Julian Dorey Podcast - #291 - Oxford Philosopher on BANNED Gnostic Bible, Jesus Christ & Wes Huff | Alex O'Connor

Starting point is 00:00:00 In my estimation, the historical Jesus of Nazareth was a disciple of John the Baptist. Jesus calls him the greatest man that's ever lived. Like, who was he? Why is it that Jesus, God himself, according to Orthodox Christianity, would need to be baptized? This is really strange. Christians will say, only God can forgive sins. What the hell is going on with John the Baptist then? Everyone's coming out to him for the forgiveness of sins.

Starting point is 00:00:17 He's a hugely significant figure with his own ministry. And they come and ask him, are you the Messiah? He says, I'm not the Messiah. Emphasizes that Jesus is more important than he is but i do find it a little bit suspicious that john is teaching baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins what does that mean in biblical scholarship for the past few hundred years it's been mainstream to say that jesus didn't actually claim to be god if you read the esv there and i'm at the podium and i'm doing my debate and i say jesus didn't claim to be god because look he said now imagine my opponent gets up he's saying jesus did claim

Starting point is 00:00:43 to be god take a look at the English Standard Version. That translation, that one word, is crucial to understanding the nature of Jesus and what he's claiming to be. So if you are ever reading the Bible and either something jumps out at you, you think it's important or interesting, or definitely if it's confusing, the first thing that you should always do. Hey guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five-star review. They're both a huge, huge help. Thank you. Alex O'Connor, thanks for stopping through Last Minute Man. Of course. Thanks for having me. Dude, shout out to Alessi, by the way. Producer Alessi for putting this together.

Starting point is 00:01:27 So this was literally like 36 hours ago. But I didn't talk to Alessi before he reached out to you. Ironically enough, though, we had Lee Cronin in here maybe like three, four weeks ago. And he mentioned David Deutsch about like multiverse theory. And so right after the podcast, I was like, David Deutsch. And it came up to an interview you did with him. Yeah. I started watching it.

Starting point is 00:01:50 And I was like, I've never seen this guy before. And I looked at the channel. I saw you got in a fight with some dude for 20 minutes on camera. I thought that was interesting. I saw the topics you were doing, like from a philosophical standpoint. I'm like, all right, I'm going to subscribe. We're going to follow this. And then boom, Alessi hits me up.

Starting point is 00:02:04 And I'm like, all right, that's the universe saying this needs to happen. Yeah. There's something going on there. David's great. I just had him back on actually. It was a really popular episode. I mean, I know people like David Deutsch, but something about that multiverse stuff just really, really piques the interest. Yeah. What was his exact point on that again? Like, obviously he believes that could be a thing. Yeah. Well, he believes it is a thing, but he's a quantum... Well, I don't know if he's actually a quantum physicist, but he's got a great deal of interest in quantum physics at the very least. And so he's talking about what's called the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. So in quantum mechanics, there are multiple ways to interpret the data.

Starting point is 00:02:40 So you'll have heard that quantum mechanics says that something can be true and false at the same time, or that atoms can be in two places at once. And that's one way of interpreting the data. I mean, it seems as though, for example, an electron, when you imagine it as like a little particle zooming around a nucleus, it's actually this cloud of probability. And when you observe it, the wave function collapses and suddenly it's all in one place. You know, Schrodinger's cat? Yes. Yeah, we've talked about that a bunch. Schrodinger's cat is a lot of people forget or neglect to mention a reductio ad absurdum.

Starting point is 00:03:17 It's supposed to sort of be a bit of a joke. A reductio ad absurdum. A reductio ad absurdum, which is a reduction to absurdity. So I'm sort of, we're really off to the deep end here. We're running into it. I like it. This is a really useful tool, and you'll have come across it before. It means taking an argument or a position, pushing it to its logical conclusion, and showing that that's absurd. So, for example, suppose you said, I think that we should minimize suffering for everyone. That's what we ought to do. I said, okay, well, the easiest way to minimize suffering for everybody would just be to kill everyone on the planet and suffering is gone. But that's a ridiculous conclusion. So I've taken the idea,

Starting point is 00:03:56 I've pushed it to its conclusion, shown the conclusion is ridiculous. Therefore, the premise must be wrong and we have to adapt it or change it. It's called a reductio adissero. Or change a way to do it. Yeah. So you might say, oh, okay, then, well, we need to reduce suffering while keeping everyone alive, you know, or something like that. So to disprove an idea, you can take it to a conclusion, show that the conclusion is ridiculous, and say, so the idea must be wrong. So Schrodinger does this with quantum mechanics because quantum physicists are observing weird stuff going on on the quantum level, and it looks as though until you observe a particle, it's in multiple places at once.

Starting point is 00:04:35 Yeah. It's like a probabilistic cloud. Yeah, for people who haven't seen my episodes of Michio Kaku and some of the others we talked about, can you just explain the Schrodinger's cat experiment? Yeah, exactly. So Schrodinger comes along and he says, okay, so if the idea is that quantum randomness, basically when a quantum random event happens, until you observe it, both of them have happened and sort of both of them are true at the same time. But when you

Starting point is 00:05:00 observe it, it collapses into one sort of option. Schrodinger says, okay, well, imagine we've got a cat inside of a box and we've got this quantum event, which has a 50% chance of killing the cat and a 50% chance of having the cat remain alive. And that box is, it's a, you can't see through the box. So crucially, you can't observe it. The idea is that if quantum mechanics, if this interpretation of quantum mechanics is true, then because that quantum event both happens and doesn't happen before it's observed, well, if half of the time it kills the cat

Starting point is 00:05:36 and half of the time it doesn't, that means the cat must be both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box and find out. And this has captured the imagination of pop culture because the cat is both dead and alive at the same time. And that's the bit that people remember. But people think that this is some kind of like truth about science, that Schrodinger's cat is like this argument as to how a cat can be dead and alive at the same time. No, Schrodinger is doing a reductio ad absurdum. He's saying that's ridiculous. The cat can't be dead and alive at the same time.

Starting point is 00:06:03 Therefore, this interpretation of quantum mechanics must be wrong. It can't be that, you know, everything exists in this cloud of probability until you observe it. And then suddenly it just snaps into a, into a real position that doesn't make any sense. So that's what Schrodinger's cat is supposed to, is supposed to demonstrate. And the interpretation of quantum mechanics that this relies upon is called the Copenhagen interpretation. And as I said to David Deutsch, and apparently he said that he's been using this ever since, I said, you can't spell the Copenhagen interpretation without cope, which apparently he's picked up on and started using. So I'm quite proud of that one. There is another interpretation of quantum mechanics called the many worlds interpretation,

Starting point is 00:06:43 which instead of saying that, like, you know, imagine quantum event, you've got option A and option B, and until you observe it, both kind of happen probabilistically. And then when you observe it, it collapses into one or the other. The many worlds interpretation says that when a quantum decision like that needs to be made, both of those realities exist. Option A and option B both happen in sort of separate branching realities. And when you open the box, you're not collapsing a probability wave, a cloud. What you're just doing is finding out which of those branches you're in. You just find out. And so there is another version of events in which you open the box and the cat is dead. And there's another sort of alternate universe, so to speak, in which you open the box and the cat is dead. And there's another sort of alternate universe, so to speak,

Starting point is 00:07:27 in which you open the box and the cat is alive. As far as I understand from David Deutsch, so David Deutsch is a big proponent of this idea, and he's like certain of it. He's like, yes, the multiverse exists. But it's not like, when you think of the multiverse, you imagine like a bunch of orbs sort of existing in the ether next to each other. For him, it's not so much that there are these different separate universes

Starting point is 00:07:46 that like exist in one big space, but rather every time a quantum event can go one way or another, there's like a different branch of reality. Yes. And that's what the multiverse is. So for him, the multiverse definitely exists, but it's this like quantum multiverse, branches of reality that occur every single time a quantum decision has to

Starting point is 00:08:05 be made yeah dr kaku got me really obsessed with that like the way that he talks about and then when i talk with him like he was explaining building upon it about how it's like he's like it's almost like the radio is turned to just the right transistor yeah yeah at that point it'll be you know we could be in this room and it's you and me. But if you just turn it a little bit this way, they could be like a dinosaur walking through here. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, it's all it's theoretical. So it could all be bullshit. And probabilistically, maybe it is. But when there's things in the universe that line up that don't make sense, like ideas that will match from across the planet to one place or another, or like asee as we pointed out reaching out to you when i find your channel and don't say

Starting point is 00:08:49 anything like you know could it be coincidental you know we're looking at similar things sure but i always think about that with the deja vus of the world and stuff where it's like maybe there's some sort of like little cross-pollination happening maybe it's not a full-blown multiverse but there's something to that transistor radio idea that could create other realities for us. It would be cool if you could travel between these branches of reality for different reasons as well. It's not just that you could enter a universe in which like you were wearing a blue jumper instead of a red one. But I've thought about this, like, is there another universe in which everything is identical except like time moves at a different rate?

Starting point is 00:09:28 When you're in that universe, it feels the same because you're also moving at a slower rate. But compared to the other branches of reality, time is moving slower or faster, which means that potentially by moving between these realities, you could move into a universe that's identical except like further back in time and so it's kind of this way of of maybe regaining the ability to do backwards time travel which seems impossible within one universe that's kind of a conjectural entertaining possibility but the idea that we could just move between these branches of reality i think doesn't doesn't work like they're essentially impenetrable because they are literally branches of of reality you'd have to somehow step outside of it which i think in principle might be might be impossible um but it's exciting another motivation yeah i mean i'm not a physicist so i'm not sure about that but i think if there

Starting point is 00:10:18 were any realistic uh potential for that to be the case I think theoretical physics would would have some kind of grasp on it a lot of theoretical physics is stuff that although we'll never do in practice here are some things we could do like wormholes or yeah what would happen if we traveled at the speed of light and although we'll never do that in practice you can still do the math and work out what would happen just in principle, but moving between quantum branches of reality or outside of our own universe, I mean, I'm not even sure what it means to go outside of our universe or what the mechanism would be. But another sort of motivation for some form

Starting point is 00:11:00 of multiverse is the fact that it's not just coincidences like, you know, oh, isn't that crazy? I was just thinking of this guy yesterday and then he called me. It's like the fundamental constants of the universe, the stuff that allows the universe to like exist are an incredibly finely tuned set of properties. And so a lot of people use this as an argument for God's existence. Other people use it as a motivation to believe in the multiverse, because if the strength of gravity were stronger by an unfathomably small amount, just like the tiniest, tiniest nudge, too strong, then after the Big Bang, everything would have collapsed in on itself, and the universe would have imploded. Why does it have to be one or the other on some of these things that's one thing

Starting point is 00:11:47 i sit up and think about i'm like what like the two examples you just gave like god and the multiverse for example why couldn't they both exist at the same time oh well they could that would be that would be really interesting yeah it's certainly possible but we wouldn't have any any sort of considerations or evidence that would point to that. Because take that fine tuning of gravity or whatever constant you want to pick. If you hypothesize, well, that's because God designed it that way. That doesn't rule out a multiverse, but there's no need now for the multiverse as an explanation. So you'd kind of want some other reason to think that the multiverse exists. It doesn't rule it out. I mean, it could exist.

Starting point is 00:12:26 But you no longer need it as an explanatory tool. Similarly, if you're like a physicist and you say, well, I believe in the multiverse, and that's how we get the fine-tuning of gravity because there are infinitely many universes with different degrees, and of course we have to be in the one that has them all tuned perfectly, that doesn't mean God can't exist, but suddenly God is no longer needed as an explanation

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Starting point is 00:14:30 Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. So it could be both, could be neither. But particularly with the fine tuning, it is the case that if those constants were different, then nothing could exist, like atoms couldn't form. And so your only options are that those constants are so tuned by pure coincidence, by chance. There's one universe

Starting point is 00:15:06 and it's just chance. That seems unfathomably unlikely. Or that there's some necessity, there's some reason they have to be that way. Or there's design. And so if you think the answer is chance, you end up in the multiverse. Because it's so unlikely that there just has to have been millions of universes. And so there happens to one that that the constants are tuned correctly that's chance necessity means you're looking for some kind of theory of everything some kind of physical law which entails all of these constants but also would kind of have to be self-justifying or self-explaining because even if you found some single theory which explained why gravity is the strength it is, why the strong and weak nuclear

Starting point is 00:15:51 forces are the way they are, and they all collapse into one law, you'd still kind of have to explain that law. Like, why is that law the way it is? And it depends on the nature of the law, but it might be some other kind of constant. They might all collapse into one constant. And it's all encompassing in the sense that if there's one chip within that row of that law that falls, it means the entire law falters. The whole thing with the universe couldn't exist. So then you just push the problem back and have to ask, well, why is that fundamental law that way? And so it would have to somehow be like self-justifying. Like at the basis of a lot of our thought are some self-justifying ideas like the idea that uh that a proposition can't be true and false at the same time the law of non-contradiction all of our logical thinking rests upon that assumption but you can't prove that assumption

Starting point is 00:16:37 it's just something that we just think is true it's just self-evidently true if there's some kind of scientific equivalent of that at the basis of the universe, then okay, maybe you've got necessity. So you've got chance, you've got necessity. But the third option here is that the constants are so finely tuned because they're designed that way. And that's where you get people arguing for the existence of God. Do you ever sit up at night, like stressed about all these things that you think about because you you are literally your entire basis of philosophy all comes back to the very meaning of life itself and like i think about this stuff a lot too but i don't you know i talk about a lot of different things in here you know it's not all looking at this but do you ever do you ever sit up at night you know not really not not

Starting point is 00:17:29 so much because i'm extremely interested in this kind of stuff but i don't have the kind of existential like dredge that a lot of people report and i think part of the reason for that is because of my violent agnosticism. Violent agnosticism. Yeah. I mean, like, look, I've got no idea if we live in a multiverse or if there's a God and that's why the constants are so finely tuned. Or if there's something obvious that we're just, like, totally missing. Like, I just don't know. And so it might keep me up in the sense of wondering about it, thinking that's kind of interesting, but not in the sense of dread because I'm not confident enough in any view to be anxious about it.

Starting point is 00:18:10 Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, I understand that. So I don't sort of have that fear. If anything, the thing that keeps me up is interesting implications of views that are just fascinating, more so than like, man, what does it all mean and stuff it's like oh this is kind of cool like this is this is kind of fascinating like there's a like the fine-tuning argument for the existence of god people use this all the time christopher hitchens famous atheist

Starting point is 00:18:36 journalist famously said in the back of a car once that this is the argument that gives him pause for thought that everything is just perfectly balanced you know why would it be that way and like i've been really interested recently in some of the non-canonical christian literature so like gnostic gospels yes other stuff that sort of isn't in the bible and alternate alternate religious views right and one of these alternate views in the history of Christianity is the idea that there are kind of two gods in a way. There's like an evil demiurge who creates the material world and the material world is evil and bad and terrible. And there's the spiritual realm, which is good. And we're sort of trapped in the material realm. And so some of these heretical views believe that, for example,

Starting point is 00:19:26 the God of the Old Testament is this demiurgic creator, evil or incompetent creator of the material world. And Jesus comes from the spiritual realm to come and help us break free of our material conditions, right? So that's a bit of a weird, wacky, dualist view, right? Dualist view? Well, dualist in the sense of there being sort of two realities. Okay. It's like the material world and the spiritual world. Is that a British word, dualist view, right? Dualist view? Well, dualist in the sense of there being sort of two realities. It's like the material world and the spiritual world. Is that a British word? Dualist? Dualist, as in like

Starting point is 00:19:52 dualism, so like dual, like two. Okay, so no. Well, in different contexts it means different things. So in the philosophy of mind, for example, if you're a dualist it means that you believe that the mind is immaterial but you've also got like a material brain so it's like a physical thing and there's also the mental

Starting point is 00:20:11 thing and they're distinct there's two of them it's called dualism got it as opposed to monism like mono one which means that either if you think that all there is is the brain and there's no immaterial mind you're a you're a monist because there's only one thing. It's just the brain. Some people think that there's only the spiritual and that the material world is essentially either an illusion or something. I thought you were saying dualism, not dualism. Dualism.

Starting point is 00:20:36 Sorry, yeah. That's the second time. Gary Harrington did that too. It's an accent thing. Got it, yeah. So, yeah, it's kind of dualist got it uh in that there are these two realms the evil whatever that's that's besides the point that the interesting thing is the fine-tuning argument one question that comes to mind is okay so everything is

Starting point is 00:20:58 super finely balanced and if if something changed by the smallest amount the universe couldn't exist you might want to ask like why is it is it, like, set up that way? Like, okay, so there's one question as to how, given that they have to be finely tuned, they are finely tuned, that's a mystery. But why do they have to be finely tuned? Why are there, like, meta conditions such that it's seemingly incredibly difficult

Starting point is 00:21:22 to create a functional material world? And so a friend of mine came along and said, you know this Gnostic idea that there's a good God and that the creation of the material world is some evil or incompetent act of a demiurgic sort of bad creator. Could it be that the true creator didn't want the material world to exist because the material world is evil, and so sets up the metaconditions such that it's extremely improbable that a material world would ever exist because he doesn't want that. The whole world, the whole material world is evil.

Starting point is 00:21:58 The whole material world is evil according to these Gnostics. To go on a little tangent on that for a second though, because I want to understand. Yeah. We live in a world where there's war, right? That's evil. Let's just stay with that example. Within war, there's stories of people though, who save other people at a cost of their own life. That's good. Yeah, but it's only good insofar as it comes over, like overcomes a bad thing, right? Yes. And also, what is it that's good insofar as it comes over, like overcomes a bad thing, right? And that like, and also what is it that's good about doing that? You're saving the life of another person and putting it before your own. Yeah, sure. So there are a few ways that you can think about this. Like the first thing is that all of the bad stuff comes from the existence of the material world.

