Andrew Schulz's Flagrant with Akaash Singh - Bible Expert on which Christianity is TRUE, the Book of Enoch, & if Christmas is Pagan

Episode Date: May 13, 2025

YERRR – the guys brought on Christian apologist and Bible expert Wesley Huff to break down faith, philosophy, and help us understand the history of the Bible. He breaks down misquoted verses, the myths about Jesus and his travels, why Christianity split so many times, and why Christmas is NOT a Pagan holiday. All that and more on this week’s episode of FLAGRANT. INDULGE. 0:00 start 0:50 Wesley Huff vs Billy Carson in Turkey 3:25 Wesley Huff: Scripture Scholar 6:50 What is the OLDEST Bible? 10:30 Christianity in the earliest days was a fringe movement 13:15 John the Baptist, underrated and unexplained 23:10 Jesus wasn't the only revolutionary messiah 28:38 Misunderstood Mary Magdalene 32:30 Did Jesus ever go to India?? 34:00 Jesus' life was not well documented 40:05 Christians dealing with Biblical discrepancy 51:30 Bible is written FOR you, not TO you 1:04:00 Biblical translation against LGBT 1:12:11 Martin Luther's Protestant Reformation Reasons 1:15:40 Catholic's Reason for the Pope vs Orthodoxy 1:22:36 the removed Biblical apocrypha books 1:31:23 Pagan Myths Debunked 1:37:10 Why did Judas kill Jesus? 1:50:30 are there giants in the Bible? 2:02:21 Hyperbole in the Bible 2:10:15 do Non-Christians go to Heaven? 2:29:25 the misunderstanding of Hell 2:37:10 Babies going to Heaven and God protecting the innocent 2:39:22 an example of God's punishment 2:41:40 Karma, transactions and the Bible 2:48:10 the only sin you won't be forgiven for 2:56:22 What Christians can do that Atheists cannot 3:07:30 the father, son and holy ghost explained Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up people? Today we are joined by the most bodaciously Brolic Bible expert you've ever seen. A true man of God, Wesley Hough, or as Billy Carson calls him, White Devil, is here to break down the big questions. Which version of Christianity is the truth? Did Jesus make it to India? That explains how he walked on water, because it's so polluted. Also, were there actual giants in the Bible? What's up with the book of Enoch our Christmas and Easter Just some old pagan holidays and can non-christians still get into heaven

indulge Wesley thank you so much for taking the time. I'm very excited for you to be here We must state that I'm not taking any credit for your success neither as Marc near as Alec neither as Akash never okay I'll give it to you. No, no, don't do it because you earned your success. Neither is Mark, neither is Alex, neither is Akash. Never. I'll give it to ya. No, no, don't do it because you earned your success, okay? And, Jesus, look at this fucking thing. Yeah, I know, dude. God bless you.

Make a news Christian. And the other thing. And then, yeah. You gotta put the test back in New Testament. There we go. Let's go. Let's go. Come with me.

Come with me to the bars, bro. Come with me to the bars, okay. The Billy Carson debate, does it sprout from you reacting to Billy on our podcast? Yes. Okay. Because I made response videos to you guys because people kept sending it to me. Yes. Now, did you watch the whole episode when we were like, we're not fact checking any

of this, this is just for fun? Yeah. Yeah. And you were like, we're not fact checking any of this, this is just for fun? Yeah. Yeah. And you were like, I'm gonna fact check the clip. I'm gonna fact check it. Well, because people kept sending me these clips. I know, the thing about Billy is like, I know he's full of shit, but he doesn't know he's full of shit.

And that's why, at least I didn't think he was a con artist. I was like, he really believes it, and this is kind of fun. So we're like, listen, we're gonna have some fun today. But then when things get clipped out and put on the internet, people believe it 100%. Well, he's so confident. Yes.

You know what's funny? I was just in Turkey, and Billy's now in Turkey. I missed him by a week. We were in the exact same location. Wow. We could have. I had this thought when we went, because I went to Derinkuyu,

which is the underground city in Cappadocia. And I had the thought when we were going in, I waso, which is the underground city in Cappadocia. Yeah. And I had the thought when we're like going in, I was like, what are the chances I run into Billy Carson down here? Because he'd said in an interview last year that he was going to go to Darren Kuyo in a year. And it was like almost the exact same time frame. I had that thought. Didn't happen. What would happen if you guys ended up in the same place? He's ducking you, bro.

I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. Have you guys spoken since? What's up with the same place? He's ducking you, bro. I don't know. I don't even know. Have you guys spoken since? What's up with the lawsuit? Like, fill us in, dude. No, the lawsuit didn't amount to much because there was no credibility to the lawsuit. You can't sue for not liking what you yourself said.

Yes. Right? So, it's okay. But, yeah, I mean, I haven't heard anything from him, nor do I necessarily need I necessarily need to I don't be the guy that took down Billy Carson I don't want that to be my legacy. Yeah My origin story. Yeah Get doing he's still doing all right People still want to believe in aliens. I want to believe in all this stuff you believe in tablets of Toth. You got a necklace about it

all this stuff. You believe in the little tablets of Toth, you got a necklace about it. Al is 100% locked in. Al's a flat earther. There's a lot of things that we know. What do you think about flat earth? What's your... I don't know. I mean, I've been in an airplane and up in the sky and I think I've seen the curve, but I don't know. Yeah, you don't know. I'm not a scientist. Exactly. Don't make me say sciencey things. What are you exactly? I'm a historian. Yes, we know that. but then there's another thing. What is it? I don't know. I was looking up your exact title and I was like there's no way I'm gonna memorize it But your specialty your PhD is in? Biblical manuscripts. Okay, so ancient scribal culture. So I study ancient scribes

Yeah, and how they produce and copy and disseminate manuscripts. So you're testing for efficacy of these ancient scribes? Yeah, different things. So there's a field called textual criticism, which looks at the text of particular documents. Because in the ancient world, we don't have any originals. Everything is a copy, no matter what it is. And even if we found, quote unquote, an original, I don't know how we'd verify it.

Yeah, what makes something an original? The author writes it. But like, oh, so the author could write 40 of them, and then we would deem that an original? Well, like whatever, like say we find Plato's Republic and it was one that was written by him. Or like, how would we verify that it was actually his? But everything we have are copies

and most of them are like hundreds of years after because old things wear out. And so textual criticism looks at the text and the copies and looks at internal and external factors and traces the original back. Okay, question. That's not what I do, but it's related. Okay, I just have a question about this.

Yeah. Okay, so it is possible that you could find an older version of the Bible, or there could be a newer version of the Bible that is more accurate than an older version of the Bible because the older version had a copying mistake. And so how would you identify that? Because there are so many copies.

The thing with the Bible is that you have so many copies, far more copies than you have of any other ancient document. Okay. Why is that? The Christians really wanted to copy it. Because we're the best. Is that why? We don't have enough of these things.

Get your copying up, Jews and Muslims. Oprah, you get a copy, you get a copy. Well, part of it was like the Christians were the, I mean, Muslims call us the people of the book, right? Christians and Jews, because we have a scripture and that's like, central to what we believe. Whereas that's not necessarily true for like, other ancient religious practices. In fact, that's the argument, there's an end of first century, beginning of second century Jewish guy named Josephus. And so, he writes a document called, The Antiquities of the Jews.

And in it, he talks about the differentiation between the Greek religious practices, the Greco-Roman religious practices, and the Jewish religious practices by saying we don't have just an unlimited amount of religious texts like you guys have. We only have this. And part of the reason we know what the books of the Old Testament were in Jesus' day,

part of the conversation is that Josephus outlines them. He gives a number and an argument for the list of books and what the books are. Okay, so from there we have this idea, because why would he lie or mislead about this time if his argument is to prove that this is the limited amount of books that we have? Yeah, I mean, he has no reason to, like, make it up one way or the other.

And then you have, so the New Testament authors quote the Old Testament, like a lot. And so we have evidence from, okay, well, Jesus, Paul, Peter, they're quoting this stuff and they're saying, this is scripture, they're advocating for it and arguing theological stuff on the basis of these texts. So we can also look at how they're treating scripture. And then there are other stuff, Dead Sea Scrolls and things like that.

Okay. What is the earliest version of the Bible? How do we... What is the Bible? This person sounds familiar. Yeah. What is the earliest version of the Bible? Well, what do you mean by version? I think that's where I'm going with the question, which is like, what were people consuming at the time? So all of these books are like independent scrolls. So there's no such thing. We think of a Bible and we think of like the single volume. When do we get that? So we don't get that until the year 300.

Yeah. Anywhere between. So Constantine decriminalizes Christianity in 313. Got it. The Edict of Milan, the piece of the church. So he makes it so that it's no longer illegal to be a Christian. Decentine decriminalizes Christianity in 313. The Edict of Milan, the Peace of the Church. So he makes it so that it's no longer illegal to be a Christian. Because before him, there was a guy named Diocletian, who was the emperor. And Diocletian in 308 says,

I'm gonna wipe these people out. So he makes it illegal for Christians to gather. And he beheads all the church leaders. And he like, it's this systematized persecution. So there's persecution before that. The emperors were kind of loopy. So like Nero is famous for burning Christians in his garden as like the lights. He's nuts.

Yeah. He got the lead poisoning, right? Probably. I think he was the one who made his horses general and like made a marble wall. Not like a few screws loose. Yeah. So there was persecution, but it wasn't like empire wide until Diocletian. Diocletian comes in, he's like,

yo, we're getting rid of this shit. Yeah, so he's, and he's gonna destroy the Christians. That's his kind of motivation. Constantine eventually takes control of the empire. Now in his effort to try to destroy them, does he just bolster the strength of the religion? Which one? Diocletian.

Diocletian bolster like, you mean for Christians? Like banning a book makes it sell more. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Does it see, is it more poppin', is it more badass, do more people want to go do it because of that? Badass. I'm just trying to... Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's not a bad way of putting it. Sort of. So Christians thrive under persecution, which is an interesting factor, but largely in spite of all of the stuff that's being spread about them. So Christians do things like the Romans practice this ancient form of abortion,

where particularly if you have a girl, it's called exposure. So they'd take the children, they'd put them out in the garbage dumps or like outside the city gates. And the Christians would go save them and would raise them. And so there was this like disproportionately large group of women in the Christian communities statistically

because the Romans didn't want the women. I know, right? Got it. Yeah, same as church right now, right? Yeah. So you wanna find a girl? It's like a Matt Rife comedy show. I'm a girl. There's girls there.

And then they have like, the Eucharist, the Lord's Supper, right? Jesus talks about, this is my body, this is my blood. So the Romans catch wind of, they do this ceremony where they're talking about drinking blood and eating flesh. And they're grabbing all these babies. Sounds wild. It's Hollywood, yeah. Right.

So in a mix of like stuff like that where they're like, they're eating the babies, they still grow. And in large part because they're philanthropic, they help people. So we have some like Roman leaders who write and they decry the fact that Christians are not just taking care of their own, they're taking care of like, they're taking care of harpoon. This is embarrassing us. But there are lots of factors that go into that. Take me even earlier then, like what's happening immediately after the big day? The big day. The round zero. Round zero. What zero, yeah.

What's happening after? Yeah. What do you mean before that? No, no, after. What's happening after? Like the time of the early church after the resurrection of Christ. Between resurrection and 313 or whatever.

Right, so Christianity is this like small, fringe movement of a bunch of, and early on they're still associated in the pagan world with the Jews They're like a group of Jews. They just follow this so they're thought of as Jews at the time But like an offset of Judaism Yeah Because they kind of all right stranger because so your religion in the ancient world is largely tied your ethnicity, right?

And so conversion wasn't unusual. This is interesting. Yeah, the version wasn't unusual in the ancient world In fact, if you got married and you were like a pagan Roman, it was expected that you would convert your religion, particularly if they had house gods, which was common. But the Christians and the Jews were unusual in that they just denied everybody else's gods existed. So, so actually one of the earliest accusations for Christians is that they're atheists. They deny the gods. So they're accused of being atheists and they're accused of being antisocial.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. Like atheists, no gods. Yeah, yeah. You guys believe in a thousand gods, why don't we believe in one? Yeah, and the ancient world is not just polytheistic, it's what's called henotheistic. Okay. So you don't just believe there are many gods, you believe that there's like hierarchies of gods and actually your gods could be my gods by another name. So like Zeus and Jupiter.

Yes. Like that's why the Greeks and the Romans have the similar if not the same gods by different names. Right. They have like different stories to them. So that's assumed by one another. You're like, okay, we both believe in these different gods. You have different names for them, that's fine.

But we're both part of the same belief system. The emperor's a god. Everyone's a god. Everybody's a god. And where Jews and Christians are coming around, they're like, that ain't the case. No, yeah, not only are your gods not like powerful, your gods just don't, they straight up don't exist. You're making them up.

And so persecution for Christians becomes this, they become this easy scapegoat. Because if you're like in Athens and the city god is Athena, and there's some sort of like famine and Can't go why do we have a famine? Well, Athena's mad. Why the theme is mad? Well, because there are these guys running around saying she doesn't even exist So there's this early church historian named Tertullian and he has this famous line where he says That if the Tiber River in Rome is too high or the Nile River in Egypt is too low,

the cry will ring out the Christians, the lions, because they become like this easy. Why would our gods punish us? Yeah, yeah, we have no reason. Yeah. So that happens pretty quickly. And Tertullian also said, the blood of the martyrs is a seed of the church. So we get like martyrdom stories very early. And a lot of them are because that Christians become this easy scapegoat. Got it, so there's tons of persecution early. I actually wanna go back even before crucifixion.

I wanna go to John the Baptist. I'm really interested in this John the Baptist guy. And I don't feel like he gets enough shine. Doesn't get the press he deserves? I don't think he- Oh, the Underrated character in the Bible. Yeah. Okay, so he's offering forgiveness through baptism, right? Is this happening in the woods? Sort of. Okay, well, maybe you clarify so I don't misrepresent. Yeah, so he is starting this movement of

this movement of group repentance, where he is saying... So baptism isn't necessarily an unusual thing to do in ancient Judaism. Like, ablution cleaning is part of just ritualistic purity. The ancient Jews were obsessed with ritualistic purity. And then you have groups like the Essenes out in the desert, who were there like, we're just going to do this all day long. Like we're basically, we're going to, there's bads everywhere in Qumran, which is their community.

And they're just constantly washing themselves for ritual purity. So it's not that John the Baptist is doing something unusual. It's that he's then saying that Israel communally needs to repent and that you need to be doing this there for this reason. And that then this Jesus guy shows up and he says he's the one that is the reason why I'm doing this. But aren't John and Jesus like homies or cousins? Yeah.

So like they kind of grew up together, no? Yeah. Okay, but and John knows this this entire time that Jesus is gonna be the Messiah or one day he realizes it. I don't know. I mean, that's not explicitly said one way or the other. But Jesus shows up and asks John to baptize him

and John says, I'm not worthy to baptize you. So he knows. You should be baptizing me not the other way around. Got it. Yeah, but he would have at least heard something, because we have this story where Mary finds out she's pregnant, and then she goes to her cousin Elizabeth, who's John the Baptist's mother. Yeah.

Don't mess that up. And the progressive Bible. Yeah, right. And so there's like a knowledge there that something special might happen. Yeah, something special going on. Okay, so the thing that John is doing that is novel, you would say, is saying that they should repent.

Sort of. Like what is he doing that is dissimilar from everyone else at the time? He's like a wild man, he's wearing camel skins and he's eating locusts and honey and he's like living out in the desert. So he's not offering forgiveness? Well, he's saying, repent.

So he's not offering forgiveness, but he's saying you need to seek forgiveness from God and you start by doing this act of going through a public declaration of your repentance. And the Jewish leaders kind of get mad at him because he's implying that they, like their ethnicity isn't enough. So they come and they're like, well, we're children of Abraham. His line is, you know, God can raise up children of Abraham from these stones. That's what he says. Yeah, just being the child of Abraham is nothing special. You have to do the acts. Yeah, he's also speaking out against the political system. So he... So he's the first person recognizing that there's something that he deems corrupt happening

in society at the time. I mean, there were other people doing stuff like that. I don't want to say first, but he is one of these people that is recognizing there is corruption and the only way that we can thwart this corruption is through repentance and hopefully there will be forgiveness. Yeah. More or less? Yeah. I'm just trying to understand like what's happening in society at the time that compels a guy like John the Baptist to even do that.

Well, there's cultural expectations in the day that the Messiah is going to come. Right, because the Jews are saying, you know, the Messiah is going to come. Yeah. So that's, okay, so that's already been set. So they're looking, they're like, who's gonna be the guy? Yeah, and there seems to be, in the New Testament, this like buzz that it's gonna happen soon. Because when Jesus talks with the woman at the well,

like he's talking to her and she basically says, like the Messiah is gonna come and he's gonna reveal all these things. There's this like cultural expectation. This guy's gonna come, things are bad with the Romans, and he's gonna rescue us from the Romans. But they kind of thought that that would be military later. Right. So the expectation was that the Messiah was going to, he was gonna save us from the Romans, he wasn't gonna get murdered by the Romans. Got it. Okay, so Jesus comes around, really quick, have you heard the claim

that Jesus just took up the teachings of John the Baptist and basically co-opted it to then create his own cult, so to speak? Yeah, I mean, there's never happened in religions before. No, no. What are you talking about? I'm just saying one guy with interesting ideas and then a really smart businessman comes around

and like forms religion around it. I'm just saying, this is an early blasphemy that I don't believe. Okay, okay. Maybe you can clarify that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Keep the blasphemies to a minimum. Yeah, yeah.

I have three more. I'm not in business at all. I have three more. Right, we're counting them down. Yeah, yeah. So explain Scientology. Yeah. Okay, well, let's go.

Go, go, go. So, I mean, yeah, there is an idea there. I think all the evidence we have of the historical John the Baptist kind of points otherwise. And there are actually followers of John the Baptist in the second century that kind of outlived Jesus. And so you have these different factions. And some people are still following John the Baptist. So some people don't choose up with Jesus.

No. They stay true to John. Well, and even in the Gospels, there's this... So John the Baptist speaks out against the local leader. The local leader has a party with his daughter, and he gets his daughter... Well, she dances. It's kind of a weird scene. She dances, inherits palace, and then he says, I'll give anything to you up to half of my empire. And she says, I'm with the head of John the Baptist.

So she kind of gets coerced to have him bring in the head of John the Baptist. While John is in prison for speaking out against them, he has doubts and he sends some of his followers to Jesus to ask Jesus, are you the one we're waiting for? Should we wait for another? So even John the Baptist starts to struggle with his own faith when things aren't going his way. And then it's really interesting because Jesus's reply is, go tell John what you've seen, the dead are raised, the blind see, the lame walk.

And there's this interesting connection with those are statements in the Old Testament about Yahweh is going to do when he reunites his kingdom in the restoration. And there's a Dead Sea Scroll fragment called 4Q521, which is part of these like Essene community. And it talks about the fact that everybody will see God's Messiah, and the dead will be raised, and the lame will walk. And so it has these connections. So those are verses from the Old Testament. How much writings is there when he raises some dead? What do you mean?

Like, does everybody go on this? It's insane. Are you saying like how many scrolls are there? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, well, every copy of like the Gospel of John with the story of Lazarus and Mark is the, Jairus' daughter. But do you have anything outside of that? Is there just like a newspaper clipping?

Like this guy's on it. No, but like Twitter clip? Yeah, it's on X. We hear a lot about the walking on the water and the wine. The raising the dead one is... Yeah, what's funny about the raising the dead one is that then the Pharisees, the Jewish leaders are like trying to figure out how to kill Jesus after that. They're like, did you see what just happened? We gotta get this guy out of here. We gotta kill this guy and then how are they gonna kill Lazarus again? It's like, well, that didn't work the first time. Wait.

