Camp Gagnon - Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert

Episode Date: May 6, 2025

Dr. Michael Peppard is a scholar and teacher whose primary work brings to light the meanings of the New Testament and other Christian materials in their social, political, artistic, and ritual contexts at Fordham University. Today, Dr. Michael Peppard joins us to cover and debunk every Christian myth and rumor. WELCOME TO CAMP! 🏕️Shoutout to our sponsors: Morgan & Morgan and Bluechew👕🧢 GET YOUR CAMP DRIP HERE: https://campgoods.co/🏕️ Get Today In History Email Here (Free): https://camp.beehiiv.com/🎟️ 🎫 Comedy Tour Tickets Here: https://markgagnonlive.comTIMESTAMP: 0:00 Introduction0:55 Who is Dr. Michael Peppard + Pop Gnosticism & Controversial Myths5:04 Did Jesus Have A Twin? Apocryphal Text15:03 Women In Ancient Times18:56 Jesus’s Twin Brother 31:24 Pontifical Biblical Commission, Bible Nerds Interpret the Bible36:32 Multiple Endings in Gospels 39:05 Pontius Pilate + Why Pontius Killed Jesus45:20 Was Judas The Good Guy?50:00 Analyzing Controversial Rank + Did Jesus & Mary Magdalene Have Kids?56:31 Jesus In The Garden With a Naked Boy 1:05:32 Was Jesus a Political Revolutionary?1:13:42 Was Mary Really a Virgin + Puberty In The Ancient World1:23:40 Jesus Taught Reincarnation + Ancient Cultures Afterlife’s1:33:17 The Gospel of John1:41:02 Transubstantiation + Ancient Eucharists2:04:00 History of Catholic Traditions2:15:47 Check Out Dr. Peppard’s Book

As a Catholic, I'm disgusted by this. And ranking them. Jesus is having a twin, it's medium. That's not too spicy. Is it possible that Judas, who sells Jesus out, and that by betraying Jesus, that he was actually carrying out the will of God, was Jesus married to Mary Magdalene? And did he have children with her?

Jesus taught reincarnation. The virgin birth was a mistranslation, suggesting that Jesus' birth was natural, not miraculous. This is a tough one, though. Let me just say. Not only is it possible, it's necessary. Of course, there are many things that he said and did that are not included in this book. If you go to the end of Mark, you find out that there are multiple endings. What do we know about that moment that Christ shared with his disciples?

Jesus was found with a young boy naked. Michael Pepperd. How are you, sir? Great. Happy to be here. Thank you so much for doing the show. I really appreciate it. Before we begin, just to contextualize the conversation, could you explain?

Could you explain to the audience who you are, what is your field of study, and what kind of work do you do? Sure. So I work at Fordham University here in New York on the Bronx campus, and I've been a professor there in the theology department for 16 years. And my main areas are, there's kind of three main areas. One would be the New Testament and in all of its forms and its context, but kind of especially it's Greco-Roman context and it's the way it lives in the Roman Empire. Secondly, I have a research track and a teaching track in early Christian material culture, so early Christian art, early Christian rituals, the kind of stuff of early Christianity as it developed in that same period, the first few hundred years. And then third, I have a kind of parallel different track about Catholicism, which developed a bit because I'm part of a center for Catholic studies at Fordham.

And so I started doing some teaching in that area too and write more less peer-reviewed stuff, more like kind of magazine and op-ed-type pieces about Catholicism. Prior to that, I was at Yale University for my graduate work, did a PhD there, and happy New Yorker now. Nice. It's amazing, and I'm very grateful to have another Catholic in the tent. So often I get these academics that roll in here and they're secular or even worse, they're Protestant. Oh, my goodness. My mom was Protestant, so I have to say, you know, I come from a mix. I'm a good American mutt. I joke with my Protestant friends because I went to a, I went to a Protestant high school and, uh,

and a middle school. And throughout my, my, my tenure there, I was, I was, I was lambasted. Yeah, as a, has a, has a Mary worshipper and, uh, any other name under the sign. Well, were you? I mean, were, did they have any truths to that? I was a Mary, uh, reverer. Venator. Venerator. That's the word I was like, I was like, of, uh, of the Blessed Mother. But no, I'm not going to worship. You know, I'm not going to worship a woman. No, I'm joking. That's, we don't need a misogyny immediately. Come on, guys. No, we're happy to see our Lady of Guadalupe here in the tent.

Yes, exactly. And your viewers can't maybe always see that, but you should get a shout of. Yeah, we'll throw it up in the B-roll. So I wanted to speak with you today because, as I mentioned before, there is a it seems like there's a current happening within pop culture, specifically on YouTube I found, where there is a large interest

in sort of like pop-nosticism, is the way that I'll put it. I think it was kind of popularized through I would say, I think zeitgeist, do you remember this documentary that came out? It was like 2002, 2003. Okay. Nope. And throughout it, it's sort of like created these parallels with like Jesus and the story of the Christ figure and paralleled it and basically said it was a rip of the Egyptian sun god, I believe. I forget the exact person. And then Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code. And then, you know, since then you have folks like Billy Carson is a very prominent. a YouTuber that talks about Gnosticism. And, yeah, it's just kind of like exploded. And I, you know, as a Catholic, am disgusted by this. But as an open-minded curious person that loves controversial hot takes, I find it very

titillating. Okay. And so I watch a lot of these videos kind of, you know, exploring and breaking down these controversial myths. So I think it would be fun just kind of start our conversation by going through some of the most controversial hot takes, specifically around the New Testament and, you know, and our understanding of Christ. Okay.

And maybe you're just ranking them. And a good ranking system I've seen, my friend Alex O'Connor does this, the YouTuber. He's brilliant. Spiciest to Mintiest. Okay. Spicest being, you know, this is a wild belief. If someone believes us, this is an insane hot take. So is it a plausibility index?

Is it a believability index? Or is it a shock value? Is it all those things? I think it's shock primarily. Okay. But then we can kind of go down the list. And I think maybe the more veracity it has, it might actually be almost less spicy, but we'll see. I guess we can kind of discover that as we go through.

The first thing that I wanted to ask you, I've heard the claim that Jesus Christ had a twin brother. Have you heard this before? And where does this come from? Sure, I've heard this before because Thomas means twin. So, you know, didomis, Thomas, two different names, one Aramaic-based and one Greek-based does mean twin. And so the fact that this is one of Jesus' disciples who is named and who is very prominent in the New Testament, well, maybe not prominent is too strong of a word, but appears in some key moments, right? Most famously in the doubting Thomas scene in the Gospel of John, where he doesn't believe he's not there at the first resurrection appearance. And so he doesn't believe his fellow disciples and wants to see for himself.

but really that's not where the kind of the theories develop. The theories really develop outside of what comes to be the canon of the New Testament. So there are two primary sources. One that we've known about since antiquity called the Acts of Thomas, which I think you've had someone on your show to talk about. Yes, Nathan Andrade. Talking about, you know, these are the so-called apocryphal acts, kind of the stories of what happened to the disciples after they all scattered and evangelized.

So the Acts of Thomas has a, you know, has a focus on that character. The themes in the Acts of Thomas in that travel are mostly ascetic, kind of self-denial, Thomas trying to get people to break up their marriages or not get married in the first place. But there's also a lot of amazing scenes of Christian initiation and what kinds of baptismal prayers they had and what kinds of meals they had mostly in early Christian Syria and to the east of that. But then there's another main text called the Gospel of Thomas, which was known in antiquity, but was not, it was known that it existed in antiquity. But the text of it was not discovered until the mid-1900s at a place called Nagamadi in Egypt. Is that something you're familiar with, this discovery of the Coptic texts at Nagamati?

Yes, the Nagamati library I find fascinating. But I've also heard that the Gospel of Thomas is like a second or third century hoax or maybe a fraudulent script. Is this fair to say? All righty, don't skip forward, guys, because I am on the road. World's fastest ad read coming at you. I'm going to be at Strodsburg, Hoboken, Indianapolis, Buffalo, Raleigh, Poughkeepsie, Portland, Oregon, Fort Worth, Texas, Austin, Texas, Stanford, Philly, Levittown, Town, Chandler, Arizona, San Diego. I'm also going to be adding Toronto, Montreal, as well as Washington, D.C., and a bunch of other dates. You can get all that at the mark agdon.com.

Dates are in the description, also in probably the comments of this episode. go see me on the road. Come hang out. I'll be hanging out with everyone after the show. Come shake my hand. Call me an idiot. Whatever you want to do, I will be there. Additionally, I will be doing my one hour of stand-up comedy. I'm very proud of this hour. I'm really excited to share it with you guys, and it would mean the world if everyone could come on out. And what do you wear to a show on the road? That's a great question. You can go to campgoids. That's right. We got merch. We got camp merch. We got hats, hoodies, t-shirts. A lot of stuff is out of stock. Things have been selling like hot cakes, but we're going to be restocking everything in all the sizes.

You can go there right now. Get all the merch, get all the coolest clothing in the podcast game. We're going to be updating that site regularly. And if you come out to a show, I'd love to see you sporting some of the threads that we got up online. I'll see you guys there. Let's get back to the show. I personally wouldn't use the word hoax myself or fraud. I tend to think more about variant traditions.

Variant traditions because that, you know, I wasn't there. I wasn't there in the first century following Jesus around to transcribe what he said, nor was I there in the second century, the third century, to think about the process of canon formation. So as a eternally an outsider to the world that I study, I try to be open to the possibilities of what was happening. Now, the Gospel of Thomas is, we only have this one, well, mainly one version of it, which is in Coptic, which is the language of early Christian Egypt. For your listeners who don't know what Coptic is, it's a hybrid language. It's kind of the final form of Egyptian before the Arab Muslim conquest of Egypt And at that point it had blended native Egyptian grammar And some characters with also some Greek characters And some Greek vocabulary I did study that, learned it for a few years

When I was a graduate student And I can read those texts So when you read the Gospel of Thomas and Coptic There are times where it seems like you're getting For example, a parable of Jesus that feels like it might actually be more archaic than what we have in Matthew or Luke, for example. But then there are other times in Thomas

where it feels like this is definitely derivative and this must have come later and is an attempt to kind of manipulate the message of the parables. So for me, I take a case-by-case approach to these texts because it's a collection of sayings, really. And any collection of sayings, I kind of look at it and I think,

well, this version of the parable, maybe Thomas did preserve maybe an older version than we have, because we have different versions than Matthew and Luke anyway of certain parables right there within the canon. I'm still not getting to your question, though, about the twining or the twin ideas. I wanted to ask actually about the gospel of Thomas. When you say that some say sayings actually seem to be more archaic, when you say more archaic, that's in relativity to the Gospels as we know them,

maybe perhaps closer to the time that Christ actually lived? Well, so, yeah, so that's what I meant. again, it's very difficult to prove, and it's not original to me, these ideas. But if you imagine how oral tradition works in a pre-print culture, right? The print culture is not coming for 1,500 years after this. So all of Jesus' teachings are circulating primarily orally. And we even see this in the canonical New Testament when you take something like the Parable of the Lost Sheep. Now, in your mind, I know you went to some church growing up, and so you've heard this parable and you think you kind of know what it is, but when you put Matthew's version and Luke's

version actually right next to each other and you look at the Greek versions, Matthew and Luke don't necessarily think the parable means the same thing. They have slight differences in how they think this parable was meant, and they have different audiences in which they said it. So in one gospel and gospel of Luke, that parable is taught to a group of outsiders, a group of, says, quote, tax collectors and sinners. And it seems like a parable. that's trying to bring people in who are not a part of the movement, who are lost, and then they get brought in. In Matthews, it's situated as a teaching to the disciples

about seemingly about not letting people go astray in the first place. It's really a teaching about leadership. That's how I interpreted. Being a good shepherd. Yeah. Okay, so that's more the Matthew emphasis. It's very subtle, but my point is, I guess my point I try to make is that already within the canonical written tradition,

we have evidence of slight differences and transmission at the oral level before these things get written down. I see. And so the fact that, or the notion that there might be also one of those in the Gospel of Thomas that was transmitted orally in Egypt

or in Syria and that eventually written down, I'm totally open to that. So, like, there's a parable called the parable of the tenants, which is in the Gospel of Thomas and is in Mark and is in Matthew. and three different, three different versions. And there are some scholars who feel like the Thomas version might represent an older version of that oral tradition.

