Dr. Dan McClellan is well known for debunking Biblical misinformation online. He’ll explain why understanding biases matters and how misunderstanding ancient texts shapes modern debates in harmful ways. Dr. Dan McClellan is a public scholar of the Bible and religion. He earned his PhD in theology and religion from the University of Exeter, where his dissertation explored conceptions of deity and divine images in the Hebrew Bible using cognitive linguistics and the cognitive science of religion. Since March 2021, Dan has worked to confront misinformation about the Bible on social media, where he shares scholarship as @maklelan on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. In 2023, he transitioned to full-time public scholarship, expanding his work to include online courses like Biblical Hebrew. In 2022, he published a revised open-access version of his dissertation, YHWH’s Divine Images: A Cognitive Approach, with SBL Press. His first trade book, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About the Bible’s Most Controversial Issues, will be published by St. Martin’s Press on April 29, 2025. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx
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