Starting point is 00:22:42 Because of the material world, we the material world we have suffering we have bodies that can be put in danger and can suffer and yeah that does give you the capability to to save somebody to overcome something but you'd still rather have none of that altogether an analogy might be that like chemotherapy is a really good thing right chemotherapy is wonderful because it helps people overcome cancer. I'll let you continue with that. But if I said like cancer is really bad and we should get rid of it, and you said, well, hold on a second.

Starting point is 00:23:12 Cancer is really bad, yeah, but it does allow us to do this really good thing of chemotherapy. Without there being cancer, we couldn't have chemotherapy. And chemotherapy is wonderful. Yeah, chemotherapy is great, but only because it overcomes something bad.

Starting point is 00:23:23 And we'd rather just not have the bad thing altogether, right? Right. And so, yeah, like sacrificing yourself, throwing yourself on a grenade for somebody else is like a good thing. But if you could have no grenade and no need for the sacrifice, that would be better. Right. But then what about lower scale good things that just happen when people do good things just to do good things like i someone's 20 meters behind and i see them coming to the door i'm at and i decide to wait and hold the door for them yeah but there wasn't a bad thing that if you want to get really like techie about it like yeah why is that a good thing because it means they don't have to push

Starting point is 00:24:00 the door for themselves anymore because it's a nice that yeah it's a nice thing to do yes it's nice to to make it such that they don't have to push the door yes pushing the door is a physical action that causes some level of like stress on the joints or whatever that's why you do it right and so that sounds really trivial yeah but it's also it's also trivially good like it's a good thing but it's not like some amazing great thing it's kind of trivial but that's because it overcomes a trivial problem with the material world, which is that you have to navigate it. You have to push things. You have to effort to move around and stuff. So for Gnostics, the good thing about people, about all of us, is the spiritual stuff. It's like the non-material stuff that's inside of you. That's what goodness is. And all of our ills come from this material world.

Starting point is 00:24:47 And we're constantly in this battle between the material world and our, like, spiritual selves. And if you think about the fact that, you know, somebody wants to have a loving relationship, but they're addicted to pornography. It's like the soul versus the material like body. You know, somebody wants to be the best and most productive person they can be, but they're too lazy and they can't bother to hit the gym or whatever. And it's like a physical impairment on the things that they want to achieve, you know? And so all of the bad stuff comes from the existence of the material world. It's not just Gnostics who think this, by the way, there are all kinds of philosophical views throughout history that sort of posit the material and the spiritual as kind of in battle

Starting point is 00:25:29 with each other. Or more broadly, maybe just the good and the bad. There are like good forces and bad forces, and they're in like a battleground on earth. For the Gnostics, and Gnosticism is a broad term. A lot of scholars think it shouldn't be used because it describes so many varying views. But broadly speaking, you could say that you've got material world, bad, spiritual world, good. And that we have essentially as spiritual beings, that's what our soul is. We have been trapped in a material world. That material world has been created by an evil or an incompetent, like creative being sometimes called the demiurge and that the ultimate goal of life is to escape from that material trapping and and regain our our place in the in the in the spiritual spiritual realm so the material world is where we're then forced to experience pain, suffering to varying degrees

Starting point is 00:26:26 that ends inevitably in death because we're in a place that we spiritually should not be. That's right. Yeah. And we shouldn't be here at all. So for Gnostics, the creation of the world is essentially a cosmic disaster. Something went wrong. And if you read some of this Gnostic literature, which we only really rediscovered in the 20th century, like this is new. Why did we rediscover it in the 20th century? So we've known for a long time. And by the way, I'm talking in the context of Christianity here, right? So Gnosticism comes from the Greek word gnosis, which means knowledge. And so in mainstream Christianity, the thing that saves you is the sacrifice of Jesus. Jesus dies on a cross and he resurrects and that's why you're saved.

Starting point is 00:27:09 For the Gnostic Christians, it's not really about what Jesus did. It's about having the right knowledge. Jesus brought knowledge. And if you know the right stuff, that's what will save you. Meaning you can access that within you. Yeah. So it's very like inward looking. Yes's very knowledge based. Like some of these Gnostic gospels don't even mention the crucifixion or the resurrection, or they have a different

Starting point is 00:27:31 interpretation on what was going on there. And so within the Christian tradition, the Gnostics believe that the thing that's important is knowledge. And so they have their own sort of scriptures. And these are like later than the books we have in the New Testament. And they're condemned as heretical. So the sort of early Christian church. Which books are you talking about to be specific? So in the New Testament, we have four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, right? That's right.

Starting point is 00:28:06 There do exist other gospels, the gospel of Judas, the gospel of Thomas. Philip, right? The gospel of Philip, yes. And also other like letters. Mary Magdalene. Yeah. And some of them are much more tenuous than others. There are some really interesting, obvious forgeries, for example.

Starting point is 00:28:22 But you've also got like apocalyptic literature. So like the apocalypse of Peter, which is incredibly interesting. I think there are actually two of those. And there's all these texts that people are writing. And at some point in the early church, you've got these texts floating around. And you've also got people claiming to be Paul, the apostle, and writing letters in his name, and they're not really written by him and stuff. And so at some point, people decide we should start putting together some kind of scriptural canon. Interestingly, the first person to give this a go that we know of is called Marcion. Marcion.

Starting point is 00:28:53 Marcion, yeah. And Marcion decides to... God, you say everything way cooler than that. So I'm like, Martian? Martian. Martian. Martian. Yeah. It's fascinating. I mean, he's cool and Gnostic, but it's a little unclear as to exactly what his views are because he doesn't have this crazy cosmic theology. But the one thing that he does have that's Gnostic is he thinks, like he reads what we now call the Old Testament. So he reads like the Hebrew scriptures and he reads about a God who is like a bastard.

Starting point is 00:29:24 He's like committing genocide and slavery and he's jealous and he's punishing people and all of this kind of stuff. And then he reads these texts that have begun to emerge, which eventually become the New Testament, these gospels. And he's like, this Jesus figure is kind and he's about love and all of this kind of stuff. So for Marcion, he decides, I'm going to put together a biblical canon. The entire Old Testament is omitted. It's not in there. Why did he make that? Just because Jesus wasn't there at the time? Because he reads the gospels and he's like, okay, Jesus is our guy. Jesus is this God figure, this spiritual being that we're all approximating. And when he reads the Hebrew scriptures,

Starting point is 00:30:04 he doesn't recognize that God in those scriptures. He thinks this God is evil. This God looks to be a monster. And so this cannot be the God that I'm worshiping through Jesus. It has to be something else. So Marcion thinks that the God of the Old Testament is this demiurge I mentioned earlier, this evil creator of the material world. The material world is bad. The God described in the Old Testament is the creator who brought about the material world, evil guy. So all of the Old Testament is gone. And all that we have left is like a slightly shortened version of the Gospel of Luke. And I think 10 out of 13 of Paul's letters that ended up in the New Testament. So the first attempt at a Christian Bible actually just excludes the Old Testament on these grounds that the Old Testament God is evil.

Starting point is 00:30:47 I've never heard that before. Yeah, it's fascinating. I think, yeah, you've pulled it up there. I'll probably say something about compiling the... Yeah, so he considers himself a follower of... Marcion preached that God had sent Jesus Christ, who was distinct from the vengeful God, brackets demiurge, who had created the world. He considered himself a follower of Paul the Apostle, whom he believed to have been the only possible apostle of Jesus Christ. His doctrine is called Marcionism. He published the earliest record of a canon of New Testament books. And so his canon didn't include the Old Testament,

Starting point is 00:31:19 because as it says there, he believed that this vengeful God of the Old Testament is an evil being. There's a text that he wrote. I forget what it's called. There was some text that he wrote which we don't actually have anymore, but it just compared the Old Testament God and Jesus. It just like lists out things that the Old Testament God does and things that Jesus does. We don't have it anymore? We don't have it anymore. Meaning it got destroyed or lost? For whatever reason, we don't have it anymore. Meaning it got destroyed or lost?

Starting point is 00:31:46 For whatever reason, we don't have it. It might have been destroyed. It might have been lost. But we have it through the works of his enemies. So like people were responding to him at the time. And so we know what's in there because people were writing about it. And so we know that Marcion is comparing the Old Testament God with Jesus and saying, this doesn't line up.

Starting point is 00:32:04 This doesn't line up at all. God is saying an eye for an eye. Jesus is like subverting that and saying, this doesn't line up. This doesn't line up at all. God is saying an eye for an eye. Jesus is like subverting that and saying, turn the other cheek. Right. God is committing genocide. Jesus is saying, love your neighbor, all of this kind of stuff. And so, yeah, he just concludes that this Old Testament God is evil and bad and terrible. So that's the earliest like attempt at a Christian canon that we get. But the early church that develops and becomes the Christian church that we know today takes a different view, believes that the Hebrew scriptures are legitimate, and it lands on these four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, as the four gospels that people should be reading. And the earliest account we have of that is

Starting point is 00:32:41 Athanasius, who writes of, he writes this like tract saying, only read these four books and don't read the rest of them. And this is- When did he write that? This is like, I don't know, you should look it up to be sure, but I think we're looking at like third or fourth century. So around the time of the Council of Nicaea? Yeah, so one big misconception is that the Council of Nicaea like set the scriptural

Starting point is 00:33:03 canon. That's not true. That might be Da Vinci Code inspired, I think. Yeah, well, there's stuff in there that's also fictional. Yeah. They didn't... Look up Athanasius canon or something. Athanasius. Oh, I can't spell that. Spelling is not aessi's strong suit. A-T-H-A.

Starting point is 00:33:27 A-T-H-A and Athanasius. There you go. Yeah, Alessi kills it on our channels with titles and stuff. And he's extremely smart. But like, when I joke behind the scene, the one thing he can't do is spell. I'm pretty bad at that too, actually. I'm really, really bad

Starting point is 00:33:45 at spelling, especially doing it out loud. But yeah, you can see he's third and fourth century. So it will have been in the fourth century, like early fourth century that he writes this. And it might even say something there about it. I'm not sure. And you're saying that at the Council of Nicaea, that was not scripturally where they defined the Gospels for the first time. No, Council of Nicaea was that was not scripturally where they defined the Gospels for the first time. No, the Council of Nicaea was about determining like church doctrine, specifically like relationship with the... Jesus is divine.

Starting point is 00:34:10 All of this kind of stuff. Like what is this Jesus stuff actually about? The canon is a separate thing, and it might have been determined earlier or elsewhere, but the earliest version that we have is Athanasius saying, only read these four texts. And so after this, what probably happens is some kind of suppression or virtuous destroying. People might do it with their own accord because they're not supposed to be reading these other texts, but these other texts sort of fall out of fashion. They're not spread around. They sort of exist in different esoteric groups. And there are some like smaller groups that have cropped up with their own scriptures and stuff, some which are more popular and travel around. But for whatever reason, they end up sort of getting

Starting point is 00:34:53 like lost. Either they're destroyed or people just forget about them or whatever. We just don't have them. But we know that they exist because in the fourth century, sorry, in the first, in the second century, Irenaeus is an early church father who writes a text called Against Heresies. And this is a huge, huge text which basically argues against every single Christian heresy which he knows exists and sort of says why it's wrong, why you shouldn't believe this, why you shouldn't believe that. And he's writing about these other views. He's writing about the gospel of Judas, you know, and so we have Irenaeus' work and we know that he's writing about this gospel, but we don't have the gospel. And so for the longest time,

Starting point is 00:35:46 all we knew about these texts was through their enemies. And you can learn a thing or two, but obviously it's always going to be skewed if you don't have the original literature. Then in the 1940s, there is a teenage farmer in the desert in Egypt near a place called Narkomadi. And he's digging in the desert and he comes across this jar. And he's scared to open it at first because he's scared it's got a jinn in it, like a devil. He's terrified to open it. And eventually it gets opened up and there's a bunch of old papyrus in there. And so the story goes, he takes it home and his mother uses some of the papyrus in there. And so the story goes, like he takes it home and his mother uses some of the papyrus to like feed the fire, you know? Yeah. And eventually it's sort of, it's realized that these are sort of worth something. So after... It's a bit of an insane story actually. And I don't know all of the details, but this is where a lot

Starting point is 00:36:43 of our Gnostic literature comes from. And so we've got, there are these like Coptic translations, Coptic is an Egyptian dialect, and there's Coptic translations of Gnostic texts. So the Gospel of Thomas, for example, the Gospel of Judas actually isn't in this text, but the Gospel of Thomas is, for example, probably the most famous Gnostic gospel, although it might not even be Gnostic. And it's our only copy that we've ever found of this gospel. And so just by chance, this guy happens to find this jar. And now we have the gospel of Thomas. And they didn't burn that one for papyrus. No, that one was not burned.

Starting point is 00:37:19 Interestingly, the gospel of Judas, which was found not as part of this collection, but nearby. Oh, yeah, that has some burn marks. Yeah, you can see. Look at it. So look underneath. See that one down there? That's the Gospel of Judas, right? So this is found in a different...

Starting point is 00:37:35 I think it's found nearby, but it's not found in the Narkomada Library. And the Gospel of Judas, this spends a long time in private hands because people are trying to sell it. Like people are trying to sell it. Like people really want to sell this. And so I can't remember when this is discovered. I think it's discovered maybe in like the seventies or eighties or something. And it spends like decades. It might've been slightly earlier than that. Maybe you can look that up actually, to be sure, just if you click on the gospel of Judas. It spends decades traveling around, private sellers trying to sell it. The thing about Egypt is it's got the perfect climate for the preservation of papyrus. That's

Starting point is 00:38:08 why these things last for so long. That's why we always find them in Egypt, because it just happens to have the perfect air to make sure that these things don't disintegrate. Someone takes the Gospel of Judas, and for example, it spends about 16 years in a safety deposit box in New York City, which almost destroys it. 16 years? Something like that, yeah. It might've been more like 10 or 15. How did it get to New York City? Because people destroys it. 16 years? Something like that, yeah. It might have been more like 10 or 15. How did it get to New York City? Because people are moving around trying to sell it.

Starting point is 00:38:30 Somebody's trying to find a buyer because this thing is absolutely like golden. Like this is an unbelievable gospel, right? And it's huge and it's going to change the whole face of New Testament scholarship, right? Eventually National Geographic buy it and publish it. I think they publish it in like 2006 or something like that. So it's been traveling, it's been going around for decades and it's only like in the, at the turn of the millennium

Starting point is 00:38:53 that finally the gospel of Judas is available for people to read. But it's a crazy story. And here's the really weird thing, man, is that like people think why, so the Narkomadi library, again, that's not where the Gospel of Judas is found, but people want to ask the question, like, why was it buried in the desert? And so one popular suggestion was, well, when Athanasius said, only read these four Gospels, the rest of them are buried, you know, either to hide them or keep them secret or because they've been condemned, you know, get rid of them, put them in the desert. And that's the theory for the longest time. Then there's this whole weird story about how the farmer boy mentions that there was like a corpse and his older brother is like no no

Starting point is 00:39:31 no there was no corpse i don't know what he's talking about and so there is this suggestion that this was actually a grave robbing because it was quite common to bury papyrus, like documents, with people who died. And so there is an idea that these guys were out there trying to rob a grave, and they happened upon this expensive set of papyrus. Do we have speculation of whose grave it could have been? I don't think we have an idea of whose grave it could have been, no, because we don't know much of the details. I'm not even sure if we know the exact location where it was found

Starting point is 00:40:08 because it was just, like I say, some teenage farmers in the desert. So it's this extremely strange and slightly shady story of how it's all discovered. I'll say. There's something about like a blood feud. I think there's some cannibalism in the story there somewhere. They're just hitting every single keyword. It's like a whole thing.

Starting point is 00:40:27 And yeah, I mean, the story is really crazy. But so some people have shifted from thinking, well, they were buried there because of Athanasius' declaration. And then it's like, actually, they were buried with somebody as part of their burial properties. There's probably a word for it. I forget what it's called, but like ceremonial burying people with their documents. And they were trying to rob a grave and then they came across them.

Starting point is 00:40:50 And it's all a bit of a mess. But eventually we have access to all of these ancient gospels. And like I say, we knew that these existed, but now we have the texts themselves. So the Gospel of Judas is one of my favorites. You can, when does it say it was discovered or rediscovered? It has been carbon dated to 20 AD.

Starting point is 00:41:07 So notice it says, given that it includes late second century theology, it's widely thought to have been composed in the second century, brackets, prior to 180 AD by Gnostic Christians. It's been carbon dated to 280 AD, plus or minus 60 years. So how do we know that it's prior to 180 AD? Because that's when Irenaeus wrote Against Heresies, and he mentions the Gospel of Judas. So we can carbon date it to 280 AD, plus or minus 60 years. And then use the previously known information.

Starting point is 00:41:39 But that's this copy that we have, right? Which is a Coptic translation. So when was the text originally written? Well, it's been mentioned. So there are multiple ways that we can sort of date documents, but the actual copies that we have, like the Nag Hammadi Library is probably, I think again, these particular scriptures are dated to like maybe the third to fifth century, maybe fourth or fifth, I can't remember exactly. But one interesting question is, well, when are these manuscripts from? Were they from the fourth century? That's cool. But when were the texts written? That's the most interesting question. And, you know, they weren't originally written in Coptic. What language were they written in?