Wow, because Mark was written, what, 70 AD, roughly? Yeah, usually we dated around there, somewhere around the fall of the temple, around the destruction of the temple. Second temple. Yeah, second temple, exactly in Jerusalem. Now, so to suggest that it is more archaic would suggest that it is more, like, closely around the time of Christ,

and what would indicate that it is older? So what I'm arguing, though, is not that the written form of gospel, not that the written form of the Gospel of Thomas as it was discovered in Nakamadi. I'm not saying that that is older. I'm saying that it might preserve oral traditions. And how can we indicate that? Is that based off of the syntax of the sentences,

like the actual words that are used? So there are actually, well, it's difficult, and you might imagine not everyone agrees in scholarship about this. You know, there are some, basic principle ideas. Some people have an intuition that shorter stories are older and then they get embellished over time. There are some people who have an instinct that more specific stories are older and then they

get universalized over time. There are some people have an instinct that Jesus didn't tell allegories and that Jesus told parables that were more curt, quick to the point and that were not allegorized into a whole world of doctrine. And so maybe the parables that look like shorter, snappier have more of an air of, like, authenticity of what a wandering itinerant wisdom teacher might have talked like. And the gospel of Thomas is very short and snappy. It doesn't allegorize.

Yeah. Exactly. It says a lot. It has a lot of phrases that we truly don't know for sure what they mean, honestly. And so if you have a category. or if you have a framing in your mind of like, that's the kind of person. I imagine Jesus to be that he's telling,

uh, riddles, telling almost like Zen koan type. Yeah. And he's leaving it up to let, let the one who has ears to hear here, right? If you have, if you have ears to hear my message and you'll understand it,

I'm not going to explain it all to you. If you have that image of Jesus in your mind, then, then some of these Thomas versions might look more authentic to you. But some of them are just wild. I mean, this is one I remember. every woman who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.

Right, right, right. So it sounds wild, right? It sounds wild, right? It's just bizarre. This isn't... Yeah, so I... We can get into this a little bit. So one of the ideas here

that maybe helps understand what's going on. This is a tough one, though. Let me just say. I don't... Yeah. I don't come in here with like definitive interpretations. I didn't give you softball.

Of all, you know, 140 of these sayings. but there is a sense in Greco-Roman, the Greco-Roman understanding of gender, let's say, that the proper, the full form of a human person is a male form. So that's obviously misogynistic, but that is a idea that's going around in the air. You can read it. It has to do with, it has to do with,

you can read it in, you know, Greek and Roman, medical treatises and things like this. The woman is derivative from the man. Yes. And it's not quite fully developed, but even biologically, and not quite fully developed. So there is a way to interpret this

that's saying, Jesus, female disciples, they are going to become fully developed. They're going to become fully, to be fully his disciple. They need to act, more or less act like male disciples. We also see this later.

It doesn't have to be, quite so misogynistic in it sound when we look later at, at like, early Christian martyr stories, many of which are women, right, who are women who are going to the death for their faith, such as perpetua and felicity in North Africa. And when we read these martyr stories of early Christian women, a lot of them are presented as male. Like, they're not men biologically, but their virtues, their characteristics are presented as male in the course of telling their story as a way of showing that they are fully embodying Christ. They are fully taking on his form.

So hypothetically. And it's almost a criticism of men who aren't doing that. Oh, right. Because if a woman is doing it, what excuse do you have? And the word, the ancient Greek word for courage is manliness. The actual word, Andrea, is like, like Andrew. So to say, like perpetua is, shows courage before her capture, it actually says, she shows her manhood, like she's manly.

Interesting. And to the people in that time, obviously, contextually, they would understand that this compliment that nowadays we see as sort of being gender neutral, something like courage can go, you know, human to non-human to anything. And the time they would have understood to say, like, oh, they're putting masculine traits on these women. And that is an honorable thing to do because, you know, perhaps it is the, it is God's will. Maybe God is a man himself. So therefore, that is like the divine essence of.

creation. And they have a lot of kind of militaristic imagery too in these martyr stories where just to take perpetual for the example I mean at the end she she guides she guides the the executor's knife

to her own throat. He's afraid to do it and she's like she brings, I mean it's Whoa, I've never heard of before. It's pretty goth. She also has a whole bunch of dreams before and when she's awaiting her martyrdom that may potentially be first person accounts of her like dreams and visions before she goes. But this is taking us far afield from your question.

But I mean, that's fine. We're here at camp and, you know, when you're a late night around a campfire sometimes. It's four in the morning. You know, we're sitting out of the woods in upstate New York. That's what happens. That's right. So I guess to circle back. Yeah, to circle back.

Did you just have a twin and was Thomas's twin? So the circle all the way back. So there are conflicting accounts about Jesus' siblings in the canonical New Testament, right? So in the Gospel of Mark, we have a list that potentially includes, if this person's name was Judas, Didymus Thomas, it could include, you know, a sibling who goes by the name of Thomas later, which could make sense. Now, the Protestant tradition has no problem with Jesus having a bunch of siblings. Because they don't have a virgin birth or perpetual virginity doctrine. Whereas the Catholic tradition has a perpetual virginity doctrine. And so they argue that these others are like cousins or other kinds of family members, which is also linguistically defensible.

I don't think we're ever going to resolve that one. But if Jesus had a twin and twins are especially close, then the argument would go that this twin would have special knowledge, just like biological twins in our lifetime often have special knowledge of one another. They feel very, very, very bonded. I mean, I can't imagine what it would feel like to have an identical twin like that. Right. And so that then does kind of close the loop of this little conversation where you think if these texts, these mostly second third century texts that you're talking about,

which come to be called Apocrypha, if the genre is mostly like special revelations that particular disciples had, right? These are the gospel of Mary, the gospel of Thomas. These are things that Jesus said to me that he didn't say to the rest of you. Then that could connect well with the twin idea that like the way that twins have special secret knowledge of one another. And, you know, he told you know, he told you all those teachings about mustard seeds and whatever, but he told me these special teachings, you know, maybe you weren't ready for them. Oh, that's interesting. But now I'm going to pass them on. Oh, that's interesting. Now, in thinking about the acts of Thomas or the gospel of Thomas,

do you think that there's any truth to the idea that Thomas wrote the gospel of Thomas? Thomas, as we understand him in the Bible, is there any conclusion on that idea, even if it was written later or not being included in the actual canon? Right. I don't mean, I don't have an opinion on that because it's a series, it's a collection of sayings. It's not a narrative. You know, it's not something that even calling it a gospel is kind of unusual because it's, it does, all the other gospels have narrative, right?

They have the passion narrative. They have, they have miracle stories. When I teach the gospel, Thomas, I call it Thomas the sayings source. Right. That's almost like Hadiths. Yeah, exactly. And we know, we know we have these from the ancient world. I mean, even in the canon, the book of Proverbs is a saying source, right?

The sorts of wise things that Solomon said. And so I don't, I guess I, on satisfying to you, I don't think it's so much matters who wrote it because it's a compiled set of sayings. So who the compiler is doesn't really put much of a, as much of a stamp on it as, as it might be the case if it were a kind of long-running narrative with, you know, that we're based on the person's life. I have no problem thinking that every one of the disciples of Jesus compiled things that he said and wrote them down eventually. I mean, I think that's, I don't think there's anything implausible about that at all. Yeah, it's interesting to think that, you know, as if you believe in a Christian tradition, you believe that the Bible is wholly true, that it is, you know, perhaps there's contradictions, which we can discuss later, but that the text of the actual. you know, canon are sort of, I guess, divinely inspired. But it doesn't necessarily mean that all the things that Christ said are included in the book.

Of course. And is it possible that there are sayings of Christ that were recorded, that were not included in the canon? And does that create some type of, you know, dogmatic issue for believers? I mean, not only is it possible, it's necessary. Of course, I mean, of course, there are things that he said that are not included. And the gospel of John ends that way. The last line of the gospel of John is, like, of course, there are many things that he said and did that are not included in this book. And if it would take the world's books to include everything, right?

And so I think, like, one of the things that I love to do when I'm teaching a basic kind of intro, intro new testament or intro to the Bible class is to get people to think about a funeral of a beloved family member, an elderly beloved family member that they've been to. Because everyone in the class, they're 20 years old, everyone's done this at least once. And I just try to get them to think about

the experience of that and the stories they hear and the stories that are told over and over and over again about this person and the kind of thematic characteristics of that person's life that they learn. And then I'll get them to think about, well, what happens when you hear two conflicting stories about your grandma?

And, you know, one of your uncles is like, well, you didn't hear about once you went to Latin America and what happened then? And then someone else is like, what happened then? Some people find out at funerals that they have sibling they didn't know about. Yeah.

From, you know, from an illicit affair. I mean, all kinds of things happen in addition to kind of the repeated stories that come up over and over and over again. But no one ever at that experience things, now we have full access to this life. Now we know everything they did. Now we know

everything they thought. You know, we're very comfortable with that, with kind of getting a basic thing. Mimatic picture of a human life. But then when we get to Jesus, we get crazy. Like, we get haywire and we think, you know, we line up, we line up, well, it says here he did this on this day, but it says here he did this on this day. And now, now I don't believe any of it. Right.

None of it's true. So, you know, we have, we have a, not all of us, but some believers have a dogmatism and a rigidity about. these stories that doesn't, it just doesn't bear out in real life in any way. I mean, look at, look at what's happening now. People still talking about JFK. We have video. Right. Right. And think about, think about how, why, why do we still adjudicating the JFK files? Why do we still write new biographies of Abraham Lincoln? Why do we, these are all modern, you know, modern people and we're still kind of crafting narratives that emphasize some features of their lives and deemphasize other features of their lives. So we're going all the way.

back to a pre-print culture with no video, with no audio, with no, really, no early organized community either. If I may just say another pet peeve I have, or a frustration I have as a scholar of this period about kind of people coming into it the first time, most people presume a much higher degree of organization than would have existed, right? So, when when people ask me, how did this book get in the canon and this book didn't get in the canon, I think they have in their mind that there's a meeting, right? That there was all the leaders get together and they have a spreadsheet and they're talking about, you know, well, the gospel of Thomas doesn't have a passion narrative. It doesn't talk about the crucifixion. So that one's out. But the Axe Thomas is

pretty good. Why can't, why don't we put that in? Well, it's a little bit different here and they only use it in Syria. and those in Italy have never heard of it. Okay, we'll put it out for the... These meetings never happen. They never happen. We want to believe they happened. Sometimes we fabricate them that they happened, right? Sometimes we say, well, at the Council of Nicaea,

they must have done this. I don't think that was their main concern. They had concerns at the Council of Nicaa about church unity and concerns about doctrine and concerns about organizational structure in the fourth century. But when we look at our fourth century codices, meaning books, kind of the great codices of the fourth and fifth century,

which are our earliest collected, what comes to eventually be the Bible, what you see very clearly is that there is a core which is strong. Your core of four gospels, Paul's letters, 1st Peter, sometimes 2nd Peter, acts and Hebrews get in there. You have your card out of core, but then you have a lot of fuzziness on the edges. And you look at, you know, codex in the Vatican, Vaticanus, or Codex Sinaiticus, in the British Library, the 4th century codices. And at the end, they have some other texts,

right, that are not ultimately in the modern post-reformation, post-printing press canon. So what do we do with that? Do we do? we think that they thought that those were of the same weight as the ones that came before, I'm more likely just to say that they had different questions than we have, right? They, their questions were primarily about, is this useful? Is this text good for teaching? Is it good for learning? No, I feel like this poses an issue for believers because they say, you know, these

books were assembled through the divinity of God. Yeah. Like God himself was guiding these early church leaders to putting these books together. So if there is, you know, there can be no error. There can be no, you know, human fray that actually affects the text of the books. Yeah, I mean, my historians' perspective on that would be to say that inerrancy is a modern concept. We don't see much concern about inerrancy in medieval Christianity or, in early Christianity in the way that we see it in in modern post printing press post-enlightment

post-reformation Christianity the vast majority of Christian Christians in Christian history did not think that way and and we have evidence you know we have evidence of that they knew there were discrepancies third and fourth century Christians they're they're not dumb they have if they have the stories they can see well in this one it looks like Jesus is crucified on Passover and this is what it looks like it's not on a different day, you know, or in the gospel of John, Jesus causes the disturbance at the temple at the beginning of the story. And in Matthew, Mark and Lucas at the end of the story. There's some pretty big discrepancies there that they were well aware of, but it was not a

barrier to their faith in the way it has been for some versions of modern Christianity. So maybe you're one, maybe is a barrier for you, and maybe I'm talking about you, I don't know. No, it's not particularly a barrier, to be honest. But I was sort of like quasi, you know, raised partially Catholic, but then in a Protestant setting. And it seems like because of this idea of solar scripture, that the scripture is the sole arbiter of what our faith is and means, that it has to be perfect and that any discrepancy is a violation to. our faith. Correct. So as for Catholic,

it's not exactly as, you know, maybe as rigid because there's sort of a papal tradition that can guide us as well. Yes. Yeah.

So you've done your homework. I mean, I would say you're exactly right on that, that the textual textual fundamentalism is associated with, not even all of Protestant Christianity,

but certain versions of Protestant Christianity. The Catholic tradition definitely has fundamentalists, but they're usually not biblical fundamentalists. They're usually fundamentalists. about ethics or liturgy, right, about something different or church hierarchy.