Okay, go on, go on. Yeah, so I mean, all the copies that we have of John and Mark would include those stories. But the ancient world was largely illiterate. So that's something else to keep in mind, is that our world is hyper-literate. So we're constantly writing things down, and most people know how to write and read.

It's not true in the ancient world. So at the height of the Roman Empire probably was only 10% literate. And there would be like pockets of communities that would be able to read and write. But usually, like the first Bibles were audio Bibles in the sense that you would have someone within your community.

They'd memorize the entirety of the Bible. Or they would just read it out loud, right? So Paul writes letters to the churches, there'd probably be a few people in the church who could read it, but they would just hear it. Yeah. Most of the time. All right guys, dates.

Before I go to hell, see me in Salt Lake City, June 19th through June 21st. Oklahoma City, these shows might have to get rescheduled, but as of now, that is July 18th and July 19th. August, I'm in Kansas City, June 19th through June 21st, Oklahoma City. These shows might have to get rescheduled, but as of now, that is July 18th and July 19th. August, I'm in Kansas City, Missouri, on the first and second. Perrysburg, Ohio, on the eighth and ninth. Liberty Township, Ohio, why am I doing so much Ohio?

On the 22nd and 23rd, and we got more dates coming. We got a bunch for the fall, so get your tickets. Augustsing.com is the website, I love y'all, thank you. What's up guys, really quick, I'm on the road. That's right, I'm going to Indianapolis, and then I'm going to Buffalo, Raleigh, Poughkeepsie, Portland, Fort Worth, Austin, Stanford, Philadelphia, Levittown, Washington, D.C., San Diego, Burlington,

Montreal, Toronto, and a bunch of other dates. You can check them out on my website, Mark Yagnon Live, and we can have a great time. See me, come hang out after the show. I'm not asking, because he's asking. Yeah, I'm not asking for anything. I'll be honest. A few people after the show were like, hey. What is this?

A few people after the show were like, hey, I'm not gonna do what Akash told me to do, but I just wanted to say hey. And that's great. That's all I need, okay? See me at the show. Well, no, I mean, he wants you to suck his dick. That's why he's sitting like this.

See you there. Jesus is crucified. Uh-huh. I've heard of it. Runs it back. Okay? What? What are you, what?

What are you, why are you laughing? Okay, it's accurate description. What? It is, this is what happened. Runs it back. He run it back. Okay. Immediate fallout after running it back.

Yeah. Who's seeing him? So, the disciples run scared. They hide because they basically figure, okay, the movement's dead. So Jesus isn't the only messianic movement that happens within this time period. There are guys before him and after him who try to create revolutions. So just a short period after Jesus, there's a guy named Simon Barjiora and he's famous. And there's Simon Bar Kokhva. So the Bar Kokhva revolt is the one that kind of launches things that eventually gets Jerusalem destroyed under Titus, who then marches into Jerusalem.

He sacked Jerusalem and they destroy the temple. That happens in 70 AD. Was Simon claiming to be the son of God also? No, so that's unusual. Most of these guys are just like military leaders. So Jesus' messianic claims are kind of unique in that he's doing things that people didn't really expect the Messiah to do or be, in that they're still expecting a military leader. Because have you heard of Maccabees? Like first, second, and third Maccabees? The Maccabees is the story of Hanukkah. So the Greek emperor guy, he marches in and he takes over Israel. And then he does something real bad for the Jews

in that he sacrifices a pig on the altar in the temple to Zeus. So all bunch of layers of not being kosher. And then the Simon, or not Simon, Judas Maccabeus, Judas the hammer, he goes in and he kicks them out and he rededicates the temple, that's the story of Hanukkah. Got it. So he's like a military leader in that sense. So he's seen as not the messianic figure that they're waiting for, but a messianic figure in the sense that he's established, like he's kicked out

the bad guys and he's established the kind of unification of the Jewish nation at that point. So they're kind of looking for that again. And Judas Maccabeus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, which is also what Jesus does. So when Jesus does that, it's kind of a callback. Like, okay, and the people are like, I think we know what's gonna happen. Okay, when he rides back in on the donkey, first of all, incredibly,

I'm gonna use the exact term, badass, right? Like, super flex. Literally, I like it. But super flex, dude, come in on the donkey? I don't need some big shiny horse I'm gonna come in on like the little I'm trying to be very respectful of my language now. We're talking about Jesus Bitch ass fake horse And then so immediately is everybody like shook are people running there are people that were joy sing

Like what is that immediate reaction upon return? Yeah when he when he rides in the Triumphal Entry, like when he goes in Jerusalem, yeah they're waving palm branches. That's why I like Palm Sunday. They wave palm branches because they're waving palm branches. They're putting their coats down and they're saying Hosanna. Yeah I listen to that song as well. Yeah, yeah, nice. Shout out Hill Song. Yeah so but it's the same crowd that then at when he's like on trial with Pilate is then saying crucify him. So they flipped up real quick. They turned fast.

Yeah. I feel like the funniest thing of Jesus going to Jerusalem is that no one thought that a guy like the Messiah could come from Nazareth or Galilee and then there's a reference and they go What good has ever come out of that? Like they talk shit about it. Yeah Somewhere small that like he's a he's a he's a heck and who says it I forget exactly who who makes that comment I think it's when Jesus is ministering in Galilee and they're like, what good can come from Nazareth? It's just such an unusual place.

Once again, subverting cultural expectations. He's born in Bethlehem, which is where he should be, which is from the house of David. But then he lives and grows up in Nazareth, which is like nowhereville. And then even when he goes back, they're like, because he ministers in Nazareth at one point and everybody he's doing like- Now I'm seeing the Star Wars parallels.

I never got it before, but they just ripped off the Jesus story completely. Everybody rips off the Jesus story. Unbelievable. They gotta pay their little 10%. Star Wars. Wait, how's the Matrix one? The Matrix? Yeah.

Is it a chosen one? Yeah, but outside of that. Like. I mean, I'm talking about like. That's a good point, honestly. Y'all laughing, but outside of that. There's a Judas, right? There's a Judas who betrays him. That's fair.

And then there's a John the Baptist. He shows you the way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who like makes the path straight. That's right. Morpheus is John the Baptist. And he's like, I'm not the one. He's going to be the one. There's a Mary Magdalene. Yeah, but what happens with Mary? What happens with him and Mary? What happens with him and Mary? Yeah, that's true. That's Hollywood Jesus. Yeah, you don't think that Jesus Jesus was I'm trying to be respectful obviously, but you don't think Jesus was you know testing the profession

She was a pro right like allegedly isn't that what some say or is that So that's a so Mary Magdalene is not the prostitute. Ah, okay. Yeah, that was a Pope's fault he connected those dots and that they were wrong and then the the church had the roman catholic church had to backtrack on they did backtrack on okay good i always thought she was a prostitute no no this is i'm obviously not christian so this is a much broader maybe ignorant question is there like a matrix kind of thing in christianity like in hinduism we call that maya which is like all this stuff that you see is illusion. The reality is the afterlife.

Is that like a thing? No. That's fine. No, it's weird. It's weird. It's like a couple characters. Characters like the matrix. I love confident Christians, bro.

Can't you goofy as multi-God related out here? Yeah, what are you talking about? No, well, because there's a differentiation between like Eastern mysticism has this idea of like that this world is an illusion, right? So you have things like samsara, the cycle, that's Buddhism, right? Not Hinduism, but the cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth. And you're trying to escape this. Yeah, that's Hinduism too. And so that would be ancient Platonic philosophy that gets mixed in with like the Gnosticism

that develops in the second century where the physical is bad and the spiritual is good. And so when you have the early Christians arguing against the Gnostics, they're doubling down, not that Jesus is God, they don't have a problem with that. It's that Jesus is a human. Because they believe if you're human, you can't is God. They don't have a problem with that. It's that Jesus is a human. Because they believe if you're human, you can't be God. You can't mix it. You're in a meat prison,

and your spirit's trying to get out of there. But Jews and Christians have the inherent belief of the resurrection. So we are embodied. You're not a spirit that has a body. You're a spirit and body. Those two things kind of mix. And heaven is a layover. It's not the final goal. Heaven is a place you go to wait for the final resurrection when we will all be given new resurrected bodies. And that's why Jesus is called the first fruits, is because everybody believed in the resurrection.

So when Jesus keeps saying, you know, I'm gonna die and I'm gonna rise again, they're like, yeah, all of us, Jesus. They don't understand that he's talking about something that's unique and that he's going to do it now as like a preview of what everyone's going to get in the afterlife. Like you have heaven and then the resurrection where heaven and earth meet and all things are restored. I had no clue that's what the real heaven was. I didn't know that this current one is a... Dude, I really should.

I started on the Old Testament, it's dense. It's a lot of rules. Get to Leviticus. The rules were so much... I don't want to be disrespectful. You got to the part with the like, the sore, with the white hair, and you're like, I'm out. No, I got to the part where it's like, the temple needs to be six inches from the cubits.

And I'm running on a treadmill, and I'm listening to the audio version, and they're constructing a temple out of like certain materials. And the fabric needs to hang three inches from the thing. And I'm like, I'm not a GC. You know what I mean? I don't need to know, like, what's going on here? I'm not building the temple. Like, we're going to heaven, you know? So I didn't even know like what's going on here. I'm not building the temple.

Like we're going to heaven, you know? So I didn't even get to the fun stories. You start with the gospels. I need, I should have started with the gospels. Why do you guys, I still want to get into, I still want to get into what's- What do you mean you guys? Yeah, you're right, I'm one of them.

No, I want to baptize so I don't get, but my parents were, how does that work? We can get that done for you. Really? Should I go to the... Baptized? Yeah. But should I go to like...

You should figure it out. Go to the Jordan. Go to the Jordan. Up here before you start jumping in the water. You don't think they want 10% of your income, dog? Yeah. That does you so fast. It went up, it's 15 now.

No, it's like tipping. That's old-testing. You don't gotta give 10%. You're released to give as much as you want. Wait, hey, Jews, you're not. You're not limited to 10%. You're not limited to 10%. Okay.

Right, actually, on the topic of India and Hinduism. Oh yeah, did Jesus make it out to India? Well yeah, what do you think of that claim? No, I don't think so. So the claim comes. Why do people think that? So there was a guy named, I'm gonna forget his name. He was a Russian researcher in the 1800s,

and he made this claim that he went out to Tibet and he found a document in a Tibetan monastery that talked about Jesus studying there in India. His name's alluding me, it'll pop into my brain. Yeah, Nicholas Notovich, that's him. So the problem is that he basically, with all these things, right, Emerald Talbis of Thoth,

all the evidence disappears, right? And then you have like, trust me, bro. And actually a statement came out from the monks at this particular monastery, and they're like, we have no idea what this guy's talking about. No Russians ever showed up here. But he made this claim that Jesus went to India

and when he was in his childhood missing years. Got it. So you have his birth story, right? And then you have a story in the Gospel of Luke where he's 12 years old and Mary, Joseph, and Jesus go to Jerusalem and then Mary and Joseph conveniently lose the son of God and they heck it out of there and then he's not with them

Yeah, they go back to the temple and he sees teaching alone is the fucking Jesus story to yes I know it's all it's all right. Yeah matrix is Hindu. Yeah, that's my point If he's the Messiah why aren't they keeping track of everything happening throughout his entire life? Good question. So the Gospels are a form of ancient biography. And when you read their stipulations for ancient biography, so there are guys like Lucian, who writes a document called How to Write Good History in the ancient world, right? So he's a little bit before Jesus. And he actually talks about, and some other ancient biographers, historians talk about how do you write good history, and the editing process they say is just as important

as what you include. So in the 18th, 19th century, a lot of these German scholars looked at the Gospels and they said these can't be biographies because we know that biographies include stories of our childhood and particularly psychologize. So we have to remove these as thinking about them as biographies. What they failed to understand is that there was already a category in the ancient world for what biographies looked like and whether the gospel authors were reading like Lucian and Celsus and Aristophanes or not, which I don't think they necessarily were.

It was in the zeitgeist that you include what's important and you make sure that you don't add fluff. Particularly because these are very arduous and expensive to write. And so you include what's, if there's something noteworthy about. So the birth is noteworthy, the story where Jesus goes to the temple and all of these teachers in the temple are amazed by this 12 year old boy who's teaching them stuff. That's in there. And then you like fast forward to when he's 30, because-

So from 12 to 30, he's just fluffed? Well, he's just kind of living. So Luke says he's- Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I'm thinking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I'm thinking. Yeah, my boy.

That's some good living. That's what most people do. You got magical powers from 13 to 30, they're gonna be, you're going to Thailand. What's so nice? I couldn't feel like, come on. Come on. Come on, with all due respect.

You're not mature enough for this. I'm not mature enough to have this conversation. With all due respect, if you had magical powers from 13 to 30, and then at 30, like I'm on my longevity shit right now, I'm 40, right? So I'm switching things up in my life. Obviously lifespan was a little bit less back in the day. So 30 comes around, you're like,

now I'll change the world forever for the better. But there's gotta be a time where you pop down to the Nile, see what's good over there. He's a carpenter, he's doing his job. He's laying wood. Yeah. Yeah. He's got that.

He's got it. With all due respect. With all due respect. He doesn't understand. So I don't, you get a pass. So it's a good question. So I mentioned before when Jesus goes- Oh, did he get a pass. So it's a good question. So I mentioned before when Jesus goes- Oh, did he get a pass?

Oh, because he gets hell. Anyway. I didn't say that. But you meant it, you inferred it. No, no, no, no. You didn't say a lot about saying it. He's trying to eliminate his existence anyways, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He'll be back. He'll be come back in the next life. As a Christian, no. So there's this story where Jesus goes back to Nazareth. Yes. And they're like, who is this guy? Isn't he, don't we know his mom? Don't we know his dad?

Isn't he the carpenter's son? So there is the equivalent of saying like, we went to prom with this guy, what's he doing? Like how'd he end up like this? Like they're surprised. But don't they also know that he was immaculately conceived? They may or may not. Oh, so that wasn't, oh, that wasn't like, you know,

people talking. They're not broadcasting. They're not in town, people talk. Yeah. They're not broadcasting it. that wasn't like, you know, people talk on the same. People talk. Yeah, they're not broadcasting it. You don't think that you would. Don't come fighting nobody. No. People go to your boy and be like, hey, man, I don't know what's going on. This girl pregnant.

I didn't do anything. Yeah, there must have been a little bit of a conversation. I mean, yeah. Maybe some people knew, but they're surprised. Right. And so there's an indication from the historical record of the gospels that people like Jesus during his childhood, it couldn't have been all that crazy because they're surprised. And so there's an indication from the historical records of the gospels that people, like Jesus during his childhood, couldn't have been all that crazy because they're surprised when he's showing up

and he's doing miracles. But there is a category of literature in like a hundred years plus after Jesus and it called infancy narratives where people are coming up with stories where what would, you know, magical Messiah Jesus have done? And so there's stories that he's like playing on the playground, he knocks it into a kid,

that kid dies, then he rays. Oh no, no, no, these are clearly embellished. Let's stick on the first-hand accounts, because these are the ones that are really exciting, right? Because you can verify these, kind of, we would hope. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're at minimum, there are only source material from the timeframe that Jesus lived.

Okay, why was he in Egypt? Why did he pop over to Cairo? He went to Cairo? He did go to Egypt. I went to the church that they were hiding out in. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the claim that they make. That's fake? Well, I'm not saying it's fake.

You're fucking Egyptian. No, no, no, no, no, no, I'm not saying it's fake. I swear to God. Listen. Brother, brother, brother, look at the temple. I'm riding a donkey down the street to go see where Jesus was hidden. It's a bullshit. You did a good deal. I got a good deal for you. On one church I have another church for you. This is unbelievable.

You can tell me Jews built the pyramids now? No. They uh... You're gonna start it. That was aliens. That was Aliens. Yes, I watched that documentary. Yes, it was a great documentary. So it's not that that church is fake, it's just that the stories that come up around these particular

things are much later and their reliability is iffy. Okay, I went to the anointing stone when I was in Jerusalem. Is that real? That has a lot more early provenance. This stuff in Jerusalem has a lot more credibility because we have records going back to the second century of people going there in pilgrimages. So a lot of the locations for the Holy Sepulcher or that kind of stuff, they go back to Constantine's mom who went to Jerusalem and established some of these things. But she did so based on like a world chain of custody where she went to the places where the locals were saying, we've been going here for hundreds of years and these are the connection

points. Got it. So that's some word of mouth right there. It is, but it's like the chain of custody going back arguably to like there's a reliable sense. So, are there questions about all these things? Sure. Okay. I have a quick question on the, like, some of the discrepancies that occur in the Bible. That's something that I struggle with sometimes. Sure. I was a Catholic, you know, we have a little broader, you know, papal authority. I'm curious, like, how should Christians deal with discrepancies in the Bible, whether it's like the birth story

or like the death of Judas or things like that? Yeah. What do you mean by discrepancies? Can you explain some of those? Well, so there are differentiations in detail because we have four gospels. They all tell- Yeah, explain what the gospels are

to the people out there like me. Yeah. To the good Catholics like you. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are these biographies of Jesus' life. So two of them claim to be written by eyewitnesses. Matthew is Levi the tax collector, and John is the disciple, John.

Luke and Mark are not. So Luke is a traveling companion of Paul, who writes this two-fold document, Luke and Acts. And then Mark is, in the earliest church tradition, he's a traveling companion of Peter. So he gets his source information from Peter, which is really interesting in the fact that Peter does not look good in Mark.

Like that's where, get behind me, Satan, he's the diciple, like he's continually not getting what Jesus is saying. And he like runs away, denies Jesus. So if the earliest source material is true, which I think we have no reason not to think it is, especially because they don't then call it the gospel of Peter, which they could,

if they're like, well, this is Peter's source information. They call it the gospel of Mark, who Mark's generally a nobody. That only gives credibility to the fact that Mark probably wrote it. And then it has this connection directly with Peter himself. So, four gospels, two are claimed to be eyewitnesses who wrote them, and then two claim to be like associates of... Second hand, yeah.

Yeah. So, when the church is looking at all this literature and they're saying, okay, we have an Old Testament, like testamentum just means covenant. Adiathaca in the Greek, he just translated it into Latin and it's testament. The Old Testament, a testamentum just means covenant. Deotheca in the Greek, you just translate it into Latin and it's testament. The Old Testament, God's covenants are always followed up by written texts. So that's why they collected. You have guys like Philo and Josephus, they talk about this stuff. What are the books? And then the Christians see Jesus, he establishes a new covenant.

He's fulfilling what the prophet Jeremiah said in Jeremiah 31, 31, where he says, I'm going to make a new covenant with my people. I'm going to write my law in their hearts. Jesus claims to fulfill those things. And then the early Christians who are Jews who believe in Jesus as the Messiah are saying, okay, here's the covenant, here's the promise, where are the written texts? And so they have these conversations of canonicity, which just means like, canone in Greek means a rule.

So it's the standard, you know, you have like a Harry Potter canon and then you have stuff that's not, the Star Wars canon or Lord of the Rings canon, whatever. So the canon of scripture, and they're saying, okay, what's in, what's out? What's in, what's out. And these are all the stories about Jesus

and his teachings at the time, first-hand account, second-hand account, third-hand account, some are some rumors, and they have to go through, parcel through to find what has the most efficacy? Yeah, so what the conversations they're having is what are the documents that are either from someone who knew Jesus or someone who knew someone who knew Jesus?

