PowerfulJREJoe Rogan Experience #2562 - Dan McClellan
PowerfulJRE
Meeting After Years of Watching 0:01
Joe Rogan welcomes Dan McClellan, and the two talk about the strange, one-sided familiarity that comes from parasocial relationships. McClellan shares a story about actor Joel McHale following him on Instagram and later meeting him for dinner in Salt Lake City during FanX, Utah's Comic-Con, where McHale jokingly called himself an arrogant foodie who had to pick the restaurant. Both men admit they rarely rewatch their own content and often forget things they have said or guests they have had on.
A Huge Content Library 2:30
McClellan explains that repeating himself every six months or so actually benefits his audience, since new viewers are constantly discovering his channel for the first time. He estimates he has put out around 4,000 videos, with close to 2,900 of those being his main content, separate from side projects like fight companion and MMA podcasts.
Memory, Creatine, and Diet Talk 4:00
Both men admit to memory struggles, with Rogan describing freezing up during a Jeopardy tryout despite knowing the answers. McClellan says he takes about 10 grams of creatine daily based on research suggesting it helps brain function, while trying to minimize other supplements. The conversation shifts to fiber, carnivore diets, and glyphosate sensitivity, with Rogan noting that some very healthy people eat no fiber at all, just meat, eggs, and fish, and recalling his own 60-day strict carnivore experiment and its rough adjustment period.
FODMAPs and Food Sensitivities 7:31
McClellan describes tracking FODMAPs, a group of hard-to-digest carbohydrates found in foods like beans, lentils, certain fruits, and wheat, after noticing bloating and discomfort tied to specific meals, including a memorable incident after eating a large amount of watermelon. Rogan adds that food tolerance often depends on activity level, noting that after a hard hike, a high-carb or high-sugar meal can actually help replenish the body.
Altitude Training and Hypoxia 10:30
Rogan describes running at a higher altitude near Salt Lake City compared to easier runs at sea level, then explains the hypoxia chamber in his gym, a device called Exalt XP that simulates altitudes up to 14,000 feet for intense interval cardio workouts. He mentions that restrictive breathing masks once popular among MMA fighters have mostly fallen out of use, unlike actual altitude training.
A Gift from the Ancient World 13:01
McClellan presents Rogan with a replica artifact called the Kuntillet Ajrud pithos fragment, made by a friend who runs relics3d.com, modeled after a piece discovered near the Sinai Peninsula dating to around 800 BCE. The fragment features an inscription referencing blessings from Yahweh of Samaria and his Asherah, alongside a drawing of a male and female deity, which most scholars interpret as depicting the God of Israel alongside a divine consort.
Ancient deities on Sinai pottery 14:32
Dan McClellan and Joe Rogan look at an inscription from Kuntillet Ajrud that shows bovine-looking figures, which McClellan explains are drawing on Egyptian iconography tied to the deities Bes and Beset. Rogan notes this reflects a broader fascination with how ancient depictions of gods came about, wondering what real events might lie behind these images and behind oral traditions before they were ever written down.
Moses and Sargon compared 18:00
McClellan points out the striking similarity between the infancy story of Moses set adrift in a river and the much older story of Sargon the Great, with the earliest known Akkadian version dating to around the 9th or 8th century BCE, near when the Exodus tradition was forming. He suggests borrowing such stories served two purposes, making new material feel familiar and also letting one tradition claim it did the same thing better, a pattern he says also shows up in how the New Testament portrays Jesus against Greco-Roman expectations of emperors and god-men.
Every text had a purpose 20:32
McClellan explains that scholars read every ancient text, whether scratched on pottery or preserved in scripture, as something written to achieve a goal, not simply to record information. Genre offers a clue, the way phrases like once upon a time or a list of groceries instantly signal what kind of text you are looking at, and pottery inscriptions were often tied to ritual offerings meant to invoke a deity's presence.
Egyptian influence and shared symbols 22:31
McClellan ties the cattle imagery to widespread animal worship across cultures and to Egypt's heavy influence on the Sinai region, noting a bulla bearing Hezekiah's name decorated with an Egyptian winged scarab motif, a sign of how long Israel sat under Egyptian influence.
Gospels written for later followers 23:31
McClellan notes the gospels were composed decades after Jesus died, Mark around 70 CE and the others later still, aimed partly at reassuring an already forming community of believers. He points to Jesus's line about bringing a sword rather than peace as an example meant to comfort people estranged from their families for following Jesus, telling them this rupture was expected and therefore acceptable.