You know, in fact, on the Catholic side, there is something called, you're ready for this, the Pontifical Biblical Commission. Hell yeah. Okay. I have not yet been invited to be on it. Maybe after your show, I will. You know, it's going to go viral. Francisco, let's go.

I have been an officially vetted Bible translator for the U.S. Catholic bishops. in the New Testament, but that's different. That's just here in the States. So the Pontifical Biblical Commission is a Vatican appointed committee of Bible nerds, basically, who are vetted faithful Catholics, and they produce documents. Nobody reads them except for people like me, but they exist. And they put out a document in 1993 called The Interpretation of the Bible and the Church. And it's a programmatic document saying,

how we think Catholics should interpret the Bible. And guess what, Mark? They reserve their harshest words for fundamentalism. Hmm. And they talk about other isms, right? They talk about Marxism, and they talk about feminism, and they talk about liberation theology, and they talk about other things that they kind of say,

their position is like there's pros and cons to these, pros and cons to these approaches. But fundamentalism, gets just lambasted. And in really harsh terminology, they call it at one point intellectual suicide. Wow. To presume that there are no errors anywhere in the Bible and that everything has to be completely, that there can be no contradictions in any single way.

Now, these scholars, they also understand the diversity of biblical manuscripts very well. And so most contextual fundamentalists, when they go, if they go and get a PhD or they go and pursue further study, they often then are exposed to just the vast diversity of biblical manuscripts. And for most people, that kind of undoes that fundamentalist view, right? Because which one? Yeah. Like which version are you doing? Which Greek? Which Hebrew?

Yeah. How many chapters of Esther? How many chapters of Daniel? Like there's pretty, that was always, that was always the issue for me where I would say like, okay, we're looking at this, you know, the gospel of Mark. But it's not written in English, obviously. So we're now looking at translations. We're looking at translations of translations of translations of, you know, semi-piece together remnants of what the earliest translations were, which may not even be. the earliest translations that ever existed.

Right. And so now we're just playing this massive game and then for people that say, well, it is all completely true and God has, you know, masterfully kind of crafted this thread for the truth to persist without error. Yeah. It just seems like a massive undertaking. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because I got to tell you about a dirty little secret.

Okay. The insurance industry doesn't want you to know this. Well, basically what the insurance companies do is that they profit by holding onto your money as long as possible. You pay them every month and then eventually when an accident happens, they try to deny or delay your claim so that they can keep their profits going. I mean, it goes even worse. When in court, the insurance companies want jurors to think that the at-fault driver, you know, a mom that rear-ends someone, you know, she's a single mom, and they think that she is going to be paying the verdict amount. Meanwhile, it's really the insurance companies who are going to be covering the costs. that's why I want to tell you about the good folks over at Morgan and Morgan, because they will take on the case and they are almost always going after the big insurance companies and not the individuals at fault. Morgan and Morgan fights hard for their clients and these corporations know that and it pisses them off. A recent client in Pennsylvania just received $29 million. The insurer's best offer? $500,000. Yeah. There's another client in Florida that received $20 million. And the last offer from the insurance company was $0.000. There's a reason why Morgan and Morgan is America's largest injury law firm. So if you are ever injured or dealing with an insurance company that doesn't want to pay up their fair share, you could go check out Morgan and Morgan. That's right. Hiring the wrong law firm can be disastrous. And hiring the right law firm could, you know, be a big substantial increase to your settlement. And Morgan and Morgan makes it so easy to get started. Their fee is free unless they win. There's literally no risk. Unless they win your case, you're not paying a dime.

And with Morgan and Morgan, it's never been easier. I'm telling you, you just go to for the people.com. That's right, F-O-R-the-people.com, and use the code Gagnon, G-A-G-N-O-N-O-N, or dial Pound-Law. That's Pound-F-2-9. And this is a paid advertisement. Now, ladies and gentlemen, let's get back to the show. Well, and Mark is a great example. I don't know if you chose it just because it's your namesake

or because it's your favorite gospel or whatever. The earliest, that's why. There you go. Mark is a perfect example. I'm just pulling out my Greek New Testament here to show you. Perfect example of this issue, because if you go to the end of Mark, you find out that there are multiple endings.

Okay. So there are different manuscripts preserve. How's your ancient Greek, Mark? Very terrible. Well, you're going to learn this year. I know Calameta. You're going to learn. learn this year. I know, I fought he stole. That's a good one. Very nice. Christos

Aneste on Easter, you know these things. Crisis. So, um, so our fourth century manuscripts, which are our oldest manuscripts of the gospel of Mark have different endings. And what, what do you do with that as a, as a textual fundamentalist? Do you say that they're all of them are right? One of them is right and the other is wrong. They're both extremely ancient. Yeah. I mean, you know, some people look at, say, some people look at it and say, oh, we only have fourth century manuscripts of first century stories. But any, any historian who knows what we're talking about is like, this is amazing that we actually have four century manuscripts. Right. Of first century stories.

Or, you know, we read Tacitus, Roman historian, we read Cicero, we read all these sorts of texts. We're reading Renaissance era manuscripts for most of that. Oh, really? Yeah. And no one thinks about it. Oh, I've never thought. Yeah, I don't think about it. I always thought like, yeah, the gospel's oral tradition written later, but, you know, Tacitus or, you know, Flavian or all.

Yeah, they're copied over and over and over, but we don't have ancient manuscripts of these things. We also don't dispute this, really the record at the same rate. Exactly. That's where I'm going with that. That's a great point. So it's really our mindset about, you know, about, you know, about. what you're coming in, what kind of mindset you're coming into this with. When I look at the

New Testament as a historian, I think we have an amazing amount of evidence relative to other things from the ancient world, especially relative to other non-elite cultural products from the ancient world. Right. Yeah, this is a small little

subdivision of the Roman Empire that had this little moment that changed the entire world, and there's so much of it that's preserved. Yeah. Compared to other I mean, I was even talking to, I think it was Dr. Andrade, that there's very little known about Pontch's Pilot. Yeah.

Which I find very funny. Like in the time, Pontius Pilot holds this, you know, a fairly high ranking position within the Roman, you know, Senate, I guess. And Jesus Christ is sort of this lowly, you know, Jewish, maybe revolutionary. Yeah. But yet there's almost no record of Pontius Pilate, which I just find sort of ironic. Well, yeah, I mean, if he had not presided at that one, that one. at that one trial, we would know much about him at all.

Yeah. But he makes it in the creed. He makes it in the creed, which is unbelievable. Yeah, it's like a, his name. His name. It is.

It is a disc track. Yeah, yeah. The worst is to get mentioned in a disc track because now people are going to sing it forever and they're going to always mention your name. Yeah. So Pontius pilot was just,

I don't know, part of me is kind of like, man, wrong place, wrong time. You just... Well, yeah, I mean, pilot, I don't know, I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for the guy. I mean, because the other evidence we do have about him that he was a pretty ruthless, pretty ruthless manager of a province, of a province that did not want to be occupied by Rome.

I mean, the only reason he's, you know, sometimes people assume that Pontchus Pilate's, like, living in Jerusalem. He's not. He doesn't even want to be in Jerusalem. He lives by the coast, man. He's like, I'm going to live in Caesarea. It's nice. I live in a nice place. and not not deal with Jerusalem. The only reason he's in Jerusalem is that it's a past, it's a pilgrimage festival. Right. Right.

So it's like he's got it goes because, you know, the previous Roman prefects of Judea struggled to govern a people that didn't want to be occupied and that didn't want to, you know, be forced to pay tribute to a foreign government. It's not surprising. You know your history. You know this happens all over the world. world for all the history. And so what do they do every spring festival that we call Passover?

What do they do at every Pesach? They gather and they celebrate freedom from a tyrant. Right. That's what the exodus is. Right. It's a celebration of freedom from a tyrant. Yeah. And so you can imagine from the Roman perspective, they're trying to, they're trying to subdue what they perceive to be an unruly province. the province is trying to gain self-governance and respect for itself and the population of the city who knows, triples,

quadruples, I don't know for sure but it's pilgrimage. Everyone's coming and they're celebrating back in our glorious past when God freed us from tyranny and from slavery. The Romans are freaking out. Which is why he's there

which is why he's not sitting on the coast in Caesarea Sippin and Negroni. It's why he's like going there. And so then you hear someone talking about the kingdom of God. You hear someone talking about, I mean, I always like to say to students, what gets Jesus on the radar? I make them find it. You know, like you read the gospel. Tell me, what gets Jesus on Pilots radar?

Because he dies on a Roman cross. So Pilots got to be involved. How are we to reconstruct this? And even if Pilots ruthless, he is not crucifying a wandering. healer who talks about seeds, who tells parables about seeds. There's no way. That's not a person's not on his radar, right?

And after a while, a student will get there and they notice the temple disturbance. Fliping the tables. Yeah, during a pilgrimage festival is key. Like when there's so many people, you think about New Year's Even Times Square, how heightened security is, you know, or a stadium. You know, any little disturbance

gets you noticed, right? But secondly, it's, and this is the more subtle and the smarter students get this, is his entrance to Jerusalem. If there's any truth to that story, because if you remember what happens when he enters. Parading in people laying down palms. They're saying, Hosanna to the son of David.

And that, you know, the coming one, the coming son of David. That's a coup. You're saying there's a lineage. He's the king. He's the, I mean, this is like an archetype, really, because it's so long ago at this point. David's more of an idea, right, than like a real thing in people's mind. But, but yeah, this is an archetype of back when we ruled ourselves, back when we were in charge, back when we were glorious.

And it's so you can interpret, you can imagine how it looks like a coup. Yeah. Even if Jesus didn't want it for himself. You know, you can only do so much control of what people say about. you. This guy has a, you know, a monarchial lineage. He's talking about, you know, he's causing disruptances in the temple during feast days. Yeah, this is going to be, this is going to get you on a radar and then put you kind of as a political revolution. And in addition to that, you start creating disturbances with, you know, the religious leadership at the time. Yeah. Now you have

multiple factions of people, powerful factions that want you dead. Right. And he's walking around, or at least want you out, at least want you banished. He's going to out of there, you know. And then he's walking around, at least according to our gospel, passion narratives, kind of going up to various status groups and arguing with them on exactly their turf. Right. Right. Like, oh, the scribes, masters of the written Torah.

Let's debate the written Torah. Oh, Pharisees, you have questions about like the oral Torah. Should we pay taxes to the Romans or not, you know? We'll argue with you about that. So he's definitely a controversial thing. figure, and, you know, he's not avoiding any of that. Interesting. Can I ask you another hot take? Oh, my gosh, I know. Yeah, we started with Thomas and we ended with the pilot.

So this is perfect. This is what the point of this is. This is what camp is. We're at camp. Okay, this is an interesting one. I want to actually make sure I get the verbiage correct here, so let me actually pull this up directly. It's something that I had thought for a bit, or at least kind of, like, kicked around, and I never would say it out loud. But is it possible that Judas who sells Jesus out gives him the kiss of death was actually working

in a proper way. This is another hot take that I've seen that he was trying to carry out the will of this destiny that he was giving up this sacrificial lamb and that by betraying Jesus that he was actually carrying out

the will of God and that Jesus himself even tells Judas you were going to exceed all the other disciples. Have you heard this theory before? What do you make of this? So I thought I knew we were going until the very end of what you said. So the first part, I thought you meant that Judas is a,

Judas's betrayal is a necessary piece of God's will. Right. Is that what you meant? Yes. And then there's a second part that I guess, I didn't know this. This is just something that I've like pulled together from research that Jesus says, you will exceed all of them for you will sacrifice the man that clothes me. that's not a New Testament quote though.

Okay. Yeah. That's okay. So there is a second century text called the Gospel of Judas, which is written, was written and then rediscovered in the modern era, which would have been a pretty fascinating story, actually, if you want to hear that at some point, the Gospel of Judas story. So here's what I would say to the first part. I would say that the role of Judas's betrayal in the divine plan of Jesus' death and resurrection is to me a total mystery. Here's why, you know, there are so many, the Gospels narrate, if you ask the question, why does Jesus die according to the Gospels? Like, what's the chain of causation that leads to this?

There's so many different things that happen, right? The Pharisees are out to get him for these various reasons. He may have some guilt by association with John the Baptist, who was already beheaded, you know, earlier in the story. He disrupts the temple. Some people think he's the next King David. There's all these reasons why it might, you know, if he blasphemes before the Sanhedron. But where do we fit Judas into that chain, that chain of causation? How does it, how do we fit that into either the historical chain or especially how do we fit that into the divine or the kind of purpose of the death, right?

Because then you have all these, all these heavenly why questions of like, well, it's, this is because God wills it. It's because the Messiah is supposed to suffer. It's because Isaiah prophecy that it would go this way, right? But the Judas part just, it just mystifies not only me, but a lot of theologians throughout history. Because it doesn't feel like something that God should do, right? It just does. It feels like why would God plant this particular mode? Right.