That's the standard. Got it, got it. So yeah, it's either what is empirical evidence or like what is one derivative away from that? Yeah, and for the gospels in particular, like these four biographies of Jesus's life They're the ones that the early Jesus community agrees upon the most because the disciples of Jesus had disciples They're called the apostolic fathers, right? So there were people who like Peter and John and paul Discipled themselves And then those people talk about,

okay, I heard John say this. I heard, you know, so, so. And they give credibility. So there's this like direct chain of succession in line of custody to the apostolic community. But is each, sorry to interrupt here. So is each one of the apostles teaching their version of Jesus's life, and do those differ slightly?

And is Christianity kind of like fracturing a little bit in those first few hundred years? So yes and no. So this goes to your question in terms of the differentiation in detail. So the fact is we have four biographiesies and sometimes they tell the same stories, but they give different angles on the stories. So we have a similar thing with the emperor at the time, Tiberius. So the only other person who's sort of comparative to Jesus in terms of source information is the emperor. So you have Jesus and then you have the most powerful, the most well-known, the richest

person at the time. And he also has four biographies of himself, or at least four, don't kick that, please. Thank you. Sorry, forgive me. Not while I'm talking. Forgive me. Andrew. Forgive me.

So, Tiberius has Velius Perturculus, Suetonius, Cassius Stio, and Tacitus, who are all writing source information for him. So if we can do like a comparative analysis for someone with Jesus, the emperor is a good guy to do it because he likewise has four individuals who are writing about his life. You're saying as an example of their importance and impact? Or like, how can we look at source information? Now, the Gospels are a little bit different because they're pretty comprehensive and they're only about Jesus. Whereas these other guys are writing, say say about emperors more broadly and so it's like snippets

here and there. But what I was getting at is we have differences in those stories too. Or like Socrates. I get what you're saying. Socrates has three biographers. Yeah, it's three different sports writers writing about the game. They might have different angles but at the end of the day this is the score and these are how much these people played and they're going to reference who the superstars were. Yeah. And the detail, so I would say a differentiation in detail doesn't necessarily amount to a contradiction. So I haven't found something that I think is an outright contradiction.

That's not to say there aren't hard ones. So the death of Judas is a hard one because one gospel says that he went and hung himself in the potter's field. The other says that he falls headlong and his entrails fall out. He falls headlong and his insides fall out. What does that mean, falls headlong? Like he falls on his head. And his insides fall out. What?

So that's what it says happens. So there are a few things going on here. I think it's entirely possible to harmonize that and say he hung himself and he has asked a question and it fell and he like, it's not, you can see how you could get these kinds of things. Even if some people think you're playing you some fast with that kind of thing. Okay. You also have the fact that in Hebraic, Semitic idea, your entrails, like your intestines, are where your credibility comes from. Ah, got it.

There could be a play on words in that he could have physically, like, his cut open and his intestines fell out. But there also could have been this idea for the Jewish mindset of like, this is the guy that betrayed Jesus, of course his entrails fall out because that's where your credibility is.

Now, could you argue that there is credibility in the authenticity of the gospels because they're- The gospels? The gospels because the hospitals the hospitals because they're different accounts like if every account was identical you don't need four counts yeah the fact that they differ slightly and they don't make the changes to make a match up offers more authenticity to me well I would say like if if would say if you're gonna change it, change it. It's sort of like the head space of like,

if you're sort of cheating on a test. Or like, yeah. Yeah, you don't have to make one thing wrong to make it not look like you can. Yeah, I guess you can make it, so like. No, no, no, I don't mean it that way. I mean it almost in the way that you're correct. I've never thought about it that way.

Yeah, because the criticism from the outside is, hey, they're just changing these things to make it look the best so that they can exert power and influence over the people that they rule. Right. That's the outside perspective from like an atheist, perhaps. And on on the societal utility, or not even societal, like how the power structure uses religion, right. So but I'm like, okay, well, that's not a really good one. If you're putting quoteunquote mistakes or differences, you're like, unless they thought it was important to maintain the authenticity of these stories, so they left them in there despite the differences. Well, if they all said the same thing, you could accuse them of collaborating in collusion. That, yeah, maybe that was a really quick way of saying what I've babbled about for the last two minutes. That's why you brought me on. Yeah, I guess, yeah, okay, That's why he brought me on. Yeah, it's good, it's good.

Yeah, I guess, yeah, okay, but to, so what are these circumstances that they're discrepancies that are causing you to have a lack of faith, you fucking frauds. Wait, no, no, that's not what I said. That's what I heard. That's what I heard. What is that?

Let me come in as A, and then say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, sir. Yeah, I'm just saying, dude. This guy's a non-D-nom, this guy's a non-D-nom, dude. He's like one of those guys that was like celebrating when Jesus came in on the donkey, and then when he's up there on the cross, he's like, oh, bad guy.

Don't do this to Mark. He's a flip-flopper, dude. He's a flip-flopper. No, no, no. So the Gospels are writing to the different authors with different intentions writing to different audiences. So some of them are clearly writing to Jewish audiences, so they're capitalizing on certain things.

For example. So Matthew is making this connection between Jesus being the new David and the new Moses. So he's doing certain things in his gospel where he's capitalizing on aspects of Jesus' life. So he gives a different genealogy than Luke does for Jesus' ancestry. So some people look at that and they're like, well, this is a problem. You got two genealogies of Jesus. And, but what we know about genealogy is particularly Jewish genealogies is that sometimes they're not meant to be either exhaustive or gapless. What does that mean? So we today, if I'm doing a family tree, I'm going to make sure that everybody's listed, right? Grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather.

The ancient Hebrews are more concerned with the right people being named for the right reasons. So, and they also have this idea that's called gematria, where every letter in the Hebrew alphabet has a number associated with it, and your name ends up having a number. So David ends with the number 14, if you like count up the things.

Matthew's gospel starts with the genealogy that has three lists of 14, ending with Jesus. And the point of that, and we know that it's not like, he leaves people out because we can go back to like, first and second Kings, first and second Chronicles, where we have longer lists of these people and Matthew is leaving people out or he's like squishing whole generations

into just one person. So you could look at that and say in our modern mindset, well, that's playing loose and fast with the data. But an ancient Jew would say, okay, well, why is this happening? Ah, you have lists of 14, that's David. And so he's to his audience, he's communicating, this is the new David, okay?

And he's doing things that are fulfilling the expectation of who David should be, like as the king, as the anointed one. And you have things like Moses goes up on a mountain and receives the law, Jesus goes up on a mountain and gives the law, a new law, right? So throughout the Gospel of Matthew, you have these constant insertions that are capitalizing on details for His audience to make sure that they know this guy Jesus is this person who is the

person you're waiting for. He's fulfilling the Davidic reign, he's the prophet like Moses that's predicted back in the Torah, and he's accomplishing these things. Is this what you mean when you say the Bible is written for you but not to you? I like that. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Because it has a different audience, right? And so understanding the context helps you.

That's why the like German rationalists in the 18th and 19th centuries, they did the wrong thing. They said, this is how we would write, therefore, and they didn't look back because there's linguistic and cultural levels to it. So you could just translate the text directly, but it's context that's going to tell you the difference between a butt dial and a booty call. Even though they might be the same words in Greek or Hebrew, right? Yes. But you could read that and you could be completely misled. A butt dial and a booty call.

Completely different things. Yeah, so there's versions of that in the ancient literature. Oh yeah, totally. And this is with everything, right? Some guy is just guessing at that point and just making an inference. In terms of like today? Interpretation. Yeah. Well, you study the ancient culture. So fortunately, we have like the ability to

look at things and understand idioms and people talk about stuff. And that gives you a frame of reference. Like I'm sure they're using slang. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Apparently, there's all these issues with like biblical translations as they're trying to translate it in like the 20th century to all these different cultures And when they're putting in their native tongue, like uh, there's one specific that I remember I did this field trip to Wyclef and it's a it's a

Bible translator in Florida. Have you heard of it? Yeah. Yeah, and uh, and one of the things like this one specific tribal culture in africa The there's this idea of jesus knocking on the heart But in that culture, thieves knock. And so they're like, okay, we can't make it knocking because then they're gonna think Jesus is a thief. And so what they did is like, they would cough or something like that. They would like clear their throat to indicate

that there was someone on the other side of their hut. And so they had to translate it to Jesus coughs at the door of the heart or something to that effect. And that when you're translating things, or something to that effect. Yeah. And that when you're translating things, you have to be super specific to the culture that you're translating to. So this is the difference between what's called

a formal equivalence translation and a dynamic equivalent translation. Yeah, this is a dynamic equivalent translation. Yeah, so dynamic is like the thought for thought idea. Yeah. Right, so in the Gospel of Luke, in the Greek, there's this line where Jesus says, let these words sink into your ears, Right? That's exactly what Jesus says. Let these words sink into your ears.

So if you have a dynamic equivalence, like the New International Version of the Bible in English, they're going to say, listen carefully to what I'm about to say, because that's what that means. But that's not what Jesus said. Right? So whereas the New American Standard Bible, the NASB, is more of a formal equivalent, they're literally going to say, let these words sink into your ears, because that's the words that Jesus spoke. So it's the question of what's, because people always ask me like, what's the best translation? And I don't know the answer to that. Like the best Bible is the one you're going to read. So just figure out the one that you're going to read and then read it.

New international version, baby. There you go. So let these words sink into your ears. And this gets tricky because you have turns of phrase. So one of the most quoted verses in the Bible of the Bible is a version of Exodus 34, six, where Moses goes up on Mount Sinai and God says that he is a gracious God, compassionate, steadfast in abounding love, and the Hebrew says long of nose.

You're like, what? Long of nose. Well, it's a Hebrew idiom meaning slow to anger. Are they? That's what it means. So how do we know that that's what it means? So what else does it mean? Hebrew is a Semitic language.

We have other Semitic languages. Slaughter Bay. Get out of here. This guy. This guy. Okay. Here's why I use that illustration. Even the most formal equivalent. How do you know?

Okay, well, okay, how would you say someone just got a long nose back in the day? How would they say that? Probably the same way. Shelf. Well, it... How do you know it wasn't just a descriptor? A descriptor?

Yeah. Because why would you describe God as long of a nose? So we have other examples within other Semitic languages and portrayals of that. I got a fucking idea too. I was just like, why wouldn't you? But this is why. They said Jesus had the golden hair. Yeah.

But they probably were describing the way his hair looked. That was good safe. This is just God. Oh, you mean Jesus long. In my religion, Jesus is God, I don't know about you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're on the same page. Oh, we are, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah.

But I use that example to say, like even the most formal equivalent isn't going to translate like that because it doesn't make any sense. Right. So but long of knows you think that they were just using a common... It's an idiom. It's an idiom.

Yeah. This guy's an idiom dude. It's not like an insane... But so Hebrew is a semantic language. insane. But Joe, Hebrews is like a Chinese guy was described as like small of I. No, I think it would be an idiom, right? Like idiom for good at math. Like one could say that or you could think, oh, this might have been a descriptive. I just picked up on why you guys are laughing. Just picked up on why you guys are laughing. Yes!

Yes! I'm sorry. Three days later. I'm sorry. No, it's Jesus' time. Yeah, that's right. And he's back! Three days and three nights.

He is risen! He is resurrected to sense of humor. I like it. Do you understand what I'm saying? Like, maybe it was just a description. But if everyone's got big noses, then it wouldn't be a description. Yeah. If everyone's got big noses.

Not everyone. But if you're God, you want to have the big... Who are you saying has a big nose? I'm a big nose. I'm a big nose. I'm a big nose. I'm a big nose. I'm a big nose. I'm a big nose be a description. You know what I mean? If everyone's got big noses... Not everyone!

But if you're a god, you want to have the big... Who are you saying has a big nose? That's what I was... Italians or something. Yeah, yeah, that's what we're talking about. Jews! Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

So wouldn't the Jewish god also have that? Well, so this is an idiom that we find in other Semitic languages. So, like, Akkadian and Aramaic, and like, so this is a language family. Languages that are in the region. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where the Jews live. You're not seeing the panel out here! You're a historian, you gotta know about this.

Well, I understand the context. You gotta know who he's speaking to. He's saying, he's one of y'all. I mean, maybe. I mean, maybe. I mean, maybe. I mean, maybe. I mean, maybe.

I mean, maybe. I mean, maybe. I mean, maybe. I mean, maybe. I mean, maybe. I mean to. He's saying he's one of y'all. I mean, maybe. Contextually, no. Listen, leave it up to the historians. Comedically, yes.

Just because Ari Shaffir looks like that today doesn't necessarily mean Ari Shaffir Does it necessarily mean... Okay, okay, okay. Are you a chef here? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You look like that. Yeah, okay. We're getting on the line right now. Yeah, yeah, we're getting close.

So you were saying... Dynamic formal equivalence translation stuff. How do we start this? You were talking about... You just said there are a bunch of long noses running out of here. Get out of here. Looking for Jesus.

I'm gonna kick you out of your own pocket. Okay, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. I thought it was disrespectful. So this issue runs up all the time. I thought it was disrespectful. It was disrespectful. The long noses are trying to cruise the volume. I'm like, you can't go.

I didn't say that. Wesley, Wesley, Wesley. You said something like that and we're like, we gotta put a stop to this. Slow to anger people. Yeah, and then you were like, no, it's an idiom for the time. Abounding, steadfast love and faithfulness.

Yes, exactly. What language was that? Huh? What was, did you just speak, what language was that? Abounding, steadfast love and faithfulness. Bro, I had no clue. You said it quickly and we were very like, what the... I thought you said another window moment.

I just now, I just want to stop. Did you understand what he said? I thought he was speaking Hebrew. I had no clue. Yeah, but I appreciate what you just Hebrew. I had no clue. Yeah. But I appreciate what you said. I just didn't bust the rums, you know? I just kicked it to your roof.

Okay, okay, okay. I twisted on you. Let's center ourselves. So he was talking about like translation issues and that happens all the time. Yeah. And like you're translating the Bible into Peruvian in a culture that like doesn't know what a donkey is. Do you then say it's a llama?

Or is that like taking too much liberty with the text? But this is stuff we run into all the time. So this is why the best commentary on the Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament is gonna be the Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament. And the Greek New Testament. Yeah, but there are things that we learn about these languages, like the King James Bible

is translated between 1603 and 1611. There were terms that they just didn't know what they meant, and they transliterated them. We now know what they are because we've like through... And then have they adjusted the King James Bible since? Well, no. You know, well, new translations, dude. There's a new King James and KJV. Yeah. And they would... So, first Chronicles 26, 18. Yeah. And the King James and KJV. So, 1 Chronicles 26, 18, in the King James Bible says, At Parbar westward ford the causeway and to it Parbar. You're like, what does that mean? Right? But if you read the NIV, this guy's favorite translation. That shit is light work. It says, as for the court to the west, there were two at the court and ford the road itself. I didn't even know what that meant. So par bar is not an Elizabethan English term.

It's just a transliteration of a Hebrew word that they were like, we don't know what this is. So we're just going to call it a par bar. Like croissant. Yeah. That's a... I think he's right on this. OK, OK, we'll go with it. Yeah, we didn't have a word for that type like a what? Sure gay bread. So we just called it Right, like we don't have an English word. Yeah, so we just go. Okay, let's just call it their thing. Yeah. Yeah, sure We should just leave it in Latin. Why do you guys look at me like I'm dumb? It's the exact same thing that the English did right? They didn't have a word for it. So like I just leave it there Yeah cultural appropriation. Yes

But in like the best version of it, we want you to appropriate Christianity. That is what Christians would hope that everybody appropriates it. Sure. But then we figure out what the word is and it's fine. And then it's fine. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

I'm like, I'm jumbled up here. We still haven't figured out your discrepancies in the Bible. No, I think we kind of- That was the only one. What were the other things? You have a biblical scholar here right now. He's a historian. He benches 240 for 12 reps.

You're low balling. What? What did you put up there? 285 for five, easy. You could have carried that cross for days, bro. You guys got a bench press here? Well, no. Why were you about to throw something out for us?

We could test it. 315. 315? I, no. Oh, okay. Why were you about to throw something out for us? Well, we could test it. 315. 315? I've done 404 for one. Whoa! What? Nah. Body of Christ. Jesus. Yeah.

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go to squarespace.com slash flagrant to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Now let's get back to the show. All right, guys, let's take a break for a second. Speaking of Lazarus, sometimes you got to rise your dick from the dead. Okay? With all due respect, Bluechew has got your back.

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I don't even know why I'll see you soon. We are. See you right now. Bye. He has a question. Yes, we need you might shifty knows the Bible. Okay, shifty. We're talking about translations and mistranslations. Yeah.

I've heard a lot of people say that gay marriage and gay relations are just mistranslations of the verses, like Romans, the ones in the Old Testament. Do you think they're mistranslations and the Bible is saying that they don't ever just talk about gay marriage or gay relations in general? Or do you think that there are mistranslations? Yeah, so the accusation is usually that the word homosexuality gets incorporated into the Bible in the modern era. So the words in Hebrew in the Old Testament Leviticus, Paul, particularly in 1 Corinthians 7, plays off of what the Greek translation of the Old Testament has and uses

this word, arsinekoites, which literally means to lie down a man with a man. And so I think it's not a mistranslation because the concept is there. What it's talking about is not obscure. It might be controversial, but it's not obscure in the Hebrew and Greek. The accusation is usually that it's not talking about like same-sex sex. It's talking about something like men sleeping with boys or temple prostitution. I don't think you can really rationalize that. There's a guy named Robert Gagnon. That's your last name. Yeah. Robert Gagnon.

So you say, do you say Gagnon? Yeah, these people don't understand. Wait, hold on. Is this guy about to justify homosexuality? No, no, no. So Robert Gagnon is a scholar. He did his dissertation. He taught at Princeton for a while on this,

like the linguistic and cultural context of homosexuality in the Bible. So his is kind of like the volume. So he goes through all this stuff. Why are you laughing at that? And talks about, Mark comes from a long line of people. He got a mighty. Yeah.

Long line of croissants. We just call them croissants. Yeah, we just call them croissants. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so he's a croissant historian, and then what did he find out? Well, these concepts are like, like if you went back to Moses and you had two dudes and said, we want to get married, Moses is not- For what?

What? He would say, for what? Yeah, well, that wouldn't be, he'd be like, that's not what marriage is. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not like, it's just because the word homosexuality exists now in English, doesn't mean that the concept isn't there back in the day within the Bible. Yeah.

Hmm. So it was in the Bible that was frowned upon even like whatever translation, whatever textually. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So what happens, what happens, are you guys done with the gay stuff? Or? So, okay. So, okay, what happens after Jesus comes back, what do his disciples go do?

Do they go separate, they go around the world, right? And they're going to spread the gospel? Well, they hide because they think their movement's done. They think their leader's dead, that's kaput. And so, but then he comes back. Yeah, so that's what changes their mind. So that's what they, when they go from 11 scared disciples because Judas killed himself Yeah in the upper room. Yeah, a two then going out and being willing to actually lose their life for this proclamation

It's because Jesus shows up and he's like and it teaches them for 40 days Oh, so they do another 40 days to do another 40 days with Jesus, right? That's yeah, so that's the That's what Luke talks about that. This is 40 day period and then you have the mountain of ascension. He goes back and then they spread out. Well first they go back to Jerusalem and start preaching that at ground zero where it happened. Which if you were trying to make it up, you wouldn't go back to the place where everybody saw the guy killed and say like, he's resurrected, the tomb's empty. You go somewhere else.