Starting point is 00:42:17 And when were they written? It's also, this is another like sticking point for me with any of this. Like when we think of our current history shit 10 years ago feels like a long time yeah to an extent and then you start looking 60 70 years out that's like when your great-grandparents were kids yes when you start looking at history the farther away it gets though time kind of has a wider lens and what at least in how we approach it which means yes we hear years like i'm gonna throw out random numbers 140 ad and 210 ad and associate it with almost the same about time yes but it's fucking 70 years apart at a time where they the record keeping was you wrote something in the fucking sand yeah yeah you know not only that but it's important to

Starting point is 00:43:04 note especially when we're talking about gospels that for example most scholars date the gospel of mark which is our earliest canonical gospel to around 70 a.d there are various reasons for doing that matthew and luke are generally dated like between like maybe like 90 like like sorry between like uh 75 to like probably 85 that that kind of decade, like 10 or 15 years after Mark. And they say Christ died in like around 33 AD. Around 33 AD, yeah. And so John's gospel is then probably between like 90 and 100 AD. Now compare that to like, suppose the gospel of Thomas. Suppose we just proved beyond reasonable doubt that it was dated to 150 AD. And that's probably around about when it was written, sort of second century.

Starting point is 00:43:50 Some people think it was dated earlier, but that's controversial. Suppose it was 150 AD. You might think, okay, John's Gospel is written in 90 AD and the Gospel of Thomas is written in 150 AD. So roughly about the same time, right? So no big difference between them. But in this context, that could be the difference between like an eyewitness to the events of Jesus's life still being alive and still being dead. Yes. Like if Mark is written in 70 AD, that's still like 40 years after Jesus dies. But 40 years is a short enough time that people could still be alive. It could have been written by an eyewitness. It could have been written by someone who knew an eyewitness. That extra few decades is the difference between eyewitness testimony being possible and being impossible. So it does actually make a huge difference.

Starting point is 00:44:34 Even on that thread, though, eyewitness testimony itself also changes naturally. Without people trying to lie or stuff, you remember details in a small way. The example I always give is, is the old experiment. I forget what it's called, where you put 20 people in a circle, you start with a story. Yeah. The telephone game, you whisper it in their ear and go down the lane and it changed by 10% or something or 20% by the end through no fault of people other than just human error. And it's like, where, you know, it's not to sit here and be a total skeptic about everything. But it's like, when you take something as law or canonical law,

Starting point is 00:45:12 whatever you want to say, that's like, this is what happened 100%. We have the proof. It's like, all right, you are relying on tests, like, I'm even talking about the ones where you still have an eyewitness testimony person alive, right? Forget the even talking about the ones where you still have an eyewitness testimony person alive right forget the other ones you point out where you don't you are relying on the word of flawed human beings which we all are to assume that everything that was said is how it is and we even see that some of these people are coming up with different versions of the same thing who lived at the same time yeah yeah i mean it it's a common analogy that's given is the telephone game. Bart Ehrman talks about this a lot.

Starting point is 00:45:49 I do think that it's not wholly appropriate for something like the Gospels because the point of the telephone game is you only get to hear it once. And the fun is that you then have to hope you hear it right and pass it on. And you're kind of trying to make it go wrong because that's why it's funny. With important traditions, you pass it on and you check you've got it right and pass it on. And you're kind of trying to make it go wrong because that's why it's funny. With important traditions, you pass it on and you check you've got it right. So you're going to tell me something. I'm going to say, I'm going to repeat it back to you. You're going to correct any misunderstandings. I'm going to make sure I have it memorized. And then I'm going to pass it on to my children, for example. And so the oral transmission of religious traditions, I think, is a lot more reliable than people often

Starting point is 00:46:26 realize. Because like you say, this was the only way that information is transpired. Like, imagine if you're learning something important, you're learning about your family history, or you're learning something for class or whatever, and you're not allowed to write it down. Yeah. And it's not written in a book anywhere else. You would probably put a lot more effort into remembering exactly what was said. That's true. And so that's passed down a lot better.

Starting point is 00:46:48 But I am suspicious, for example, when people say we have the, so much of Christology, which is the study of the nature of Jesus, relies on his exact words. Like it says in the gospels that Jesus used this phrase and this is really important. Why did he say that instead of this?

Starting point is 00:47:05 When it gets that specific, I get highly suspicious, right? You're listening to me very carefully right now, right? You're paying attention to the words I'm saying? Of course. Okay, excluding the sentence I just said, can you repeat my previous sentence to me? Word for word, no. No. Can't even come close.

Starting point is 00:47:18 You probably couldn't even really paraphrase it very well. But you're paying attention quite well. I am transcripting the information you have and translating it into understanding. You're paying attention quite well. Because I am transcripting the information you have and translating it into understanding what you're saying versus the exact words and lingo and prepositional phrases you're using to land it there. Exactly. And so you can't remember the words that I spoke 20 seconds ago. And I'm expected to believe that the gospel authors who were writing at best decades after the death of Jesus remembered the exact words that he'd spoken. I'm not convinced of that. There is an idea that people had been traditionally remembering the words that he'd

Starting point is 00:47:54 said and passing them on to each other and sharing them and authenticating them against different independent traditions. And that can be true. But when it's as important as in this particular instance, did Jesus call himself the son of man or a son of man? And that actually makes a big difference. Yes. Then I think we need to be a lot more suspicious. Hey, guys, if you haven't already subscribed, please hit that subscribe button. It's a huge, huge help.

Starting point is 00:48:16 Thank you. There are in in to play devil's advocate on some of that, though. In our own lives, forget even something as serious as like Jesus or a historical figure. In our own lives, you may listen to someone talking with you for an hour, right? Yes. And you're talking about something serious with them. And to your point, I can't remember what they said 30 seconds ago in the exact words. But at some point, the drama of the situation lines up that they land the plane and they say something that isn't.

Starting point is 00:48:47 Those words are ingrained in your head forever. Yes. So there could be some of that. And that's what probably happens in a lot of these cases with Jesus. So really, really big Christological moments. In John's gospel, Jesus appears in chapter 8 to like invoke the divine name. He says to his Jewish opponents, before Abraham was, i am and i am ego amy in greek is thought by many to be a callback to the name that god gives moses as his own name um aisha in the in the hebrew which kind of means ego amy which is what

Starting point is 00:49:19 jesus says and so if jesus really did say something like that it is the kind of thing that would stick in the mind yes the mystery then is why only John's gospel reports it and Matthew, Mark and Luke have no mention of such an event. So there are other reasons to suspect the historicity of that event. But a lot of like reading into the words of Jesus isn't just the big headline, obvious stuff like that. It's more specific stuff, like the son of man stuff. Jesus uses the title son of man for himself all the time. It's like he uses it more than any other title for himself, I think. And it's a bit of a mystery what it means, because son of man in Aramaic, which is the language Jesus spoke, is just a

Starting point is 00:50:01 sort of slang term that means human being, bar nash. It just means human being. So you would say that person is a son of man, just means that they're a human being. Bar Nash, it just means human being. So you would say that person is a son of man, just means that they're a human being. You know, they were born of a human being. Weirdly, the Greek New Testament consistently has Jesus use the definitive article, the son of man, which is a really clunky Greek phrase. It's not something that just sort of gets lost in translation.

Starting point is 00:50:22 It was very particular. It was done on purpose. It's not a son of man. It's the son of man. So we've got this title, the son of man, which we associate with Jesus. But a lot of scholars think that the way we should sort of think about this is as if, because son of man just means human being, it's as if someone was going around calling himself the human being or the one in like the matrix sense.

Starting point is 00:50:44 Yeah. Which until something like the matrix popularizes that, that usage would be really clunky and strange. But it seems like Jesus might've been doing something like that. Like I am the human one, you know, it's extremely strange. But if there were some instances where he was actually just saying, I am a human, it would totally change the interpretation of a verse. So for example, have you ever heard the phrase,

Starting point is 00:51:03 the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbathath you ever heard this before i don't think so so the sabbath is supposed to be a day of rest right it's the seventh day of the week and in jewish law you have to remember the sabbath and keep it holy you're not allowed to work on the sabbath jesus is working on the sabbath his jewish opponents come up to him and say, you're working on the Sabbath. Because they're trying to catch him out. They don't like him. They want to eventually crucify him. So they say, you're working on the Sabbath.

Starting point is 00:51:34 And Jesus goes, have you not read what David did? And he says that King David does the same thing. He sort of works on the Sabbath when he has to. And then he says that the Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So in other words, the reason that the Sabbath exists is for humankind's sake. It's so that we get our day of rest. And so the criticism he's making of the Jews there is that they've become too legalistic. They sort of forgot the whole reason why the Sabbath exists in the first place. It's not just there because God hates it when you work on the Sabbath.

Starting point is 00:52:05 It's there for your sake. The Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Jesus then says, therefore, the son of man is Lord of the Sabbath. Meaning he gets to decide what happens that day. Well, that's the thing, right? Who is the Lord of the Sabbath? The Lord of the Sabbath is God.

Starting point is 00:52:25 God is the one who- I thought it was Ozzy Osbourne. God is the one who institutes the... Yeah, he's the other son of man. Fuck. In the Gnostic gospels, they associate Ozzy Osbourne. The person who institutes the law about the Sabbath and the 10 commandments is God. God is the Lord of the Sabbath. But here's Jesus saying, oh, the son of man is Lord of the Sabbath. Me, the title I'm using, the Son of Man, I'm the Lord of the Sabbath. So he's claiming to be God. Unless this is a tradition that's been lost in translation,

Starting point is 00:52:52 and Jesus actually said Son of Man just to mean human beings. Over and over again, though? Well, some scholars like Morris Casey think that that's what's happened. I think that's dubious. That seems like a stretch. The use of the definitive article is too strong to think that Jesus wasn't sometimes using it essentially as a kind of title. But this instance, for example, check it out, right? So he says, oh, can you go to the version of Mark's gospel?

Starting point is 00:53:18 Can you type in Mark, Lord of the Sabbath? Mark is our earliest gospel. We also, by the way, I have been saying this this whole time, but a whole another rabbit hole here is the translation of all these gospels. Yeah, that's so much of that is... Where one article can be here instead of there. Oh, I've got something for you on that. I've got something for you on that. Does it start with Ammon?

Starting point is 00:53:39 Go back and go to the actual... Just type in Mark 2 into that, where it says that. Just type Mark 2 and hit enter. Okay, and then scroll down until you get, keep scrolling. Jesus, Lord of the Sabbath. So he says, right. So they come up to him. The Pharisees say, look, what he's doing is unlawful on the Sabbath. Jesus answers, have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? So they enter into the temple and eat the bread

Starting point is 00:54:05 that only the high priest is supposed to eat. So first thing to notice is Jesus is justifying his breaking of the Sabbath by pointing to another human being and saying, well, he did the same thing. He then says, Then he said to them, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So, and the word does mean therefore, the word so there, it does actually mean therefore in the Greek. Therefore, the son of man is Lord, even of the Sabbath. So one, the traditional Christian interpretation of this is Jesus is

Starting point is 00:54:35 claiming to be God because he claims to be the Lord of the Sabbath, which is only God. But if this has been lost in translation, which I suspect of this verse, and Jesus in this instance meant son of man in the Aramaic colloquial sense of just meaning a human being, all he's saying is that human beings are lord of the Sabbath. In other words, humans are lord of the Sabbath. Sabbath isn't lord of human beings, which, hold on a second, is exactly what he's just said in other words. So my interpretation here, that Jesus is just saying that the son of Man, what he actually said was like Son of Man as in human beings. Yes. Now reread the verse with that interpretation in mind. They accuse him of breaking the Sabbath

Starting point is 00:55:14 He says well David did the same thing and then he says look the Sabbath was made for man not man for the Sabbath Therefore human beings are Lord of the Sabbath because he's just said that the Sabbath was made for mankind Is he essentially saying that like instead of trying to treat this like a law that you're human beings are Lord of the Sabbath. Because he's just said that the Sabbath was made for mankind. Is he essentially saying that like, instead of trying to treat this like a law that you're dictating your whole life around to feel like you're doing the right thing, it's really supposed to be a guideline as a method to how to live your life in a good way?

Starting point is 00:55:37 In this instance, I don't know if I'd phrase it in those terms, that it's just like a guideline. It's a polite way of saying, fuck no. No, no, no, because I think you're probably about right, but I think saying guidelines is too loose. Like it's not like, well, these are rules, but they're only guidelines, so break them if you want to.

Starting point is 00:55:53 It's more like understand what the purpose of the law is. The law is there for your sake, you know. What I'm trying to bring out with this particular verse is that I think that that is the interpretation of what's actually happening here. But the specific words here, the son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath. It's a little bit weird and clunky because he's just said that David broke the Sabbath and that was fine. He's just said that the Sabbath was made for mankind. And then suddenly shifts to talking about himself.

Starting point is 00:56:24 The son of man is lord of the sabbath then why he's not mankind why has he just spoken about david breaking the sabbath why has he just said that the sabbath was made for mankind and then suddenly he's talking about himself doesn't it make more sense if he would say well david broke the sabbath and the sabbath was made for mankind therefore mankind is lord of the sabbath i what you're saying. Therefore I think when he says here the son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath I think it's probably a not a mistranslation from the Greek but the Greek itself is probably a misreporting of what actually happened here and Jesus was just saying that mankind is Lord of the Sabbath not the son of man as a title you

Starting point is 00:57:00 know what I mean? I could see that one both ways because he's and maybe this is a way too simplistic way of looking at it But he's looking at date He's using David as an example of a great man Among humankind not to say like he's above man or anything and then relating back to himself and saying but you know By the way, like I'm the son of man so I can actually yeah. Yes, that's that's another great interpretation Is he saying like well David did it and I'm so much greater than David because I'm the son of man, so I can actually dictate that. Yeah, yeah. So that's another great interpretation is he's saying like, well, David did it, and I'm so much greater than David because I'm the son of man. So of course I can do it too. That's another interpretation.

Starting point is 00:57:32 The key is that it's not always obvious, and a lot of it has to do. The reason I brought this example up is because, by the way, I might be wrong there. Maybe this is an authentic tradition, and he really did say the son of man, meaning himself is Lord of the Sabbath. That might be true. But the important thing is here that there's a lot more room in my view in an instance like this for someone to have slightly misremembered what he said, especially if Jesus had been going around claiming himself to be the son of man. And he had been saying, like, I am the son of man constantly. And then in this instance, he used the phrase son of man in the non-titular sense. It would be so obvious, it'd be so easy for me to imagine that somebody sort of misremembers. And they sort of go, yeah,

Starting point is 00:58:17 remember when Jesus said the son of man is Lord of the Sabbath and they record it that way. So the whole, why I said, can you remember my sentence 20 seconds ago is to indicate that in some instances, I think there is a lot more wiggle room for just thinking that something has been misremembered. Whereas if Jesus were to have said before Abraham was, I am, that's so specific that it's unlikely that that would be remembered wrongly. So I think it applies sometimes, but not other times. I think that's very fair because like I said, there's different, you know, for lack of a better way of putting it, there's different levels of drama that occur with the context of what you're saying and where you're saying it. But like, who do you in, because obviously like one of the reasons Alessi spoke so highly of you is you've studied this

Starting point is 00:58:59 stuff inside and out. You're not just someone who will argue about points in the Bible without literally being able to pull up point in scripture note and the whole bit. But like, you know, in, in your time studying, let's say the new Testament and the character that, that is Jesus, what, what do you make of that? I mean, he was a historical character. We, we, we know he existed, but who do you think he was? And, and do you think, do you think he was, regardless of whether he was divine or not, do you think he was a force of good? To clarify, I'm very much a student here, and I'm fascinated by the Gospels, and I have read a lot about them, but I would be put to shame by a biblical scholar, like in terms of knowledge, in terms of interpretation, certainly like grasp of Greek. I don't read New Testament Greek. I know some important terms and things like that, but I'm very much not even approximating an expert here, which is important

Starting point is 00:59:55 to clarify because, you know, I'm sort of trying to learn out loud here. When I share these ideas with people, even if I say them kind of confidently, of confidently like hey this is what I think Jesus is doing it's all in the spirit of being like this is how I'm reading it guys like am I missing something and sometimes sometimes I am like just missing something or someone brings something to my attention I'm like actually you know what you're totally right I need to totally re-evaluate my view that happens all the time in my, that throat clearing out of the way, the historical Jesus of Nazareth was a disciple of John the Baptist, who was essentially trying to adapt and continue the ministry of John the Baptist. John the Baptist is my favorite New Testament character. Why is he your favorite? You know who John the Baptist is?

Starting point is 01:00:40 Yes. I ask people this all the time, and they say, yeah, of course I do. Who's John the Baptist? Jesus' cousin. Who is John the Baptist?? Yes. I ask people this all the time and they say, yeah, of course I do. Who's John the Baptist? Jesus' cousin. Who is John the Baptist? What does he do? He was the dude that did the baptizing. Yeah, sure. And what does that mean? What is baptizing?

Starting point is 01:00:54 Bringing someone into the belief system. In this case, we're referring to it in a Christian context and being a part of what then became that church. But Christianity didn't exist yet. It didn't exist. So what was Jesus being baptized into? I don't know what he was being baptized into officially, actually.