Well, why would God in the historical chain? Harden Pharaoh's heart. Or why would, uh... Very good. Why would, you know, the angel of destruction? Yeah. that comes and kills the firstborn that doesn't have the blood of the lamb

or the doorposts. It's like, wait, so God's sending hitmen? Right. It's like, it just fits outside of, I think, of our modern context of what the biblical, specifically New Testament God is. Yeah, yeah. Good, no, you're right.

The hardening of Pharaoh's heart is a great example. Like, why does the divine will act in these ways on earth and through human causation? But I feel more comforted when I'm confused by that mystery because it's been confusing all the way back, right? So the very existence of this Gospel of Judas narrative is an attempt,

theologically, to reckon with the role of Judas. Like, maybe Judas is an insider. Maybe Judas has access to the divine will. Maybe Judas is a key player in a secret way that the other disciples don't get. And so the Gospel of Judas, in part, is a narrative reflection on that. But as to the, as to resolving it, Mark, I'm afraid I don't have, I don't have a resolution for it.

If someone believed that Judas was the, was an agent of God, would you say that's spicy? Spicy. Yeah, definitely, definitely spicy. Yeah, we, we forgot about our rankings. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll go back to the first. When Jesus is having a twin, it's medium. It's not too spicy. Yeah, that's fair.

That's fair. Okay, another one. For a Catholic, it's spicier because of the perpetual virginity part. Well, we're about to dive deeply into that right now. Was Jesus married to Mary Magdalene? And did you have children with her? That's a two-parter. So spice meter, 10 out of 10.

Off the chart. I mean, it's, I'd say it's the top. Indian hot. Yeah, that's right. Ghost pepper, whatever. It's spicy, spicy. So what's amazing about this? question is that like like many of the spicy takes there is a there are there's a little bit of

evidence that make you wonder what's going on so what here's what i would say as a historian i would say i personally do not think that jesus was married i don't think that jesus um had had had a wife had a woman and had children but i don't think that's a very radical thing to say i also don't think john the baptist did I don't think getting married and having children is the sort of thing, an apocalyptic itinerant wisdom healer does. Right. Right.

I mean, there are people today who live radical lives, either radical lives of service or radical lives of travel or radical lives of passion for a project who also choose not to settle down, so to speak, right? And if anything, I would say, I'm sure Jesus was a pretty radical and, unusual figure, right, like John the Baptist. So I don't think so. So how does this come in? How does the Mary Magdal idea come in?

Well, for sure, she's the most important female disciple. I just don't see how that's debatable at all. No, what you're saying, disciple, which is interesting. Discipleship, I don't think, is in question. Apostleship has been in question, meaning apostleship, meaning did Jesus specifically commission her? and like call her to be in the inner circle. But I think, you know, the list of female disciples,

especially in the Gospel of Luke chapter 8, you know, but other places as well, we have no problem. Not only no problem thinking that, I think it's, I'm sure. I'm certain. I haven't heard the term disciple before, I guess, in reference to any of the women in the Bible. Okay. But that's interesting.

I guess it wouldn't be any type of violation. It's just a category for, you know, an acolyte. So, yeah, so traditionally, disciple, it's from Latin for a student. So someone who follows Jesus and listens to his teachings and observes them, I would call all of those disciples, all the followers. The term apostle in Greek means like commissioned or sent, like I send you out to do something. And so that's the term that gets more, is more debated. But not just for women. I mean, the apostle Paul, because Paul didn't know Jesus. in the flesh, he has to defend his title of apostle for his whole life because he didn't know him. And he says he had a mystical experience where he was sent commissioned by Jesus. And, you know, Peter and James are like, are you sure? I don't know. So that's what I mean by disciples.

So there's no doubt in my mind that Peter is the closest male disciple and Mary Madeline's the closest female disciple. The existence of Mary, she's the only person named in all four Gospels at the cross and at the tomb. I mean, that's the evidence we have, right? That's very, very strong evidence. In the Gospel of John, she has the individual resurrection appearance, which is only in John, but is very powerful and clearly very meaningful to the author of the Gospel of John. But none of that really implies, you know, romance or eros. that implication does come from non-canonical texts and non-canonical traditions.

So, you know, the Gospel of Philip, which is a text discovered also in Nagamati, would be one of the main ones here. But then you have other legends that, you know, develop later. So I don't know how much more we want to go with that. I'm probably not. I think it's a very, very spicy taste. but I think Dan Brown and the Da Vinci Code took it as far as it could go. That's fair. And even the Da Vinci Code, it only cites like two early Christian texts in one paragraph.

I mean, it's very, very minimal. You know, there's not a ton to go on there. Right. I think actually even the Mary Magdalene component, I was taught as a Catholic, was another indication why we believe in Mary's perpetual virginity and that she didn't have other children. Because she was, I believe, given, like, specific consideration when dealing with the body of Christ that I guess she was so close to the

crucifixion that Mary had kind of said like, hey, you can move him to the tomb or something to that effect. And that, oh, no, no, no, no, I'm mistaken. Jesus had said to Peter, perhaps, to take care of his mother. Yeah, to, well, to an unnamed disciple in the gospel of John. Okay. So, yeah, we're blending, abunding stories here, but in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, right? Mary Magdalene is at the tomb,

or I mean, at the cross, excuse me, at the cross. And in the gospel of John, in addition, Jesus' mother and his beloved disciple, or the disciple Jesus loved, is also at the cross. Traditionally is thought to be John, the author. So that's the woman, behold your son, son, behold your mother, seen of entrusting his mother to the care of this younger male disciple. But people say if Jesus had brothers, why wouldn't he give the care of his mother to his brothers?

Yeah, that would make a good question. That would make sense. I think a great question. Unless they were just dead beats, you know. Yeah, maybe. They were going up. They were busy. They'd go to India or something.

Okay. This one is very controversial. Maybe the most controversial on the list. but I have seen it percolating on YouTube the most. So maybe it would be good to dispel it. Okay. If we can. It has been popularized through some sources that will remain unnamed,

that Jesus was found with a young boy naked. I've never really heard this before. There was a gentleman named Ammon Hillman, who is a theologian, I guess, is at a universe. I'm not sure which. And he was kind of discussing. this idea and kind of popularizing this idea. I had never heard it before.

I'm curious, what is your understanding of this story? How can people, where does this come from and how do we rationalize it? Yes. This is a very complex tale. And so I'm just going to give a short version because I also would have to reread some things to get the full version. Fair. Because it's a lot, it's a modern story.

There's a lot going on here. But first, let me give you the canonical, the New Testament canonical source text or the moment in the gospel of Mark there is a very unusual scene to you know one or two verses in which there's a young man

who's in who's there when Jesus gets arrested and the young man is described as running off naked like they lose his garments and he runs away right totally unexplained

like in in the text it's led to all kinds of theories about what's going on. Yeah, so we can see here, one of those following Jesus was a young man wearing only a linen cloth when the people tried to grab him.

He left the cloth in their hands and ran away naked. Those who arrested Jesus led him to the house of the high priest. There you go. That's it. That's the canonical source. So what can you learn from that, Mark?

What can I learn from that? Like, very little. Almost nothing. It feels to me, as a scholar of the Gospel of Mark, like Mark expects the audience to know something about this story or know a little bit that they're filling in or maybe they knew who the person was

or maybe it's just a detail that is included to show the kind of chaos of the scene, right? The chaos of the arrest scene. I'll also say just in the canonical text, it doesn't indicate that he was naked with a child or a boy, which is the claim that people have thrown around. Well, the word is young man. That's where it comes.

Right. That's the guy who runs off naked, yeah. He runs off naked because he's being arrested. Like he's being, you know, restrained in some capacity. Totally. And leaves. It's not that he was with him naked, which the original claim is much more salacious. Right.

So you've just seen, that's it. That's all we have to go on in the New Testament. But it was always a curiosity for New Testament scholars and New Testament readers. Like what's going on in this story? He's only narrated, he's only characterized as a follower, someone who's following Jesus. Okay, so now you fast forward to the 20th century, a scholar named Morton Smith, who got famous for a book called Jesus the Magician, where he talks about Jesus in the context of ancient magic and ancient healing practices. Morton Smith publishes a bombshell revelation that he had discovered an early Christian text that was inserted. into a different text, an expansion on this scene,

an expansion that he publishes as the secret gospel of Mark, where there is an expanded story about Jesus and this young man that Morton Smith then argues has been cut out of canonical Mark because it was too salacious or too scandalous. Does he explain how he got his hands on this secret gospel? So he, I have to go back to remember all this. books published about this whole thing, of course. So when my, as I remember it, he, uh, you know, he, he, he copies it down, but then when he

goes later, when he doesn't take it out of the library because he doesn't have authorization to do that. He copies it down. And then when he goes back later, it's gone. Hmm. So it's, if you think it's a conspiracy, then it's a very convenient story. Right. So the, so people who think, there are, there are people who think then, okay, more.

Morton Smith made this story up because he's the sort of guy who likes the idea of Jesus having a young gay lover. Right. But then there were other scholars at the time who were like, Morton Smith would never do that. Morton Smith is like, we know him and why we don't think he would do that. So then, I mean, I wasn't alive. This is in like the 70s. So I wasn't alive at the time to know, but scholars were very in a lot of conflict about whether he was the sort of person who would just make this up. So that's where the secret gospel of Mark comes from. Now, in this letter that Morton

finds, is the account that is allegedly cut out? Is it far more salacious? Does it go on to say that there is, you know, a very clear, indiscriminate relationship? I don't think it gets beyond kissing and lying down. I can't remember for sure. I see. Yeah. I mean, I heavily implied sexual relationship. I feel like, I mean, I haven't thought about this in years because I feel like it was pretty definitively shut down as, you know, sadly for his legacy, something that Morton Smith made up and, you know, it was disproven. Did he have a motive? Was there ever any type of, uh, did he ever have some type of confession at any point in his life that?

I don't, I don't think so. I don't think so. Interesting. Okay. I mean, yeah, that's all I needed to hear. I like this. Um, so I mean, that's unfortunately going to be maybe the spiciest take of all. But, but, but. Well, but spiciest with plausibility, though, is more the Jesus Mary Magdalene, like, what's going on? Yeah, you need something. Like, there's just this kind of, like, you know, canonically, there's just this one line. I mean, to reference, though, to say that he was only in a linen cloth, I guess does that try to indicate poverty?

Is that what Mark is doing in the gospel? Most people don't have more than a couple garments. Right, but to say only a linen cloth would indicate that he was, you know, had even less than the average person. I guess at least that's what I would infer from that. I mean, it would not surprise me at all if someone only had one garment in the ancient world. Wouldn't surprise me at all. Yeah, that's fair. We live in the air of fast fashion, unfortunately, in throwaway culture.

But, you know, even not very long ago, it's not uncommon in our country for someone to just have a few articles of clothing. Yeah, that's fair. And especially if you're in a hot climate, just having one linen shirt, that could be what you got. And now the cops are trying to grab you and you wriggle out of it and run away. Yeah. And you got to go buy a new outfit and you're naked. It's so awkward.

So awkward. Yeah. I mean, typically, you got to go to the store. I mean, imagine if you're walking out, you take a shower, you're wearing your robe, and you come out on the street in Brooklyn, you know, to pick up your mail and then a cop tries to grab you for some reason. Or like, anybody tries to grab you.

Yeah. You know, you get a caught, not a cop, you get accosted by someone trying to mug you and you slip out of your robe and just run down driggs. Get on the L train. Yeah, that would be difficult. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick

because I'm sitting here in my beautiful tent, as you can see, every week, day in, day out. And people always ask, they say, Mark, how do I have a tent like that? I want to sit in a beautiful tent and invite a lover, a friend, you know, someone that I appreciate and adore. I want to give them a good time inside my tent.

Well, it's easy. Thanks to the good folks over at bluechew.com. That's right. Bluechu is the original OG brand offering chewable tablets. And what do these tablets do? Oh, I'm glad you asked. They are going to give you the, just a stronger, harder, and longer lasting sexual performance. That's right. They're going to help you pitch a tent any place, anywhere. And the best part, it's all done online. That means you don't have to go to a doctor's office and, you know, talk to them and be like, oh, you know, I'm feeling some type

of way. Look, this is not for people that are, you know, lacking necessarily. This is for people to want to have the best experience of their life, whether it's Valentine's Day, birthday, a funeral. Who knows, whenever you need it, you never know when you could use Blue Chew. And we have a special deal for the listeners of this program. That's right. Try your first month of Blue Chew for free. That's right. Completely free.

Mark, is it going to work for me? Is this? Hey, it's free. Why not just try it? Visit Bluotchew.com for more details and important safety information. And we thank Blue Chew for sponsoring this podcast. All right. Now let's get after it and let's get back to the show.

Okay, I have another hot take. This one, I don't even think is that hot, but I'm curious what you think. Jesus was a political revolutionary. That one is, where am I going to put that one? I'm going to, what's in between spicy and minty? Is there a middle? You could say mild?