And people check the tomb and it's empty. Yeah. I mean, they would resurrected, the tomb's empty. Like that's, you go somewhere else. And people check the tomb and it's empty. But yeah, I mean, they would have, right? So it's like- That's a bar that I've seen a bunch of pastors on TikTok use. It's fire. It's like- The tomb is empty? No, no, it's, if you look in Muhammad's tomb, he's in there. Ah, yeah.

If you look at Moses' tomb, he's in there. If you look at my God's tomb, it's empty. That's fine. Yeah. And then they start getting... I'm just kidding, I've just heard it before. So it's all nervous. That's all it takes to convert this guy.

They don't make any sense. I don't, but it's... They're gonna be cast out. He's still dead in the tomb. Jesus ain't there. And then Stephen is the first martyr and he gets killed. And so the disciples know that this is risky. They can still go do it. So like when I was last week, I was in Turkey and I went to Ephesus, which is where the

body of St. John is. And I went to Hierapolis, which is where the body of Philip the disciple is. So they went out and they started preaching these things. And there's various stories of like some were martyred, those reports are sketchier than others. But we know at minimum that Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome in and around the time between 64 and 68. So every single one of them gets killed? Not that we can reliably. At minimum they are persecuted. Some were probably killed for their faith. A lot of them suffered physical harm

because of it. And the idea is that they all have disciples as well, the religion continues to grow, and you see a difference in the religion from certain areas, right? When do we have like the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church separate? Well, that's in like the, that's a thousand years after. Yeah, but it takes time for those beliefs to separate.

And what is the true one? What is the true one? Well, I mean, so I'm biased because I'm a Protestant. Yeah. Right, so nobody wakes up one day and is like purgatory. We all believe that now, right? Like there's a slow fade for these traditions that develop over time.

And so it's not like it, so if you talk to Roman Catholics, they, you know, it's the 2000 year old church, Pope Leo the 14th is the successor of Peter and that goes right back. Yeah. From Chicago. You like that though, you like that.

I mean, I'm not gonna say I influenced it while I was in Rome, but I'm not gonna say I'm not. Talk to some cardinals. I'll believe it if I see a Pakistani Pope. A Pakistani, I'll believe it. I see a Pakistani Pope. Pakistani. I'll believe it. I'm in, I like the Italian guy named Pizzabola. That was the, just because his name is Pizzabola.

That was a front runner. Pizzabola is the most Italian, it's like a made up Italian name. Yeah. If you were to like invent an Italian. Italian virus. Nice. Don't you want Trump saying pizza-bola though? Yes, I do.

Okay, so tell me, so the East and the West split over, I mean, there's language divisions, Latin and Greek and all sorts of things. And then they ultimately disagree on the formulation. There's a bunch of things that happen, but on the formulation of the Nicene Creed, where does the spear proceed from the father? So there's a bunch of things that go on, but they eventually excommunicate each other,

interestingly enough, under a Pope Leo. Wow. So here we go, we're in a bad. And then Pope Leo. But how different are the religions at the time? And is there enough communication between the different factions to maintain one singularity of belief? There is a printed book at the time, there is one story, yet the Roman Catholics have a pope and the Orthodox do not. And so I imagine there's infighting here, I imagine there's like, I don't want to say like blasphemy thrown around, but I imagine like...

Well, they excommunicate each other. They excommunicate, and what year does that happen? One, I don't know, give it a goog. Which one thousand... Give it a goog. So we're pretty deep into the excommunication. Yeah, we're a thousand years afterwards. Got it.

But the... And then by the time you get to like 1517. 1054. 1054. So by the great schism, by the time you get to 1517 and Martin Luther poses 95 theses on the castle door in Wittenberg, Germany, that and launches the Protestant Reformation.

Like that's then the next, and he didn't want to start a different Denomination like that wasn't his purpose. He wanted to reform the church Yeah, but the church wasn't willing to get along with that right and so then that created the division So just so I can understand this Orthodox have been holding it true this entire time Then the Catholics kind of change it up a little bit. Well, no, it's trickier than that.

And then the thing that the Catholics create gets changed up again. And then well, it gets changed up again, and gets changed up again, and gets changed up again. But the Orthodox have been holding it true this whole time. I mean, kind of crazy how that. You gotta talk to the cops. They got Jesus's house in Cairo. Yeah, I was there for that. Yeah, so that's the cop deck. So they're another group.

Yeah. So you got a bunch of different factions, right? But I think you have a central core, which we would all adhere to approximately, but then you have differentiations in like theological disagreements. The Protestant Reformation was to reform all of that and go back to the primitive church The primitive church is well, like what scripture?

Teaches which would be closest to I don't think it's necessarily closest to any of them. Like I don't claim that it was kind of orthodox to me It feels like you don't want to admit it. Oh, no, no, i'm not orthodox. No, this guy is like a diehard orthodox Christian no, I just went to i just went to turkey and I had a tour guide and he was breaking the whole thing down on me. I was like, oh, I've been lied to my whole life. Orthodox are really the real ones. What is that church in Istanbul? Hagia Sophia.

Yeah, Hagia Sophia. Yeah. Have you visited? Yeah, I was just there. And thoughts? I mean, it's a beautiful church. It's a mosque now. So yeah, how'd we let that one go? That was the first one, right?. It's a mosque now, so. Yeah.

How'd we let that one go? That was the first one, right? Muslims. Yeah, they got it. They got it. We had it for a while. They got a lot. They got a lot.

All those regions were Christian. Christian and Jewish. We stopped them right there, though. 7th century. They didn't get into Europe, you know. Yeah, Charles the Hammer. They're crying. That's why we get croissants from.

You know that? Yes, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. they ate the Turks for breakfast. That was the line. Oh, because- Because that's as a crescent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's largely why we have coffee,

is because the Muslims were taking over Spain and they went up and they grabbed all these beans from like Kenya, because they weren't making coffee for a long time. And then when they were treated, they left the stories that they left these beans in Spain and Portugal. And then when Charles the hammer of France,

he pushes them back, they leave all these beans and they get some of the Muslim captives. And they're like, what is this stuff? And they're like, oh, this is this drink we make. And there's a lot of pressure on the Pope to ban coffee as the drink of the devil. And so the story is that the Pope at the time drank it. And he said, if this is the drink of the devil, we so the story is that the Pope at the time drank it and he said, this is the drink of the devil,

we need to baptize it for Jesus. And, but it was just like this feud because it was pitted as the anti wine. So wine was like the drink of the Eucharist and coffee is the drink of the infidels. And so, but that's larger. And then the Capuchin monks in Italy, they took it and they didn't like the taste. They mix it with honey and they mix it with milk and cappuccinos.

Yeah. Wow. That's awesome. Hell yeah. Thank you Muslims. You could be Billy Carsoning us right now. I could. And I would totally believe every single thing.

We're not fact checking anything, Joey. Okay. Oh, that's awesome. So you haven't really told me the difference between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. We believe every single thing. We're not fact checking anything, do we? Okay. Oh, that's awesome. So you haven't really told me the difference between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. Well, it would be, well, so. The Eucharist is bigger.

The Catholic Church has a papal primacy. Yes. Right, so they have the Bishop of Rome. How does that come about? Why do they decide that there is a pope and why does the Orthodox Church decide that there isn't one? I mean, this is one of the disagreements

between the East and the West because the seed of Peter becomes very important in the West. And the East church says, well, we have all basically every other apostle. So we're not too concerned with the Bishop in Rome. But there is a point in time where like papal infallibility starts to develop. And then when the Pope chooses the Emperor,

so Charlemagne is crowned the Holy Roman Emperor by the Pope, I think it's the year 800, give it a goog. And that's when I would argue, that's when it starts. A fact check me, I can't remember the date. Every once in a while the Canadian bursts out. That's Canadian. Give it a goog. Give it a go.

Give it a go. Was it 800? You got it. So yeah, Pope Leo, another Pope Leo, the third, he crowns Charlemagne the emperor. Before that, the emperor kind of had influence who the pope was. And this is where you get this subversion.

And that's where I personally would say the Roman Catholic big R, big C church starts. That's controversial. Roman Catholics don't like that I say that. But that's when you start to get this idea of a papal primacy and the magisterium as this concrete body. The East is not on board with that. At all?

No. Well, they just don't care. They don't think that the Bishop of Rome has any more or less authority than any of the other bishops. So they have the patriarchs and and they have that kind of set up. Which do you think is most similar to the earliest forms of Christianity? Because was there a pope in the earliest forms

of Christianity? Well, there was a, so bishops are like the leaders of the church. Like one singular bishop, was there, he was just the guy, or is that kind of like an invention of like- Well, the bishops are like leaders within the church. So Paul outlines this like hierarchy of... He won't give it to me.

He doesn't get it yet. Of course not. Guys hanging out in Turkey, you know, at the source. You keep going to the source. You're not going back to Rome, my boy. Because you know the truth is... I crossed the Tiber and I took apart my boat and I made a poppet and I started preaching the other side. That's what I'm talking about. Well, so at the Council of Nicea, 325 AD.

If you had to make the argument for the Orthodox Church being the closest church to... It's not going to let this go. Could you do it? If you had to, if you had to do it to save humanity. Sure, it's possible. What would you do to save humanity if you just had to save humanity? To save humanity? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I would look at the Bible, and say Sola Scriptura.

Ooh. Ooh. Scripura is the sole infallible rule and faith of practice for the church. That was English. That was English. You got that one? I got that one, barely, but I got it.

Barely, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's the biggest differentiation when the Protestants come around, is they say Martin Luther's reading the Bible, he's reading the New Testament in Greek, and he's saying, I'm reading this stuff, and I'm looking at the church. I'm seeing a big difference. And so... So the church isn't acting in the way that the book is written. There have been a lot of traditions that have developed that are, at minimum, non-biblical and at most anti-biblical. Ah, like what's an example of that?

Well, Pope Leo, another Pope Leo, starts this process of indulgences. So there's this theological idea called the Treasury of Merit that you can draw from that's like the holiness of the saints and Mary and the copious out giving of the blood of Christ that you can draw on. And so the Pope Leo in the 16th century says, hey, we need to rebuild St. Peter's Basilica. And so he commissions guys to go out and collect money by selling indulgences. So you either can get out of purgatory faster,

or if you have family members who are stuck in purgatory, you give the church money, they'll get so many years off purgatory. This is still a thing, by the way. Did that ever happen in the Orthodox Church? Do you know if they ever did anything like that? They never did anything like that. Wow, it's fascinating. Interesting.

Yeah, I feel like you should look in more to that church because it feels like it's the one truth. I guess in France, we're gonna be really happy you're talking like that. Yeah. We're going to be best friends. So that's clearly like, and that's what the Martin Luther's 95 Theses are about. We're gonna get you over here, man. We're gonna get you over to the one true religion. The one true religion.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, that makes sense with Martin Luther doing it. Do you think that there were Catholics that at the time respected that idea? And they thought that the church had... For or against? The Reformation, that they appreciated the Reformation, despite not wanting to become Protestants, but they wanted Reformation for their own version of Christianity. Yes, and even some of the people that like fought Luther on it were sympathetic to some. The first debate of the Reformation was between a guy named Desiderius Erasmus, he was Dutch,

and the first debate was a written debate between him and Luther on the freedom of the will versus the bondage of the will. And Erasmus could have been like a closet reformer in some things. Because there were lots of people. I mean, there was a whole period of time with popes and anti-popes.

Well, I mean, you even hear it now, like with the selection of the pope, a lot of times Catholics will be like, this pope isn't progressive enough or this pope isn't conservative enough. And the hope I would imagine is that like maybe a more conservative pope would reform the church in a way that met what they thought was most important about their values. And I don't know, maybe there's something really valuable to that that the church can kind of sway according to what society needs at the time.

But maybe there's also something very concerning about that too, that if you don't have the rigidity that the religion can be manipulated and used in the way that you were saying. Yeah. Well, so you have another reformer guy a little bit later on after Luther named John Calvin Oh, yes, he's in France or he's in well, he's French but he he's in Switzerland and so he's in Geneva and the the bishop of Geneva at the time actually writes to Solito Cardinal Solito writes to The people in Switzerland in Geneva and says like you got to come back to the people in Switzerland and Geneva and says like, you got to come back to the

true church. Like you're in danger of damnation, come back. And the elderly Calvin comes out of retirement, he actually writes this letter to Cardinal Salido and he says, you got it wrong, we are the original church. We don't need to go home, you need to come home because you have, we've scraped all the moss off of the facade of Christianity and all that tradition that's dividing you from what scripture actually is telling you, what the core of the faith adheres to. And so you've lost the script. What do you think about Martin Luther's removal of the Apocrypha from that original canon?

Yeah, great question. So he didn't. But- What does that mean? So Roman Catholics and Protestants have different number of books in their Bibles. So this is part of why I was in Italy, because we went to Trento in Italy, where the Council of Trent happened, where the Council of Trent was the Counter-Reformation. So 1546 to 1563, I think it was. They respond to the Reformation, because they're like, okay, like Protestantism has become this big thing.

We need to deal with this. So let's try to bring the Protestants and the Catholics together and figure this out. So that we can reunite the believers? Sort of, although they invite the Protestants and they say, you can show up but you can't vote. So they don't really. So the Protestants hear this and they're like,

well, we're not joining up then. And a few show up later on. But part of the conversation is that there was no one Roman Catholic Bible. So you go back to say St. Jerome Jerome in the 4th century. He translates the Greek Old Testament and Greek New Testament into Latin. That's the Vulgate. It's the Vulgata, right? It just means like common. So people weren't speaking Greek anymore. They were speaking Latin. And so Constantine says, we need a Bible that people can actually read. So he commissions

Jerome to translate the Bible into the language that everybody can read. At the time though, Jerome doesn't believe that the Apocrypha, so this other group of books in the Old Testament, not the New Testament, are Scripture. So Jerome argues against Augustine, who does believe they were Scripture. But there's always this open conversation. The only counsel that makes any delineation on what scripture is is the council of Trent So at Trent that is when the so the Catholics would call it the deuterocanonical books And I'm a little disappointed that you didn't use my term Because apocrypha typically means I get to term for things that are out. Right. I went to Presbyterian school.

Nice. So the Catholics have 73 books in their Bible. I have 66 in my Bible. The 39 books of the Old Testament that I have in my Old Testament are the same books that the guy that I mentioned before, Josephus, mentions as the books that the Jews consider scripture. Now, he gives a different number, but it's the same number of books, they're just in a different order. So the Jews order them differently. It's the same today. If you buy a Tanakh, the Torah, Nevi and the Ketubim, what are the books of the Jewish

publication, they will have the same books as a Protestant Old Testament, they'll just have them in a different order. They group the prophets together differently. They don't have first and second Kings. They have Kings. They don't have first and second Chronicles. Oh, so it's all the same information. It's just the same books just different. That's fine. Um, order so Luther says okay, there's all this debate. I'm just gonna stick with the core I'm gonna cut out the chaff and I'm just gonna this is the Bible However, Luther still includes them in a separate section, which he labels the Bacchapha to stick with the core, I'm going to cut out the chaff and I'm just going to, this is the Bible. However, Luther still includes them in a separate section, which he labels Apocrypha.

And actually the first King James Bible in 1611 also did that. So did the Geneva Bible, so did the Bishop's Bible. There's a long standing history of Bibles that include them because they're written in the intertestamental period between the last book of the Old Testament Malachi and the first book of the Old Testament Malachi and the first book of the New Testament. But to say that like Roman Catholics put them in or that Protestants took them out, I think is a little bit messy because there is historical precedence for both lists. But I would say that the strongest evidence, the earliest evidence is for the 66 that us Protestants stuck with. Because he said, what is scripture to the

Jews? And so Paul says the oracles of God are entrusted to the Jews. And so guys like Jerome went back to the Jews and he said, okay, how many books do you have? And they said these. And he said, have you ever considered these other ones scripture? They said, no. And he's like, okay, well, that does it for me. Is it, historically speaking, is it easier to maintain the authenticity of a religion if it is not in power in an area? I don't understand the question. In other words, like once the religion is tied

with the power structure of the area, there might be bad actors that will abuse the religion to exert more power, to raise finances, et cetera, when if the religion is a minority group in the area, there's no real way to exert power outside of maintaining its authenticity, and you have to do the most pure form if you want to get to heaven. Over here you can bastardize it a little bit, that's maybe a strong word, but like you can morph it.

Yeah, I'm not going to do that ever again. Sorry. Sorry or whatever. But you can morph it and the morphing of it can kind of deteriorate the authenticity of the religion. So like, what does history say about that? Yeah, I mean, you do have like power corrupts, right? People are always going to use it. Vengeance. I mean, that's the biblical narrative, the original sin, like the Israelites want a king. They're like, Hey, God, we want a king. And God's like, no, that's gonna, the king's always and badly. You don't want that. And they demand it and he gives him a king and Saul is not a great guy. And then David sleeps with everybody and kills people's husbands. So,

it's the narrative of this story. I think that definitely happens. I think so the common accusation is that Constantine converts and then he pollutes things. Right? I think the problem with that is that Constantine, if he wants to exert power by converting to Christianity, it's kind of a dumb thing to do because he's converting to a minority religion that worships a crucified Jew. Why did he convert the empire to Christianity? So he converted himself to Christianity. It's only after him under Emperor Theodosius that Christianity becomes the religion of religion. I thought he converted on his deathbed.

No. But I know what you're talking about. So he's not baptized on his deathbed. That's it. Yeah. He converts after the events of 312 with the Battle of Milvian Bridge. So there's this battle between Maxentius, who's the leader of the West, and Constantine, who's the leader of the East, and they fight for the unification of the Empire of Norman Empire. And so the story is, whether you want to consider it reliable or not, is that Constantine and his army have a vision of the Cairo, what looks like a P and an X.

It's the first two letters in Greek for the word Christ. And here a voice that says, in this sign conquer. And so he puts that on all his shields. And even though they're going against the Praetorian Guard, which is like the elite fighting force of Magsanteus, they win. And so after that point, he starts to like, okay, what's going on here with this?

I use the sign of the Christian God and I won. And so what's, and then we do have testimony of other early Christians who seem to give credibility to the fact that he does in fact legitimately convert. And part of that is that if you want to do exert power, he could just do what Diocletian did and say, I'm God. So I'm going to kill everybody. What I say goes. And he doesn't do that

So it's actually it's interesting the way that this is taught the way that it's taught it was To me as like a kid was that there was so much momentum for the growth of Christianity Within the Empire that they had no choice but to convert. Yeah, it's not it's why even teach that like I mean, why does anybody teach anything? I guess I guess I guess but I think it does a disservice to like, the the choice at the time, like it's a pretty brave choice in that regard for Constantine. Like, yeah, and it certainly would not have been popular. I thought he was succumbing to the will of the people. No, I thought it was a train. There was there was a runaway train. There's nothing he could do about it

He's like the only way that we can keep vampire together is we start following that and then there's all this conversation Conversation of them like including pagan rituals into this new version of Christianity, which I'd love you to speak on So that the pagans would more easily adopt it. Yeah. But you're telling me that this is just like, completely false. So there are like, there are kernels of that that's true in the sense that like, Christians would do things like build churches over the sites of old temples, in that they're so like,

you're coming here anyways to worship, now worship the true God in the same location that you're regularly aware of going to anyways. But the assimilation of pagan practices, that's a myth. How do we get the eggs in Easter? That's a middle-aged thing because eggs were associated with both New Life and Spring in Europe. It's a European thing.

Christmas. How do we get Santa? Santa is like a combination of St. Nicholas, who is a fourth century bishop, and Sinterklaas in Germany. I think it's a New York thing. I think eventually the Dutch in New York. That's fire, the trial.