Starting point is 01:01:10 And what does baptism actually mean? Oh, you're getting meta. Remember, I recorded for five hours right before you got here. You got to bear with me. I'm being a bit unfair. I'm being a bit unfair because the point is that people always say, yeah, of course I know who John the Baptist is, because he's the

Starting point is 01:01:25 guy that baptized Jesus. It's like, what does that mean? We don't know. The first time the word baptism shows up is in this report of John the Baptist. Like, who was he? What was he doing? Why was Jesus being baptized? This is really strange. Like, why is it that Jesus, God himself, according to Orthodox Christianity, would need to be baptized. Baptized into what? For what purpose? Now, it's unlikely that the gospel authors would make up this story, right? If they're trying to present Jesus as at least the son of God and possibly God himself, they're not going to make up a story about him being baptized by some other preacher. Yeah, because it goes against the narrative. Exactly. So the fact that all of theospels report about John the Baptist and his importance

Starting point is 01:02:05 mean that we can be pretty certain that historically this is actually what happened, that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, right? Yeah. So why? Now, the Christian answers are plentiful. There are lots of reasons why that could have happened. But, like, historically, I believe it's because he was a follower of John the Baptist. We have all kinds of indications that this is the case.

Starting point is 01:02:23 Like, at one point Jesus is asked, or Jesus says, who the greatest person ever born of a woman was. Of people born of a woman, there is none greater than John the Baptist. He refers to John the Baptist as the greatest person who ever lived. Person. Yes. So some people think, well, okay, he was excluding himself there. So he might have been. He also might not have been. Like, we don't really know. It's kind of interesting. John the Baptist is a hugely significant figure with his own ministry as well.

Starting point is 01:02:56 This is important to point out. He's somebody who's got his own following. Two of Jesus' disciples are John the Baptist's disciples, who essentially poachers from them. And in the canonical... We poached them. Well, in the canonical tradition, John the Baptist basically is constantly saying, there is coming one greater than I. Like, you're all my followers, but I baptize you with water, but there's one who's going to come and baptize you with spirit. So when you're a free agent, you sign up with him.

Starting point is 01:03:18 Yeah, yeah, right, right, exactly. And so Jesus comes along and John the Baptist is like, here he is. Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, as John's gospel has him say. So instantly, John the Baptist is just like, this is the dude. I'm unfit to like untie his sandal. It's a really clunky sort of specific phrase. Oh, he said that? Yeah. Or maybe it's tie the sandal or something like that. He says like, I'm unworthy. Pull it up, John. John, John one. I guess that was like the old school way of saying i'm unworthy of holding his jock strap yeah but that's the thing so so some some people kind of think that was was this some kind of known colloquial saying that people say because it's weirdly specific so the first person

Starting point is 01:03:56 mentioned if you if you scroll down the first person mentioned by name is john the baptist um hold on scroll up a bit there we we go. John testified out concerning him. So, the word became flesh famously in John's gospel. The word becomes flesh and dwells among us, blah, blah, blah. John testified concerning him, that's John the Baptist, saying, this is the one I spoke about when I said, he who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me. Out of his fullness, we have all received grace in place of grace already given. But the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

Starting point is 01:04:29 No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known. So this is a very high Christology. This is very like Jesus is the God, you know. And if you look right underneath, John the Baptist denies being the Messiah. They come up to him and they say, who are you? You know, are you the Messiah? And he says, I'm not the Messiah. He says, are you Elijah?

Starting point is 01:04:49 He says, no. He says, are you the prophet? No. And if you scroll up right to the top of John's gospel, there was a man, this is verse 6, there was a man sent from God whose name was John. He's not called John the Baptist in John's gospel, but that's who we're talking about. Just called John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light so that all may believe.

Starting point is 01:05:07 He himself was not the light. He came only as a witness to the light. John's gospel is particularly interested in reminding us that John is not the Messiah. He's not the light. He came to bear witness to the light. Then they come and ask him, are you the Messiah? He says, I'm not the Messiah. And one indication, one interesting implication of this is that at the time of the writing of John's gospel, which is probably around like 1890, 100 AD, there were people who

Starting point is 01:05:37 believed that John the Baptist was the Messiah, that John the Baptist was the light, that John the Baptist was the main guy. And that's why in John's gospel, one idea is that that's why in John's gospel we see such an emphasis on diminishing the status of John the Baptist. He's constantly saying like, this guy's better than me, he's coming, I'm unworthy. This is the guy, I'm not the Messiah, he's the Messiah. Because we know that John is held in high esteem. Jesus calls him the greatest man that's ever lived. When Herod Antipas first hears rumors of this Jesus chap, when people start talking about Jesus, Herod Antipas says, this is John the Baptist resurrected. Jesus is causing such a scene around, like, throughout his ministry. And when Herod Antipas, the king, hears about this guy, he says, it's John the Baptist resurrected.

Starting point is 01:06:30 What must John the Baptist have been doing if when this guy hears about Jesus, he goes, oh, it's another John the Baptist? Well, John was pouring water. This guy's walking on water. He's 2.0. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's right. Water is actually... I'm going to hell. No, but the emphasis on water is really interesting too

Starting point is 01:06:47 because it's not entirely clear what the water thing is all about. James McGrath has just done two books. I had him on my show about John the Baptist. One is a popular biography called Christmaker. Christmaker. Christmaker because he's the one who makes the Christ, right? And the scholarly work he put out is called John of History, Baptist of Faith. And it's about the historical John the Baptist. And some of it,

Starting point is 01:07:11 in my view, gets kind of speculative, but I'd recommend people reading this if they're interested or read through the gospels with a view towards John the Baptist being incredibly important because it's kind of underplayed. People don't realize just how important John the Baptist is. He's the first person mentioned by name in John's gospel, unless you count the word as a name or God, I suppose. And it's like denying the Messiahship and there's this preoccupation with it. So what were all the things he was doing though?

Starting point is 01:07:38 Because as you pointed out at the very beginning when you asked me my base level knowledge on him, it is emphasis on base. Yeah, well, we're not entirely sure, but we know that one thing he was doing was baptizing people, and he was doing what was called a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. That sounds very familiar. Yeah, doesn't it, right? Yeah. Heard that one at the altar.

Starting point is 01:08:00 Go to Mark 1. So I like looking at Mark's gospel because it's our earliest gospel. When was Mark's gospel written again? Arguably around 70 AD. There are all kinds of debates about when the gospels are written, and it's kind of a fascinating debate. And was this also written on papyrus, by the way? Yeah. So the thing is, we don't have the original autographs, as in we don't have the original... We don't have Mark's gospel written in 70 AD. What we have, the thing is we don't have the original autographs, as in we don't have the original, we don't like have Mark's Gospel written in 70 AD. What we have are like early fragments of copies or early codices. And so we don't know what the original autographs would have looked like. And also, you know, I'm no expert in manuscripts, so there might be some way we could know that

Starting point is 01:08:46 without seeing them ourselves. But the dating of Mark's Gospel is not based on finding a manuscript and dating the manuscript with carbon dating or something. It's quite speculative. It's very textual. So we do have early manuscripts, so we can put a top end on these manuscripts.

Starting point is 01:09:06 But nailing it down to an exact point yeah we haven't got like a first century fragment right and even if we did it would be probably impossible to like prove exactly when it was when it was written so instead we we're looking at other factors so mark's gospel seems to be written in response to the destruction of the temple in jer, which happened in 70 AD. This is like a key moment. Some people think it was written before 70 AD. Some people think it was written in like 40 AD. It's just incredibly speculative.

Starting point is 01:09:34 In fact, in a new tab, can you go to John chapter 5? So John's gospel is the latest gospel, which people think is written around like 90 AD, maybe 95. But there are some scholars who look... You said five. Five, yeah. There are some scholars who look at John and say, take a look at verse two there. Now there is in Jerusalem near the sheep gate a pool.

Starting point is 01:09:56 There is in Jerusalem near the sheep gate a pool. That pool would have been destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. So the fact that... The pool? Yeah, destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. The pool? Yeah, because it was on the temple ground. So the whole area is just like completely flattened. And so it wouldn't exist anymore, in other words. Jerusalem was like ravaged. And so although John is telling a story about what happened a long time ago, at the beginning of John's gospel he's writing as an author he's saying he doesn't say now in that time now in that time there was a

Starting point is 01:10:31 there was a pool and this is what Jesus did there he says now there is a pool right now and this is what and this is what happened there and so some scholars based on this alone say that that means that John must have been writing his gospel before 70 AD, which is when the temple was destroyed. Because he says there is. Now it's possible that the author of John's gospel was just saying there is because he's sort of writing as if he's in the tense of the time. Yeah, or he's playing chestnut checkers like everything I wrote earlier. Right. But it is a little bit weird, right? It's like, why is it speaking in the present tense? So some people look at that and go, oh, John must be pre-70. So the point I'm

Starting point is 01:11:09 trying to make is that dating is an incredibly speculative enterprise, but it's generally assumed that Mark is the earliest. So if we go back to Mark 1, which is in our other tab, John the Baptist prepares the way. And arche, eugaleon, yesu, Christos or something, you know, the beginning of the good news, and good news is the same word for gospel, by the way, eugaleon yesu christos or something you know the beginning of the good news and good news is the same word for gospel by the way eugaleon so when you hear about the gospels it just means the good news of Jesus Christ the son of God son of God kind of should be in brackets because

Starting point is 01:11:36 it's not in some of our earliest manuscripts so often times in translations you'll see that in fact I think if you see where it says B the little B footnote some manuscripts do not have the son of God these are fascinating if you see where it says b the little the little b footnote some manuscripts do not have the son of god these are fascinating if you're ever reading the bible online is this the niv yeah like look at the footnotes because it's always got this these really interesting little tidbits but check it out you've got this this interesting quote of actually a few different

Starting point is 01:12:00 prophets but it mentions isaiah i will send my messenger ahead of you who will prepare the way, a voice calling in the wilderness, a voice of one calling in the wilderness, prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him. And then John the Baptist appears in the wilderness and he's preparing the way for Jesus. So Jesus in this instance is the Lord. And in the Old Testament passage the Lord there is Yahweh, the great God. So it seems like Mark is presenting Jesus as Yahweh. But notice again, the second person mentioned by name in John's gospel, John the Baptist, in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. What does that mean? I don't know. No one really knows.

Starting point is 01:12:40 But look, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him confessing their sins. They were baptized by him in the river Jordan. To get forgiven. Yes. John was wearing clothing made of camel's hair, a leather belt around his waist. He ate locusts and wild honey. That sounds awful.

Starting point is 01:12:59 And then there it is again. And this was his message. After me comes one more powerful than I. The straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. So from our earliest source, we've got John the Baptist as an incredibly important person. The first person mentioned who prepares the way for Jesus, emphasizes that Jesus is more important than he is, but also an emphasis on how big John the Baptist was. Everyone's coming out to him for the forgiveness of sins.

Starting point is 01:13:30 Interestingly, later in Jesus's ministry, Jesus says things like, you know, the greatest student will one day come to be as good as their teacher and surpass their teacher. He also says to his disciples at one point, you will do even greater things than I, which is a little bit of a weird thing to say so as the son of man again like historically i'm kind of looking at this and thinking what's going on here i kind of see this as john the baptist like passing on his ministry to jesus jesus is essentially his successor and then jesus takes on this forgiveness of sins um and this sort of embodiment of what christians will say only god can forgive sins and that's why jesus can forgive sins what the hell is going on with john the baptist then and why is it that in john if you go to john chapter 20 verse 21 sorry this is this is a lot of them but he was close to him jumping around they were they were related and 21 22 and so chapter 20 is fine yeah

Starting point is 01:14:19 you can scroll down hypothetically like i'm just this is way more serious than than it but i'm thinking about like good things that come before great things right like one person walks so another can run yeah yeah yeah so this is the thing right like historically you're either looking at this theologically and saying like okay well john the baptist was an important preacher a prophet of god who knew that jesus was god himself he wasate, so that's why he was there. Or you could see it historically as someone who's just saying that, like, you know, this man will come who will, like, overtake my ministry. Now, historically, if that is what happened, it probably doesn't make much sense that John was saying that before Jesus showed up. And so, if we take this view that Jesus is essentially a disciple of John the

Starting point is 01:15:03 Baptist who carries on his ministry, it's unlikely that John the Baptist is already going around saying there's one who's coming who's going to be greater than I am. And then Jesus appears and he goes, that's him. That's the guy. You know, that's unlikely to have happened. Jesus chapter, sorry, John chapter 20. So one chapter beforehand. This is a really important Christological moment for me. If you scroll down to like verse 21,

Starting point is 01:15:27 a bit further, about that, yeah. You got this indexed, man. Jesus is talking to his disciples here and he says, again, Jesus said, this is him speaking to his disciples. And he does this, this is after the resurrection. So Jesus has died, he's resurrected and he says, peace be with you.

Starting point is 01:15:39 As the father has sent me, I am sending you. The word as there is cathos, which means in the same way as. And with that, he breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone's sins, their sins are forgiven. If you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven. So Jesus seems to be giving his disciples the ability to forgive sins. So my image of who Jesus is, is somebody who kind of takes on the ministry of John the Baptist, becomes extremely proficient, is an incredibly talented like healer, miracle worker, all of this kind of stuff. And then has a view constantly towards then passing that on to his

Starting point is 01:16:19 disciples. And this forgiveness of sins is really important because it shows up in John the Baptist. Jesus takes it on and now he's giving it to his disciples. Also notice how this is worded. I'm only really thinking about this now, like this particular point, but it says, how does he give that power to his disciples? Receive the Holy Spirit. He like gives them the Holy Spirit and now they can forgive people's sins. Go back to Mark chapter one, top left tab. Let's look at the actual baptism itself. Check this out. So actually, I don't think it will word it like this in Mark's gospel. Hold on. Yeah, okay. So it kind of does here, right? So this is the actual baptism. Just as Jesus was coming, yeah, so Jesus is baptized by John in the Jordan. Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove.

Starting point is 01:17:18 A voice came out of heaven, you are my son with whom I love. With you I am very well pleased. Try like Luke chapter 3, I think it would be. Because the thing about the gospels is because we've got four gospels, the same stories are often reported in multiple ways throughout all of the gospels. So look, it's basically identical. You're sitting versus like rap bars, bro.

Starting point is 01:17:37 It's basically identical, right? Like you can see it's the same thing, the same quote, although it's slightly changed. Which verse am I looking at? Just scroll down a bit. Let's get to the actual, scroll down a bit further. There we go. Hold on. Look at that. All right. When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was open and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven. You are my son whom I love with you. I am well pleased. So this is is really important the holy spirit descends on him in bodily form like a dove um try the same thing

Starting point is 01:18:09 in matthew's gospel let's do like matthew baptism and see what comes up the the main thing that i want you to take notice of here is in every instance of the baptism of jesus the holy spirit comes upon uh jesus as a dove yes the spirit of God descending on him like a dove and alighting on him. And I think in at least one instance, there's talk of the Holy Spirit coming into him. I'm not sure if that's in the Greek in the synoptics or if it's John's gospel. The wording's also the same on that quote, almost word for word. Yeah. So the thing about the synopsis, you know that the first three gospels are called the synoptic gospels? Have you heard this before?

Starting point is 01:18:49 Yeah, I think Wes talked about this. Yeah, Matthew, Mark, and Luke share so much in common that they seem to share similar sources and rely upon each other. John's gospel is just like totally wacky and out on its own. Maybe they were cheating off each other's papers. That seems, that's how, I mean like 95% or so of mark's gospel is also in luke and matthew like luke and matthew are essentially like expanded versions of mark's gospel with like new stuff added on only a couple how wild would that be if they were just like sitting in some room like inside a rock in jerusalem like yeah we're gonna write this out and then it becomes those

Starting point is 01:19:21 gospels that is basically that is basically how it That is basically how it seems to be. We're going to change the world. We know that the author of Matthew and Luke are using Mark, which by the way, is one of the dating, the keys to dating here is that like, if we date Mark around 70, then because Matthew and Luke are obviously using Mark as a source, we have to date them like, you know, at least sort of maybe five, 10 years afterwards, right? And so there's a lot of stuff going on there. At any rate, the point is that at the baptism by John the Baptist, the spirit comes upon or into Jesus. At the end of John's gospel, Jesus gives his, like the authority to forgive

Starting point is 01:20:07 sins to his disciples by breathing and the spirit comes upon them. So there seem to be these interesting parallels between what Jesus gets from John the Baptist and what the disciples get from Jesus at the right moment. Is Jesus getting that from john the baptist or is it a result of just him like he's john the baptist happens to be performing this act on him baptizing him and then afterwards separately from john the baptist jesus's father god yeah this is this is what the bible says teaches yeah happens right because again i'm i'm trying to offer like a plausible account of what it would mean historically for j trying to offer like a plausible account of what it would mean historically for Jesus to have just been a follower of John the Baptist. But

Starting point is 01:20:48 as I clarified, this is just one man's opinion. The Bible paints it very differently and Christians believe something very different. They believe that John is doing some kind of baptism. Jesus comes up to him and John's like, I'm unworthy of this. But he baptizes him, at which point the heavens open and the Father says, like announces, this is my son with whom I'm well pleased. And so the Father is doing, the Father is the one who puts the Spirit into Jesus. The Father is there.

Starting point is 01:21:15 The Trinity is present. You've got the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit descending like a dove. You've also got the physicality of the dove, which is a little bit strange. And so Christians are going to listen to what I'm saying and say, no, no, it's totally, totally different. And also it's not that Jesus got this from John the Baptist. He got it from the father, which is kind of interesting. Of course, Jesus

Starting point is 01:21:33 says in John chapter 20, as the father has sent me, I'm sending you. So even if it was the father who sent Jesus, Jesus is now sending his disciples in the same way. So if that's where Jesus got his ability to forgive sins from, for example, then he's passing that on to his disciples still. But I do find it a little bit suspicious that John is teaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Like, what does that mean? Christians will say, well, John wasn't forgiving people's sins. He was baptizing people for the forgiveness of their sins somehow or another. You know, it wasn't like he didn't have the authority to forgive their sins. He was kind of just announcing the forgiveness of sins as priests often did.