It's mild. Yeah. Even closer to minty, you think? I think, I think, yeah, I'm closer to minty because there is there's such mixed evidence within within the Gospels. By political, also by political, we've got to define our terms here. We've got to be a good, good student professors,

students and professors here. By revolutionary, does one mean take up arms in violence? If by that, I would say, no. I don't think we have evidence that Jesus was designing a kind of insurgency against Roman occupation in Jerusalem, a Roman occupation of the region. If we mean by revolutionary something more like Gandhi, then I would say yes.

Right? Do you, like, you know what I mean? Like, how do we use the term? Yeah, just going on a hundred strike. Or if we mean something like Oscar Romero in El Salvador, the bishop of El Salvador, who is martyred by the, by the state, you know, if we mean, I think he was a revolutionary in a sense, a political

revolutionary in a sense, right, but not not with a gun on his shoulder or not with a weapon in his hand. I guess furthermore, was that his primary goal? This is, I guess, the, why the claims controversial, that his primary agenda was to overthrow Roman rule and the religious, you know, elements were secondary. I do not think it was his primary role, but I, I, I, I, I, I, I mean, I want to believe that great figures in history are capable of multiplicity of things, right? We know this in our own era. We have very impressive figures in history who, whatever, whatever is. Like, you can, Beyonce can win a country Grammy.

You get people who have Dr. Drake and sell sodas. The Beatles go from, I want to hold your hand to Sergeant Pepper's in 10 years. People do all kinds of diverse things in their lifetimes. And so I think that my view of personal of Jesus is that he is all these things. So he's a healer first, right? That's something people miss when they read the New Testament for some reason, because it's so clear. People are seeking him out as a healer. And no one's questioning that he can do it.

It's amazing. Right. His opponents don't even question it. They question why he can do it. Where do you get the power from? But no one's saying like, you're faking. That's a great point. You know, he's a healer.

And I don't know how to explain that as a modern person. I have a modern scientific mindset that's the air I breathe. So I think in that way. But I'm very open to mystical power. I'm open to Reiki. I'm open to acupuncture. I'm open to the kinds of ways that even meditation, and mindset can have physical effects, you know, in the chemical, in the biochemical world.

So who knows what he's doing, but people seem to believe that it's working. So he's a healer first. He's a, he's a wisdom teacher, I would say second. So he is crafting stories that are of kind of narrative theology that he's delivering to people as an itinerant, you know, quasi-homeless person by his own account, homeless as an itinerant person delivering stories that confront them to reflect on their life, to reflect on their ethics, to reflect on how they treat the poor, to reflect on nature, to reflect on what God asks to them.

Those are the top two things that Jesus is doing. He's healing in his teaching. Now, how does this transition into politics? Well, he's a highly ethical person, and he believes in God's sovereignty. that God is in charge, right? He is absolutely positive of divine sovereignty. So that is going to have a clash with political rulers of the day, who in his mind are, and most people's minds were not ethical,

were highly exploitative, highly exploitative of the poor, expropriating people's land, having all kinds of oppressive taxation regimes. Tax isn't even the right word, because it's so exploitative, it's not like, tax. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's systematic. So you have feudalism. Oppression of resource. Presion of resources. Yeah. Rome is an extractive empire. It's, it's, it's not, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's an empire that the different kinds of empires in world history. Rome really wants to extract resources from the periphery and bring them to the center and they don't so much care whether you speak Latin or,

you know, read Virgil. Like, that's not, they don't, you know, so much care about that, right? Whereas, Whereas like Alexander the Great did want you to read Homer and build Greek architecture, right? He was a cultural imperialist. He was a different kind of person, which is why they're even speaking Greek in the New Testament, of course. So he, when he's teaching then about when he's teaching in parables and he starts talking about the kingdom of God all the time. And then that kingdom of God is giving visions of human life that are in conflict with the ethics. and the power structures of the world that's on earth, and then he brings that to cities. Inevitably, you're going to have some conflict

because he's using his primary metaphor is political, right? So this is what someone like Pilot hears. He's walking around, someone's walking around talking about the new, the coming kingdom of God. Well, there's only one king, there's only one monarch in Pilate's mind, and that's the emperor, right? That's in his day, Tiberius. and so now someone's talking about a new king.

They also had a client, what we call a client king in Herod, meaning an appointed kind of local king who's going to collaborate and kind of do what Rome wants and sometimes push back, but mostly do what Rome wants. So there's like, from the Roman perspective, they're like, we've already got this kind of client king who's helping us out in Judea. And we already have our real monarch, our emperor back in Rome.

We don't call him a king, though, because Rome doesn't like that. It's an emperor. Yeah, yeah. It's like military term. And now we've got these other figures from kind of the countryside who are talking about God's rule and God's kingdom. And then when that gets associated with David especially, then that like closes the loop for them. Like, okay, this guy thinks the God of Israel, their God is going to bring back sovereignty.

of their land, they're going to get their land back, and someone is going to claim the mantle of their archetypal King David, and then rule their land again. That's why I say, it's a yes and a no for the political revolutionary part. Like, he's healer first, teacher second, but some of the ways that he's teaching veer towards political language and the interpretation by others for sure that looks political, I would say. I like that answer. So yes, kind of a political revolutionary, but not as a priority. That's, that's my, my view, yeah. Mild? Medium? I'll go, yeah, I think it's mild. I think it's mild, actually. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I have another one.

The virgin birth was a mistranslation and that the Hebrew word Alma and Isaiah means a young woman, not necessarily a virgin, suggesting that Jesus's birth was natural, not miraculous. I know this might be, you know, Old Testament. No, no, that's fine. But I'm curious if you've heard this claim before. I'm going to say it's definitely, definitely heard the claim. I'm going to say it's minty. I'm going to say it's minty.

And here's why. I think there's no way to distinct. So what is the difference between a young woman and a virgin in the, in the Mediterranean world, not very much. Most, like, I think it's our modern mindset that makes this more confusing than it needs to be.

Okay, so our bodies give us indicators of when we're adults. Our culture has decided to ignore them. Our culture has decided that you can be 30 and still not know how to do your laundry

or still not have a job or whatever. That is a completely unusual world historic abomination, like that that we would just ignore puberty, adolescence, coming of age, right? Many, many cultures, traditional cultures throughout history, you have a coming of age right around puberty, like a bar mitzvah, or, you know, or like a hunt, and you take a few days, maybe a month, and then you start to phase into adulthood, right? for young women, mostly for,

mostly for, I was going to say for better or worse, but it's mostly bad for them in terms of their agency, women go through puberty a little bit earlier, and some of them are betrothed as early as like 10 years old.

Betrothed then when they hit puberty, then they are marriageable at 12 or something like that. I see. St. Augustine even talks about. I mean, we think of St. Augustine, or at least I do, is like,

St. Augustine, he's one of the greatest theologians and philosophers in all of history. But you also have to reckon with the fact that he was betrothed to a prepubescent person. But that's not that's not our place to, I guess, judge morally, but that's

the culture of the time. Pretty weird though, right? Yeah. When you think about it that way. Yeah. Yeah, it is it's one of those things where you're like, okay, there's like a technical justification.

That's why, like, comedy because you can kind of make the, make the jokes. But then as I sit here today in 2025, I'm not about to, you know, make some type of judgment call that our current ages of adulthood shouldn't be such. Yeah. But I can also recognize that historically, it was not always that that way. I've also heard the claim that children, I should say,

or maybe like pre-pubescent teenagers, whatever, that time frame is, we're going to puberty later. Yeah. And that, like, boys and girls were having puberty around, like, 16, 17, sometimes even 18. Right. Due to, I guess, like, the, you know, food and things like that. Yeah, and probably other chemical factors, too, I would say. Endocrine disruption.

Yeah, we're learning a lot more about what's in our eating chicken that's been, you know, 90% fed soy. Microplastics and other things in our water supply and our soil. So regardless, it's an. interesting challenge that we can look at someone like St. Augustine and be like, oof. Right. Do you know, do we, do we know how old his betroth wife was? Is it explicitly said or do they just say that she's? Yeah, it is. I mean, it's been a long time since I, I could not tell you, uh, chat GPT would be able to tell you faster probably. Okay. But I want to say it was like 10 to 12. She was 10 when the arrangement was made. Yeah,

there you go. Uh, but she was two years below the legal age of marriage. And so I'm assuming once she actually reaches 12, then she's able to be married. But you kind of put it on, you get dibs. I should have been confident because I thought it was 10. Yeah, you got to trust you. But I got thrown off with the puberty thing. Yeah, I know, it happens. Lose your confidence.

Yeah, yeah, no, it's in there. You got to believe. That's interesting. So, yeah, we kind of got to grapple with that. So that's my way of thinking about, like, I think that is this a virgin or a young woman question in the text? I'm like, I don't think there's a difference. I mean, the term, like, in Greek, the term Parthanas means virgin.

it also means young woman. Like it's a woman who's not marriageable yet. And those things were one of the same. The idea of like out of marriage fornication would be pretty strange, I guess. Yeah. You know, you don't, yeah. So, yeah, I guess that's what homosexuality is for. Hell yeah.

Well, in the Greek world. Now we're talking, dude. I was in a frat. I get it. You get the boys together. It gets wild. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's interesting.

So, yeah, if you can't. Yeah, if you're not going to have sex outside of marriage, but literally, you have a guy that you're, you know, maybe you're on a military campaign with or... I'm trying to keep my job work, you know. That's fair. That's fair. You don't understand anything. Okay. Well, cut to me. But what I would say, what I would say, though, about the other pieces that as people, as you and I live post-1968, that is post-the-pill, we struggle in our culture to really understand. what what the bifurcation of sex and procreation

has done to the mind and has done to our sense of everything. Yeah, pre-sexual revolution. Those were the same thing. Yeah, I mean, every sexual act is a potential procreation, and then there's consequences, right? There's not, it's not easy to deal with that.

Right. It's still not easy to deal with that, but it's very difficult to do with that in an ancient culture. You don't have that, many options and it disrupts many, many things about one's extended family life, about their economic life, about their social status in their village or town. It's quite risky. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So in the text, technically a young woman and virgin mean

the same thing, but that's more of a, I guess, an antiquated binding of words because they didn't need to create two words for the same thing. Right. That makes sense. Later, when you do get, in the Roman world, you get some consecrated virgins, and in early Christianity, you get consecrated kind of voluntary, ascetic virgins. So the word does expand more in meaning, people who are entering into that voluntarily, which is also interesting because it's really a form of sexual revolution.

But it's by not having sex. Oh, right. It's the primary way for women in the Roman Empire, in the Mediterranean world, to have agency over their own lives is to say, I'm not going to be controlled by the cycle of birth, of sex and birth, which also carries the threat of mortality every single time. Right. So the only way to gain an education is to opt out of that cycle because you have you have to be. You have to be, well, for the Roman Empire to have replacement rate, just to replace its people, every woman of childbearing age has to be pregnant like, I don't know, five times maybe, just to get two births to adulthood.

That's just a rough estimate. Right. But if you think about every single person living like, and you figure some of them are not able to conceive, so that's just the average that you're trying to get to. Yeah. This is what leads to, you know, women opting out and trying to opt out. and seeing a spiritual path to voluntary celibacy where they can then have freedom over their own lives,

a little bit freedom over their own minds. And as the gospel of Thomas says, be more like a man. Right, that's right. So for women, we haven't talked about women much besides Mary Magdalene, but one of the best things to be in this period, especially in the Roman Empire, with its laws, inheritance laws,

is to marry a wealthy man and then have him die pretty quickly. Yeah, it sounds awesome. Because you don't have to get remarried. Yeah. And so when we read about widows, like in the New Testament, a widow can be 18. Oh, right. A widow can be 20. Oh, that's interesting.

We always have in our mind that a widow is 70 years old. Yeah. But no, not at all. So you look at when you see like in the New Testament, when you see women who are named but unattached to a man like in the book of acts, There's a woman named Lydia, for example. Lydia's in Philippi, and it says that they are meeting at her house and that she's a dealer in purple cloth, and she seems to be running, basically running a successful business and has a big enough place to host people, like hosts an early church, right? Almost certainly, we can't prove it, but almost certainly she's a wealthy widow who inherited a business and is like, sweet.

Yeah. I'm going to study some languages. I'm going to run my business. I'm going to listen to these philosophers. I'm going to... It's like my dream life, too. Yeah, that's kind of what I would want to happen. Marry some dude, have him die,

and then just gets it right off in the sunset. I mean, that's like kind of ideal. Yeah, okay, that's interesting. So, yeah, I guess this... Yeah, it's hard for us to understand that those words have different meaning. But I guess when people point this out, you could say, look, the Greek is the same way.

You know, this word means the same thing. Yeah. In antiquity, those things. were synonymous, seems minty to me. I think it's minty. How about this idea? Jesus taught reincarnation. Have you ever heard this?