They, you're gonna take credit for that one? Yeah. I mean, yeah, he should. He trial. You're going to take credit for that one? Yeah. I mean, yeah, he should. He should. Him and him. And so we like all comes together. So this doesn't exist prior?

What? The celebration of Christmas. Oh no, Christmas goes really old. So there's a guy named Julius Africanus in the second century who's preoccupied with figuring out how old everything is, and you know, how he gives us the date for the creation of the world. And then he like adds up. So part of what he's doing is he's a Christian and he reckons that he's figured out when Jesus was, when Mary got pregnant and they count nine months and gets to December 25th. And so that's, is it 24th or 25th? Why did I blank it? I was right. Oh, you know why. Jesus ran with it. Why? When do Why'd I blank it? I was right. Oh, you know why? I just ran with it.

Why? When do the true Christians celebrate it? January 6th. Damn it! What's going on? What is that? So the Orthodox do it on December 6th. January 6th.

But it's the same date, we just use different calendars. That's why. You guys stuck with the old calendar, we went to the new calendar, it's the exact same date, we just, our calendars change. Yeah. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What about Halloween?

Halloween is all Hallows Eve, and the like, pagan stuff appears to have been entirely invented by commercialization. So you're saying there's no pagan influence on Christianity? I'm not saying that I'm just saying like the accusations of Christmas is pagan, Easter is pagan, like that's nonsense. What about the accusations that like even the Jesus story was taken from other myths in other religions? I think like the the Egyptian god Ra or something like that. Like what do you say about this? Is it just like a common occurrence? Like, how do you feel? Is it bullshit?

Yes. Really? Well, so it's Jesus' mythicism and no historian, like even the people who doubt that Jesus exists, don't use that argument because usually historians are aware of the primary sources and if you look at the stories of like Horus, Ra, Mithras, Attis, they, if you look at the details and then try, Ra, Mithras, Attis, if you look at the details and then try to find the parallels, there's not there.

It was made up by, largely, and popularized by the Zikas. Dan Brown? Oh. You know the movie Zikas? Yeah, yeah. It's like a YouTube thing. It's made up from Tenir. So if you look at the actual stories of Horus, Ra, the accusations of virgin births and 12 disciples, you won't find them in those things.

Hmm. You won't. Really? Isn't there connectivity to some Indian... I think the story of baby Krishna, I think there's some connectivity in that. I think the king tried to kill him, but he couldn't do it. So it's not that there aren't parallels that you can make. it's that like if you look at the actual core of the details. So there's a fallacy called the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy, where it's this idea that Texan is shooting in the side of a barn and he then finds the closest cluster of shots and he paints a target around it, making himself look like a great shot, right? So if you want to find parallels, you can find them.

And then you make the accusation afterwards. Yeah, so. Yeah, that makes sense. Let me see if I can give you an example. So John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln were both, the presidencies were exactly 100 years apart. And Abraham Lincoln had a, he had an assistant by the name of Kennedy, and Kennedy had an assistant by the name of Kennedy and Kennedy had an assistant by the name of Lincoln. Both were assassinated by a man who went by three names, right? John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey

Oswald. Kennedy was assassinated in a Lincoln and Lincoln was assassinated in the Ford Theater. So like, if you want to go down the rabbit trail of trying to find all these things, you could argue that John F. Kennedy never existed. He was just a copy of Lincoln and... That's interesting. The great one is that before Lincoln died, he was in Monroe, Maryland, and before JFK died... He was in?

Maryland, Monroe. Hey! No, no, no, no, no. I didn't say it. Mark did. But it's these kind of things, right? So you can find... you can find parallels. I saw this on like a VHS when I was like eight years old. That's good, that's a criminal source.

My details are, no it's a story of baby Krishna, but I mean the details are a little iffy, but I remember growing up in such a Christian country that I was like, oh, they took this from the Bible. Right. But I didn't know Hinduism was older and the story of Krishna was older. So that would, that just came to me. That wasn't like, I'm trying to find the thing. And that always just stuck with me because I remember thinking like, oh, they stole this from Christianity, which is very funny. So there's also like issues of

correlation and causation. So if you do find parallels and you want to assert that Christians invented it, you have to find the causative links rather than just the correlations. Because the correlations could actually exist, but things correlate all the time. And the idea of an incarnation within Christianity is very different than the idea that you would find in something like Hinduism, or even like miraculous births in the ancient world. Okay, question.

Did Judas carry out the will of God by killing Jesus? Yes, because he was prophesied to do so. And was he aware of this? Did he do it begrudgingly? Um, I mean, I don't know. That's not something that the Bible necessarily... there is an interesting theory that Judas was fed up with Jesus not being the Messiah he wanted him to be and by betraying him, he was gonna kickstart the revolution. Oh, impatient. Yeah, but it's hypothetical, right? You can't say one way or the other.

That's something you would do to be honest. Yeah. Let's go. Top, top. These New York Orthodox. Yeah. Dude, New York Orthodox, that's a fire type of Christianity. I like that. I don't want to see, yes, yes, go.

I got something for you. Cause, when I was on Rogan, I made him a facsimile papyri. Yes. Okay. And it was a very important facsimile papyri. I remember watching it. Because it was P52 and it says, pilot, what is truth?

Yes. I made you one. Oh, but. Order of importance, I also made Mark one. So, cause Mark likes the apocryphal gospels. This is, that's the Gospel of Thomas. Oh wow. That's the first page of the Gospel of Thomas.

Mark, that's your guy, aren't you Mark Thomas Gagnum? Yeah, yeah, and that's made of genuine Egyptian papyri. Oh wow. That's sick. Yours. Dude, thank you so much. So order of lesser importance to great importance, because yours is far more important.

Oh wow, okay. So this is a Dead Sea Scroll fragment. What? Okay, okay. I made it. Yes. And it's very important, 4Q51. Yes. From Samuel. And I got the text there for you. Make sure you read it. What it says in Hebrew. This is, As-salamu alaykum. It says, then David sent messengers to Ish-bosheth, Saul's son, saying, give me my wife, Mikal, Michael? Mikal, yeah.

Okay, whom I betrothed to myself for the price of a hundred Philistine foreskins. Very important passage for you. Can you tell me what I just read? I was concentrating so much on... Well, I tried to find... Getting the words out without sounding retarded that I didn't actually take in anything. I thought, I thought.

Who's McCall? That's his wife. Dave's wife. Oh, okay, masculine name. Saul's daughter. God, is that Michelle? But I needed to find, sure. Got it, got it, got it, got it.

But I needed to find you a passage that said foreskins. Give me my wife, Michelle, whom I betrothed to myself, I betrothed her to me for the price of a hundred Philistine foreskins. So he had to go out and collect 100 Philistine foreskins. To kill him, take the foreskins. We don't know if he killed them. Did he? Yeah, he killed them. 100% killed them? Yeah. Hells. Man, you can't just find some Jewish people, see if they got some stick, like floating around, you know? Yeah, start digging. Dig them up. No, no, that's not how this works. Okay. You know about dowries, right? Wow. This is Old Testament, though. This is Old Testament. This is Old Testament, Samuel.

So it- That's King David. King David, wow, boy, right? With Philistines, are those the Palestinians? Are they the same people? No. Oh, still fucking them up, yeah. Yeah, okay, so who are the Philistines? The Philistines are the bad guys. They are living in Canaan.

And they're, so like Goliath is a Philistine. God. Yeah, the Canaanites. The Canaanites, wow. Why did he want the Forskans? What did that symbolize? How did he get them off? Did he get them off himself?

The pagans? Of course he did. He's got a sword. Oh, a sword. Got it. Oh, not the biden. Choppy. Choppy.

I mean, that sword gets dull. That's a modern thing. Guys, we've got to put a little bit of a pause on this brilliant Bible breakdown because people need their picks. That was great. Brilliant, brilliant Bible breakdown. That was fire. That was fire. That's what I do.

You know what I mean? Inspired by someone out there. Shout out to him. Even though it might be illegal. Is it illegal in Christianity? To gamble? We've got to figure that out. It's frowned upon.

It's probably frowned upon. Some denominations say no, but then a lot of them are like, that's fine. What do the Orthodox Christian say? You don't know? I don't. Because I don't engage in any of that. Let's see. Christian in heaven.

No, no, shout out to y'all. You know who you worship? The Knicks. You know where the Mecca is? Madison Square Garden. Yo, keep talking that shit. Wow, that's fire though. I do go to Mecca low key.

As much as I possibly can. The hardwood of your church. Headline two shows at the Mecca. I know. I know. I know. to Mecca low key. Yeah. As much as I possibly can. The hardwood of your church.

Headline two shows at the Mecca. Hey, there you go. You know what I mean? That's the hunch, bro. Game of prodigal son returned. Yo, real talk, it actually happened. You can't say I didn't do that. Yeah, you did.

You know who else dominating at their home? The Knicks. They got fucking rinsed. Yeah, but they're still up two one. Took a game off. Yeah, but they got rinsed. Yeah, but they're still up 2-1. Yeah, but they got rinsed. It's his fault, bro. Who's fault? Jamil.

Why, Jamil, what happened? In the group chat. He had no faith. He had no faith in the Knicks, man. Yeah, yeah. That's how you know. Listen, Knicks, we're an arrogant group. The Knicks fans were an arrogant group, but the fact that after going up 2-0,

most of us were like, I think we got it in six. That's, you you know everything. Now but game three if you're up 2-0 happened dude the Pacers got their ass beat up 2-0 and then game four they won they were by 50 at one point. It was insane I didn't even understand the score. Yeah it was like 100 to like 56. Yeah something ridiculous like that so game three loss if you're up 2-0 at home. Not that crazy. Yeah, game four is the one that wins.

No, Nick's got it. I believe 100% Nick's got it. We got it in five. Absolutely. We're definitely getting that W tonight, recording this on a Tuesday. I mean Monday. Yeah, we're recording this on a Monday. Yo, why don't we get back to the Bible, man, dude? What are we doing over here? Trying to spread sin. You're gonna need Jesus, bro. I do.

If you want the next one. We came back from 220 points. Yeah, that's insane. Okay, listen, this playoffs, the question that we have right now is can Jimmy Butler win a game on his own for the Warriors? If he can win a game on his own, then they can get to game five at 2-2. He should be able to.

He kept a minute yesterday. He kept a minute yesterday. Yeah, I mean. Or two days ago, I think. I guess the Wolves are better, but last year we saw, or I guess two years ago, we saw Jimmy Butler destroy everybody. He took apart the Celtics, he took apart the selfies took apart the bucks he took apart everybody by himself yeah I just with the heat I don't know he seems

like he should be able to get a game off the wolf the worries are a little yes it's really interesting the Warriors are a little like Dreymon just doesn't have it anymore offensively and then defensively you know he really have it like Randall was cooking Dreymon's ass. So if you're not, if you're scoring two points a game and you can't defend. I think he, yeah. I don't know, I think they can do it. I think if Steph was healthy.

If Steph was healthy, I think they win it. But right now they need something else. They need somebody else who's gonna create the shot. Like Buddy can splash, but you gotta run him around, pick Steph can go, give me the ball, I'll bring it up and I'll score. Jimmy can go, I'll bring the ball up and I'll score. And then no one else really can do that.

Yeah. On the team. Yeah. You know, effectively. I mean, and it's so fun to watch whenever I see anything of his. So I would not mind if they won. You know what series are the most interesting to me though? Celtics, obviously.

Celtics Knicks and how well the Knicks are playing. And also the Nuggets and the Thunder. The Thunder are so good, but somehow it's too all this series. Celtics Knicks and how well the Knicks are playing and also the Nuggets and the Thunder. The Thunder are so good, but somehow it's too all this series and there's only one game that wasn't close. Okay, and what's his face is incredible. Nami Yokochi is, yeah, he's the best player in the league for years. Just unbelievable.

But if that series goes seven, the Thunder are the better team, but they haven't ever played in a game seven. The Nuggets, it's a small stakes relatively. Yeah. So even though it's going to be an Oklahoma City and all that, I think if it goes seven, the Nuggets, this is small stakes relatively. Yeah. So even though it's going to be an Oklahoma city and all that, I think if it goes seven, the Nuggets will win. Yeah. I just wouldn't bet against Jokic. Yeah. He's the best. He'll just figure it out. It's crazy. It's like you don't even want to run the, you don't even want to run the offense through anybody else. Like I would literally have him bring the ball

up. Yeah. I, I'm not mad at it. Just crazy. Anyway, listen, a lot of great playoff games coming, a lot of great series. You know, Stake is the leader in global betting in US social casinos, been on top sports and political events, used the promo code flagrant for your welcome bonus. Now let's get back to the show. What can you tell us about the Gospel of Thomas? This is awesome. Thank you. I went to the Compton Museum in Cairo two years ago and I saw the Nicomati Library.

So this is Nicomati Codex II, which was discovered in 1945 and includes a bunch of Gnostic writings, including the Gospel of Philip, but the famous one is the Gospel of Thomas. And the Gospel of Thomas, which we knew about prior to this, because it had been condemned in the ancient church,

but we didn't have evidence for it in terms of physical documentation until in the 1800s in a place called Oxirincus, Egypt, they found some fragments of this unknown gospel. This is the Sayings Gospel? Yes, 114 sayings. Yeah. This is an important one because the last saying of the Gospel, Thomas, has Peter saying, let Mary leave us for women are not worthy of life. Good start. And then Jesus says, don't worry. I will make her resemble

a male like you males. And the last line of the Gospel of Thomas is every woman who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven. Look at that. You said biting the foreskin is a modern thing. So there was one time when they were using a knife and somebody was like, I don't know enough about that. Okay. I said it was a modern thing.

Go back to this right here. The gospel of Thomas is fascinating. But is it legit? What do they say? Was he? No, it's second century. Like, so you have these other. You're just saying some wild stuff in the name of God.

Yeah, so it's 114 sayings of Jesus talking to his disciples. And it's pretty early. It's our earliest of this life. Written by a guy who's never met Jesus or any of his disciples? Yeah, pretty conclusively. The Gospel of Thomas was not written by Thomas the disciple. But these other groups appropriate the names of the disciples to give credibility to their theology.

So that's where you get gospel of Peter, gospel of Thomas, gospel of Philip, gospel of Mary, gospel of Judas. It's these other groups in the subsequent centuries and they read back their theology onto the lips of Jesus in order to like validate. After peace. Go, go. So, okay. And then is that what the, what is it?

The book of Enoch or something like that? That's, that's pre-Jesus. Oh, that's before the Old Testament. Yeah. Would have been. Yeah, it's, it's pseudopographical. So it's like, it's pseudo-strange, graph A writing. So it's like, like a pseudonym is you want to write a book.

You don't want people to know it's Andrew Scholz. Yeah, Samuel Clemens, Mark Twain, yeah. That's your pseudonym? No, yours isz. Samuel Clemens, Mark Twain. That's your pseudonym? No, yours is Mark Twain. I'm Mark Twain. Nice. Noah is a New York Orthodox who did that. And so the pseudopigrapha are a group of writings that are associated with names that we know

wasn't written. So Enoch is Noah's great-great-grandfather. So the book of Enoch, we know isn't necessarily, it doesn't come from that time frame, because that would be like pre-flood. It was written way after. It was written in and around the three hundred years after the Old Testament, beginning of New Testament. So like in that period of time, they wrote a bunch of stuff.

And part of it was Enoch. What do you make of Enoch? As obviously a non-canonical text, but something that the people of the region might have been consuming. Yeah, Enoch's very interesting. There's actually three Enoch's, first, second, and third Enoch. And the only one that really has any kind of credibility is first Enoch. But even then, what we call first Enoch is a collection of different... So we have fragments in Aramaic and Greek in the Dead Sea Scrolls,

but then we have later ones in Coptic. So what ends up being published as if you buy a copy of First Enoch, it's like all of this stuff put together. Some of it is like 200 years before Jesus, but some of it could very well have been written in the timeframe of Jesus in the first century AD. But it's very clearly like a collection of Jewish musings about what happened during the flood. It's like very theologically in-depth fan fiction. I was just about to ask that. Is it possible that it's like Harry Potter?

I think it's them trying to figure out, and this is common with like the super graphical work, is that there's another one called the Ex-Gogay of Moses. So they're looking at these Old Testament stories and they're trying to figure out, okay, like how do we explain some of these things? You have this weird story in Genesis chapter six where the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful and that's where you get the Nephilim

and that kind of stuff. And so the Jews are like, how do we figure this stuff out? What are demons? What are angels? How do they interact with this world? There's not actually that much in the Old Testament about that stuff. So let's explore it.

So they write something like the gospel, or not the gospel, sorry, the Book of Enoch to try to expand upon and extrapolate this stuff. Enoch is... So you don't believe in the Nephilim? Well, yeah, they're in the Bible. Yeah, the Nephilim are in the Bible.

It just depends what you mean by Nephilim. Well, what do you mean by it? I don't know what you mean by it. I'll tell you what I believe in. I would love to believe that there's giants. Yeah, well, Nephilim is a tricky term because we don't really know where it originates. So, Nefahl means to fall in Hebrew.

And so that's where you get the idea these are fallen angels. Fallen angels, yeah. But the Greek translation of the Old Testament translated as gigas, which is giant. Gigantic. Giants. So, and then they pop up later in Canaan when, what's his face? Goliath. Goliath.

Well, so not just Goliath, but when they go into the promised land and they like, you have the story of there's these 10 spies that go to scope out the land that God has promised them and then they come back and, no, it's 12 men and 10 of them are like, we can't go in there, there are giants there. And the term there is nephilim. Like they're giants. I don't know if it's like, they could just be spooked, they don't want to go in there and so they come up with this excuse that there are giants in there.

But because the idea of the flood is that they were destroyed, right? So everybody dies, including the Nephilim. But then you have guys like, you know, C.S. Lewis. Like Lewis and Tolkien had these ideas that these stories of like Zeus and the Greek gods, those were like echoes of cultural remembrances of these heroes of old, men of renown, which is what they're called in Genesis chapter six. It's kind of a cool idea. So I don't know what they are.

Do you believe in giants? I believe that there were giants, yeah. Wow. When you say giants, what do you mean? How big? I don't know. Like Andrew's a giant. Game of Thrones?

You're a giant to me, everybody's a giant to me. You've been 400. I couldn't grow tall so I had to grow wide. Like Game of Thrones giants, dudes who are just a little bit taller. You go down to Sudan, you see guys that are seven feet, they look like giants. The Hebrew Old Testament says that Goliath was nine feet tall, but the Greek translation of the Old Testament says that he was like, I think he was six foot five. So it could just be a word for really tall people.

He's really tall people. And I would imagine in a time... Everyone's kind of small back then. Yeah, but you don't have food readily available. And if there is a tribe that has tons of food, they grow big, then they look like giants. Is that being reductive to the religious text? I don't know. Not necessarily. It's tricky because it's not like, like these stories tell you what you need to know, not what you want to

know. And so often we have to like speculate, which is where you get the Book of Enoch. And that's like, let's expand upon this stuff. Is there ever a time where, or like maybe the question I want to ask is like, how do you feel about the people who don't take these stories literally, they take them metaphorically, but they arrive at a similar conclusion that somebody who takes them literally does. I think it depends on what you're looking at and whether it's meant to be taken literally or not.

Can you give me a good example of both? Yeah. So, there's different genre within scripture. Because remember, 66 books written over a period of 1600 years on three different continents but close to 40 different authors in three different languages, right? That was English too. And so it's a wide variety.