Starting point is 01:22:08 So priests would announce that people's sins are forgiven, but they would never claim to forgive sins themselves because that's what God does. But they would say your sins are forgiven, by which they mean God has forgiven you. A bit like what a Catholic priest does when you go to confession. And so Christians will probably look at John the Baptist

Starting point is 01:22:21 and say that's what he was doing there. And Jesus comes along and forgives of his own authority. And that's what makes him God. That's a bit dubious, too, because that's also a little bit unclear. There's an episode in Mark chapter 2 about the paralytic being raised, being sort of sent through the roof to Jesus because the crowds are so big. And there's a paralytic man who wants to be healed and they lower sent through the roof to Jesus because the crowds are so big and there's a paralytic man who wants to be healed and they lower him through the roof. And Jesus says to him, take heart, your sins are forgiven. And the scribes nearby, the Jewish authorities, they're

Starting point is 01:22:55 thinking, hold on a second, like who can forgive sins but God alone? Only God can forgive sins. But Jesus is announcing this forgiveness of sins. What's he doing? Jesus reads their minds knows that they're thinking this and says why are you thinking these things? he says Because they accuse him of blasphemy like in their hearts. He says why you why are you saying this? I want you to know that the Son of Man has the authority to forgive sins on earth And he says which is easier to say to this man your your sins are forgiven or to say, take up your mat and walk. So, so that you know that the son of man has authority to forgive sins. I tell you, get up and walk. And the paralytic man gets up and he walks

Starting point is 01:23:33 out. So Jesus is saying like, okay, you're saying I can't forgive sins. Mic drop. It's even harder to raise a paralytic, right? But watch this. So raise paralytic. So you know that the son of man has authority to forgive sins as well. Now, this is a really important chapter because Christians look at this often and they'll say, okay, so the scribes say, who can forgive sins but God alone? And Jesus goes, well, watch this. I can forgive sins. So he's claiming to be God because only God can forgive sins. And Jesus is saying that I have the authority to forgive sins. That's how Christians interpret it. But you don't think that's the case?

Starting point is 01:24:08 No, another interpretation is to say, like, is to say Jesus says that, actually, can you pull up Matthew's version of this? I forget which chapter it's in, but Matthew paralytic type in. Type in paralyzed guy. I feel like that might come up faster. but let's get matthew's version so matthew's version is slightly different this is really interesting and i'm a lot of christians might not be aware of this too because by the way this comes up all the time as an apologetical tool

Starting point is 01:24:34 in popular apologetics people like the connect lees and west half and people i think they use this kind of argument all the time and they point to mark chapter two jesus forgives sins therefore you know he he is claiming to be god some Some interesting things when we get to Matthew's gospel. So my interpretation of this story is the scribes are saying, who can forgive sins but God alone? And Jesus is saying, you're wrong. I want you to know that the Son of Man has the authority to forgive sins. Even if because he's got that from the Father, even if like God has given him that authority, I think he's trying to say, actually, I have the authority to do that too. And I'll prove it. Watch this. And some interesting clues

Starting point is 01:25:09 to this in Matthew's gospel include, check it out. Verse three at this, some of the teachers of the law said to themselves, this fellow is blaspheming. Said to themselves. Yeah. So he's reading that, knowing their thoughts. It's pretty creepy. Mark's version says this fellow is blaspheming, who can forgive sins sins but God alone? Interestingly, Matthew, by the way, remember I said a moment ago that Matthew takes almost all of Mark's gospel. 95% of what's in Mark's gospel, Matthew has in his gospel almost verbatim. Interestingly, one of the few changes that Matthew makes is here. In Mark's gospel, it says, this fellow is blaspheming. Who can forgive sins but God alone? Matthew removes the reference to only God being able to forgive

Starting point is 01:25:49 sins, which is kind of interesting. Not entirely sure why he did that, but the implication is still there because they say he's blaspheming. How else could he be blaspheming except somehow, you know, invoking something that only God can do? So I don't think that Matthew's trying to remove that implication, but it is interesting that he just chose to remove that statement. That's kind of weird, right? But then check it out. And keep these two interpretations in mind. Either Jesus is saying, yes, you're right. And I am God. So I'm going to forgive sins. Or he's saying, no, you're wrong. I can forgive sins as well, even though I'm not God. So Matthew reports this story, which is easier to say your sins are forgiven or to say, get up and walk. But I want you to know that the son of man has authority to forgive sins. So he

Starting point is 01:26:27 says to the paralyzed man, get up, take your mat and go home. The man got up and went home. When the crowd saw this, they were filled with awe. They praised God who had given such authority to a man. A man. A man. That is unique to Matthew's version of the story. Who has given such authority to man. To man, yeah. To man, as in to mankind. Yes. So at least the author of Matthew here is painting the interpretation of the crowds as thinking that God has given the authority to forgive sins to a man. Well, to play devil's advocate here, because he is in the appearance of a man walking among them. So Christians will read this and say, well, yeah, that's because they were like,

Starting point is 01:27:06 because they hadn't clocked it yet. They were sort of like, hold on, why would God give this authority to a man? That's so strange because they hadn't realized that it's because Jesus is actually God. But my reading of this story is at least consistent, right? Like as in my view that what Jesus is doing here is saying, by the way, i mean one of the themes of the gospels is that scribes pharisees sadducees they come to jesus and they say you're blaspheming and he goes no you've misunderstood me they say you're claiming this and there's like no

Starting point is 01:27:34 that's that's not what i'm doing at one point they they accuse him of being a samaritan possessed by a demon that happens in john chapter eight and they're just getting things wrong left right and center jesus was a demon yeah They say that on a few occasions. In Mark's gospel, in the synopsis, so Mark's gospel happens quite early. They, this is, there's so much

Starting point is 01:27:56 in here, man. I'm loving this. This is great. They say, type in, I can't remember which chapter this is. It might be Mark 3, but type in Mark blasphemy Holy Spirit. So, you know Jesus' whole thing is about forgiveness, right? Doesn, but type in Mark, blasphemy, Holy Spirit. So, you know, Jesus' whole thing is about forgiveness, right? It doesn't matter what you do. It doesn't matter where you've come from. If you throw yourself on Christ and you repent, then you'll be forgiven of your sins. Check this out. So the scribes come to Jerusalem and they

Starting point is 01:28:18 say he's possessed by Beelzebub. Beelzebul? Beelzebul. Yeah, sorry, Beelzebul. And by the prince of demons, he casts out demons. So Jesus is exercising people, exorcising, casting out demons. And the Jewish scribes say, well, he's doing that because he's a demon himself. That's how he's communicating with these demons, you know? And so Jesus has this whole thing where he says, how can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself the kingdom can't stand blah blah blah blah blah um so he's basically saying like no he says but no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods unless

Starting point is 01:28:53 he first binds the strong man so you have to bind the demon to to win over the demon so he can't be a demon himself and then he says truly I say to you all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin. Yeah. So you can't ever get for just that. Mm-hmm. Meaning you can blaspheme against him. You can blaspheme against him. You can blaspheme against him you can blaspheme against him you

Starting point is 01:29:25 can blaspheme against god blaspheme against god or the father this holy spirit but if you blaspheme against the holy spirit you will not be forgiven right what the hell does that mean once again i'm going to surprise you here nobody really knows nobody knows for sure what jesus meant by those words you can't know everything. But so it's kind of interesting that this happens in the context of him being accused of having a demon within him. Yeah. So it seems so some people say, well, this is because specifically the scribes saw the evidence right in front of them and they called God himself a demon. And that is the kind of thing that simply can't be forgiven or something like that. Some people say that to blaspheme the Holy Spirit is to sort of know that it's true,

Starting point is 01:30:09 but still reject it because you're like rejecting the spirit. But the fact that it says it will never be forgiven is what keeps me up at night. Because whatever interpretation you give, and I've spoken to Christians about this, left, right and center, and I've spoken to Christians about this, left, right, and center, and I've never had a satisfying answer. Let's not say there isn't one, but I haven't spoken about it, like, maybe with the right people.

Starting point is 01:30:31 But they'll have some line on this. They'll say, like, when I spoke to the Connectleys about it, they say, like, look, this is because somebody who blasphemes the Holy Spirit means that they've hardened their heart against, like, the truth. And they've done that to such an extent

Starting point is 01:30:46 that even when the truth is there and it's in them, they still just won't hear it. And that is the kind of, if you don't have a heart that's open to forgiveness, then you can never be forgiven. But what if I'm like, what if I'm just kind of living a shit life, right? Let's paint a scenario here.

Starting point is 01:31:02 And one day, for whatever reason reason i don't know why this would come up but this comes up and you're like oh you know that or whatever yeah and then five years and then five years later you're like actually a wife and a kid and you change your life and like you know some other guys out there killing someone and saying sorry god and he's good but you're not yeah that doesn't make any sense so this is the thing right, right? Whatever line you have on what blasphemy of the Holy Spirit means, because it says it will never be forgiven, you have to imagine that no matter what your line is there, if tomorrow I change my mind about that,

Starting point is 01:31:35 that I cannot be forgiven. So the Connectly said that the reason that's the case is because the person who's so hard on their heart has made it such that they just never will change their mind. That's what it means. I think that's a bullshit answer answer i think so too with all all your respect to them um it's stew right is that right it's the word connect cliff and cliff and stewart that's right you know and we had a great conversation like three hours on this and because it's a podcast format and not a debate i can't press this too hard but i really was trying to say to them like but i don't think you're hearing what I'm saying here, is that, like, this means that there is no hope for this person. It does not matter what they do,

Starting point is 01:32:11 they will never be forgiven for this, right? And I think that, you know, Christians recognize the importance of this verse, but they have, like, oftentimes, and I mean, like, in popular apologetics, they have their apologetical line, oh, that's because, you know, to blaspheme the Holy Spirit means to, like, harden your heart to forgiveness. And you can't be forgiven if you're not open to forgiveness. And I'm like, that's true of any sin ever. You can't be forgiven for committing a murder while you're committing it. You can't be forgiven for having a hardened heart while your heart is hardened. But the point about forgiveness is that it's retrospective. It happens afterwards. So whatever blaspheming the Holy Spirit is, it has to be something which whatever you've done,

Starting point is 01:32:49 if in five years from now, you say, I regret that. I shouldn't have done that. God, please accept my apology that God has to say, no, you will never be forgiven. This is where it doesn't line up for me because it's like on the one hand, you have Jesus and I'm looking at it from the Christian perspective now, painted as divine, not human, and perfect. Yeah. On the other hand, you have scripture that you hold to and say, well, this is the historical record, and we know this is right, that also shows him as, and I'm not even blaming him, as someone who can once in a while, in very slight ways, I might add, usually be imperfect, right? He may be imperfect by, I don't know, exaggerating right here, if this is what he said. That's one example. He also may be imperfect. Like we had Captain Tzariak in here. You ever

Starting point is 01:33:36 seen him? You ever seen Captain T? I need him in a studio with Captain Captain T that was popcorn ready. He's the leader of the New York Black Hebrew Israelites. Oh, right. We had a great conversation. Man, you had him in here. Yeah, yeah, episode 270. We talked for over three hours. And I will say, like, even Alessi

Starting point is 01:33:57 was impressed with his ability to remember stuff from the Bible kind of like you. Because I can't repeat it because there was a racial epithet that he's allowed to say, I'm not allowed to say in the phrase. But at one point he's like, oh yeah, Jesus was switching the word there. And we start cracking up. I'm like, what do you mean he was switching? He goes, he saw them in the temple working and he brought in a switch, he started hitting them. And I'm like, no no even unless he was like no he didn't oh yeah john's gospel like oh fuck jesus was like that he made

Starting point is 01:34:30 a chord he made a chord yeah and was and was and was driving people out of the temple and that's what i'm saying like you know hitting guys with this with a cord to get them out of the temple yes doesn't sound like the most moral way to go there. Well, there you go. Right? But at the same time, I kind of fuck with that because that makes him,

Starting point is 01:34:51 you know, people are going to say this is blasphemy saying this, but it makes him like a human figure, even if he wasn't. No, it's not blasphemy because Jesus in Orthodox Christianity, and I don't mean like Eastern Orthodox. I got to be careful with the, you know.

Starting point is 01:35:01 I know, it's important how you'll get. All respect. How you'll get clipped, but what matters is the soul of what you're saying and in the orthodox tradition by which i mean like orthodoxy not like the eastern orthodox church i mean like catholic protestant as opposed to like gnosticism whatever yeah jesus is fully god and fully man it's one of the paradoxes of the heart of Christianity is that he's 100% man and 100% divine. So if you downplay his humanity, if you say, oh, he wasn't really a human, he was God who just appeared to be a human, that's a heresy. Cool. Yeah. This part always confuses me too, because it's like, they make them sound like

Starting point is 01:35:40 if I put my hand through him, it would go through like he's a ghost. Yeah. No, that's a heresy. It's called docetism, I think. I actually don't know how to pronounce that very well. But like which is it? You know what I mean? Doseo, I think, which is Greek for appearance or to seem. And so the idea is that like Jesus only appeared to be a human being. But yeah, it's kind of got this vibe of like, well, if I touched him, he'd be like a ghost.

Starting point is 01:36:01 That's a heresy. No, he was a human of flesh and blood. Interestingly, a lot of the Gnostic Gels present jesus as this sort of god like in the form of a human but not really a human that's that's how the gospel of judas appears to present jesus it's absolutely fascinating um but yeah i mean translation you were gonna you mentioned before you were like a lot of this is about translation the things that i'm bringing up here here, I think, I always try to be careful to really get at the Greek terms and see what they actually mean. There are some instances where I think the gospel stories have been misreported. So that even if you look at the Greek, I'm thinking it's probably gotten something wrong.

Starting point is 01:36:42 Do you have an example? Yeah. So the most famous examples of things that probably are in the Gospels but probably just didn't happen, called like an interpolation, so something which is added in later. The most famous examples of these are the ending of Mark's Gospel and there's a verse in John's Gospel, both of which don't appear in our earliest manuscripts

Starting point is 01:37:01 and so they seem to be a late tradition. In fact, once again, sorry, you're doing the hard work here. If you scroll up a little bit, actually, see the drop-down where it says Bible Booklist? You can click on that, and this is the whole Gospel. Scroll down on Mark, right the way down to Mark 16. So this is the last chapter of Mark. Oh, I wonder how the ESV says it. So see

Starting point is 01:37:25 there it says the brackets in the middle there. It says some of the earliest manuscripts do not include 16, 9 to 20. See that? It's because the original manuscripts, so our earliest complete manuscripts of the Bible are Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaticus, and they're like fourth century. And they just end on, they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid. That's why they end. Now Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus is predicted. So it says go and you'll see him in Jerusalem and he's going to be there. But all the stuff that happens afterwards, which is like the actual appearances, they're not in there. So it's just widely accepted by most scholars that the rest of the gospel underneath that, the so-called long ending of Mark, is a later interpolation. So that's not like a translation issue from the Greek into English. That's just a thing about the manuscript, which says that something has been added.

Starting point is 01:38:20 Meaning like Hollywood got involved. Yeah, there are some scholars who think that the long ending of Mark might have been original and for some other reason it wasn't in the in the scripture actually westhoff did a video about that a while back and what did he say well this well um it's it's all well it's all a bit dramatic um so there's a guy i know oh boy this is a story a guy I know called Gnostic Informant on YouTube I know him as well yeah cool right

Starting point is 01:38:49 so he's on the Danny Jones show and he says exactly what I've just said about Mark's gospel he tells Danny Jones exactly what I've just said Westhoff made a response video like on Instagram and said so this is partly true

Starting point is 01:39:03 but mostly false and he basically goes in to debunk the claim. So the first thing Westhoff says is like, Hey guys, I just want to make something very clear about this next part you're about to see. So this episode is being released on YouTube on a Tuesday. It was recorded last Wednesday, so six days before this, and it was released early on Patreon on Saturday night. I say that because Alex is about to address some points that Wes Huff made in a previous video that he then deleted because there were mistakes in it.

Starting point is 01:39:32 And there was then after we recorded, after Alex and I recorded, Wes actually put out a video on Sunday night, so two days before this video where he addressed this topic again. So I wanna make sure that people understand that Alex had no time to respond to any of that stuff because this was recorded before that video was put out. So if there's any new information that Wes put in there, I don't know if there is,

Starting point is 01:39:53 I haven't seen the video. Alex will respond to that at a later point. And he was working with what Wes had said publicly when Alex and I were actually recording this. I know that's a lot, but let's get back to it. The resurrection is still narrated because like I just said, you know, it still says, go ahead and he'll be there in Galilee. That is something that Gnostic informants said on the show. So like, okay, but, but Wes is just working off like an Instagram reel. So he doesn't know that. But then Wes says, it is true that our earliest manuscripts don't contain the long ending of Mark, but there's a really interesting, uh, there's a really interesting feature about them. And maybe you can pull this up actually, Alessi. If you type in like, maybe it'll come up if

Starting point is 01:40:30 you type in like Codex Vaticanus Mark 16. Vaticanus. And then type in Mark 16 after it. And maybe just see if there's a, yeah, maybe just click on that, see if there's a scroll down. So, okay, pull up this image. I thought it was a Reddit thread for a minute. See that image there? So this is a picture of Codex Vaticanus, which again is one of our earliest biblical manuscripts. And this is the ending of Mark. And it ends by saying they said nothing to anyone because they were afraid. And there's nothing else there. The sort of light text that you can see underneath is from the other side of the page.