Can you Google that, Gabe? I mean, I would say it's an eight out of ten spicy. Okay. That's up there. Yeah, again, I mean, similar to the political revolutionary concept, I would want to define, define what we mean by that? I mean, there's no doubt that there's belief in an afterlife. And so what do we mean by afterlife?

There's a number of options for belief in the afterlife in the Mediterranean world. You could be a nihilist. You can believe basically there's nothing. And we have a lot of evidence that people had that belief. You can study this through epitaphs, for example. There's a famous epitaph that was repeated a lot, mostly in Latin. It's repeated often enough that it gets abbreviated in Latin. like RIP, right, for us.

And, but spelled out, it's, I was not, I was, I am not, I care not. Hmm. Like, I didn't used to exist. Then I existed. Now I don't exist. I don't care. Wow. They had that even back then.

Yeah, it was idiomatic. It's kind of nihilism about life after death, right? So that's very common. You have epitaphs that say things like, take heart no one is immortal that's like a stock epitaph you can get on your tombstone you can you can hire the guy to carve that he's carved it a million times 20 this week take heart no one is immortal it's just a reminder to the grieving that like no one

this forever momentamori or keep it moving exactly it'll or or one of them will be like uh melu Pes uh udesa thanatos which is in greek don't don't grieve literally don't grieve No one is immortal. So these are the common, some of the common beliefs going around. Now, you also have the belief in Hades or a kind of shadowy underworld where people like, I don't really know what happens there. I think there's some post-mortal existence, but I don't really have dogma about it or doctrine about it.

Then you have the kind of Greek mythology world of crossing the river sticks and the Legion fields and these kind of things. Then you have a little bit of evidence for astral immortality, people who believe that all these things up in the sky, these are souls and these are stars and, you know, holy, holy souls or righteous souls get to become like the stars. And so you'll sometimes see stars on on epitaphs or on commemorative items or stories of comets at people's funeral and like, this is their soul, right? Going up, Julius Caesar, an example of that. So this is kind of your set to like, what are the available beliefs? Now, the Jewish people had a different one, which is

the resurrection of the body, resurrection of the body in the Jewish expectation as a communal event at the end of time. Okay, so that's the world into which Jesus is born and Paul is born and Mary Magdalene is born and others. But what happens in early Christianity is that they come to the faith that this has happened. It only happened to one person so far, but it happened. And so that's where you start, that's where then you get some of the split. from, you know, from Jewish theology where some people are like, well, no, we don't think that did happen.

If that did happen, why isn't everyone else raising from the dead? Like, what's the next piece? These are the questions asked in first Thessalonians of Paul in the New Testament. They're like, some people have died in our community. What's next? You know, where are they?

Where do they go? Very valid question. If you're coming from a traditional Greco-Roman belief system about immortality, or about mortality. and then, you know, and then it comes to this. So amid all of that, do we have ideas of reincarnation?

Yeah, I wonder if there's any specific verses where maybe, like, I just see that he talks to maybe Elijah or John the Baptist about this idea, perhaps, a reincarnation. I don't have specific verses. Well, oh, yeah, I mean, the idea would be like if people say that Jesus is Elijah, come back from the dead. or like John the Baptist is Elijah has come back from the dead. Is that kind of what you mean? Perhaps, yeah. Yeah.

So I mean, I, I suppose, I mean, yeah, I never thought of that as reincarnation. I guess I just thought of it as like, you are the second version of this prior person, you know, you're like. Right. You carry on his legacy. You carry on this legacy. But there's no doubt that Elijah is, you know, is the most prominent northern Israelite prophet in the tradition. And so, you know, they're calling upon that legacy quite frequently.

And I think Jesus himself, you know, is characterized in some ways that resemble Elijah. Interesting. And in Jesus' own synagogue sermon in Luke chapter 4 when he's talking about, yeah, talking about his own mission to his own mission, his own ministry and kind of laying out a chart. for his ministry, he refers to Elijah and says that, you know, in the days of a famine, Elijah went to, you know, went out to, you know, preach the way that I'm going to preach and to heal the way that I'm going to heal and to provide these blessings that I'm going to provide. But I never really thought of that as incarnation, reincarnation. I thought of it as a, because I think,

when I think of a reincarnation, I think of it on the traditional South Asian model of a chain of being right that you die become a new being forget your past memories right and that and that you move among species too like that you're not just it's not like human just human to human not only move along species move along

timelines perhaps yeah and then move along multiverses according to some Hindu tradition yeah I find I never considered this like when thinking about reincarnation it's like I always assumed there's a forward trajectory but it's like you could die today and then reincarnate as, you know, King Henry the 8th.

Wow. Or you could reincarnate in a different timeline outside of this present timeline because the Brahma, you know, this divine being, if you're a monotheistic Hindu, that, you know, there's all powerful, all omnipresent outside of time. Just a diversion. But I never considered that when thinking about a Hindu reincarnation. I was like, whoa. That was wild.

Yeah. I mean, I think the close, I don't know, the closest we would get to that in early Christianity is the idea of pre-existing souls, I would say. Where is that talked about? A lot of places. I mean, it's a big question of like, besides post-mortal existence, you know, pre-mortal existence. Like, do souls exist before they're embodied? And if so, where are they?

And do they have individuated identities, you know, like the, actually that the animated movie soul kind of plays on this too, if you ever saw it. Yeah, of course. But in the gospel of John, we have this opening prologue kind of overture to the gospel of John. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God. We have this what's called Logos theology of a, Logos is the Greek word for word, where you have seemingly a pre-existent, some kind of intermediary being that then takes flesh and incarnates. and the word became flesh and dwelt among us in John 114. So for that to be legible to anyone,

the listener, the first century listener, first century reader must have to have some sense of they've thought about these kind of things before, right? And you can imagine you're sitting around a campfire in the first century in a desert in Egypt and you're looking at the stars and it's only natural to think about, oh, my mom just gave birth to my sister and like, where was she before that?

You know, was she in a star above and, like, came down into Earth or whatever. And so there's all kinds of reflection in platonic philosophy and cosmology about these kind of things. That's so much more poetic than the truth. Right? Like, what was that quote? Like, oh, how I wish I never knew astronomy when I looked upon the stars. Yeah. This idea that you could look and see the souls of your ancestors or maybe your sister that's not born in.

Or that in some parts of the world that come out of the ocean, not the stars, right? If you live near the water and you're bathing all the time and, you know, these souls enter your body. That's... Never heard that. Yeah, I mean, they're anthropologists who studied various groups that that was their cosmology. That was their belief, which... Interesting. And why not?

Why doesn't that make sense, you know? Yeah. Okay. Gabe, were there any other verses about Jesus talking about reincarnation? That seems like a stretch to me, but always an interesting, an interesting idea. Yeah. Let's see. What is it? Okay, let me see.

No, I mean, I guess he talks about sort of his reincarnation, but it's not really a reincarnation. That's not the same concept, really, no. Interesting. Okay, and then I guess being born again in John 3, more of a spiritual rebirth. Yeah, born again is, well, it's a double meaning in the story there, with uh in john three familiar with the greek there it's highly relevant the story actually doesn't make sense unless you know the greek it's one it's one of the finally i'm going to make it make sense no there's very few i mean there's very few times where i would say that where i would say truly

you can't understand what's going on without it but but i think this is one so john loves wordplay the gospel of john there's there's a number of double entendres in john there's dramatic irony there's a lot of good stuff going on in terms of the literature. And so this is in John 3, famous, famous section. Jesus meets with a man named Nicodemus, who's introduced at the time as a Pharisee, but clearly someone who's open-minded, like yourself, he's bringing Jesus into a tent like this. And they meet under the cover of nights because he wants to learn about what this new rabbi is up to. And in the process of the conversation, they talk about, that someone needs to be born.

The Greek word is anothen. They need to be born onothan. And Nicodemus is confused and says, how can someone like be born when they're old? Can they enter their mother's womb again? That's because the word, the verb anothen can mean again. Like one more time, right?

Another time. But the verb or the word anothen can also mean from above. and Jesus says, no, no, no, they're born onoth then, the other way, like the vertical way. So not the horizontal temporal way, but the vertical way, they're born from above. And then he goes into, you know, they're born of water and spirit

and kind of leads into the baptismal idea of rebirth. That's really clever. And the, the onoth, I mean, we do this in English too, but if you're a native speaker, you don't think about that are prepositions, like often have multiple meanings, you know? So, for example,

before is one. Before has a temporal and a spatial meaning. So, you know, I had lunch before I came to camp. Right. But I kneel before the king. And we just, we're native speakers, so we don't think about that. It's that kind of idea.

Interesting. Right? Where that's a, yeah. So Anothan, the Greek word is doing, has both of those meanings. and the way Jesus teaches in John, he does this a number of times where he presents an idea

that kind of trips up the listener and that it allows Jesus to expand further and work with their misunderstanding and then give a longer explanation. It's just a style in John or the way Jesus is narrated in John. It's very clever that he's able to phrase things, create confusion,

and then break the confusion. almost like a joke in a way or almost like a, I don't know, like a magic trick sort of. Like you're like saying something, leading them astray kind of intentionally and then revealing what you actually meant. It's really a clever double entendre that ties it all together.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, and he does this outside of John too in the parables, but not quite as often, but one of the best ones, I think, one of the most clever teachings he has is a parable called, usually called the Pharisee and the tax collector. which only happens once is in the gospel of Luke,

and I'll just tell it real quick and then tell you why I think it's a very clever teaching move. So it's a teaching about, like, what true righteousness is, what does it mean to be holy? And this Pharisee, who thinks of himself as very holy, is at the temple praying, and there's also a tax collector there praying. And tax collector is a very negative term because,

not because like the IRS today or like we're democratically, electing and our congresspeople who declare taxes. So we've only ourselves to blame, in a sense, but they are being imposed from a foreign occupying government. So the person collecting taxes is really like collecting tribute to a military occupation, right? And the Romans are hiring, in many cases, hiring locals to do the collection. So it's like one of your own townspeople who's taking your grain and your coinage. and delivering it to a foreign, distant government. Like a capo.

Yeah. And then they're probably skimming off the top a percentage for themselves because they're putting themselves in it. So that's a very, very negative person, right? And so you've got. You're a fed. You're like an informant. Like, yeah, you flipped on your own people to sell them out and then take extra for

yourself. It's like the most despicable thing you could do. So that's, that's why the story is placed this way, right? You've got like this person who thinks of it was very holy and some other person who they think of as very, very negative morally and low social status. So they're both there and the tax collector is humble. The tax collector like knows that they're a sinner and they're down on themselves and, you know, I'm so, I'm so terrible and I need mercy. And the Pharisees looking over and it's like, I'm so glad I'm not like this tax collector. Like I'm so glad basically like I'm

you made me how I am, you know, that I'm so righteous. And I'm just going to continue to be that way. Okay, why do I think this is a brilliant story? Because when you're listening to it, when you're reading it, what happens to you is that you start thinking to yourself, I'm so glad I'm not like that Pharisee. Right. Like, oh, I'm not like that guy.

So arrogant. Yeah, it would never be so arrogant. So the story actually becomes a mirror and, like, draws you in where you become the negative figure in the story. Oh, wow. And then you have to catch yourself and be like, wait a minute, I'm actually sitting here in prayer with this story thinking about how I'm so glad

I'm not like the story's character. Who's so glad. He's so glad he's not like the story's character. Oh, that's very clever. You know, so, you know, this is why these stories are told and retold forever is that, you know, they have a, they have this,

longevity because they put each individual into into like little moments of crisis and revelation about themselves. They're existentialist in a lot of, I would say in a lot of ways. I have another one. What's up people? Quick announcement. If you are a fan of Camp Gagnon or Religion Camp, I have great news because we're dropping History Camp. That's right. This is the channel where we're going to be exploring the most interesting, fascinating, controversial topics from all time throughout all history, right? You probably know about Benjamin Franklin, I don't know, Thomas Jefferson, Nikola Tesla. Interesting figures from history, and you probably

learned about in school and they were pretty boring, but not here. No. As you know, I was raised by a conspiracy theory, so I'm going to be diving deep into all of the interesting, strange, occult, and secretive societal relationships that all of these famous influential men from our shared past have. So if you're interested, please go ahead and subscribe to the YouTube channel. in the description as well as the comments. And if you're on Spotify, this doesn't really apply to you, but these episodes will be dropping as well. Just go ahead and give us a high rating

because it really helps the show. Now let's get back to it. I appreciate you, you humoring many of my bizarre hot takes. I feel like we've gotten to the bottom of many of them. Now, to get a little bit more deep cut, there is a profound delineation between a Catholic Mass and a Protestant church service. And I would say the most significant,

significant is an idea that is a transubstantiation, the Eucharist. Yeah. And it is probably the most important Catholic ritual, maybe the most frequent. Yeah. It is of the most sacred sacraments. And it is this idea that Christ exists in a spiritual nature inside of this, you know, edible piece of bread that Catholics consume as well as wine every Sunday at Mass. Yeah.