So don't read historical literature like you read apocalyptic literature. Don't read poetic literature like you read biography. Like you gotta figure out what you're looking at. And some things are descriptive. They're telling you things that happened. Some things are prescriptive. They're telling you what to figure out what you're looking at. And some things are descriptive. They're telling you things that happened. Some things are prescriptive. They're telling you what to do.

And some things are emotive. So you really like the Psalms and it says, blessed are those who smashed the childrens of our enemies on the rocks. And you're like, that's pretty intense. Like, it's not telling you to do that. It's just this like heartache in wartime where you're seeking justice and so those type of

things like are expressed and depending on what the genre is we have to be careful in trying to figure out what it's trying to say to us and some things are history and poetic so in Canada we have Remembrance Day November 11th yeah is it you have the equivalent right like remember World War two months earlier veterans day yeah like veterans day and so we read this poem by this November 11th. Yeah. You have the equivalent, right? Like, remember World War II? Two months earlier. Like, Veterans Day? Yeah, like Veterans Day. And so we read this poem by this Canadian soldier who was, it's called, I'm going to

forget it and all the Canadian people watching are going to get mad at me, in Flanders Fields, right? So, in Flanders Fields, the poppies grow between the crosses row by row. And it's this like very passionate story about the graves. They're burying their compatriots in the between the crosses in Flanders fields. There are these poppies that are growing. So everybody wears the poppy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So is that history or is that poetry? Well, the answer is yes. Like it's both, right? Like it's not just because it's poetic. It's talking about like these dead people saw sunsets glow days ago kind of thing. So there are parts of the Bible that are meant to be interpreted as metaphor.

And they're, I'm being like protective of you whenever I ask these questions, because I know like if you agree to something, somebody on the internet is gonna crucify. Do they do that? Oh God. Do they do that on the internet? Yeah, but-

Has anybody ever done that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, never. No. Yeah, okay, so maybe that's not the wording. What would you find? There are parts of the Bible that are, would you say prescriptive? Yeah, prescriptive, they tell you what to do.

So Leviticus, like telling the Jews what to do. Yes. But then you read something like Joshua, and they're like going in Canaan and they're killing people, and you're like, that's descriptive. That's telling you what happened. It doesn't mean you should do this.

It's not going to do likewise, right? Judas hung himself. That's not telling you to go hang yourself. It's telling you that Judas hung himself. So, it's, you have, that's what like, I knew a guy who he put little, like sticky notes in his Bible every time someone was like raped or killed or murdered.

He's like, the Bible is so violent. He's like, no, it's just telling you things that happened. Right, so it's not telling you to do that. And life is violent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it just depends. And then there are some passages that are trickier than others.

Like Genesis chapter one is a tricky one because it's not entirely clear, is it telling you like the mechanisms of how God created everything in the way that God created them? Is there more of an expansive explanation to that? When you look at the culture, could there be almost like a defense of the fact that you have other creation stories, like the Babylonian Enuma Elish, which has this big

battle between the gods and its chaos and the gods who die become the world and you and me and the end theme is kind of like everything's a mistake. You don't really have any purpose. You're just the product of this big battle. And now you're worshiping things like the stars and the sun and the earth. And Genesis chapter one says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. So the things one says, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. So the things you guys worship, that's pretty stupid because our God created them. And it's good, right?

Keep saying it's good after each refrain and created the land and it was good and created the fish and it was good. That's counter-cultural to something like the enuma liege and then he creates humanity in his image and they're very good. And so, is that the way God created everything? Sure, yeah, potentially.

But is it also kind of taking a jab at something like these other origin stories, and it's subverting them and saying, the stuff you believe is nonsense because this is actually how everything started. Yeah, I think so too. So there's like multiple things going on in, and once again, the first thing a booty call and a butt dial, like contextual reading is helpful. Okay.

In that regard, something I've seen sprout up on the internet, a debate that I never really considered as a kid that I find fascinating is- There are debates on the internet? Yeah, oh my goodness. Is the murder of the Canaanites and this is something that gets brought up a lot the base you have this command by God to go into this land and murder all the people men women children and Ostensibly some of them are innocent but yet all of them need to be killed right and people have kind of taken a bunch

Of insides is like oh, it's God justifying genocide. What do you make of that text? So I don't think it's genocide in the way that we would understand genocide, specifically because the Canaanites continue to pop up. So if they did actually wipe everybody out, they did a poor job at it. There's a few things going on in the text. God promises Abraham Canaan and says, I'm going to give it to your descendants, but I'm going to wait 400 years because the sins of the Amorites have not come to their full fruition. So God gives them 400 years to repent. And by the time you get to like Joshua, they're not repenting if anything, they've gotten

worse, right? They're doing things like child sacrifice to these agricultural gods. And so then you have something unique in the Old Testament where before the monarchy, before like Saul and David, the kings, it's a theocracy. God is the ruler of the people and he uses Israel to enact his judgment. So he enacts judgment on these terrible people in order to... So like in the same vein, a lot of people who accuse, who say to me like, look, there's genocide in the Old Testament, also say things to me like, well, why doesn't God do anything about the evil in the world? I would actually argue this is an example of God doing something about the evil in the world,

and that he's using his nation Israel to accomplish the wiping out of these people. So he sees that as justice for what they've done wrong. These are bad people. And so I think there is an aspect of God is saying go and wipe them out. I'm done with their evil. At the same time, there's a friend of the organization I work with, a guy named Paul Copan. He's in Florida. I think he teaches at Florida State University. He wrote a book called Is God a Moral Monster? And then he wrote another book called Did God Command

Genocide in the Old Testament? And he goes through some interesting parallels in other ancient Near Eastern, so like Canaanite, Hittite, Egyptian, war texts where it uses similar language in terms of like wipe them out, leave none left, kill the women and children, the goats, that kind of stuff. And Copan argues that there's an aspect of cultural wartime hyperbole that exists in the same way that I would say like the Toronto Maple Leafs murdered the Montreal Canadians. Right? There's an aspect of, if you didn't understand what I was talking about, that that was, I'm talking about hockey, I'm talking about a team. When I say murdered, I don't mean like that they were like that we use these kind of Phenomenological hyperbole in our language today

Like you killed at your last set right like this kind of stuff makes sense Yeah And so in in these kind of ancient eastern texts you have these levels of hyperbole which could mean kill everybody But doesn't always mean that. And we can compare them with like Egyptian steles or like wartime inscriptions from... Does other hyperbole exist in the religious texts when it doesn't have to do with these type of severe situations? Like are they hyperbolic about how fruit tastes?

It's a good question I don't know if I know because if that hyperbole exists in these other areas that aren't as high stakes then It would make a lot of sense that would exist when the stakes are high But if it only exists when talking about genocide, it seems like people trying to skirt with accountability, right? No, we do we do get that in in the sense of like when you read the book of Jonah in Hebrew you get these like, there's almost like a comedic play to it where when he does eventually get to Nineveh, which he doesn't want to go to because God says go to Nineveh, preach repentance, he doesn't want to go so he tries to hike in the other direction.

When he eventually gets there, it says that everybody repents even the cows. And it's like, it's hyperbolic where it's saying like, even the cows are sorry. Like that's how much they're repentant of what they've done. So you got stuff like that. Can I ask a question sort of based on that? I don't know anything about the Bible. I'm very non-religious. I know nothing. But it is interesting to hear that don't know anything about the Bible. I'm very non-religious. I

know nothing. But it is interesting to hear that there's something funny in the Bible. You're surrounded by a bunch of comedians. Is there, like in Shakespeare, how they're sort of mistranslated or jokes that don't make it to modern times while reading Shakespeare, because you're not in the time period in which it took place. Are there funny parts of the Bible that are translated well or mistranslated that people don't know about? That's a great question. That's a really great question. I don't know if I have a good answer to that in a

room full of comedians. I wish I had examples. No pressure. Yeah, I didn't mean it like you're around, but are there parts of the Bible that are like lighthearted, funny or like... I mean, the bears killing those, killing the kids is always funny. Yeah, Elijah go up bald head. And he sends the she bears after them to kill them. That's, I mean- Kinda funny.

The foreskin thing was pretty good. Foreskin thing is pretty good. Yeah, you have like record of that. When Jesus is talking to the woman at the well, and she's a Samaritan. So Samaritans are like mongrel Jews. They've married with other tribes. And so the Jews in like Israel don't like them very much.

They also, there was a time where one of the Greek leaders was coming to wipe out the Jews. And the Samaritans who like live up north caught wind of this. And so they send him a letter and they say, hey, I know we look like Jews. I know we sound like Jews. I know we worship like Jews, but just FYI, we're not Jews. So don't kill us when you go kill them. And also we have a temple that's like their temple, but we're

actually going to dedicate it to you. We're going to start worshiping you. And so this is like a point of contention in Jesus's day where the Samaritans, this is about the good Samaritan is kind of like a play on things, right? Who is my neighbor? And Jesus says like, it's those people you don't like, that's who you need to love and be nice to. But when Jesus is talking to the woman at the well, and she's like, well, you guys worship in Jerusalem, we worship at Mount Gerizium, Jesus is kind of like, hey, what's the name of your temple again? Who do you guys worship? It's kind of like poking her, right? Because it's a call back to this story, which is not a biblical one, and we know it because of individuals like Josephus, where they actually dedicated their temple to the Greek leader

and to Jupiter. And so he's like, when she says, you know, we worship here, you worship there, he's like, but who do you worship? So he's kind of like poking her. And there's some sarcasm that if you didn't know what was going on in the background, in the situation or context, you wouldn't actually pick it up. And it's actually a weird kind of comment that he makes to her. Yeah. Oh, that's funny. What about him cursing the fig tree? That's allegorical to the leaders of Jerusalem that they look like they should. It has leaves.

And so even though it's not the time for figs, it's like masquerading that it should grow figs. And he's like, I'm gonna curse the fig tree and it's not gonna grow any figs. He does that while he's going to Jerusalem. And he sort of, the play is that the leaders in Jerusalem have all of this appearance of religiosity, but in the end they have no fruit. So they're like dead and it doesn't matter how good they look on the outside, right?

You don't judge by what you water with, right? The judging is by the fruit, but everybody's looking at what you water with, all the good things you do, but that's not... Going to church and the reading your Bible but that's not the going to church and the reading your Bible. That's not the fruit. That's the nutrients, that's the fertilizer, the water. And Jesus is saying, no, no, no, it's not that that's wrong, but you got to grow the fruit.

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And America, your energy. Kaka. Kaka. If you're non-Christian, can you get into heaven? day and America your energy. Call! The call. If you're non-Christian, can you get into heaven? Oh, important question. What do you mean by non-Christian? I mean, if you just don't...

Me? Yeah, him, me, I'm agnostic. So I would say God is not going to force anyone into heaven in that heaven, once again, remember heaven is not the final destination. Softened up. The new earth, the final destination. Yeah, so essentially, no one comes to the Father, but through me, Jesus says, right? But C.S. Lewis, once again, he says

that hell is locked from the inside. So I would say that if you have spent your life not living out a life that is what Jesus has called you to do, to be, then Jesus is not going to force you into His presence. You're going to go... So, Lewis also says, heaven is God's... or hell is God saying, thy will be done. So, what you want in your life by rejecting Christ

is what you're gonna get in the afterlife. Nobody wants hell. Well, you just accept, and maybe, and I guess Hindus accept Jesus as, I read like a yogi, essentially. But maybe not the only form of God. And theoretically, I think it aligns with Christianity in some ways, that if God is everywhere we could all be God.

Jesus is a human that he achieved his inner God. So that would be the Hindu way of working it out. Right. But then we accept Jesus. But even Hinduism is exclusivistic in certain regards. So like, no one is entirely inclusivistic, right? The exclusivists have to exclude the inclusivists, and the inclusivists have to exclude the inclusivists.

Look, I don't know enough, so how are we exclusivists? Right, so, depending on what version of Hinduism you're talking about, because there's polytheistic Hinduism, there's monotheistic Hinduism, and there's atheistic, or non-theistic Hinduism, right? Yeah, you could be an atheist Hindu.. So they can't all be true. So truth by its very nature is exclusive. If I say 2 plus 2 is 4, well I'll give Andrew the benefit

of that. Andrew says 2 plus 2 is 4. I say 2 plus 2 is 6. One of us is wrong. Now we could both be wrong, but the truth is that 2 plus 2 is 4. He's right. And so in that sense, that's an exclusive truth statement. So if you look at all the world religions, I would ultimately say they're all exclusivistic at some regard. I say Jesus is exclusivistic in the most important regard. Well, yeah, so I would say Christianity is inclusivistic in that all are called to come. But it is exclusivistic in that Jesus loves you and calls you to come as you are, but he loves you too much to leave you where you are.

And so, it's unconditional, but it's not unconditioned because all you have to do is give up your life and follow Jesus. I think a conditioned is conditional. It is there, you're putting a condition on it. Like that was a very poetic thing you said, but it doesn't actually mean anything. Well, it does in the sense that when I say it's unconditional, it's that Jesus says all are welcome to come. But there is a condition. Yeah. There is, right? It's not nothing. And in that sense, God is either the universe in an Eastern mystic kind of idea, or God is a personal being. They can't both be true.

So, I think all world religions have these superficial agreements, but they disagree on the fundamentals. Who God is, who we are, why we're here, what sin is, what the afterlife is like, how we solve the problem of human flourishing. All these things are important topics, but Advil and arsenic both come in pill form. But it's not the similarities that make you choose one over the other when you have a headache, it's the differences. So as someone who has studied world religions, I would say that there is no such thing as

a religion that accepts everything. Because even if I say Jesus is God incarnate and there's only one God. He's not just a guru and his teachings actually don't give you reason to just chop him up to a guru. Then that's excluding the worldview system of something like Hinduism or Buddhism which would also include that. Yeah, I guess the difference would be we would say that's fine. Like in Hinduism, that's okay. You believe what you believe. God bless There are many ways to the mountaintop if that way gets you the mountaintop amazing. We're thrilled for you Yeah, and I would say there's only one way to the mountaintop. Yeah, and that is that is fairly big difference. Yes

Yeah, so it's not pluralistic I guess to me and I'm also a little I don't want to say sensitive But like you grow up getting told you're going to hell if you're sure so it's like I would look at it as a kid more So now I'm less bothered by it, but I'd be like, man, you guys will forgive murderers. Jesus will forgive you murderers, child molesters, if he believes in them or if they believe in him. But if you're a good person

who doesn't fully believe in him. Yeah, so to that, I would say there's no such thing as a good person. Because we're all sinners. So all good people. There's no such thing as a bad person. All good people all sinners. So all good people... He's such a bad person. All good people go to heaven. That's clear biblically, right?

But Jesus says no one is good but God. So we have a dilemma, right? All good people go to heaven. No one is good but God. What does that mean? No one's going to heaven. So the issue is like, so this is similar to the question of, what do you do with the person who lives on like a random island in the middle of Papua New Guinea and has never heard the God, the innocent tribes person.

And the biblical answer is that there's no such thing as an innocent person. In that I deserve hell. Me, Wes H to earn a wage and that's sin and death, right? But the second part of that line is the potential to do much more good than we realize. However, I am not going to heaven because of anything I've done. Right? I can't do that. That's very clear, scripturally. You cannot earn your way to heaven. It's not about doing things. It's not about what I'm doing, it's about what Jesus did.

So it's up to us to get some Christianity out to that island in Papua New Guinea. Yeah. And is that why these people are compelled to, you know, take it? And that's why missions existed. That was the motivation. So we're talking about like, the New Testament is copied like crazy in the early period, these independent writings. One of the reasons for that is because they were like, we need to get this out everywhere. Well, these people aren't going to get to heaven. So I didn't really, pretty quickly, I didn't resent the people trying to convert me.

I understood their motivation. But I did resent, you know, Jesus, like, I like your Christ, I don't like your Christians. I almost felt the opposite in that sense. And Gandhi. Gandhi said that. Gandhi said that. So I almost felt the opposite. Like, I understand, I, Gandhi said that. So I almost felt the opposite. Like I understand, I have empathy for the people

who are trying to convert me, they're trying to save me. What is this faith that is written in such a way that a guy who's never heard of me because y'all didn't make it out to me is condemned to hell? Sure, but we both deny each other's central truth claims. Like you would deny the central truth claim that I just articulated and I would deny yours.

No, I'm saying that, let's say, Papua New Guinea, never heard of you, they're not denying, they don't know. How is that person going to hell for simply you not doing your job and going out to convert him? Yeah, ultimately, I would say God doesn't owe anybody anything. So the assumption is that God owes us our salvation. And I would say that it is more, if God chose just to save Abraham, He would have been more gracious than we possibly deserve to do that. But He didn't just save Abraham. He saves a countless number. In the sense that when John has his vision in the book of Revelation, it's an innumerable number.

He can't even count it. That's how big it is. And so I think the message of Christianity, the good news, what we call the gospel, is that you are headed towards destruction. You're actually attempting to cause the destruction. Right? It's not that Jesus has thrown a life preserver and you need to catch it. Now you're trying to fight Jesus, you don't want the life preserver. But apart from the saving work of the Spirit

preaching into the prophets, use the language of, you have a heart of stone, God is gonna give you a heart of flesh, but it's God's work that does that. And so we don't deserve that freedom, that graciousness. It's a heavy weight, man. It is, but I mean, the good news is that, so when I study world religions, I come up with this conclusion that all worldview perspectives are some form of survival of the fittest in

that it's a do this, feel this, or think this, right? It's do this pragmatism, it's feel this, emotionalism, or it's think this, intellectualism, right? You need to be the best at the knowledge, you need to be the most spiritual, you need to do the most things, and it's one or a combination of those things, right? Christianity is the opposite of that in that it says you can't feel, think, or do good

enough. Oof. Right? So it's not about that. It's not do and you'll be accepted, feel and you'll be accepted, think and you'll be accepted. It's God has stepped out of eternity and into humanity and the second person of the Trinity in Jesus. And now you're accepted.

Now you can think, now you can feel, now you can do, but it's not on your shoulders. I get that it's supposed to alleviate it, but in order for it to alleviate it, you first have to accept that you're a piece of shit. And what if you don't feel like you're a piece of shit? So now I have to stop feeling good about myself, and I have to convince myself that I am a piece of shit.

Just as much as a murder or child molestation. Just so somebody else can get me back to, not somebody else, God can get me back to feeling good about myself. And I think that that really works for people who feel like they're a piece of shit all the time. But if you don't feel like a piece of shit, to convince yourself that you are,

and the only way out of your piece of shittness is to believe in this one person, who will then, through that belief, convince you to do the good and kind acts that you were already doing prior, I can see how that's like a heavy weight for people to take on. I would say there's this dichotomy.

And keep in mind, I'm framing this as someone who was not raised religiously and does feel like a good person. And I think there's been this part of me, I think there's probably this part of me that's quite naive, definitely based on your description, which is that, you know what, because I do believe in something, I'm like, yeah, God knows my heart, and, you know,

I try to live what is Pascal's wager, and I try to live as if there is a God, and I try to do the things that are good in the world, and those are probably prescribed to me through religion in some way, shape, shape or form but it would be tough for me to accept this and I don't think that I'm perfect in any way I do actually accept the fact that there is like sin in me and there are these and I'm fighting those natural instincts so I think but the only way I can be good is if I'm just like right back I like so it's not that that's the only way you

can be good and it's not simply the piece of shit. I think if it was that, then I think we would have a problem. I think what the Bible says, particularly in that creation story, right, is that you are created with purpose and meaning and intention and it is good. You actually bear the image of God and there's something about that that is special. So in one sense, you're more of a piece of shit

than you can imagine, but also you're more loved and more capable of amazing things than you can imagine. And that's the dichotomy of Christianity is that God does not need to create, right? So God lives in a set of living, loving relationships in the Trinity. He has existed eternally in relationship and in love. That's what John says in 1 John, God is love. And so God does not need to create in order to experience anything. Creation is an outpouring of his love. Now this is different than say a unitarian monotheistic faith like Islam. In Islam in one sense, philosophically, God does need to create to experience love.