Starting point is 01:41:09 Right. So this is a blank document. So Westhoff, in response to Gnostic informant, says that there is an interesting feature. There is an interesting feature of Mark's gospel, which we only see in Mark's gospel, which is that in Codex Vaticanus and in Codex Sinaticus it does have the short ending of Mark but there's this big intentional gap that's left at the end of Mark's gospel. Right?

Starting point is 01:41:35 Now why would they leave a huge gap at the end? Well because they knew that there was more material they just didn't include it for whatever reason but they left this gap so that other scholars could come and correct that decision if they decided they needed to. You know what I mean? Yes. You know what I'm saying?

Starting point is 01:41:48 Other scholars, though. Yeah. So Westhoff says, look, in Mark's gospel, can you go back to the other image? So in Mark's gospel, we've got this big gap at the end. And he says, and this is a feature that's unique to Mark's gospel. Crucially, we don't see this in any other gospels. That's what he says in the video. Now, okay, that's a pretty good explanation, right? It's like, okay, yeah, sure. There is a missing long ending of Mark, but because he's left this big intentional gap, we know that he at least

Starting point is 01:42:17 knew that it existed. So it wasn't something that was just made up later. It still existed at the time. He just didn't include it in this codex for whatever reason, but he knew it existed because he left the big gap. But if they – I actually do want to go into this, what I was thinking. Maybe I'm overthinking this. But if they leave it blank for other scholars to come in later, you are now letting more time pass and letting people come in who did not necessarily live at the same time as our witness. But check this out, right?

Starting point is 01:42:41 So this – none of this actually matters because the point that Westhoff makes, as he says in this video, yeah, it does end abruptly and doesn't have the long ending, but it leaves a big gap, which indicates that the author knew there was extra material. And crucially, this is not a feature we see in any other Gospels. Okay. Here's the problem with that. This is Codex Vaticanus. If you were to look at the end of... Actually, let's just look it up. Type in Vaticanus ending of Luke's Gospel, maybe. Try that. Or just go to Codex Vaticanus. Just see if there's an online version. Yeah, let's scroll down. Can you just read it online somewhere? Loose gospel? You kind of need to actually see the actual manuscript itself. Yeah, type in... you don't want to...

Starting point is 01:43:30 Oh yeah, facsimile, that'll do the trick. Let's see here. Yeah, nice. Okay, so... So let's see if this loads. Come on! I'm going to refresh that. Okay, so this is Codex Vaticanus. Nice. Now, is there like a contents page? Can we get to Luke's Gospel? You seen anything? Bookmarks? No, this is a little bit... Come on. Because this is all in ancient Greekreece okay i'll tell you

Starting point is 01:44:06 what can we cut yeah you want to pause for a minute i want to find it i want to show you because this is a really interesting we'll be right back all right we're back so we were able to find the concept what i've done is instead of pulling up the because uh nottingham formant has made a video about that it's called like west huff is lying like they accuse billy harson he's pretty annoyed. I understand why he's angry about this, by the way. And I think you will too.

Starting point is 01:44:29 But no, but seriously, I can understand why this was like, this is really quite bad. It's got all the information together. So instead of clicking back and forth, we'll just look at the video that they made. But we should play it on mute. Right.

Starting point is 01:44:40 So Wes's video has a copyright song in the background, so I can't play it. But we want to make sure we get the context. If you hit play on mute, just because I want to show you what Wes actually says here when it goes back. So check it out. Earliest copies that leave out the longer ending of Mark

Starting point is 01:44:51 have an unusual feature. The copies of these earliest manuscripts leave deliberate blank sections. Pause. A feature. A feature that we don't... Go back. All right, go back about five seconds.

Starting point is 01:45:00 I've got to read this. You want me to read it in his voice? Yeah, sure, go ahead. So he's talking here about the versions of the early manuscripts, which don't have the long ending of Mark's gospel. So pop it back. Okay. Best, worst, half impression. Okay. Here we go. The copies of these earliest manuscripts leave deliberate blank sections, a feature we don't find the end of the other gospels. This is an indication... Oh yeah, carry on. Sorry. Yeah, go ahead. This is an indication that the scribes appear to have been aware of the other gospels. This is an indication. Oh yeah, carry on. Sorry. Yeah, go ahead.

Starting point is 01:45:29 This is an indication that the scribes appear to have been aware of the material. It's going to. So check it out. Right. So, so, so pay attention to what he said there, which is, there's an interesting feature, which is that these earliest versions of Mark missing the long ending have an unusual feature. They leave a deliberate gap at the end, something that we don't see at the end of other gospels. And he shows on screen, see there's three on screen here. It's Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaticus, and Codex Alexandrineus, I think is how you would say it. Three versions. And as you can see, he's highlighted in a big yellow box, the gap where the long ending would go. Okay. So we all clear on what the argument is here. This is probably about to semi-blow your mind, but check this out. Okay, so hit play.

Starting point is 01:46:07 Try me. So it cuts now to Nossic Informant, who's basically saying, this is a Billy Carson-level bullcrap lie. So he's saying that they're aware of extra material. Check this out, ladies and gentlemen, buckle your seat belts. It's about to get wacky. Evidence exists, he says. That was a Billy Carson level bull crap lie. Bull crap lie. The funny part about it is he's talking about the Codex Sinaiticus right now.

Starting point is 01:46:40 And you can do this. According to the Sinai Bible. Okay. So you can mute this again. Do you want to ask a clarifying question? You can mute this now. Just skip forward with the arrows. So check this out. Keep going. One more time. Right, so check this out, right?

Starting point is 01:46:54 So, as we established, he thinks that there's a gap at the end of the Mark and Codex Sinaiticus, for example, because they knew that there was extra materials. And crucially, this is something that we do not see at the end of other Gospels. Go back one arrow and hit play. ...opinion that I disagree with. This is an objective statement that you can go and check for yourself. Codex Sinaticus, Book of Acts. Here on the screen right now, here is the Codex Sinaticus of the Acts, Luke, Matthew, Mark, John, Revelation.

Starting point is 01:47:24 Go back and pause on John. There's a lot going on here. You can put it on mute, but go back. Is it on air? No, as in the video. Just go back an hour or two, but mute the video. And hit play. So you can see that's the book of Acts.

Starting point is 01:47:44 That's the book of Luke. Pause around about now. Play a tiny bit more Pause now. Right there. Oh my god it's so fast. Yeah, that's because he's sort of lining it up to what he said so Ready? Now. There you go. So check this out, right? So he's showing in Codex Sinaiticus Which remember? Remember what has just been said, right? Westhofer said that, well, the interesting thing about Mark's Gospels, where they have the short ending, they leave an intentional gap because they know there's extra material. At the end of Acts, Luke, Revelation, John, look at John here, same Codex, Codex Sinaticus.

Starting point is 01:48:19 Look at that massive gap. So hold on a second. What does West mean when he says this is not a feature we see at the end of other gospels? Are there supposed to be a bunch of missing material from John's gospel and Luke's gospel too? I don't think so. So West has obviously made a mistake including Codex Sinaticus, right? Because they all leave a gap at the end. It's probably, is it that there's extra material or is it just that they've got to the end of the book and want to start on a new page? Is that a better explanation? So, okay. So he's messed up the Codex Sinaticus, but he showed

Starting point is 01:48:48 three on screen, right? So keep playing, again on mute. So the other one was Codex Vaticanus. So this is the end of, you can skip forward a tiny little bit. Codex Vaticanus, there you go. Same thing, Corinthians, Acts, Revelation, John's Gospel, all of them, once again, have gaps at the end of them. So Wes Huff has said that the only reason why Mark's Gospel has a gap at the end of it is because they knew the long ending existed. But all of the Gospels in that same codex have gaps at the end of it. So you think it's cherry picking, obviously. It's not just cherry picking. It's just like getting it flatly wrong.

Starting point is 01:49:28 It's saying that, well, we know that they knew of the existence of the long ending of Mark because the scribes left a gap to include that long ending of Mark. And this is a feature. Remember he said, this is a feature that we don't see at the end of any other gospels. You can look up these codexes online and read them.

Starting point is 01:49:44 It's like he just didn't even check. Like there's a gap at the end of every single Gospel. Pretty bad, right? I agree. And I think... But you know what? It's about to get worse. Before you tell you how it's going to get worse, I think that this is an unfortunate part of the internet that Wes is going to fall victim to and other guys fall victim to when you're in this response era where you're constantly having to respond because you can't have one thing wrong about your belief system because it could threaten the whole dominoes. As Wes said on your show sat in this cell same chair that I'm in right now what is Wes Huff's PhD in? Do you remember? Paratextual features of New Testament manuscripts.

Starting point is 01:50:29 I don't even remember. Paratextual features of New Testament manuscripts, meaning features of New Testament Greek manuscripts that are paratextual. So not about the content of the text, but stuff to do with the way that the manuscripts are written. You know, like the handwriting, the layout, this kind of stuff. So in other words, this kind of stuff, like this is squarely within his expertise, paratextual features of New Testament documents. And yet he's managed to make a genuinely to me unfathomable blunder. I do not understand how you can make a video where you say that there's a gap at the end of Mark's gospel in Codex Sinaticus and Vaticanus, and that's something we don't see in any of the other gospels.

Starting point is 01:51:06 If you have copies of those codexes and you can look and see that there are gaps at the end of every single one of them, I do not understand how you make that blunder. I don't, I genuinely don't get it. Yeah, it seems like a big mistake. But it's about to get worse. How?

Starting point is 01:51:21 I'll show you how. Maybe try going forward a little bit, because I'm not sure if they show it on screen again. So pause, check it out. So this is Wes's video. Also, like, take note of the comments here, right? Like, this is just another feeble and weak attempt to make the Bible seem like it's a tool. So people are coming after Gnostic Informant for this. I don't know how many views this had, but you can see it's got nearly 4,000 likes, 4,200 or 700 likes. So it must have a fair amount of views. Everyone's coming after Gnostic Informant. In the video, as you can see, Wes has shown three manuscripts which have the gap, and the gap is

Starting point is 01:51:59 supposed to indicate that although there's a short ending, we know that there was a longer ending too. I hope you're strapped in, ladies and gentlemen, because check this out, right? So Wes has shown these on screen and helpfully added a yellow box around the gap. The bottom two, Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaticus. Yeah, they have the short ending and a gap, but so do the rest of the Gospels. The one on the top there, Codex Alexandrineus, or Alexandrinusus is from the 5th century and, look at me when I say this, has the long ending of Mark. That codex has the long ending. The photo that is on screen right now at the top there is the long ending of Mark with a gap after it. So Westhoff has said that yes, the earliest manuscripts only have the short ending of Mark, but they've left a gap to indicate they knew there was a long ending of Mark. He has shown on screen a manuscript with the long ending of Mark and then highlighted

Starting point is 01:53:01 a gap after the long ending of Mark in order to prove that there are only gaps when they know that there is a missing long ending of Mark. Doesn't make sense. Not only that, but even on the ones that do have the short ending of Mark, where he said, okay, well, there's a gap after those. There's also a gap after every single other gospel in those codexes. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what to say. Has he addressed this? No. As far as I know, he deleted the video because Gnostic Informant is obviously pretty annoyed about this and it's just like down the memory hole. No correction, no apology to Gnostic

Starting point is 01:53:36 Informant as far as I'm aware. This just disappeared. And so obviously Gnostic Informant still has the video, right? And so he can show it like this. And as you can see in this video, Wes Huff is lying. This is on MythVision's channel if you want to go and watch the whole conversation. The thing is, this is like buried within a two-hour podcast. So not a lot of people saw that this happened. And like you can see now when Gnostic Informant is there saying like, this is a Billy Carson level bull crap lie. It's like, yeah.

Starting point is 01:54:03 And I can understand why he's so annoyed because all of these thousands of people are coming after Gnostic informant saying, oh yeah, see, they never know what they're talking about. This Gnostic informant guy. Oh, he doesn't know that. Yeah, sure. Because, because there's a, yeah, well, yeah. Okay. There's a long ending, but they left a gap. You fool. You didn't know that in, in paratextual, like Greek, if you do paratextual manuscript tradition, like you'll, you'll know that they leave gaps when there's extra material and they're all coming after nottingham formant and west has just made like an unfathomable blunder now like you say it is really important to point out that people just make mistakes all the time i've probably made about 15 mistakes during this video

Starting point is 01:54:36 i've said the wrong day i've said the wrong thing i've quoted the wrong thing i've mispronounced alexandre or alexandrinus fine yeah you can you can do that you can make mistakes like that but but this firstly i don't understand how it happened i just don't get how you do this especially if you're making a graphic like there's a yellow box maybe maybe he doesn't make his own graphics but like there is a yellow box there's a yellow box highlighting a gap after the long ending of mark i i'm i'm hoping that people listening are following what I'm saying here and understand that this is like, this is like, I kind of couldn't believe it when I first saw it. But yeah, I mean, and by the way, also, there may be some explanation for this. Like, maybe I'm like

Starting point is 01:55:16 massively misreading something and so is Nostic Informant. Like, maybe, I don't know. Like, I don't want to say with too much confidence that like this is... It seems like it's a very clear mistake. But it's just like a... It's such a big mistake, especially if your PhD is in paratextual features of New Testament manuscripts. I don't understand how this happens. And the worst part for me is that all of these comments

Starting point is 01:55:37 are coming after Gnostic informant. And now it means that... Because this video just doesn't exist anymore. Yeah, it's a shitty part about the internet. Westhoff took it down that if someone sees Gnostic informant, they might be like, oh, I saw that guy. Oh, I saw that guy. Yeah. There's that video that Westhoff like, like destroyed this guy. And it's, and that's why he's looking at the Billy Carson thing and going like, yeah, that's like a bad look for Billy Carson. But if somebody had pulled this, if Westhoff had done this in a debate,

Starting point is 01:56:00 in like a Billy Carson type situation, imagine if we were on this podcast right now, Westhoff is there and he's made this exact argument. And I said to him, well, take a look, look at the other gospels. They've all got gaps after them too. Also, the one that you've just shown includes the long ending of Mark. That would be a Billy Carson moment for him.

Starting point is 01:56:14 Yeah. It really would. And so I can understand why Gnostic informant is so annoyed. Anyway, I don't so much like to sort of stir the pot here, but I sort of said, I was making a response to Westhoff and it all kind of kicked off and people were commenting and I was going to make a response video. And I did part one, which is about the Isaiah scroll. And I was going to do part two, where I was going to talk about all of this. And I spoke to Nostica Forman and I was like, look, man, I think this

Starting point is 01:56:37 needs to come to light because I think it's not fair that this happened to you and nobody knows. But it's been so long now that i felt like if i came out and made a video just just pulling this up it would have just seemed like out of nowhere would have seemed like i was just taking a jab for the sake of it and so i kind of haven't but i'm kind of glad we've had the opportunity to talk about it now because i really want people to be aware that this happened but i kind of don't want to just like randomly take a job i understand what you're saying I'm glad you asked because because we were talking about the long ending of Mark and I said some

Starting point is 01:57:08 people deny it including Wes Huff and you said well what does Wes Huff say about it which is why I'm now talking about it but like I just I just think it would be um yeah like I said I don't know how many views this actually got but as far as I know there was no correction or anything and the fact that he took it down shows that he knows that knows that something went wrong i haven't had a chance to talk with wes about it obviously i come at my worldview differently than wes does you know i'm very open on a lot of this stuff and certainly don't have the religious beliefs he does but some of the things that he discusses are fascinating he's been he's been a good guy with me but yeah you know i'm and i'm in a position now where you know he was on here saying things.

Starting point is 01:57:47 And obviously there's things that have been translated to the internet where he's backed up with these, some of these things. And one of these things to me, unless I'm really missing something here, it looks provably wrong. And I, you know, I'm not, I don't want to get into like this thing where I suddenly start criticizing a guy who was on my show. I do want to talk to Wes when I get off camera about this. However, there are a few things that are true right here.

Starting point is 01:58:09 It's a very bad look that Wes blocked Gnostic Informant on Twitter. I don't think, I don't know, did he block? He did. I saw that. Oh, well, okay. I don't know. I don't believe in, I don't block anybody. All right. I think before I ever had a, before I was ever in public or whatever, there were, like I blocked Skip Bayless, who doesn't know me.