And that the spirit of Christ actually exists within these things. that it's transubstantiated. And this is done just as Christ did it at, you know, his last supper prior to being crucified. So I'm curious, based on the biblical text of the Last Supper, what do we know about that moment that Christ shared with his disciples? And why does that sort of parlay to how Catholics practice today? Sure. So the, I want to get into this by thinking about how, ancient people dealt with meals more generally and how they dealt with meals related to

gods more generally because I think this is important to to kind of unfurling the mystery at the heart of the Catholic Eucharist and also the Greek Orthodox Orthodox Eucharist is very holy in this way too. So let's move outside of Judaism and Christianity for a sec and just let's go to like a Greek temple in the ancient world. Okay. So let's say that let's say that you have a brother who got sick and then you you pool some money together and you sent your brother to go to go live at the temple of Asclepius for a month, which is a Greek god of healing, and your brother's going to live there and be with their priests

and have some dream interpretation and eat their food and pray their prayers. And then a month later, your brother gets better. It's amazing, Mark. And your family's like, we're going to go rent out a dining room at the temple. of Asclepius, and we're going to sacrifice a lamb, have some beautiful baby lamb chops, lemon, rosemary, you know. And everyone's going to be there, and we're going to give thanks to Asclepius, the God that your brother has been healed. Okay. Now, when you go there, that animal is partially sacrificed to the God on an altar, and then the rest of it is cooked

and distributed, and you eat it. So what are you doing in this event? This is totally normal, right? It's a normal part of culture. Animal, bloody animal sacrifice and grain offerings are happening every village, everywhere, every day, all over the entirety of the Mediterranean region. It is completely normal. And it is the primary way in which gods and humans meet each other. This is the mediation method, right, is through this logic and ritual of sacrifice. So when you say the prayer of thanks to Asclepius for your brother's healing and you take a bite of these beautiful baby lamb chops, part of which was sacrificed on the altar, you are in a way communing with the God.

Right. This is the cultural surroundings in which we think, I would say in which we should think about these stories and meal cultures. So for now, there's a big leap, though, because Jesus is a human. Right, right? So there's a big leap there to say that when Jesus says in the New Testament, take eat, this is my body, drink this, this is my blood of the new covenant, right? It's a big leap then to say for the rest of time when Christians are eating this bread and drinking this wine that they are communing with Jesus as a God.

or Jesus' body in the way that they might have been communing with pre-Christian or other Greco-Roman gods. But I want to establish that because the logic of sacrifice and the experience of communion was not invented by Christians. They're participating in a very important mode of divine human relationship at the time. So if you go ask a second century, third century, four century Christian, you just take a poll, you go to Syria, you go to, you go to Jerusalem, you go to Rome, you go to North Africa and you ask them, what do you think you're doing at this time? When you do this ritual, I mark, I think you're going to get a lot of different answers from Christians. So I'm not going to be satisfying to you by saying there's just going to be one answer. I think some of them would say we are commemorating Jesus' death. This is a funerary meal.

It's like a meal that we eat at a graveside for our grandfather and it's to commemorate him. Or like the death of a martyr. I think some of them would say we are drinking blood of sacrifice that signifies that we have a new covenant with God. It's a covenant meal. It's a covenant kind of renewal meal that we have to remind ourselves of our covenant with God and to recommit ourselves to our covenant with God. I think some of them would say the didache, a first century text that's not in the New Testament, a very ancient text. Didake seems to imply that it's a grain sacrifice, not a blood sacrifice, that the experience is more like, the gathering of a harvest from the field and sacrificing part of the grain and Thanksgiving to God. Like the bread part of it.

Right. And so then that's a different image. It's like this is more of an eschatological harvest image. This is like the harvest at the end of time that we are celebrating a bit in advance and trying to participate in our hope that we will be raised at the end from this harvest.

But what text is that? It's called the Didache in Greek, D-I-D-A-C-H-E. And it has a, Last Supper. No, it even better. It has a Eucharistic prayer. It's our oldest Eucharistic version of Eucharistic prayer, meaning the prayer over the bread

and wine. And is it utilized? In what, what do you mean? Like, is it used in the present? It's a modern, it was a modern discovery. It's an ancient text that was discovered in the late 1800s, and it's considered to be our oldest version of a liturgical prayer in Christianity. And it has some very very.

archaic language, it talks about the vine of David, and it has this kind of, like I said, it seems to have a kind of a grain sacrifice idea focusing on the bread and the harvest and seeds that are, you know, like things have been gathered from the mountainside into one. That's fascinating. And then you have other, so I'm giving you a diversity approach, which is my mode. You're not learning. But then we have other evidence from second and third century Christianity, where, especially in the East, where some of their.

Eucharistic meals don't have wine. They just have the bread or bread and water. And so then you're like, well, could they have been thinking of it as a bloody sacrificial meal or like that kind of communion if they weren't even using the wine because they thought that they weren't using the wine because they wanted to be more ascetic and more self-denying? But what was in their mind when they were having this meal, you know? So when we really, here's what I would say, though, when we really start to get to a strongly sacrificial kind of transubstantiation belief system, I would say I'm confident around 250. I would say I'm confident that in Western Christianity, North Africa, when I say North Africa, I mean like modern day Tunisia, Algeria, that region. Okay.

Like, so there, can I tell you just a story here? Because I think a lot of things come together here. So there is Christianity's growing throughout the second century, early third century, to a point where a Roman emperor named Decius in around the year 250, um, it has the first,

what's considered the first empire-wide persecution of Christians. Okay, the first, the first big one. Now, was he intending only to target, Christians, probably not. He's intending to shore up, I guess you could say patriotism, shore up Roman, the Roman ethos, right? He feels like things are fraying a bit. And so he wants

everyone in the whole boundaries of the Roman Empire to make a sacrifice to Rome and its gods. And you have to prove it. So you have to get a receipt in Latin, a Labellis, a receipt. I see how this is the problem. Yeah. So now, the vast majority are still polytheists and so they have no problem doing this. It's like, no big deal. I'll go to my village sacrifice. I will, you know, participate in it.

I'll get my labellus, my receipt, move on with my day. Like the early Christians were polytheists. Sorry, sorry, no, I'm non-Christian and non-Jews. The non-most people are polytheists, so they're fine with us. The pantheon of Roman gods. Well, we would call an open pantheon, right? Like, there's more gods and we even know, and more can come in.

It's not a big deal. I'm happy to participate in a sacrifice to the Roman emperor and the gods of Rome. It's fine. But, you know, quite famously, Jews and Christians aren't not into that. They're monotheist and they're non-idolatrous and they don't want to participate because they believe it's real. They believe that if they do this, they are actually communing with the God that they are sacrificing to, right? It's not just like cross my fingers behind my back and, you know, eat some meat from this altar. It's like, no, this is actually coming into my body and affecting

my soul. My soul. And it is also telling the God that I think that God's real. Like it's or that there's a reverence or a, yeah, you have respect. An honor. And so, so this is a huge moment because Christianity had now gotten big enough where there's a lot of, you know, it's a lot of, of people I figure out what to do. So there's a number of options in this scenario. One is, if you're a Christian, let's say, one is you just go do it anyway. So you just go, maybe you cross your fingers behind your back and say, I hope God you don't judge me for this, but I have a wife and kids and a job and a farm and I don't want to get in trouble and I don't want to get, who knows what they're going to do to me. Another option is you can bribe someone either to do it for you and

get your receipt with your name on it, like having someone take the SAT for you in the old days or whatever, or write my paper for me. Yeah. Or like bribing an officer. Or you could try to bribe an official just to get the, how much is this going to cost me? It's risky.

Right? I'm not going to eat the meat, but probably it's very risky because they're likely going to be very, very patriotic to Rome and they're not going to like that. You could flee. Like you could go live with your uncle in the wilderness for a little while, and it passes through and maybe then you get out of it. Or you could stand up to them.

You could stand up to the Roman official in your village, in your town, and say, I believe in the living God, the Lord of Heaven and Earth, who cannot be frozen in this statue, your gods aren't real. I'm not doing it. And see what happens. And guess what, Mark? Some of them become martyrs. But some of them don't.

some of them are allowed to live. I'm going to blow your mind. Are you ready? So they had confessed their faith. Right? So they come to be called confessors. Okay? Here's where it's going to blow your mind

because you know your Catholic terminology. When you go to confession, the person who hears your confession is called a confessor. This is why. It goes all the way back to this. Oh, wow. You ready? So a confessor in 250,

is someone who stood up and said, I'm not eating meat and drinking wine from this sacrifice to the God of Rome and the emperor of Rome. I'm a Christian, I don't do that. Now, let's say you're someone who paid a bribe. You're a Christian who paid a bribe. Now, you want to go back to church a month later.

Are they going to let you in? Maybe, maybe not. They'd be like, no, man, you paid a bribe, and you communed with... Right. Either you communed with the Roman God. No, no, I just lied. Right.

Like, oh, then you lied and you weren't actually about it. Yeah. Or you fled. You ran. Mm-hmm. And now you come back. Now, let's make this even bigger. Let's say you were like the priest or the bishop and you fled.

Yeah. No. But now you come back. You can't come back. And some regular person stood up and confessed. Now, they have more authority in the church than you, in your local church than you do. and they can forgive you. So they're your confessor.

Interesting. They can absolve you of your sin that you participated in an idolatry and communed with the wrong God and let you back, let you back into the church. So hold on. It gets even better. So there's a communal element to this. Yeah. So this is why I set it up with meals generally is because we have, we meaning post in light. Enlightenment, rationalistic, Protestant culture, folks, we don't think this stuff is real often.

Like, or we have this notional idea that like our mind and soul are separated from what our body's doing. You know, and like, oh, I can just not believe that that's a God and I'll just eat it anyway. Right. But so many people did not have that mindset, right? It was a real communion and had to be, you kind of confess and be absolved for the. this. So, so what here's another thing that happens at this time is we start to get the leaders of Christian communities called priests in a much higher rate because a priest in the ancient Mediterranean world in all the languages, really, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, it primarily meant a

presider at a sacrifice. It didn't mean you're a good person. It didn't mean you're give good advice, you know, it didn't mean any of these things. Mostly heredity. associated with temples or shrines, you're presiding in the sacrifice. So Christians until 250 didn't really call people priests. They called them elders, deacons, bishop, like, we're for overseer or the, you know, disciple, shepherd. These are a lot of terms, but not priests

because they weren't doing actual sacrifice, actual sacrifice, you know, which has a meaning that's very specific. on an altar, on a shrine at a temple, whatever. But now when they have this conflict that was started by the Roman emperor, now they have this conflict, and they start to say, wait a minute, no, we do. We do have a different sacrifice. And we have our different priests. And it's not the one that you have.

And now we've shown it. Enough of us kind of stood up to you. And you actually get a blossoming of what comes to be the sacramental worldview and the sacramental system where you get ideas of, I don't know, I wouldn't use the word transubstantiation for that period, but you get these ideas of like the deep reality of the ritual, that this is not a notional, just a notional idea. It is not just symbolic. It's like lives are on the line for this ritual. You also get the idea of confession and absolution in a community that comes in more strongly.

And then eventually through all of this, you get questions about baptism and rebaptism. It's like, what if someone was, what if someone who baptized you, Mark, is someone who capitulated in this moment? Then people are like, well, is your baptism valid? Yeah. And they have to ask that question.

And they ultimately decide it is. But it's a real live question that they're arguing about. And so then they decide that baptism it's not dependent on the holiness of the baptizer. So anyone can baptize. So anyone can baptize. Water and form, maybe, that's it. Right.

The Trinity and water is what, in the Catholic tradition is what it is. But the reason I wanted to talk about 250 is that so many of what comes to be, like the Catholic Sacramento worldview, comes out of this period of conflict. And they're all sort of connected. They all end up being kind of connected, right?

Oh, that's interesting. Because, yeah, in order, to have this time of persecution, you have to have, one, monotheism, you have to reject this whole pantheon of gods, and then you have to have some type of understanding of sacrifice and your own sacrifice that is exclusive to your God, you know, Jesus Christ. And then the willingness to reject that, so then you have martyrdom that is obviously a very, you know, important theme throughout Christian or Catholic theology. and then confession being tied to the rejection of the, you know, wrongful sacrifice. Yes.

Yeah. And then, I mean, I'm trying to think of other sacraments, marriage. Is it really a sacrament? They certainly didn't think so. Yeah. They didn't think so. That was just a civil, civil transaction, you know. Right, even in that time.

Yeah. It was uniting, you know, fiefdoms or whatever, trying to keep our goats together. What are the other saccharac? The other Catholic sacrams. Can you pull this up? Well, Holy Orders, ordination, anointing of the sick, or last rites. So holy orders would come from. And then confirmation kind of comes later as well.