Word of God reconsidered 26:00
McClellan explains that the phrase word of God never appears in the Bible referring to a specific text, only to a message or to Jesus himself, so no biblical author ever calls scripture itself the word of God. He adds that Paul sometimes explicitly says a statement is his own opinion rather than from the Lord, yet readers often quietly treat it as divinely authoritative anyway.
Paul's contested letters 28:01
McClellan and Rogan discuss Paul's strange path, from persecuting and killing Christians to claiming a vision of Jesus he never met in life, writing it all down some twenty years later. McClellan says scholars widely agree several letters attributed to Paul, including Timothy, Titus, and debated ones like Colossians and Ephesians, were actually written decades after his death, and that the genuine letters show Paul expecting Jesus's imminent return, urging people to stay unmarried or celibate rather than change their life situations.
Celibacy and the delayed second coming 30:01
The discussion turns to Paul's advice that even married people should avoid sex when possible, paralleling a passage in Matthew where Jesus discusses those who make themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. The reasoning was that Jesus's return was believed to be imminent, making children pointless, so celibacy was the higher ideal and marital sex was only a safety valve against temptation. Rogan jokes about the regret of staying celibate only to have Jesus never return, and McClellan connects this to a broader pattern of people following confident authorities whose predictions fail, which he likens to how cults and political movements take hold. He notes that later, non-genuine Pauline letters reversed course, claiming women are saved through childbearing once the movement needed new members as the expected return kept being delayed.
Ancient creation stories and the alphabet 34:30
McClellan traces Genesis back not to ancient Sumerian king lists or oral tradition but to Babylonian versions of the Enuma Elish circulating around 600 BCE, since Hebrew narrative prose only appears after the mid-9th century BCE. He cites the Tower of Babel as likely inspired by the real, unfinished tower of Etemenanki near Babylon. He then explains that writing began as counting and receipts in Sumer and Egypt, and that the alphabet emerged in Sinai around 1700 to 1900 BCE when Egyptian hieroglyphs were repurposed so each symbol stood for a single sound, eventually spreading through Phoenicia to nearly every modern alphabet except Korean's Hangul.
From Mormon mission to biblical scholar 46:02
Dan McClellan explains that his path began at age twenty when he served a two year proselytizing mission in Uruguay, where he fell in love with the Bible and tried teaching himself Hebrew. After returning home he learned he could earn a degree in biblical studies, and he pursued Hebrew, Greek, literature, history, and archaeology before narrowing his focus. His PhD combines biblical studies with cognitive science of religion, using interviews and experiments on living people to understand how ancient authors of the Hebrew Bible would have conceived of gods, rituals, and religious identity.
Why translation misleads casual readers 50:01
McClellan warns that translating ancient Hebrew or Greek into English is never simple, since languages structure thought differently rather than offering word for word swaps. People who rely on an interlinear Bible or a website pairing Hebrew with English often think they understand more than they do, a problem he calls knowing just enough Greek to be dangerous, and this fuels the misinformation he tries to counter on social media. He notes that nobody speaks ancient Hebrew natively, though modern Hebrew speakers can read it fluently with awareness of differences, and he himself is still working on a Hebrew Bible translation he has not touched in two years.
Discovering the lost language Ugaritic 54:30
McClellan tells the story of a farmer plowing a field in Syria in 1929 who uncovered the ancient city of Ugarit, yielding about a thousand texts written in a thirty sign cuneiform alphabet that scholars decoded by identifying the common consonant mem. Ugaritic, spoken north of where Hebrew developed and predating it, mentions deities like El, Baal, and Asherah and preserves rituals and myths that illuminate biblical Hebrew, including a passage almost directly echoed in Isaiah.
Baal, death, and the serpent Leviathan 58:00
A Ugaritic text describes the storm god Baal battling Mot, the god of death, who taunts him by recalling that he once slew Lotan, the wriggling seven headed serpent. Isaiah 27:1, written roughly five hundred years later, describes God striking Leviathan the wriggling and twisting serpent in nearly identical language, showing a shared poetic tradition rather than direct copying, and Psalm 74 and a newly found inscription near Tel Hazor confirm the multi headed serpent motif was widespread.