Because love requires an object and a subject. And so, in order to feel love, the Unitarian God of something like Islam needs the subject, right? And the object in order to feel that. That's not true for Christianity. Because the Spirit and the Father, the Father has been loving the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit forever. Yet, He chooses to create as an outpouring of His love, knowing full well that the creation will rebel against Him because God loves us so much. So if it's only your piece of shit, that's a problem.

That's a problem theology for what I think what the Bible actually says. And the piece of shitness, this is a theological term. I went to seminary. Is that we brought that into the world, right? So when the garden and the fruit, we want to take that literally, or like we want to do the Jordan Peterson thing, whatever.

What we get though, is that God knows what's best for our flourishing. And when it says that you will know the difference between good and evil, it's less of like an intellectual understanding of what good and evil are, and more of a choosing the shots on our own terms. I, even though God created me and knows all things,

I actually think I know better. And I'm gonna eat the fruit because I think that that's better for me. And that's what sin is. You see people do this all the time. They decide what God cares about the most and then they, you know, care their life according to that. I guess in the circumstance with the person

who lives on the island has never heard about Christianity. But what if he lives his life as a Christian? Without because God is omnipresent, right? Like God maybe has given him the gospel In a different way than he gave it to you the covenants written on the heart is yeah so it's like what if that person is living a devoutly Christian life and What if that person is living a devoutly Christian life and the God that he's praying to might not be named Jesus Christ, but isn't it possible that God is up there like,

I know who he's praying, he's praying to me because I put it on his heart. Is it possible that he's accepted in heaven? I, again, I don't want man to decide what God is capable of, and I sometimes think that that we do that. And I'm not trying to skirt out the responsibility of just going, hey, I gotta get baptized.

You're just gonna put it on me. I'm gonna put it on you. No, but sometimes it's possible that man is going, hey, God doesn't know unless you do this exact thing. And then God's up there like, listen, I get the point what you're trying to do, but the guy on the island who's living this perfectly devoutly Christian religious life,

he gets in too, because I put it on his heart. Yeah, so I think ultimately that's a question that I don't know the answer to because it's not something that's directly outlined in scripture. However, I think you can like extrapolate certain things. In one way, part of that is still saying you can earn it in that he's doing the right things.

And he doesn't even know he's doing it. He's doing it because... So I think God is not gonna judge us based on what we don't know. Okay. We would hope. So I am optimistic that I personally would not damn that individual because I don't know what's going on there.

And God is more than capable to reveal himself. I mean, Paul says in Romans that God's divine attributes and invisible qualities have been shown throughout creation so that no man is without excuse. So there's an aspect of nobody can stand before God and say, I just didn't have enough, I didn't know enough. Because God is saying creation is screaming at you that there's something.

Yeah, and I think that like... But the only way to heaven is through Jesus Christ. So that's where it does get tricky. And there is a sense of Jesus saying, I'm the way, the truth and life. No one comes to Father but through me. I would say we have an imperative to tell that person about the God that they believe in and who that is. And that's what Paul does in Acts chapter 17, when he goes to Athens, he goes

to the Areopagus and he says, you have a shrine to an unknown God. In one sense, that's silly, but let me tell you about the unknown God. So that you go to the right place. That you're worshipping, put a name to it, and actually tell you the person that your heart is actually crying out to because you bear his image. And in that sense, we have to be careful because if we make it about like what we do and what we believe and what we... In that way, it's a merit... It's meritorious. I understand what you're saying.

And the commandments, something like the Ten Command commandments, are less of a thou shalt not, and more of a promise in that God is not a murderer, you're creating his image, don't murder. God is not an adulterer, you're creating his image, don't commit adultery. God is not a thief, you're creating his image, don't steal things. It's actually calling you to live up to the standard

of the image that you bear of God. Even though you might feel inclined to do these things. And flourish ultimately. But I would say that there's an aspect of the person who doesn't understand that sees those things as a burden and sees them as a rule. And I would actually say that it's a calling by our Creator to live up to the standard that He actually created us to be for the sake of human flourishing. And why do you think that we would like it to be merit-based? Because I think that's that that we want to contribute. Humans are very uh... I also think we want heaven without

subscribing to also theidity of the religion. I think there's part of it that's there. It's like, hey, I'm a good person. Yeah, maybe I don't go to church and maybe I haven't accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior, but I'm a good person so I still get in, right? It's like, we still want in. We still want the eternity.

It's still begging the question. But the alternative is hell. That's the issue I have. If there was a first class, a business class, and a coach, I'm with it, right? I don't gotta be first class, that's fine. But the idea that it is a, like, God doesn't owe you heaven, but he don't need to give you hell.

Well, I think part of this is that we have these understandings of hell, which might be skewed by Middle-aged painting. Okay, I would love to hear that. People burning. I would say hell is the concept of God's wrath against evil in eternal justice, but it's also a separation from His goodness. And so you see these depictions, particularly from the Middle Ages, of like demons burning

people alive. And that's more, both heaven and hell in the Middle Ages is drawn more from like Greek imagery of where the gods live and what the underworld is than it is from what scripture actually says about these things. Yeah, I feel like Dante's Inferno defined hell for us and not scripture. And that's like quintessential, you know, middle age.

What does the scripture say hell is? Well, it's separation. It's separation from God. Like God is not going to force you into his presence into that. And if you are not choosing that, like if you are not in Adam, you're in, sorry, if you're not in Christ, you're in Adam. So Jesus is called the second Adam, right? Adam brings sin into the world and taints everything. Christ comes into the world and renews everything. And so the gospel message is that you're either going to be found in Adam or in Christ. That's it. And God is not going to force you into being under Christ's righteousness. And at the same time, I still don't deserve that. So this is where, like, when I was talking about before, all these religious concepts, it's about the do, the feel, the think.

It's also about mercy or justice, right? So I would argue that something like the Eastern philosophies, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, anything that has a reincarnation, that's just. Right? You get what you deserve. The good you do in this life, you get in the next life, the bad you do in this life. Sort of. There's a difference between reincarnation, Hinduism, and Buddhism. But that aside, it's like just. Right? But we wouldn't necessarily say that it's merciful. You do get what you deserve. Oh yeah, it's not. Yeah. Then there are other religious systems. And to a certain degree, I would pin Islam in that group, because every chapter of the Quran, bar one chapter, starts with the Bismillah, God the most merciful, the most benevolent. So in that sense, the God of Islam

forgives, but somewhat arbitrarily. And it's at the expense of his justice. So if God will forgive you, but the wrong you've done hasn't actually been paid for. His law is kind of just winked at. Where Christianity is different is that the punishment that we deserve is taken on God himself and the person of Jesus. And so in that sense, justice is fulfilled. And because justice is fulfilled, his law is accomplished.

And now mercy, so justice is getting what you deserve. Mercy is not getting what you deserve. And grace is getting what you don't deserve. So because you don't get what you do deserve, which is the punishment, mercy happens. God forgives you, but He doesn't actually, and you don't deserve that either, but then He adopts you as His child. That's grace, that's getting what you don't deserve. And so, when I look at something like comparative religious studies, what I see is all of these systems of the survival of the fittest that I talked about before,

Christianity is the fittest stepping down and sacrificing himself for the survival of the weakest. And that changes things in that mercy and justice are not pitted against each other. It's not justice at the expense of mercy, it's not mercy at the expense of justice. They're actually accomplished together in the act of mercy, it's not mercy at the expense of justice. They're actually accomplished together in the act of the cross where the self-volunteering of Jesus going to the cross, right? He says, no one takes my life from me. I give it of my own accord. This is why forgiveness is an accomplishable goal, even for the most heinous act, because God has already taken on the punishment for that heinous act that that person committed.

Well, forgiveness is costly, right? Like there's always a cost to forgiveness somewhere. And so I'm just saying in general, that lack of perceived lack of justice doesn't exist. Yes, this person killed somebody. Yeah, Jesus died on the cross for that very thing that that person did. It's not this person killed somebody.

All right, how are we gonna reconcile this? Do we give him 20 lashes? What is the thing for this act? And who gets to decide that? It's already been decided. So now we can go, okay, I see. It's not a points-based system either, which also gets hairy with like, so Islam is this concept within the Quran of the scales. So you do bad things, you just try to outweigh them with your good things. There's a weird subjectivity to that. Right, because who decides? Yeah. And the, actually Isaiah says that our righteous acts are like filthy rags.

And the term there, it's debated, but could actually mean something like menstrual rags. Like, they're like, they're not just dirty and gross, and it's like ritually impure with stuff that you don't want to get near. And so it's like, look God, look at all the good things I'm doing. And he's like, you don't understand compared to my holiness how far that measures up.

And so once again, God doesn't need to do any of this. God doesn't need to create, God doesn't need to forgive, how far that measures up. And so once again, God doesn't need to do any of this. God doesn't need to create, God doesn't need to forgive, God doesn't need to give mercy or justice. But the fact that he does and then calls us all into that, to turn away, so the word repentance in Greek, metanoite, actually means to change one's mind and actions and attitudes. Like it's less of a, just don't do it anymore.

It's more of like metanoia, change your brain. Like change it entirely. Your thought patterns start, it's what I talked about before with the 10 commandments. Like you're seeing it as a command and God is saying, no, it's a promise. You don't need to steal, you don't need to murder, you don't need to lie, you don't need to murder. You don't need to lie.

You don't need to. Those are promises that God makes to you because of who you are through what he can do. And then if you don't change, you said you either become Adam or you become Christ, right? Well, yeah. So it's like when you stand before the judgment thrown, you're either going to take the penalty you deserve or you're gonna be covered in the righteousness of Christ and that penalty is on him. And coming back as Adam would be a human who sins.

So isn't that kind of like reincarnation? No, no, you're not coming, it's like a metaphorical language, the first Adam and the second Adam. It's almost kind of how they see it, where it's just like, hey, until you are enlightened, you're going to continue being a sinner. Until you are enlightened. Yeah, don't think that's the way because it's not it's not like a it's not a spiritual or intellectual

awareness in that sense. It's like, God. Yeah, so it's tricky because the Eastern language, it doesn't compute with what's going on within the Semitic understanding of scripture. So it's not like a nirvana, it's not like an awakening or an enlightenment. It's Christ revealing to you who you really are and who he really is.

What would you say in the case of children that die on the first day of life or someone with like a cognitive disability where they're not able to function in society or have any type of like intellectual understanding of Christ. What happens to them? Yeah, I would say everybody is born with original sin and we all deserve punishment. But from who I know God's character to be in scripture, God is free to save whom he wants to save. And based on who God is, I see no reason why. He would not save children who die in infancy. He would not save people with cognitive disabilities. I don't know the answer to that ultimately, but once again, scripture tells us what we need to know,

not what we want to know, but I think based on the character of God and the fact that when the Israelites are told not to sacrifice their children, it's the only time that a group is overtly described as innocent. The death of the innocent is what it's described to when these people are sacrificing their children to the pagan agricultural gods.

So I think it's extrapolating in its conjecture, but I think based on what I see in Scripture of who God is, that he's loving, that He's compassionate, that He's merciful, that He's abounding in steadfast love and kindness, right? That Exodus 34.6, that I see no reason to not say that if my wife has a miscarriage, that child I will be reunited with in heaven because of who God is and what His love and kindness is to humanity. So, couldn't you extrapolate that to the guy on the island? That's what I would. It could be, it could be. However, there is kind of a cognitive reckoning.

This is where I would be careful to say that this is my opinion. Yeah, we're not. But I'm not denying that everybody is not like an Orthodox Christian bishop or anything Christian bishop that we would really trust. Amen, Andrew Schultz? Yeah. So, but these, once again, these are like topics that are, have been discussed for 2000 plus years,

right? The Jews and the pre-Jesus times were also coming up with these questions. So there's a lot of delineation in literature and like debate about these things. What I think. One thing scripture that hung me up when I was a kid is the idea of the Pharaoh of Egypt having his heart hardened by God. That God hardened his heart so that he couldn't see the truth of what was being revealed.

And I'm curious why, in your opinion, God would step in to, I guess, orient him in a way that was against what God wanted. Yeah, why doesn't he get the same forgiveness? Yeah, to accomplish God's will. So the thing is... I guess at that point in time, Jesus hadn't died already. Yeah, it was the Old Testament. Okay.

Well, God, I would go to the length of saying God knows things we don't, because He's God. And so Paul talks about this in Romans chapter 8 and 9, where he comments on this and talks about the heartening of Pharaoh's heart. But it says both that Pharaoh hardened his own heart and God hardened Pharaoh's heart. So there's a mutuality going on in there in God's sovereignty and our free will. Both those things exist. And God uses Pharaoh as a tool to enact his justice. And yet also, God can draw a straight line with a crooked stick. And so he does these things,

even in instances where we might not totally understand what's going on, but it's ultimately for his glorification and the purpose of... God is the main character of the story. And the redemption of his people is accomplished through Pharaoh hardening his own heart and being bitter. And yet God also uses that in hardening for his hearts to accomplish that narrative. So the book of Genesis literally ends with the story of Joseph, where Joseph's brothers sell him into slavery, into Egypt.

They want to kill him, God restrains their evil, they sell him into slavery, and he ends up climbing the ranks of being second to Pharaoh. And then there's a famine throughout the land, and the only place that has food because of the wisdom of Joseph via the, you know, God revealing this to him, is Egypt. And so Joseph's brothers go back to Egypt and they meet with him, not knowing it's their brother, and eventually he reveals who he is to them and he says, you know, what you intended for evil, God intended for good in the saving of nations. And so God uses, God allows evil for good that often we don't understand. Wowza. Karma. No. Yes. No, no. You know this idea, like I think that we have a skewed understanding.

Can I drink this? Yeah, sure. Maybe we have a skewed understanding of karma and Akash could speak to it more, but this idea like it's transactional. I do a bad thing and then something bad happens to me later. But it might be a little bit something more like you live within your karma. Doing bad things makes you feel bad about yourself and then you exist within this badness, right? You just feel horrible because of these bad things that you've done.

And you could maybe say the same is true about Christianity. Living this Christ-like life makes you feel good, makes you, I'm not saying, you know, having heaven on earth, but that following this way, not only gives you eternal salvation, but also makes your life better while you are here. Would you say that that would be true for most Christians, that aspiring to live a Christlike life will actually make you feel better than a life of sin? Oh, of course.

Okay. So just so there's a pragmatism to it, I think I'm not trying to pin you so far. I'm not trying to pin you. I swear to God. No, no, no, I get it. I get what you're saying. And I do think there's truth to that in that like I want Canada, the US, wherever. I want laws to be based on Christian things because I think that's actually good for society. And just for people in general. But I don't want then those to become a means to an end. Like don't make the laws based on the Bible because people should be doing good. Actually, a friend of mine, Andy Bannister, who runs an organization in Scotland called Solas,

he did this debate. It was him. It was the head of the secular society, and it was a Muslim Imam. And the topic of the discussion was, what makes the flourishing society? Or what makes a good society? And the secular materialist guy and the Muslim basically argued for the same thing. We need to enact more rules, we need to make sure people are following them.

And my friend Andy, his point was, that's not gonna work, because everybody's gonna try to find the loopholes in the rules or they're gonna just do it so that they don't get in trouble. And so the more rules you put in, the more people are gonna try to get around them from one region to the other.

Like taxes. The only way. Like taxes. Like taxes. Oh, taxes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You make any tax law you want, we're gonna find the loopholes. Sure, yeah.

And so it's not about rules, it's about changing people's hearts. They should want to do the good thing. I'm not suggesting that we establish these rules and that's how society should function. What I am suggesting is what you're saying is that by living this life, you will feel better and ultimately have a more fulfilling life, right? And while you, a devout Christian, might say, yeah, that might be the case while you're here, but you're not gonna get that eternal salvation, but to those people who maybe they're not believers, subscribing to the behavioral mechanisms,

not for eternal salvation, for happiness while on earth, they do get to attain some of that. I think, you know, it's not an either or, it's not just about the afterlife or just about this life. It's a both and. Right. Your will be done on earth as is in heaven. Yeah.

Right? So that's the Lord's prayer. You get it now. in heaven. Yeah. So that's, that's the Lord's prayer. I think that the people who take the Bible for metaphor, who you would call retards, not retards, sorry, you would call idiots. Sorry. You would call idiots, but those people who take it as- To find a Canadian, more Canadian way of saying it. Yeah, yeah, by that. What's a good one? Fools. Fools, hockey pucks. Yeah, yeah. Don't, posers.

Yeah. But those that take it as metaphor but still see like immense value in it and living this quote unquote, I wouldn't say Christian life, but Christian inspired life. They, like many people, for example, who grow up like Catholic, you know, like my dad grew up Catholic, right? Not religious, but- Is he proud of you now that you're Orthodox? He's very proud, yeah. No, no, no, but not religious as he, you know, he had some kind of like, kind of falling out with the church, not on like some like, you know, pedophileship, but just like, he just didn't... I guess I didn't make any assumptions. A couple words in my mouth.

Everybody puts something in their mouth. But like, I don't know a person that is, Yeah, but like but I don't know a person that is I Don't know somebody that doesn't lead a more Christian life you if you asked him. He's like, yeah I'm just being a nice guy, you know, I'm trying to help people when I can't like he is so He still finds this immense value. Yeah in this belief system Yeah without the belief now the cost could be eternal salvation, which fucking sucks. But while you're here on earth, it seems to have really helped him. Sure. You know, so I'm just curious how you reconcile that. Like, okay, there are these people out there that are leading these quote unquote Christian lives, but they're maybe not believing some of the things that you've

said. So maybe they're not leading a Christian life, but they're maybe not believing some of the things that you've said. So maybe they're not leading a Christian life, but they're following. As a matter of fact, they might be leading better lives than some of these Christians who do believe all these things. So which one does God value more? Does God value the Christian who's like, you know what, I'm a sinner. I am a piece of shit. I believe that God is my savior. I'm going to keep on doing all this fuck shit, but I am a piece of shit. That's why I'm doing it. But God died for my sins, but I'm gonna try. But he's a piece of shit his entire life and he hurts people. Or do you think God is more favorable

to the person who goes, yeah, I don't know if I really believe it, but I really like being nice to people and kind and trying to help my neighbor and trying to help anybody I can and trying to be a positive force on the world. Well, I think at the end of the day, it's still like you're in Adam or you're in Christ. And so, like this is what I said when I was on Rogan and I was commenting on Jordan Peterson is like,

we need to be careful that the law, the doing good things is the mirror. Don't try to clean yourself with the mirror. The mirror shows you how dirty you are, right? Yeah, I would believe a lot of these people aren't trying to clean themselves with it. I think that they're doing it because they just feel like that's the right way to be. Right, and I would encourage them in that because ultimately I would want people-

But don't you think God recognized it? Don't you think God is smart enough to be like, hey, this person just found a way around the system. He just said, yo, I believe in that guy, and then he's just out here continuing to kill people. And this other person is like, I don't know if I believe him, but I am that. Isn't it also weird that he died for all of your sins except one? Every sin except one.