Yeah, I'm curious about confirmation. But before that one, I can imagine that, you know, holy orders and priesthood is obviously going to be also connected to the sacrifice. Yeah, so there's different traditions that emerge kind of regionally. So I always try to take a regional approach to early Christianity because what's happening and on the Euphrates River in Syria is different than what's happening in, you know, Rome. They're not communicating all that much at this time period about this kind of stuff. But it certainly was more democratic than the Catholic Church is now for these kind of things.

Like, even in, you know, even in the end of the third and fourth century, you know, people are kind of raised up from within the community. You know, we lay our hands on the person that we think is the best leader. We lay our hands on the person that we think is the best orator or interpreter. scripture or can kind of keep the community together. And then there are, there are rights that emerge. We have some evidence from the late 300s is probably where we get our first textual evidence.

Well, late 200s, sorry, late 200s, you get our first textual evidence of the sorts of things that might be said when someone is laid hands or ordaining really just at first means like someone's hands are laid on someone else and they're prayed over and they're they're acknowledged as a leader. But, but, you know, we, it does, it does build a bit from there.

The term, at the beginning, the terms are, you know, deacons, elders, and bishop, or overseer, episcopas.

And then, like I said, the priest term doesn't really come in until the third century, until this moment of crisis. Ah. And then confirmation. So confirmation, is a relatively late, late emerger,

but it really becomes necessary when infant baptism becomes the norm. So if you think it's really, that's the problem it's solving. So if you think about the first 300 years of Christianity, it's still primarily a conversion religion. It's growing through adult converts. And so you have adult converts who are learning

and then eventually being baptized and being initiated through rights of initiation, which include more than baptists, by the way. My second book, I talk a lot about that. The other rights that are involved. But we do have some evidence of infant baptism from very early on. But you can imagine as Christianity, then it becomes the, even if it's not the majority of very, very large presence, then you start having large families that have children and infant baptism becomes more of the norm. So when you have that, then what do you do with the kind of coming of age into adulthood when someone grows up

and they're like, well, I didn't really choose this and I don't know what I think about it at all. How do I learn it? Because I didn't learn it as an adult. And so confirmation is just a word that means strengthening, you know, to strengthen one's commitment, strengthen one's faith. And so it's primarily relating to infant baptism. I see. Yeah. So if you are, even today, late convert. You get baptized. Yeah. You also get confirmed?

So typically you get baptized and confirmed in the same, either in the same right, like at the same day or within a very short period of time. Because they're functionally doing the same thing. Yeah. I mean, they're traditionally the, yeah, the right of confirmation is an an anointing with oil and the right of baptism is primarily water. And so there's a different matter that's used. and traditionally the confirmation is a kind of descent of the Holy Spirit is a theological idea.

But yeah, for an adult, the experience is quite similar. Interesting. Yeah, these sacraments are so interesting. And I think specifically communion. And something you had mentioned in relation to that, this idea of the grain sacrifice. I'm curious was the idea of Christ holding bread and wine and saying, this is my body. Yeah.

That has been given up for you. Is that, would that have been strange in comparison to some of the, you know, Roman or other, you know, non-Christian sacrifices that would typically involve, like, an actual animal dying or, like, meat? Like, is the nature of what's being sacrificed changed the, you know, validity or the severity of the sacrifice? Yes. So, for sure, the, there are a degree.

of sacrifice in the ancient Mediterranean mindset. You know, to sacrifice a bull or even a cow is a major, major event. Yeah. Right. No one would take that lightly. It's a major economic event.

It's, you know, the emperor had a, the emperor had a son kind of event, right? Or sacrifice a cow or a bull. I mean, there are some annual rights where, in Greco-Roman religion, where you have certain animals, that are for specific rights. But the vast majority of sacrifices

is much more small than that. You know, grain and birds and smaller animals and things like that. But I would say you would not have much access to meat that wasn't sacrificed to some God or other. There's no, you know, shop right or supermarket where you get meat.

So fish is kind of an unusual category then. So this is why Jews in the diaspora, like Jews in Rome are eating fish because they don't have to then participate. They don't have to worry that they're eating meat sacrifice to Athena. Oh, fish are inherently kosher. Because they're like, fish are not sacrificial foods for whatever reason. They're just in a different cultural category where you can. That is so funny. But like if you're a Jew living in Rome in the first century, any meat,

that comes across your table, like, potentially is idolatrous. And this is where kosher laws come in? Well, kosher laws already existed before that, but this is more like when Jews are living outside of their homeland. And they're not the majority, right? They're interacting with these other peoples. I mean, so in the New Testament, in the New Testament, just like to continue with this,

because this also gets back to your Eucharist question, outside of the Last Supper narrative, the in the gospels, the main place we learn about this is in 1st Corinthians. So Paul writes a long letter to a church in Corinth, which is in Greece. And it's a church full of questions and full of problems. It's an amazing document. I highly recommend everyone to read 1st Corinthians with a study Bible with notes because it's confusing. But they have, I don't know, eight or nine or 10, like major questions. They're asking Paul, these new converts, right? Like, what do we do? about sex, should we free our slaves? Can we, you know, can we marry non-believers? They have lots

questions about the resurrection of the dead. Can we take each other to court? Because now we're supposed to be like in the same quote-unquote family, like, but this guy is bothering me and we have a civil dispute. Can I take my neighbor to court? You get the idea. But one of the questions they have that Paul answers in three chapters, the longest argument in all his letters, is about eating meat. Hmm. And we, like, hardly ever read this because we don't think of this is a big deal. Like, we go buy burgers at the store, cook them up, whatever.

For them, this is an enormous question because eating meat in a Greek city in the first century functionally means communing with a Greek god, right? Because everything that's sacrificed is going to Apollo, Athena, something? Well, so the animal was like partially sacrificed to the God and the rest is distributed for sale. Very few animals would be sacrificed just for food. Like they would throw in a little... As far as I know, none. Really?

Well, it is, excuse me, it is sacrificed for food. Like part of the animal is burned on the altar because we don't eat the whole animal either to be right, right? So like the animal is, and this is normal. I mean, Native American culture is also blessed, gave thanks for it. They didn't just like slaughter. We don't have slaughterhouses, just like slaughtered animals for fear. And what is that? Is that, oh, we don't want to just throw away the refuse.

We might as well offer it up, get some goodwill with our God. I mean, I'm not so, I'm not quite cynical as that. I think, I think there's a mysticism to it as well. There's an appreciation of life. Like, I mean, I've never slaughtered an animal. I don't know if you have. We're here in the camp, we could, but. No, I strungle to a doubt one time.

but people, I know people who have and... I was hunting, by the way. I just want to put that. I feel like, you can't just passively be like, yeah, I strangle the duck and just keep moving. That's what I mean, but... We were hunting, we had to... I don't know if it changed you,

but I've known people who felt different after they had actually taken life. I feel a weird about it. Even though they eat meat all the time, but they just don't think about its source. So I do think there is a mysticism and a... An interactive... or relationality with nature

and more of an ecological sense of humanity as one yes the most dominant species but one among many species here and gratitude to this lifeblood like literally lifeblood that that keeps is keeping us alive

so part of it is offered and then part of it is distributed a full offering like a whole offering of the animal would be a dramatic act of gratitude to a God or a dramatic act of of penance for something, right? Because then you're just giving it all

and burning the whole thing up. That's what the word Holocaust, where the word Holocaust comes from. Oh, really? It's like a whole offering, which is obviously a terrible use of the term. It's a misnomer, but that's interesting that's where it comes from.

So getting back to First Corinthians, and just to kind of close a loop on this, so their real question, and it gets back to your community question, you know, because they're a real question, is we Christians in Corinth, we're new Christians. We believe you, Paul. We believe there's only one God.

We believe that all this world full of gods in our town, these are not real, there's just statues, Athena's not real, et cetera. Let's say we've come to believe this. But also we get invited to dinner down the street. Also, we have the brother who's sick, and sometimes we've gone to the temple of Asclepius. We're sorry, but sometimes we've gone, you know,

give him maybe we gave thanks there like what do we do and they seem to give some arguments to Paul that we don't have their letter but he seems to like quote parts of their letter and his response kind of saying because and they seem to be saying there's no god but one there these idols don't really exist so kind of like we can eat the lamb chops that's good right and paucous well pa but paul's then saying well okay let's say i even agree with you on that. But kind of like who's watching you do it? And what are they thinking about why you're doing what you're doing? So if you're, you know, if you mark or a new Christian in Corinth and you said you only believe in one God now and you're being kind of zealous about it, but then you go to your

friend's house for dinner and they give thanks to Athena for this beautiful lamb chop and then you're like digging in, then it looks to them like, well, Christians aren't that different. They're basically just polytheists too. Right. So you have a question of how you're, what demarcation lines are you drawing for your new community, theological?

And those demarcation lines happen through the meal for a lot of them because they believe that these are real communion meals. Right. With some God or other. It's also happening every day. Yeah, all the time.

You're confronted with this frequently. So Paul ends up making a pretty radical, and I think beautiful argument, which is a community-based ethic about whether you can eat meat that has been sacrificed to what he would call an idol or another god, which is

basically if someone presents to you meat and doesn't say anything about where it's from, go ahead. And he quotes like the earth is the Lord and all its fullness. You know, quotes a psalm. Also the same psalm that Rastafarian's quote about smoking weed, by the way. Just like a little sidebar there.

Wait, what is the song? The earth is the Lord and all. Earth is the Lord's and all its fullness. I see. That's like, everything on Earth is the Lord's and so we can use it all. A mushroom. Yeah. Or whatever. Anyway, so Paul uses this, says, yes, this is true.

But then if they kind of, if someone presents this meat to you and says, like, this was offered in sacrifice, then you shouldn't. No, thanks. Because, because of your conscience, not because it actually harms you, but because of how. The optics. Yep, the optics of how, of the conscience of everyone else who's there. Interesting. And so it's a community-based ethic. And I think about it a lot.

We never, it's three chapters long. We never really read it much. It's very difficult to understand it without kind of a classroom setting, I think. But I think about it a lot as a modern example in terms of like, like drinking. Like, is drinking alcohol, you know, morally right or wrong? And some people like, yeah, it is. I know it is. And blah, blah.

But for me, I'm like, it just depends on the context. Because, like, I don't think it's morally wrong if I'm having a beer with you right now or if it were later, we'd have a bourbon or whatever. But if I'm at work and it's happy hour time on a Friday and we go out after work and I know that one of my colleagues is a recovering and struggling alcoholic, we're going to dinner. I'm like, I'm not going to, no, I can have a beer in front of that person. That's right. That's, that's, that's, I think it's immoral even.

obviously that's immoral. So it's a community-based, a communal ethic. It's the contextual ethic. Like, are you drinking from this giant vat of every type of alcohol mixed together at some giant party where everyone's blacking out? You know what I mean? Like, yo, you're consuming alcohol at both places. But it's the nature of the consumption and sort of the, I don't know, there's almost like some type of degeneration that happens once it's outside of its proper social context. So it's a, yeah, he articulates his contextual ethic.

and then he pivots right from that to narrating the story of the Last Supper and seems to be saying we have our we have our own communion sacrifice we have our own we don't need to participate in these others that you have in Corinth and then he retells the story of the Last Supper in that same spot

and he says that if you're not discerning the body properly you're eating and drinking judgment on yourself so it's pretty intense. Not discerting the body properly. Right, and it's a nice ambiguous phrase, like discerning what the body is, and also I think it means discerning the body of Christ as in the community.

Right, the people you're around. Exactly, because he uses the body of Christ in both ways in that letter to mean this, the Eucharist, and to mean the community. Oh, that's very interesting. Well, Dr. Pepperd, thank you so much.

Thank you for having me. We covered it all. Well, I really appreciate it. I would love to have you back on, and we can discuss more about your books. I'm definitely going to read how Catholics interact or encounter with the Bible. How Catholics encounter the Bible is the new one right there.

Yeah, I'm definitely going to check this out. Reasonably priced. Yeah, I mean, free for me. That's pretty good. I got to sign it for you. I would love that. I would love that. Yeah, I mean, this is awesome.

This is exactly what I needed at this moment. From stained glass to passion plays. All right. This is awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you. You got to go to a baseball game. I do, I do. Opening day for high school.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Let's do this again. If you've made it to the end of this episode, you are clearly someone who understands that beneath every historical event lies a deeper truth waiting to be uncovered. You're the type of person who knows that real history is more fascinating than any fiction. And we deeply appreciate that about you. I'll be honest. That's exactly why I personally invite you to sign up for today in history, our free newsletter that goes beyond the surface of historical events. into the stories that textbooks never told you, the secrets that challenge the course of nations and the forgotten tales that deserve to be remembered. Let's continue this journey of discovery together. Take the conversation from your headphones into your inbox. Sign up now through the QR code

or link in the description today in history because every day holds a secret waiting to be revealed. Thank you for being part of our historical journey. We'll see you next time.