Dragons as symbols of chaos 59:00
McClellan explains that ancient peoples lacked distinct words for lizards, reptiles, or dinosaurs, so dragon described any scaly threat, including crocodiles and sea monsters. Land felt safe while water felt dangerous, so the chaos of the sea became personified as a monstrous deity, and a god who tamed that monster showed power to bring order out of chaos, which many creation stories center on.
Religion, order, and watchful gods 1:01:01
Rogan asks how much these stories were shaped to give civilization structure and rules, suggesting older generations saw value in people believing someone is always watching. McClellan agrees this watcher idea is central to how scholars think religion shaped civilization, pointing to Ara Norenzayan's book Big Gods, and begins to explain that human minds evolved to be highly sensitive to signs of agency in the world.
Evolutionary roots of belief in gods 1:02:02
McClellan explains that early humans who assumed rustling bushes meant a predator survived more often than those who assumed it was just wind, leaving us wired to sense hidden agency everywhere. This sensitivity extended to imagining unseen beings watching over us, an idea that let societies grow beyond small kin groups by giving people a shared sense of being monitored and accountable, which built trust between strangers through costly signals like handshakes or wearing a cross.
Parochial empathy and dehumanizing enemies 1:06:30
He describes parochial empathy, the human tendency to feel deeply for our own group while feeling little or nothing for outsiders, which makes war, political hatred, and cruelty easier to justify. Rogan and McClellan discuss how dehumanizing rhetoric, including reactions to Charlie Kirk's death, lets people celebrate harm to those seen as enemies, and how overcoming this narrow empathy is central to civilization.
Shanidar 1 and ancient care 1:08:31
McClellan points to Shanidar 1, a disabled Neanderthal whose survival to old age suggests a community cared for him, calling this kind of sacrifice for someone who cannot repay it close to a defining feature of humanity.
Unknown minds of older hominins 1:10:30
They discuss newly discovered hominins like Homo juluensis with larger brains than ours, questioning assumptions that older species were simply less intelligent, since only bones remain.
Possible human extinction scenarios 1:11:32
Rogan raises AI risk estimates and past near-extinctions like the Toba volcano, wondering if future species might someday find human remains the way we study ancient hominins.
Older echoes of Adam and Eve 1:13:00
McClellan notes that earlier Mesopotamian traditions, like the Adapa tale and the Epic of Gilgamesh, share themes with Genesis, including humans maturing from a naked, animal-like state into civilized life through knowledge or sexuality.
Adam and Eve's minor biblical role 1:17:00
He points out that Adam and Eve are barely mentioned again in the Hebrew Bible, and that ancient Jewish tradition actually blamed the origin of evil on the fallen angels of Genesis 6 rather than on the fruit eaten in Eden.
Two origin stories for evil 1:18:31
Before the New Testament was finished, the dominant explanation for evil on earth came from the Book of First Enoch, where fallen angels descend, teach humans forbidden knowledge such as weaponmaking and even cosmetics, and corrupt the world. The Adam and Eve story from Genesis existed alongside it, and the New Testament itself reflects both traditions, with Jude quoting First Enoch as prophecy while Paul leans on the Adam and Eve account. Christianity eventually settled on the Genesis version because that was the one included in its canon.
Eve's mismatched instructions 1:20:01
In Genesis, Eve describes a rule slightly different from what God told Adam, adding that they must not even touch the fruit or they will die. Scholars have long puzzled over where she got this version, whether Adam relayed it inaccurately, whether God repeated it to her differently off-page, or whether the text we have is simply a shortened account. The earliest manuscripts show no sign the story was once longer, so the discrepancy remains unresolved.
Why modern Bibles cut verses 1:22:00
Modern translations often omit verses found in the King James Version, including about sixteen passages, because newer manuscript discoveries let scholars reconstruct earlier text. One example is Matthew 17:21, missing from the oldest manuscripts and added later in the margin of Codex Sinaiticus before becoming part of the main text in subsequent copies. Similarly, Mark's ending describing Jesus's resurrection appearances is widely agreed to be a later addition, now usually bracketed with an explanatory footnote.
Dead Sea Scrolls discovery 1:26:00
The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1947 after a shepherd's thrown rock shattered a clay jar in a cave, revealing ancient manuscripts that filled in previously unknown biblical passages. Israel's statehood that same year brought funding for archaeology, so the caves near Qumran likely would have been found anyway within a decade or two. The Qumran community itself was destroyed by the Romans around 68 CE, which is why nobody returned to retrieve the scrolls, leaving them preserved for two thousand years.