What's the one? Don't believe in him. Like, you don't believe in him, so you're going to hell. Everything else, you're good. But you don't believe in him. That's the one sin I can't admit. Also, his own followers didn't believe in him until he came back And now we got to believe with them and we didn't even get to see him come back

Yeah, I can't Like I can't believe if his own followers the people who saw him do all the cool stuff the second he dies like yeah He was bullshitting and then he comes back like okay. We're on board yet. We have to have this this undying faith that even his own closest followers couldn't have and he has a higher expectation for us than them. It's a good point. Because if he did come back, I guarantee we'd be like, hey, I'm choosing up. I'm doing all your homies did too.

But why do you have a higher expectation for us and we never even met you? So the answer to that is that it's, it's not like faith isn't simply about believing the right things, right, because even in Matthew's gospel at the end, Jesus has been with them, right, Luke tells us 40 days, and at the end, he commissions them, go make disciples of all nations, and it says that they worshiped him, but some still doubt it.

So you've been with the resurrected Jesus, what are they doubting about? And that's where I think that ultimately, I think Christianity is true because I ultimately believe that the publicly available evidence communicates that it's true. But salvation is not merely an intellectual endeavor

in that I can't just think of all the right things and that gets me to where I need to be. There's something that's different. You're making my argument. Yeah. It's not about thinking it, it's about doing it. And I think- It's not about doing it either.

Okay. It's about you being changed by the Spirit to not just feel, think, or do the right things, but to actually be- So when Jesus says Nicodemus- So what defines changed by the Spirit? Yeah. So here's the thing, when Nicodemus,

who's John 3.16- We're about to get there. We're about to get there, bro. He gave his only son, right? Yeah, yeah. The old John 3.16, the most famous verse. Then Jesus says that you need to be born again. There's a play on words there in the Greek, which means both born again and born from above.

It's the same term in Greek. And Nicodemus takes it as I need to be born again. He's like, well, I can't shove me in the back of my mom. It doesn't work like that. And so, but there's something that goes beyond the like carnal in the life of the believer. That's what being born again means. Is that there's a, not an awakening in an Eastern way, but an understanding of the fact that Christ has reached into your life

and he's revealed something that is beyond the simple facts. Why, I guess my concern is, God is all knowing, all powerful. If you feel that change or transition in you, you feeling a transition? Is that what's going on? Yes. No, no, no. Like every woman who makes herself men. Yes. But you don't think God is aware that that's Him? Like you think that that person on the island or the random person that grows up in Ohio or New York or Japan or anywhere that realizes that I'm going Ohio or New York or Japan or anywhere that

Realizes that I'm going to live a better life. Yes, and I'm going to be a better person Yeah, and I'm going to do all these things which now we know through scripture Yes says will give you eternal salvation and the one thing he doesn't say is I know that Christ is reaching in me to do it He feels like something is reaching in him to do it. Maybe he chalks it up to evolution. Maybe he chalks it up to his God, whatever it is. But you don't think God, the one God, is smart enough to go, I know who he's talking to. You think he needs to say him by the one specific name

and then God goes, oh, he said the name, okay. To me, it seems belittling to God to assume that he's not capable of understanding all the languages that we speak to the highest power in. Yeah, so I don't disagree with you. And I think that's where God, like what I said before, is not going to judge us on what we don't know. He's going to judge us on what we do know. That doesn't mean that we're innocent. At the exact same time, I think the Spirit of God is constantly speaking to us and convicting us. We call it a conscience, right? So, like, there's an aspect of God's means of grace that is just general to everybody,

in that we understand that murder is wrong and that arguably everybody throughout history, barring a few wackadoos, believes that, and that is the image of God that we are created in, screaming out. This is, yes, same page. So I'm curious, even in the book of James, the Epistle of Straw, as Luther would call it. Yeah, by some pious Jew. Yeah, perhaps. That in this book, God says, without works, faith is dead. Faith of that works is dead, perhaps. That in this book, God says without works, faith is dead. Faith without

works is dead, rather. So how do you reconcile that with this idea? Yeah, so you're not saved for your works, but you're saved—no, sorry, you're not saved by your works, but you're saved for your works. So that's the fruit in the cursing of the fig tree. It's like, if I see a friend and he's claimed to be a Christian, but his entire life is reflecting the complete opposite, I would say to him, listen, I don't know what's between you and God. That's not my place. However, I have no evidence to see that the things that you actually confess have an actual

outpouring in that. And I think that that should worry you. I want to grab you by your baptism, and I wanna say, like, I'm gonna hold you to the standard that you yourself are claiming. And so- So what's the inverse of that? The fruit is that which,

Jesus says you will know my followers by their fruit. And that's why it's problematic when we see Christians doing things that are unchristian. Right. That's why people point out things like the crusades or the inquisitions. I think these are legitimate things that we can point to and say, you know, if you pour out the substance, here, let me give you an illustration. So the methodology of form and substance, I said it slow so you don't think of it.

Thank you very much. Methodology of form and substance has this idea that this is black rifle. Oh sweet. We don't have this in Canada You know, we don't have this course up every time I come American. It's freedom We don't have that up north. Oh, we know so black rifle energy. Yeah, okay I come in the room. I say Andrew. Can I drink this and you say yeah, I say what is it? You say black rifle energy. I crack it open. I take a sip. It's gasoline Yeah, okay I say, what is it? You say black rifle energy. I crack it open, I take a sip, it's gasoline. Yeah. Okay. It is black rifle energy drink in form and then it claims to be, but not in substance

and that the actual contents are not what the can is describing. So when we look at the contents, when we look at what Christianity actually dictates and we see things like Jesus saying, love those who hate you, pray for those who persecute you, turn the other cheek, and then you look at something like conversion by the sword, we can say, based on the actual contents of what Christianity and the Bible claims to be,

that that is in form but not in substance, and that person either is in a lot of trouble and that they're claiming to be something they aren't, or they really need to figure out what's what and that they're going down a dangerous road. And so I forgot the original intention of this illustration. Faith and works.

Faith and works. So you explain one version, then what's the inverse of that? What are the person that don't claim to be Christians, yet everything in their works shows that they are? Sure. I would say ultimately- The substance is Christian, but the form is not right.

So I would say that when Jesus is asked, what is the greatest commandment? He says, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. All the good works, if they're not done in the love of God, that is actually a commandment that someone who doesn't believe cannot fulfill. Wait, wait, say that again? Yeah. Say it again? Crazy dude.

Say it again. So I get asked sometimes like, is there something that a Christian can do that an atheist can't morally? There's something a Christian can do that an atheist can't morally. No. And I would say yes, and it's love God. The atheist

doesn't want to. He's not going to do it, and he can't do it. Yeah. And that is when Jesus is asked, what is the greatest commandment? That's the thing he points to. See, this is where like, I think that we're not giving God enough credit, because I think God is looking at the atheist we're not giving God enough credit. Because I think God is looking at the atheist who lives a quote unquote Christian life. And the atheist goes, I don't believe in God. And I think God's up there like, gotcha. Yeah.

So like, because, but that's, but that's how high I view God. Sure. Like I feel like God is so powerful, so intelligent that he's aware of our little intellectualizing of who he is and how we behave. And he's like, it's like when your kid first starts learning stuff in school and they're like 11,

they start trying to tell you what the stars are and you're like, yeah, yeah, sure, it's exactly what they are and that's exactly how history is and it's adorable. You know what I mean? So that's what I assume God is doing and that's how I, I guess that's how I solve the problem for the person on the island, or the good person that was never given Christianity, or the person that was given like this horrible

bastardized version of it. They were molested by some priests and like they're going to feel that disconnect to this beautiful source because of that horrible individual. And now they don't get eternal salvation because of what this horrible person did. Like, yet the rest of their life, they're being good and they're being pure and they're being true. You know, like despite them saying they don't,

I think God is looking at that like, listen, I know your heart and you're doing the right thing. And I think God is looking at those people who say they believe in God, but they're doing these horrible acts and they're like, you're not gonna trick me. I'm not, you're acting like I'm stupid. Right.

Right, I mean, I feel like that's insulting to God. There's layers to this. I think, you know, scripture says the heart is deceitful above all things who can know it. And I think there's an aspect of, should I say it slower? Yes, the heart is deceitful above all things that know it. Who can know it. Who can know it.

So the idea is that even our good things are gonna be done with a motivation apart from actually understanding who God is and what our relationship to him is properly. They're going to be, it's the people who are feeding homeless people and making YouTube videos about it. I think that's profound. I think that's a great way,

if you were someone who maybe wasn't religious, of understanding our evolutionary biology and why we're inclined to do certain things. I think that's a really profound way of understanding human behavior. There's still a selfishness to a particular thing. That's what the evolution, what would you call them? The evolutionarist? What would they be? Evolutionist?

Yeah, that's what the evolutionists would say Yeah, and and and they could be consistent in that way. However The survival of the fittest doesn't actually give you a Grounding standard for being moral In the sense I agree that so my friend Glenn Scrivener, who wrote a great book called The Air We Breathe, he describes it in this way, I mean, he's British, so he talks about trousers.

But when we say the atheists, when we ask them, where do you get your morality from, often the response I get is, the people think I'm accusing them of not being moral. I'm not doing that, right? I think atheists can be moral because I think they're created in the image of God and that's like outpouring from them.

But when I say, where do you get your morality from, Glenn says, it's like asking, Mark, where do you get your trousers from? And Mark going, I'm wearing trousers. You're like, no, no, where do you get it from? Like, how dare you tell me I'm not wearing trousers? It's like, no, that's not the question I'm asking. I'm asking the origin of the morality to actually ground doing something that is good.

I fully believe that you can do good things. I'm just asking where is the objective idea that that actually stems from because evolution doesn't get you there. I would say that, I would say evolution gets you part of the way. What I would say is that your evolutionary inclination to be moral only scratches the surface of the euphoria you can experience when you lean into the will of God or being a good person. In other words, just not killing doesn't make me feel good. I've not killed my whole life. Helping my neighbor for no other reason than to just help him.

And in the moment, like feels annoying. I'm like, why am I gonna go to this? Immediately afterwards, I'm like, man, I'm really glad that I did that. And like, I felt connected to that person and they felt really grateful and like, wow, I feel really, that act of altruism made me feel really good.

Yeah. And this is what I would say would be walking closer to God. And I think Christianity and other religions give this really compelling argument for, hey, hey, yes, you are doing these things, atheists, you're already doing these good things. You could even lean further into that and feel the fruit doing these good things, you could even lean further into that and feel the fruit of that connectivity. I'm just saying, I think there are people who have realized this sometimes in spite of religion and sometimes without religion, and they've continued to lean into it. And I think God is smart enough to realize that they're getting to the same place. And that might be what Hinduism is seeing.

That's where. That might be. Now I'm not trying to make an argument for it. Yeah, I get you. Obviously. You know, it's side I'm on. But I get it. But I guess there is this objective beauty to it. Yeah. And there is so much to glean from it. it. I just think that there is a potentially, I don't want to say this, but like belittling of God's ability to recognize His greatness within people. I tend to agree.

But like even that idea of like, you'll know my followers by their fruits. It's like if you see a Hindu or like a Sikh that's feeding people at their temple or a Muslim that's living like a very p, or a Muslim that's living a very pious life, perhaps they're living a Christian life. Is it possible that that is the fruit that you can know them by? A Christ-less Christian life isn't a Christian life.

How do you know he's not in there? It's written on your heart. Sure, but if he's confessing Sikhism, the tenets of Sikhism, God's going, God's going, God's going, listen, you could call it that. So here's the thing, all religions are saying, I'm hating Christianity more and more. You making me, you moving me from Christ.

That's okay. How closer than I was an hour and a half ago. I'll pray for you, I'll pray for you. I'll pray for you. I'll pray for you. I was like, now we're cooking though. That's the bloody-looting thing that Christians say, right? Thoughts and prayers. Bless her heart.

Bless her heart. Bless her heart. Yeah, yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, all religions at their core are saying counter things. Yeah. Like I said before, they can't be all true. It's the equivalent of if we say like, they're all true, it's the equivalent of me saying,

I went to the library and I read all the books and I came to the conclusion that all the books, despite their differences, are really saying the same thing. They have words, grammar, syntax, letters, numbers, everything from one fish to fish, red fish, blue fish, to mine, cough, is the same thing. Whoa. You could conclude one of two things.

I didn't read all the books, or I read the books so poorly that I'm not giving justice to what the content of the books is. I didn't read all the books, or I read them so poorly that I'm like, yeah, yeah. And I would say the same goes for worldview perspectives. If we say that all of them are saying the same thing or getting to the same result,

we either are not studying the religions themselves and what they actually say, or we're not doing justice to the fact that they say mutually exclusive things. I think that's 100% true right now with us. And I think, unfortunately, in this argument, and I don't want to speak for Mark or Akash because you guys are- Go want to speak for Mark or Akash, because you guys are- Go ahead, speak for Mark. No, but you guys are far more aware of what your religions say and dictate,

whereas I think Alex and I were a little bit removed. Not that much more aware. More than I am. You know more about Hinduism than I do. He's got back from India. Exactly, he knows it all. He's really aware. He started a war.

If anybody's aware. But Alex and I don't know exactly what the scripture's saying, so it's very easy for us to ascribe the most open-minded terms for us to ascribe like the most Open-minded terms for us because we're like I want to guess I'm heaven, you know, God knows my heart So I understand what we're doing is is incredibly selfish. You could frame it in that way Yeah But it remove us and whether we go to heaven or not and we can put it on other people that we don't even know

That we think might be good people. We're hoping there is some salvation for them if that heaven does exist. I Don't know what the point that we were trying to make here with was though Gandhi was right We're hoping there is some salvation for them if that heaven does exist. I don't know what the point that we were trying to make here was though. Gandhi was right. No, no, no, no, no. No, no, but it is tricky because you are so aware of exactly what the scripture and the religion is saying the requirements are.

And we're here going, yeah, but isn't it kind of like this? And you're like, no, that's not what it says. We're hoping that there's a little extra room. And you're like, listen, there's a way. You're welcome, you're invited. Just come in the door, but these are the rules to be in there. So it is kind of like.

Yeah, I wouldn't say that it's rules. But I do get your saying. I understand. Stop putting words in my mouth. No, no, this is so interesting. It's like, I get you. And I think it is possible. If you nod and agree to me saying rules There's gonna be a video so I understand the pressure you're under you make response videos

But you're so like I am delicate with that But like I'm just throwing out the words that like fit my narrow mind version of very narrow So now so narrow though, I accept everybody. No, no, I get what you're saying. And I think like, once again, I'm not saying that people of all worldview perspectives cannot do good things, cannot be good people, cannot actually articulate what would be like even if it's superficial fruit. I think that's good and I would implore everybody, right, of whatever, atheist, Hindu, Buddhist, Mormon, Jehovah's Witness, atheist, Hindu, Buddhist, Mormon,

Jehovah's Witness, even the Scientologist, even the Scientologist, to do good things, right? Like, I want people to do that because I think it's just better for humanity. Yeah. Ultimately, though, I want everybody to confess Jesus Christ as Lord. But on a superficial level, I think just for the sake of human flourishing, for what is good for society, I want to implore people to do good things. And I think that the foundation for that is actually a Judeo-Christian one that comes from the scripture,

because I believe that everybody's created in the image of God, and everybody is intrinsically worth in their value. Nobody's worth more than anybody else. Agreed. Agreed to that. Now Now I know you have to get on a flight to go back to Canada. No, I want you to be here for like two more hours and like talk. But you have to be a good parent. That's the thing. You're being responsible. My son has a soccer game that I got to get to in Toronto. I love this. I think this is great. Okay, so we let you get out of here. Last question and then you go. And then we should order him a car right now

just so it's waiting downstairs. Jesus. Heard of him. Father. Read the book. Son, Holy Ghost. Yeah. He is God.

Yes. I think that a lot of time there are people going, okay, isn't he the son of God? He is the son of God. God gave his one and only true son, but like he also gave himself. So why is the language, why is the language his son? Why is he giving us his son?

And why does that discrepancy kind of exist? And at what point in time in like a Christian historical record are they all synergized? Summarize 2000 years of Trinitarian theology before the Uber comes. 10 seconds. Okay, no, it's a good question because I think what you see in the Biblical New Testament

and the early Christians are wrestling through this because we have the benefit of standing 2000 years down the road and they've hammered out the language we use today. Got it. So they're wrestling through this. The Father is called Yahweh God, the Spirit is called Yahweh God, the Spirit is called Yahweh God,

and Jesus is called Yahweh God. There's only one Yahweh. How do we figure this out? So what they do is eventually they come up with this language of being and person. Being describes what you are, person describes who you are. This chair has being, right? It's what philosophers called ontological status, right?

But it doesn't have personhood. I didn't ask its permission to sit on it. But it does exist. And so being is what you are. So God is Yahweh. And we see this in the sense that Jesus tells his disciples to go baptize in the name, onamon Greek, it's a singular. And then he says, the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit. So he says the the name, onamon Greek, it's a singular. And then he says, the father, son, the Holy Spirit.

So he says the singular name, but then he describes three persons. And so this is the question the early church is wrestling through when they say, okay, Jesus is given the honors, the attributes, the names, the deeds, and the seat of God. It's an acronym, hands. The Spirit is given the honors, the attributes,

the names, the deeds, and the seat of God. And the Father is given the honors, the attributes, the names, the deeds, and the seat of God. And the Father is given the honors, the attributes, the names, the deeds, and the seat of God. There's only one God. How do we understand this? Now the ancient Jews actually already had a concept of this in that they weren't unitarian fully. They understood that God is complex within his unity and that God can rule and reign

in heaven and yet the Ark of the Covenant could still have God's presence. And we even see examples when before Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham is met by three individuals, two that are identified as angels and one that is identified as Yahweh God. The angels go off to Sodom and Gomorrah to find Lot and his family. Abraham dialogues with Yahweh. Eventually Abraham leaves and then in chapter 19, in Genesis 19, it has this really interesting passage where it says that Yahweh on earth rains fire brimstone from Yahweh in heaven. Now you only have one Yahweh, so what's going on there?

Well we would say within like a Christian framework, this is the pre-incarnate Christ, okay? He is not, you know, enfleshed in who Jesus is, but this is the complex unity. And the Jews understand this. And even early on in rabbinical Judaism, there's a concept of the Shekinah glory, which is the presence above the ark, that God is ruling and reigning in heaven.

And yet there's also this idea that kind of gets fleshed out in Kabbalism of the Shevrot, which are like the presence and spirit of God all throughout the earth. So in that sense, ancient Judaism, sometimes it's called the two powers in heaven. I don't love that kind of articulation, but in academia that's what it's called. That God is ruling and reigning in heaven and still has a presence on earth. That God is complex within his unity, only one God, but there's something else going

on there that maybe we don't fully understand, but then is teased out in its fullness in the New Testament with the son, which is a title of familiarity. It's not like a birth son. But the Father and the Son, those are kinship terms. But they have existed, like I said before, in a set of living, loving relationships. It has always been three. And they have existed eternally as three. The Spirit is teased out a little bit in the Old Testament.

You have these kind of like these Easter eggs of Jesus throughout the burning bush, right? It says that the messenger of God spoke from the bush. And so you have these sort of things. The early Christians are wrestling through these things and coming up with some good ideas, some bad ideas in order to formulate the language of this. Eventually, they come up with this idea, one being in three persons. Being describes what you are,

persons describe who you are. Hmm. Got it. Got it. So the, yeah, yeah, so your form. One, three, three forms. That was really good. All right, get back to Canada. Victory's in. Dude, thank you so much for taking the time, Wes.

Thank you, man. I appreciate it. You guys are great. Fascinating guy, you're awesome. So glad it worked out. I'll see you in hell buddy. Peace. I love that.