Starting point is 01:58:27 You don't know who that is. Good for you. I've never blocked anyone either. I've never blocked a detractor or someone commenting against me or something like that. I've certainly never blocked someone who's like got an audience who's speaking out against like something I do or anything like that. So I full stop really don't believe in that. I think you have to let speech out there. So I full stop really don't believe in that. I think you have to let speech out there. So that I have an issue with. Secondly, if you are going to take

Starting point is 01:58:51 the video down, that is a quiet admission of I fucked up. And if in that process, someone else's reputation was hurt by your fuck up and they were correct i do believe you are obligated as a decent person to correct that record and i know i know neil's gonna come on here at at some point that's not significant yeah yeah he and i he and i have have talked about that i was about this man i was out of the loop on on this stuff like i don't get involved yeah because that's the thing it seems it seems kind of seems kind of drama and part of me is like oh this is kind of interesting and juicy and that kind of thing but i like to stay away from that but i do think it's important to know this but also bear in mind that like i might have

Starting point is 01:59:35 misremembered a feature here like as far as i know like it's possible that wes has addressed it or that he or that he said he took it down for a different reason or something like that. But I spoke to Gnostic Informant and as far as I know, the video was deleted and there was no correction or apology. Like I might've got some of those details wrong. What I've definitely not got wrong is the content here. Like that claim was made and it was wrong and it was provably wrong in his area of expertise, which I don't know, man, like I don't really know. I don't really know what to make of it because... Have you ever talked with Wes? No, I'd love to. It's funny, when I made my video, people in the comments who said,

Starting point is 02:00:09 well, if you're so sure, why don't you just debate him? And I was like, if you watch the video to the end, I said that, of course, I would talk to him. He's like the new messiah of the Christian movement. Of course I'd talk to him. It'd be like a huge thing. Everybody wants to talk to him. But he's made a video where he said,

Starting point is 02:00:24 I'm probably not going to debate you. Yes, I've seen it. I totally understand that, man. You get invitations up the woo-ha. It's crazy when something like that happens to you. But the thing is, half of the comments were saying, oh, why don't you just debate him if you're so scared? And then half of the comments were saying,

Starting point is 02:00:37 oh, you're just trying to bait him into a debate for clout. So it's like, I'm either too scared to debate him or I'm trying to bait him into a debate. No, fuck that. I'll shut that down right now. No, but for clarity, of course I would love to speak to west half but i kind of want people to stop coming after me pestering me to do it because the invitation is open but i also don't want people to go and pester him to do it because like he's incredibly busy he's got like a family he's got

Starting point is 02:00:56 stuff going on like people don't understand like he's a real human being and also he's just the other reason i was hesitant about this is because i like he strikes me just like a really nice guy like he just seems like he's very nice just like seems very friendly really nice really like excited and also by the way putting biblical scholarship like on the map like he goes on joe rogan and starts talking about like p52 and like the the manuscript traditions uh surrounding like john's gospel and stuff like that is amazing it's amazing that is like so so cool and i'm like so excited that that's happening but the annoying thing is that because he was so popular actually I'm interested can we scroll down and look at the comments on

Starting point is 02:01:30 this video while we're talking is that like when I made my video about Westhoff I was actually like stunned yeah check it out so like uh invite Westhoff on invite Westhoff on um tell me you're being paid by Billy without telling me. Did Carson pay you for this hit piece? Like dishonest as usual from the very start. You misrepresent how Wes responded. And it's kind of like, I can't even waste my time to watch this. MythVision has so much bias against Christianity. Jealousy at work here.

Starting point is 02:01:59 And when I first started seeing this come through, I genuinely was like, are these just bots? I don't think they are bots, by the way. Some of them are, but a lot of them are not. When I made my video about Westhoff, I was stunned by the amount of, like, they'll still be there now, comments. Just comments and comments and comments. Don't read the comments on this video. By the way, none of it was about the content.

Starting point is 02:02:20 This was the thing that was suspicious. It was all like, you're jealous of Westhoff's success. Whatever. You're trying to bait him into a debate. You're just upset you didn't go on Joe Rogan or whatever. This kind of stuff. And I'm like, okay, whatever. But there was such an influx of them that I was like, what is going on? And I saw the same thing happen to MythVision. I saw the same thing happen to, I think Cameron Bertuzzi when he made a video, he's a Catholic, he makes a video about Westhoff and the same thing happens. And I was like, whoa, I was genuinely stunned by it. And so, although I don't like like pointing stuff like this out just for the sake of it,

Starting point is 02:02:50 there is something kind of gratifying about it, but one doesn't like it, you know, because it essentially feels like gossip. But when you have dealt with months and months of people commenting, being like, well, you're just an idiot. And Westhoff is a biblical scholar. And you're just a YouTuber guy. It's kind of like, come on, people. Like, let's cut the crap and, like, actually talk about the content here. You know what I mean? And so, I don't know. And then, so, if that's what's happening to me

Starting point is 02:03:16 and that's what's happening to MythVision, can you imagine what Billy Carson is going through right now? Yeah. Now, Billy is a little bit of a separate subject for me personally because he gives it as much as, way more than he takes it. yeah now billy is a little bit of a separate subject for me personally because he gives it as much as way more than he takes to be clear like billy carson was just talking was just talking a lot of nonsense yes like he's out of his mind like he he seems to sort of i know he's got the whole alien thing going on or whatever i don't i've never like listened to him

Starting point is 02:03:39 before but i listened to some of him on like flagrant and a little bit of the debate he had with us up just because it was like a big deal. There's not enough weed in Narnia. I'm hearing him say things that are just like, that are just false. And Westhoff has done a great job of bringing some of that out. So he's like confusing, like he says like the Sinai Bible and was confusing it with the Gospel of Barnabas. And the Sinai Bible is Codex Sinaiticus, the fourth century manuscript of the Bible. And the Gospel of Barnabas is like this apocryphal like middle. And that makes a huge difference, right? So yeah. So to be clear,

Starting point is 02:04:10 I wouldn't defend Billy Carson's claims, but even if you mess up like that, I'm thinking like, I just can't imagine what it must be like, the comments he's receiving and stuff. Yeah. But anything about the Westhoff stuff, for some reason just got this huge response. And so I can understand why Gnostic Informant is looking at Westhoff, like especially as he gets really popular after the Rogan thing and everything and everyone's saying like this guy is like such a knowledgeable, brilliant scholar. And Gnostic Informant is like this guy screwed me over, you know? I can really see why he's so annoyed about it.

Starting point is 02:04:41 He has a point. And, you know, obviously like he was already coming in here. I was less familiar with some of the details in this because, and I'm going to talk about it in a minute. I want to address some of these points you're making. You're making a lot of really important points here. You know, the internet drama that happens with cults that form, comment cults, I stay the fuck out of it. Yeah, it's great. I've never seen it.

Starting point is 02:05:02 So I've seen a bunch of that. And I know Neil was, like, said, Gnostic Informant was sending me a bunch of stuff and i was like i i don't want to know like i know he's coming on the show later so whatever he wants to say he'll say i like things being handled in here yeah i understand that you know whether i like that or not sometimes i don't have control over that but look man i have i have been on the wrong end of vegans i've been on the wrong end of muslims sorry to hear that muslims i've been on on on the wrong end of vegans. I've been on the wrong end of Muslims. I'm sorry to hear that. Muslims. I've been on the wrong end. Maybe that could be a bit euphemistic. I've never met a vegan who's a happy person. Okay. You know I was vegan for like four years.

Starting point is 02:05:33 Yeah. Were you happy? Next question. I'm a fucking meathead. But my control variable might have been a very unhappy meat-eating Alex at the same time. But besides the point, I have been on the wrong end of all of these people. I have never seen anything like what happened when I made my video about Westhoff. And I mean it. I mean, when I pissed off the Muslims and they were coming after me in the comments section. It didn't even come close.

Starting point is 02:06:05 Oh, they went harder than the Muslims. Oh, yeah. Not harder. Obviously, they're not like saying, I'm going to come to your house and kill you, right? Like they weren't doing that. But I mean, sorry. Yeah, sorry. I don't mean to misunderstand me here. What I mean is like the level and consistency and amount, like the traffic, I genuinely just couldn't believe it. That's why I was first looking at this like, is this like bots or something? Because like they were so, because firstly, none of them were about the content. All of them were identical.

Starting point is 02:06:29 You could copy and paste them from my video to- Some of it is, some of it is bots. Captain Christianity. But like, I don't think it is, just to be clear. That's not the accusation I'm making. But it was so stunning to me. I just don't understand what's happened here. So I had to make this really long technical video

Starting point is 02:06:45 about the great Isaiah scrolls and the Dead Sea Scrolls, which I think essentially vindicated most of the stuff that I was saying. I never did my part two video responding to myself, which was going to be about Jesus claiming to be God. Because of the comment section. No, no, not because of that, just because I got kind of busy.

Starting point is 02:07:00 And then one of the big sections that I was going to respond to was about whether Jesus claimed to be God. And I just recently had a debate about this so i was preparing for the debate and i kind of didn't want to like use all my arguments in a video and then go and debate because it was better to just save it for the debate and so lots of and also i was just like extremely busy and so i just never ended up making it and i still might like i still kind of want to do this part two wes huff you know video i would much rather and and i want to see this part two Wes Huff, you know, video. I would much rather, and I want to see that to be clear. But I just didn't want to see like it was really coming out of nowhere. No,

Starting point is 02:07:28 no, I know. I want to see you two have a conversation and go about it. I think that on most, like, I mean, because Wes's PhD, as I say, is on like New Testament manuscripts. So when it comes to things like the manuscript tradition and stuff, I think Wes Huff could like crush me. Not that I'd have much to debate him on. I'd query some of his like, I think some of his datings are like definitely against scholarly consensus, but also possibly like, I think I'd want to like criticize them, but I would fully anticipate him coming up with some kind of argument or something where I'd go, oh cool, yeah, I'd never heard of that. Interesting. Because that's his field. And he would like crush me if it were a

Starting point is 02:08:06 debate like that um i think there's a world in which we try to have some kind of debate where like it just it looks really badly for me and i'm like oh gosh yeah you're you're you're so right in ways i didn't know that that i could totally see that happening i mean i would much rather just have a conversation with the guy but again i don't i don't do the like call out thing i'm not like you know where's like come and join. It's like, look, man, like obviously he knows that if he wants to like come on my podcast, he can come on my show. It doesn't need to be like that, though, either. And also him not doing so is no indication of anything.

Starting point is 02:08:35 He's like, he's just busy, man. This is the problem with the Internet. We are literally talking about like a religious conversation here, too, where it's like a fucking 90s rap beef. Like, oh, yeah, you got to call him out on the song and drop you know jay-z drops this like not drop ether it should not be like that that's that's ridiculous there's there's two things that i think really got to get addressed here that are based on some of the things you've been sharing on this and i appreciate you giving all the context too for everyone and also by the way anyone who's like claiming someone like you would be clout chasing i mean i think I checked, you have like three times the subs.

Starting point is 02:09:07 So that's bullshit. And you've been around a lot longer. Number one, Wes's video about I won't debate you. I'm not going to say some of the stuff that I discussed with Wes offline about that because that's a personal conversation. But I will tell you some of my thoughts on that that i also did i said to him at least but wes i think because he also blew up so fast over something that is so important to him and so many people which is the meaning of life like the religion he is extremely afraid to get things wrong and let people down in that way. And like maybe be the put out something that could be pulled as a string to say the whole

Starting point is 02:09:54 house of cards doesn't exist with relation to Christianity, which unfortunately, if you're going to hold yourself to that standard, I don't even think Jesus had that standard. So I was like, you don't need to feel that way. Secondly, I dude like if you listen to his podcast with joe that he did in january joe even said it at one point when he was referring to billy where he's like if you woke me up in the middle of the night and asked me about mma or something to debate he's like i have enough that i could be like wait wait oh yeah and i could i could go right into it so when west says i would need at least six months to prepare no the fuck you don't you don't you're not it's a it's a live debate it's communication it's not scripted you're going to go back and forth you will get some things wrong you will hope to get more things right

Starting point is 02:10:38 if you know your shit yeah it's going to go down correctly so i thought that was a bad argument but there's also some stuff like, as you said, and I appreciate you saying that, like he's got some life stuff going on too. And a lot was being thrown at him all at once. Everyone wanted to debate him, including some people, not you who were unheard of, who were just trying to cloud chase to debate him for sure. So there was a lot going on there, but that also comes down to what has formed here which you've talked about a lot which is like the cult around this stuff and it's so fascinating to me because some of it is bots but to your point a lot of it is not and you know i always talk about the concept

Starting point is 02:11:17 the the the physic the universal law of physics for every action there's an equal or opposite reaction it explains everything in the world i'm a firm believer in equilibrium in literally everything. It's like my curse in life. I see both sides. I understand why it lands here. But the violence of a reaction here to an action here is far much – is far lesser than the violence of a reaction here to an action here, right? And for people listening, not watching, I wind in my hands with these two fists. And so when you see that over time, and it literally gets to the meaning that people have on this earth, which in this case, they may define in their religion. You use the word yourself about

Starting point is 02:11:56 Wes being this new Messiah or whatever. There are people who view him that way. And they're like, oh my God, we finally have a dude who can shadow box with people on the language and the text and the actual history and the ancient, you know, the Graham Hancock version of like Christianity. And it's not just that, it's the fact that through whatever fortuitous circumstances, he's ended up on the biggest platform in the world of Joe Rogan. So even if people don't think that he's like the guy they would have chosen or whatever, it's like, well, he's now the guy, like he's on Rogan like we we need him to do well we want him to do well and everyone's very excited about it and we hope that he

Starting point is 02:12:31 does well you know and and that's and that's that's cool that's great you know but like this there's so much to say I mean about like the debate thing like debates are also I have a sort of on-and-off relationship with debates and I don't know if i would be interested in debating west half like if if if it was set up like yeah sure i mean that would be a big thing but i'd much rather just talk to him because the thing that gets lost is there's so much that's so interesting to talk about like and when he says i'd have to prepare for a really long time and you rightly say well if it's your area of expertise as rogan says it's

Starting point is 02:13:02 the first thing he says in their interview like if you woke me up in the middle of the night, I'd be able to talk about this. It's like, yeah, you could talk about it. But if you're doing a debate, it's kind of a different story. Also, because like, if I had a debate with West Huff, we might talk about the reliability of the gospels or the nature of Jesus. That's my wheelhouse. But we might also get into talking about manuscript traditions. That's his wheelhouse. So I would have to prepare because the conversation will go into areas that are not my expertise and if it were a conversation i could go oh okay so tell me about this i'm interested in this because you know about this can i ask you some questions or is it a debate it has to be right here's my rebuttal you know

Starting point is 02:13:37 right so you're going you're going official i see what you're saying for a debate yeah you kind of do have to prepare but that way. But not six months. Depends on the nature of the debate. That's what I'm saying. Like when you universally say six months for anyone. And we also know, like his logic was, he said this part publicly, you know, well, I had 24 hours for Billy because that was Billy. And like to an extent, I get it because like he's not even a moving target. But, you know, you could probably talk to someone in a week if, if, if you had to,

Starting point is 02:14:09 maybe you're not going to be perfectly as scholarly as sharp, but like, if you're gonna, if, and, and this is just my opinion with anyone, whether it be Wes, whether it be you, if you're going to be an expert in a certain space and go and put your opinions out there, if you can't take the heat, don't come in the kitchen. I think I agree to some degree. But I also do think that there are people who like producing educational content but aren't debaters. I don't think Wes Huff considers himself like a debater. That's not who he is.

Starting point is 02:14:39 He's like an educator and he likes making informational videos and stuff. There's a kind of temperament that you need to have to debate like there are people who are awful at debating but are incredibly good communicators and i understand if someone says look that's just not how i roll that's not what i do even even if but the thing is there are ways around it like firstly you have a conversation or a podcast but i understand that say wes huff uh saw this and said okay i want to speak to alex even if we say oh it's just a conversation, he can't prevent me from coming in with a debate energy and acting as a debate and kind of trying to trap him in that way. So he's got to be ready for that, which means he'd have to prepare.

Starting point is 02:15:13 I wouldn't do that. I'd try not to do that, of course. But he doesn't know that, and I understand that he can't trust that with any conversation that he has. There are other ways around it. You can do a series of response videos. People have done, they don't get as many views, but they're quite effective. I saw Cameron Batuzzi did this a while back where,

Starting point is 02:15:30 you know, a debate, he's a Catholic YouTuber, capturing Christianity. You know, people in debates, they do opening statement, opening statement, then the rebuttal and rebuttal, then a Q&A or whatever. They did this, but each of those segments was a video. So they put out the opening statement, 20 minute video, and then the other person can watch it, can take their time,

Starting point is 02:15:50 take as long as they like and put out their opening statement. Then for the rebuttal, this person, so it's formatted, there's a set format, but in between every speech, you get to stop, think, go, research, like, and it's just such a brilliant way of doing a debate because what you're seeing is two people who you've chosen because you think they're good at what they do but giving them the time and space to actually think and respond to everything it's not like oh can you remember this on the spot oh you're gonna you know because people make fun of this like in a debate they'll be like if someone like starts typing on their computer they're like oh he's googling the answers

Starting point is 02:16:21 because he doesn't know he's he's he's? It's like, okay, but that's only interesting on like a gossip level. Like, if you actually want to know what the most interesting answer he could come up with is, which is ostensibly why you're here, then give him a month to think about it, you know? And so there are ways around the sort of, I don't want to debate, I like to prepare kind of thing. I like that as an idea, right? So there's loads of stuff that you could do by the way you're also talking like you're referring that this should be stated you're referring to like the official like word debate and what that means from like the old school debating format when i'm being a little more liberal with my use of debate just like two people in a room yeah like get them in this fucking podcast studio and talk you know what

Starting point is 02:17:01 like we're not going to sit here and be like, and the first subject is going to be this. It's more just lie. But also I understand that Wes is like hot property. At least he has been. I don't know how, and after the Rogan thing, it was like stratospheric.

Starting point is 02:17:15 I don't know if that's still going at the same rate. I don't know if it's going to sort of tailor out or whatever, but there's a sense in which it's sort of like, know your worth. Like don't go and like debate,

Starting point is 02:17:24 you know, anybody or this person or that guy, especially if it's like, especially if your worth like don't don't don't go and like debate you know anybody or this person or that guy especially if it's like especially if you feel like you don't have time to prepare and it'll be a bad look for you for that reason like do your thing man like you are experiencing this unimaginable experience that like that people dream of it's like enjoy it man take the time like like make it content that's interesting to you use it for projects that you care about he's's got his Apologetics Canada thing. I think it's like an organization. He puts an event. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:17:49 Put all of your effort into leveraging what you're doing to make that a success. It makes so much more sense. I totally understand it. And for what it's worth, I have spoken to Wes over message or whatever. It's not like he's ignoring me or whatever. That's good. I know that he's just like a guy with a lot going on and seems like a nice dude, all this kind of stuff. Very nice.