Destruction as preservation 1:29:31
Archaeological preservation often depends on disaster, since fires that destroy buildings can bake clay tablets solid and conflagrations that level cities trap material that would otherwise be lost. This creates what is called a mortuary bias, where much of what is known about ancient societies comes disproportionately from tombs, which are not representative of everyday life or broader communities.
Feeling ancient human presence 1:31:32
Holding a thousands-year-old tablet at Oxford's Bodleian Libraries and noticing a thumbprint on its base gave a vivid sense of the person who made it, even with a cognitive explanation for that feeling in mind. This sense of presence at ancient sites, such as Eleusis in Greece where the Eleusinian mystery ceremonies once took place, can feel strange and significant, though visitors to sacred sites don't always treat them with the respect their history might suggest, as seen in cases like the Taliban's destruction of ancient statues.
A cannabis-burning temple at Arad 1:34:01
Dan McClellan describes visiting Arad, a site in the southern Negev desert where archaeologists found the remains of an eighth century BCE Israelite temple inside a fortress. The site had a courtyard, a broad room, and a holy of holies, along with a standing stone representing the god of Israel, an altar, and inscriptions mentioning the house of Adonai. This find, along with another temple discovered near Jerusalem at Tel Moza, shows that worship happened at many temples before the book of Deuteronomy pushed for centralizing worship in Jerusalem alone. Residue tests on incense altars at Arad revealed three kinds of cannabis, confirming it was burned during worship, likely producing a smoke-filled, mind-altering atmosphere.
Allegro's mushroom theory debunked 1:38:00
McClellan dismisses John Marco Allegro's claim in The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross that Christ derives from a Sumerian word tied to mushrooms and semen, noting Hebrew and Greek are not descended from Sumerian, which had largely vanished before Hebrew existed. Though Allegro was a skilled Dead Sea Scrolls scholar, colleagues reportedly warned the book would damage his reputation, and it has been rejected by linguists ever since.
Tracing the flood story's origins 1:41:01
The conversation turns to the Epic of Gilgamesh and its flood narrative, and how Sumerian king lists predate any flood story. McClellan explains that early Genesis material, including genealogies in Genesis 4, shows no awareness of a coming flood, suggesting the flood account was inserted later, around the sixth to fifth century BCE. He links this to Genesis 6's story of divine beings fathering children with humans, and how First Enoch, written around 300 BCE, better explains the violence that supposedly provoked the flood through giants and demon spirits.
Daniel's missing fragments 1:44:31
McClellan notes Dead Sea Scroll fragments referencing Nabonidus that never made it into the final book of Daniel, suggesting the book was assembled from older material with some pieces left out.
Ethiopia's Bible and First Enoch 1:45:31
The Ethiopian Bible descends from a Greek Septuagint brought to the kingdom of Aksum around the late third or early fourth century CE, including texts like First Enoch and Jubilees that Ethiopian Christians kept using while debates over the canon raged in Constantinople and Rome. First Enoch was quoted as prophecy in the New Testament's Epistle of Jude and defended around 175 CE by Tertullian, but by the mid to late fourth century, in manuscripts like Codex Sinaiticus, it had disappeared from the Christian canon.
Book of the Watchers and suffering 1:50:30
McClellan calls the Book of the Watchers one of the strangest texts he has read, and he and Rogan puzzle over whether its animal allegory of Israel's history is meant to record real events or simply to answer big questions. McClellan ties its appearance to the Babylonian exile, when Israel and Judah came under the control of larger empires and people began asking why their god allowed such suffering. He argues this crisis is what pushes the idea of justice into the afterlife, with concepts of heaven and hell first appearing in Enoch before developing further in the New Testament. Part of Enoch's explanation blames wicked angels who descended and taught women things like makeup, introducing evil into the world.
Hell's murky origins 1:59:00
McClellan traces early hints of hell to the last verse of Isaiah and to Daniel 12, describing an unending fire and an undying worm meant to show that fuel and victims keep being added, not that punishment itself is eternal. He says the New Testament actually holds three competing ideas about postmortem punishment: annihilation, temporary torment followed by salvation or annihilation, and eternal conscious torment. In his view hell began as comfort that wicked empires would eventually be punished, then slowly turned into a threat used to control ordinary believers, becoming fully formalized by Augustine's time. He stresses that the claim good non-Christians are doomed to hell appears nowhere explicitly in the Bible.
