37

mean, yeah, that was. That was pretty you know, the best part about Robert Patrick. Yeah. He grew up in Metro Detroit.

Nick VinZant 1:20:47

Course. Okay, who's in your honorable mention?

John Shull 1:20:52

Let's see. So like I said, Any anytime Cruise movie? Matthew Broderick from Ferris Bueller? The run that he did in that movie with

Nick VinZant 1:21:01

Oh, that's a good run.

John Shull 1:21:03

Yeah, look, I mean, look natural. Good. Brendan Fraser in the mummies. Yeah, pretty natural. He looked pretty cool. Looks like good. And then I have Daniel Craig from his James Bond movies that he did. He looked, you know, they always started the first scene very big. He was always running or something. Always looked awesome.

Nick VinZant 1:21:25

little stiff. But I think that that was also part of the character, right? Like he looked like somebody who could run. I would also say that he suffers from the same thing as Matthew Broderick does, where they're kind of, there's not just straight running. Like they're doing other stuff and things like that. So it really doesn't really allow you to focus on the running, as would like a Robert Patrick chasing down. Sarah Connor.

John Shull 1:21:47

I mean, I agree. I mean, Robert Patrick was amazing in that role. And then last but not least, he may not look the coolest, but he is the coolest. And that was John Travolta in Greece, where he's running track trying to impress Sandy.

Nick VinZant 1:22:02

Okay, and never seen that movie. No have any desire to see that movie? Um, I had Daniel Craig. I had Laura Dern running in Jurassic Park.

John Shull 1:22:13

Oh, man, I mean. That's fine, I guess. But I'd rather have Jeff Goldblum, I think,

Nick VinZant 1:22:21

yeah, Jeff Goldblum has a better scene. But I think that she is the better runner. Scarlett Johansson can run very well.

John Shull 1:22:30

Or even Sam O'Neill I think probably has the best running in that whole movie. I don't kids.

Nick VinZant 1:22:38

Oh, yeah, that's a pretty good, but he's too distracted. You can't really see the form. He's got other things that he has to be doing.

John Shull 1:22:45

We're checking elbows and knees. They gotta be lateral. You know, they gotta be 90 degrees. I get it. You has

Nick VinZant 1:22:50

good form, but I wouldn't consider them to be a great runner as Will Smith. He's got some good iconic running scenes. And you can see if you look at like one of the trailers or things for one of the scenes from bad boys. I think it's bad boys or maybe bad boys too. But he is juxtaposed running with Martin Lawrence. And then you can clearly see that Will Smith is like, oh, Martin Lawrence can't run and Will Smith. Clearly running well.

John Shull 1:23:18

Yeah, I mean, let's be honest, Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, they weren't put together as an acting duo. Because of their athletic similarities, I don't think

Nick VinZant 1:23:28

no, but it really showcases how much better of a runner Will Smith is. I have one that I can't remember the guys name. I keep wanting to say Leonard Nimoy but that's not his name. He played Spock in one of the recent Star Trek series like Oh, Zachary Quinto. He could run like oh, he's got some he's got some skills at running.

John Shull 1:23:56

I mean, we should have just put the guy that plays the flash and the guy from the boys that plays you know the fast character that can run like the speed of light. I forget his name now,

Nick VinZant 1:24:08

but yeah, but I feel like if there's power is actually running, it shouldn't count. It is Zachary Quinto good running. It's good runner.

John Shull 1:24:15

Also, I feel that need to give a shout out because we talked about Rocky, Michael B. Jordan and creed is also a very talented runner as well does not make my list because he's not an original. But still good runner. Good form. Good technique.

Nick VinZant 1:24:30

I like it. Who do you who can you imagine is the worst runner that you can think of? Like, oh my god, I can't run.

John Shull 1:24:37

I mean, Sylvester still or not. That's Steven Seagal is probably terrible. Oh yeah. Dwayne Johnson is probably terrible.

Nick VinZant 1:24:48

Which is ironic because he's, but he's too muscular now. Right? Pull off a good running even though he is one of the probably the more athletic Hollywood actors. He couldn't pull off a good run. Lean knee Mark Wahlberg. Oh yeah, that's like that fake athleticism. Right? Dude once said he could do 40 Pull Ups. No, you can't. You can No, Liam Neeson is a terrible runner. I like this. What's what's her name? I like this person as a musician. And as an actress, incredibly talented. Janelle Monae, there was a scene of her running and like the new knives out is like, Oh, she's a runner. Yeah,

John Shull 1:25:30

no. Okay, what about earlier? I mean, I mean, it's been Tara You know, Jim Carrey, but? Nah, not not even not close. Not good.

Nick VinZant 1:25:41

Okay, that's gonna go ahead and do it for this episode of Profoundly Pointless. I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance, subscribe, leave us a rating or review we really appreciate it really helps us out. Doesn't have to be anything big. Just like, Hey, I like to show Jon's toes really aren't that good. Anything at all really helps out with the algorithm. And you know that all of us are now subservient to the algorithm. Also, let us know what you think are some of the best running performances. I don't know how John could have Robert Patrick is number five. And Rocky is number one. I mean that come on now. But I think that there are some good running performances, maybe some that we've never even thought of. So if you've got some let us know.