Shifting authority and belief 2:00:02
McClellan argues that what counts as authoritative scripture keeps changing as groups renegotiate tradition to fit new social and historical circumstances, even among biblical scholars who sometimes read texts to reinforce rather than examine their own beliefs.
Illusions reveal hidden perception 2:02:00
To show how intuitive cognition shapes experience, McClellan has Rogan view the Cornsweet illusion, where two patches of identical gray appear as light and dark because the brain assumes it is viewing a lit object in shadow. He extends this with Ramachandran's mirror-box experiment, in which patients with phantom limb pain felt real relief after visually tricking their brain into seeing a clenched fist release. McClellan says these examples prove the brain mediates everything we perceive, shaped by evolution for survival and by social identity, and he points to Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind as related reading on how such forces shape values.
Intuitive versus reflective thinking 2:06:30
McClellan describes an idea from cognitive science involving two modes of thought: a fast intuitive cognition we barely notice, and a slower reflective cognition we use to reason. Intuitive cognition often protects us socially, making us resist interpretations or viewpoints that threaten our group or interests. He gives the example of public reactions to Lindsay Clancy, the woman who killed her children, where some see a victim needing more care and others see a monster, each side entrenched and unable to see the other's position, which is why jurors are screened for similar bias.
Decoupling, rationalization, and ideology 2:10:02
He names two responses when intuition and reflection clash: decoupling, where reflective thought overrules a gut reaction, like realizing a nighttime noise is just the furnace, and rationalization, where reflective thought instead defends the intuitive reaction even if it is wrong. He notes people in power often got there because of ideology, making change difficult.
Keeping personal faith private 2:11:01
McClellan explains he deliberately avoids discussing his own religious beliefs publicly, citing Jesus's New Testament teaching to pray privately rather than for public show, believing this keeps him more effective as a scholar and more honest in his own practice.
The prophetic critique in scripture 2:13:31
He describes the prophetic critique found in Isaiah, Micah, Amos, and echoed by Jesus, where God rejects rituals and sacrifices from people who perform piety publicly while exploiting the poor privately. The real demand, he says, is justice, mercy, and righteousness over performative religion.
Inner cities and systemic neglect 2:16:31
Rogan and McClellan discuss how a supposedly Christian nation neglects impoverished inner cities, linking this to redlining and ongoing related lawsuits. They argue meritocracy only works if everyone starts at the same line, and that systemic neglect, not individual failing, keeps these areas poor.
Walkability and city design abroad 2:18:01
McClellan reflects on how cities in England, like near Oxford, are designed for walking rather than cars, unlike most newer American cities. He contrasts Los Angeles, hard to walk, with New York, dense but walkable, suggesting the U.S. has the capacity but not the will to build this way.
Fixing root causes, not symptoms 2:20:00
Rogan proposes redirecting funds, such as cutting the Pentagon budget, toward systematic plans for cities like Detroit and Baltimore covering education, crime, and opportunity. Both agree political debate focuses on symptoms rather than root causes, and that improving opportunity nationwide could unlock hidden talent lost to poverty.
Power, Division, and Fake Solutions 2:22:01
The conversation turns to how people in power tend to prioritize staying in power over solving problems, often keeping the public divided so nothing changes. Despite this, there is optimism that interesting and worthwhile things still exist, illustrated by a 1952 Alan Watts book describing an "age of anxiety" that sounds remarkably like today, showing that cultural anxiety and change are constants rather than new phenomena. Progress tends to move in uneven steps, and nostalgic views of the past, like idealized memories of the 1950s, often ignore the anxieties people actually felt at the time.
Running for Office and Critical Thinking 2:25:01
Dan shares that he ran twice for state legislature in a conservative part of Salt Lake County, mainly to challenge incumbents and shift public opinion, closing large polling gaps even though he lost. The talk shifts to how people drawn to political office are often poorly suited for genuine problem-solving, and how critical thinking is rarely taught, leaving many to simply adopt rigid beliefs from their upbringing. They discuss the tension between religious freedom and public education, including concerns raised by Francesco Talerico about Christian nationalism, state-sponsored indoctrination, and the historical example of Confederate statues erected explicitly to intimidate Black communities. The episode ends with Dan sharing his book, "The Bible Says So," and previewing his next project on how the biblical conception of God evolves across scripture, tied to his podcast's guiding principle of letting data, not ideology, drive understanding.
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