Starting point is 02:18:09 It's why I don't, you know, I like, but I don't like doing all of this kind of stuff. And I hope if he sees this and is watching, he knows that like, he understands why I think it's important to point this out. Yeah, he'll see. But at the same time, like, I'm not just trying to take a stab in the dark here. Right. Um, but, but yeah, I mean, of course the, the, the invitation remains open for him to come on my show, but also like, that's my show. That's my thing. He doesn't have a show, but like maybe one day it will happen and it might take a year or two or more for it to calm down or whatever, or maybe it will never happen.

Starting point is 02:18:39 I don't know, but yeah, whatever, man, you know, like, okay, we like okay we'll see what happens i would love to see an open discussion of the idea that religion has to be perfect is this expectation we've put on things because i do feel like that's a part of it people feel like if they admit that one thing may not hold water to evidence that means the whole thing's not true and to me you know it's ironic we still we open up this conversation talking about like the perfect timing or whatever you want to say about how the universe is even yeah the multiverse yeah world is even able to exist yet the great paradox to that is that things are also so beautifully imperfect that's what defines humanity at least in in in how i see it and I don't see why that can't be the case

Starting point is 02:19:27 with religion, even with a deified figure like Jesus Christ. We already pointed out that the gospels that project him to be perfect also show things where he's not necessarily perfect, which I like. I think that's cool. But there's this idea that you know oh you can't talk about this because that would be blasphemy or whatever well that that's a non-starter and i'm i'm very careful because it you pointed out like it when it comes to specific people even maybe like a west or something like that the comments will get weird but when you start to talk about people's beliefs they get real defensive about it and i get that so I try to do it as respectfully as I can. My own producer, Alessi, is like an enormous Christian.

Starting point is 02:20:10 He's got the chain out right now. You know, like the dude, Lawrence Krauss walked in here who believes something came from nothing. The dude's wearing a cross shirt. I'm like, maybe not today for that, but whatever. You know, it's cool. That's fine. So we have great discussions about this. Obviously, we come at it from a different lens.

Starting point is 02:20:27 So I know it's possible to do that. But for some reason, so many people are unwilling to do that. And I think it kind of defeats the purpose of what someone like Jesus is supposed to stand for, which is one of the things I would say is listening to other people and understanding where they come from. Jesus did have debates of a kind it's kind of it's kind of interesting watching his sort of confrontations with the with the with the pharisees and the like um but the thing that does get lost is how interesting it all is yeah so like on on wes's rogan episode he talks briefly about some of the like gnostic gospels and why they're not part of the canon, and talks about the motivation

Starting point is 02:21:05 for not including them and says that they seem to be theologically motivated. I would love to talk to him about his idea about the theological motivations of the Gnostic Gospels versus the canonical Gospels. If that were a debate, I mean, in my video, he says, well, part of the problem as to why these Gnostic Gospels aren't included is because they, I might be misquoting him here, but he says something like, because they seem to have theological motivations. It seems to have been written with an apologetical purpose. And I'm like, well, so do the canonical gospels. And people think that about the canonical gospels as well. And a lot of people were like, oh, well, you cut out the reason that he gave because he was specifically talking about you know their their uncomfortability with like the tomb story or whatever okay yeah but like i've got

Starting point is 02:21:50 interesting things to say in that but i don't want to do it on the format of like well west says this but i say to you you know i want it to be like well hey man what do you what do you think about this you know there's some really interesting like apologetical motives within the gospels even on the tomb itself so like west is talking about how one of these apocryphal uh texts has people like camped outside the tomb because like it's it's really important to them to to show that like the the the tomb was being watched that the body couldn't have been stolen or something like it's really this is part of part of the motivation yeah i might be sort of misquoting or paraphrasing whatever that but there's some interesting stuff

Starting point is 02:22:28 about the tomb in the new testament like this is so interesting one of the most important apologetical arguments for the resurrection of jesus is the fact that the tomb was found empty right jesus is laid in a tomb by joseph of arimathea and then there's an empty tomb the disciples go to the tomb and it's empty. Now, this is, again, we're having a conversation so this works, because this isn't like some definitive proof of anything, but it's interesting that if you look at how the tomb is described in the gospels, in Mark's gospel, it's a tomb. In Matthew's gospel, which is the next latest, it's a new tomb. Why is it a new tomb? Because one of the most important observations of the Gospels is that the tomb was empty,

Starting point is 02:23:13 but you could bury multiple bodies in a tomb. And so how do you know that Jesus had actually gone? What if you got mistaken for a different body? What if you got lost? What if there were loads for you? The important thing is that the tomb was empty, so we know that there was a body in there that's not there anymore. So Matthew's gospel says it's a new tomb, because if it's new, no one else had been laid in it before. By the time he gets to Luke's gospel, it's described as a tomb in which no one had been laid. It's specified that no one had been laid in the tomb. And John's gospel goes to the double whammy. It says, laid in a new tomb in which no one had been so there's this like subtle indication like was is it is there like this

Starting point is 02:23:50 increasing emphasis on the emptiness of the tomb and so they really wanted to now maybe the tomb actually was a new tomb in which no one had been late but they just felt like it was more important to emphasize that or maybe it's just a coincidence maybe it just happens to be the way that they're describing the tomb but there's stuff that, which if you read through the gospels, there is absolutely no way you would notice that. There's no way you would notice that unless you have a specific question in mind, you go back to the gospels and you read through them with that question in mind, which is what biblical scholars do, which is why even now, after thousands of years, people are still discovering things about the Gospels.

Starting point is 02:24:26 Like something like that. You can imagine thousands of years, no one's noticed that sort of developmental description of the tomb. And then finally someone's like, huh, this is kind of interesting. That kind of stuff is still happening because the Gospels are so dense and there's so much in them. And there's so many things that seem completely irrelevant unless you're asking the right kind of question. And that's one of them. So I'd love to know what Wes thinks about that, for example, and whether that at all influences his idea about motivations of the Gospels. That's a lot weaker than the obvious motivation in the Gnostic literature that he's talking about, but it's an interesting consideration. And I would love to know what he

Starting point is 02:25:02 thinks, for example. And if that were a debate, that point that I've just made is nowhere near strong enough to make like an argument out of, to say, well, hold on a second, Wes, because here's some evidence of motivate. So I wouldn't use it. So it wouldn't get discussed and people wouldn't know about it. But in a conversation, it's like, oh, hey, that reminds me of this and let's talk about it. So it's so much more interesting for everyone as well. You know? That's why i like that idea rather than the more yeah formal format because you know people there's people who aren't going to be moved or swayed by anything based on it doesn't matter if you tell them that wall is white there here's the scientific reason why they're still there it's fucking black but then there's a lot of people out there who you know they just want to

Starting point is 02:25:43 hear different ideas and not one thing has to be 100 percent right or 100 percent wrong. And they want to try to get to the truth. It's like I always talk about how I think one of the worst, I don't know, like curses that we've cast upon ourselves in humanity is making science and religion diametrically opposed to each other. They both seek the same answer. Why not work together? Yeah. You know, and unfortunately, you know, that's not what wins the clicks, but there are a lot of people who might think that way. These days, I think maybe the trend is reversing.

Starting point is 02:26:15 I hope so. If you hosted a debate that was like science versus religion, I don't think anyone clicks on it because it's like kind of a dead horse. Like it was really popular during the whole height of new atheism and stuff like that, but kind of lost interest it's boring now people are more interested like the stuff about jesus claiming to be god for example i just did this debate on whether jesus claimed to be god in the gospels who'd you debate uh david woott who's a christian youtuber and like i think it's a pretty popular topic which is surprising because it's like a it's like a point of like scriptural exegesis it's kind. But that kind of stuff is more interesting to people now

Starting point is 02:26:45 because Christianity is experiencing a sort of popular revival in the online space. It's becoming cool again. And people are getting really into the weeds with it. So now this kind of new atheist, like science versus religion, problem of evil, it's kind of boring. People don't really care about it.

Starting point is 02:26:59 They want the biblical stuff, which is really interesting. And so now- Why do you think that happened? Because it's just been done. Like we've had the debates and the discussions and like... No, no. Why do you think people...

Starting point is 02:27:13 Why do you think... Because I completely agree with you. There's been a phenomenon online that has spread to the real world where Christianity has become like very cool, which, you know, that's, that's fine. I'm just curious why you think that's happened. Uh, there are, I mean, I'm not a sociologist, but there are some hypotheses. One is that Christianity is right all along and people are beginning to realize it again. That's one, there's one explanation. Another explanation is to remember, you like that one, you know, Mike wasn't on, alessi alessi clicked another

Starting point is 02:27:46 another explanation is that he's such a good sport i love this like you could think that like look new atheism was cool it was really cool and it was a phenomenon if you were alive like in 2008 2009 i mean i was alive but i was like nine years old but you know what i mean like it you would have seen like the intellectual space become dominated by atheism. And it's happened throughout history. It happens in the Victorian era, kind of coinciding with Charles Darwin and suddenly the intellectual elite, they're all atheists all of a sudden. And then there's, you've got like religious revivals happening and you get the growth of Mormonism out of revivals in America and sort of goes back and forth.

Starting point is 02:28:27 And like new atheism crops up and it's really cool. And everyone's talking about it. And it's cool to be an atheist. And when you imagine a Christian, you imagine like your school teacher sort of happy-go-lucky. And you've got the cool atheist in a leather jacket like, well, actually, miss, you don't know about this, right? And, okay, that's cool. But now now because people have gotten used to that and they begin to see through it now when you think of an atheist you think of the reddit user with the fedora and the christian is the sort of like based giga chat like you know what i mean and so

Starting point is 02:28:55 it's like a cultural shift and yes and and so why was new atheism so popular well maybe because it was cottoning on to something or maybe it was just a publishing fad and we've got kind of a youtube publishing fad right now christianity but that's one hypothesis maybe it is actually just experiencing a growth because it always seems to seems to come back but i think things just ebb and flow i think and we're christianity is sort of coming up and then suppose like joe rogan converts to christianity that'd be huge become a big thing and then five years down the line won't be cool and rogan's talking about christianity again and it's like the same stuff and all of these arguments people right now find really interesting like gosh you know why did the disciples die for their beliefs

Starting point is 02:29:33 and all of this kind of oh that's so interesting all of that is just like it's it's you know water under the bridge and suddenly the guy who comes in and goes well actually i think that might be a mistranslation of the greek it's like oh hello this is fun you know and so new atheism before was all about the problem of evil and religion being evil i don't think like richard dawkins of christianity know like a word of greek i don't know but like all of these criticisms that we've been talking about all of this interesting stuff well did jesus claim to be god what about this translation that stuff just kind of doesn't come up there's a little bit about the virgin birth actually that richard dawkins likes to talk about that's kind of interesting but outside of that There's a little bit about the virgin birth, actually, that Richard Dawkins likes to talk about. That's kind of interesting.

Starting point is 02:30:05 But outside of that, like, no, it's like a different approach. And so if atheism becomes cool again, it's not going to be that new atheism style. It's going to be something else. It'll be a new version. It's going to be scholarly. Because I think what people are interested in now is like the scholarly stuff, which for me is really exciting.

Starting point is 02:30:18 I'm amazed that I've essentially become mostly interested in biblical scholarship. I used to be like a philosopher essentially, or like a wannabe philosopher, analytic philosophy. An Oxford philosopher. An Oxford philosopher. Arguments, logical positivist, sort of arguments of the existence of God, premises, conclusions, syllogisms, all that kind of stuff. And I used to think that the rest was basically all like bunk. And now I just don't care about your stupid premises, man. I want to read the Bible. You know, that's what I'm interested in. And it's amazing that that's happened. But I think that that's

Starting point is 02:30:47 happening across the board and people are interested in the text. And I'm constantly discovering things, especially in this debate about whether Jesus has claimed to be God or not. There are all like Christians often look at me like I've said that a square has three sides when I say Jesus didn't claim to be God, because it's like this obvious fact of the gospels. In biblical scholarship for the past few hundred years, it's been mainstream just to say Jesus didn't claim to be God, because it's like this obvious fact of the gospels. In biblical scholarship for the past few hundred years, it's been mainstream just to say that Jesus didn't actually historically claim to be God. And that's like a later development into the doctrine. Oh, they admit that? Well, admit that is a strong term. Like there are scholars who think that's the case. There

Starting point is 02:31:17 are some scholars who think that's not the case. And a lot of biblical scholars are non-religious. So I think Morris Casey, for example, isn't a Christian or wasn't a Christian when he wrote his, I forget what it's called, it's called like Jewish Prophet to Gentile God, I think, which is kind of a proto version of the most popular biblical scholar at the moment, it's probably Bart Ehrman, who you should have him on the show. I mean, he's fantastic. Yeah, his name's come up. He is phenomenal, man. He's great. But like a lot of Christians look at him and say, yeah, you know, he's kind of cool, but he's actually not that great because he's he's great but like a lot of christians look at him and say yeah you know he's kind of cool but he's you know he's actually not that great because he's i think he's he's made

Starting point is 02:31:47 some blunders in the past and stuff like this as well like i mean when i was talking about this west huff thing my friends were pointing me to something that i wish i could remember it to for fairness's sake but something that like bart had written that had a similar level of like just getting something wrong i think it was about the telephone game actually um but anyway like yeah so those are your sort of scholars who are like Jesus never claimed to be God, Bart Ehrman's book is How Jesus Became God and it's about that kind of stuff it's quite accessible

Starting point is 02:32:11 but Brant Petray just wrote a book called Jesus and Divine Christology which attempts to regain the idea that Jesus did make divine claims but he opens the text like last year, he opens the text by saying that most scholars think Jesus didn't claim to be God. And he describes this paradox. Most scholars think that Jesus didn't claim to be God, but most scholars think that very early on in

Starting point is 02:32:34 Christianity, people started believing that he was God. So how do you explain this paradox? If he didn't claim to be God, why did they so immediately think he was God? And Pietre's answer is to say, well, because he did actually claim to be God. And he gives all of his arguments why. And it's interesting, but I, ultimately, I don't think Jesus claimed to be God. I think- You don't. No, there are all kinds of arguments. That's why I say that Christians will look at me like I've lost my mind. But I think it's important to understand that in biblical scholarship,

Starting point is 02:33:03 this is a very mainstream opinion. That's not an appeal to authority. I'm not saying it's therefore correct. I'm just saying it's not some like batshit, like, yeah, wacky view. It's incredibly common. I think it might even be the most common view of scholars of Christology, but I don't know. So don't quote me on that. Don't even paraphrase me on that. But I find it absolutely fascinating. Christians have their lines. They say, we've already discussed one. You know, Jesus forgives sins in Mark chapter two, and only God can forgive sins. But I've already given an explanation as to why I don't think that's him claiming to be God. And people say this, just forgetting that in John chapter 20, Jesus gives the ability to forgive sins, the authority to forgive sins to his disciples. It's as if they just forget or they say, oh, well, that's because, you know, they could only forgive sins, you know, through Jesus.

Starting point is 02:33:45 It's like, yeah, but what did Jesus say? As the Father has sent me, now I'm sending you. So if they're only doing it because Jesus gave them that authority, then Jesus is only doing it because God gave him that authority. It's like the same thing, right? Or they'll talk about how Jesus walked on the water. If Jesus walks on the water, you must have heard of that story. Of course, yeah. And he walks on the water.

Starting point is 02:34:07 And in Job chapter nine, it's written that Job is speaking in it and it's written that God alone treads upon the waves of the sea. Only God treads on the waves of the sea. And so people say, yeah, so that means. Jesus is God. Jesus is, and it's calling back to this imagery.

Starting point is 02:34:22 And again, they just kind of forget that Peter, Simon Peter, then gets out of the boat and walks on water as well. And he starts sinking because he doesn't have enough faith. And Jesus sort of says, like, oh, you haven't got enough faith. That's why you're sinking. But the implication is that if Simon Peter had enough faith, he would have stayed afloat.

Starting point is 02:34:40 And so how did he stay? Well, okay, but he could only walk on water because, you know, he had, like, faith in Jesus. Okay, but then maybe Jesus could only walk on water because he had faith in God. In other words, the stuff I was talking about with John the Baptist, all of the indications that Jesus gives of things that only God should be able to do that he can do, forgiving sins, glorifying himself, raising the dead, judging people, all of this kind of stuff are all things which at some point or another another he then gives to his disciples as well. As if to say that, yes, I have this authority that's come from God, but it's something that's been administered to me. And in John chapter 17,

Starting point is 02:35:13 Jesus prays for his disciples and all Christian believers and prays that they'll all be one together. Can you pull up John 17? This is one of the most instructive parts of the New Testament. Also, actually, if you just want an interesting tidbit of mistranslation before we go there, can you type in John 12, 44? Actually, just in a new tab, because I want to go to a slightly different website. John 12, 44, I think is the verse. Yeah, check this out. So scroll down, go to Bible Hub. Scroll down. That one, Bible Hub. So this is John 12. Yeah, check this out. So scroll down, go to Bible Hub. Scroll down.

Starting point is 02:35:46 That one, Bible Hub. So this is John 12, 44, right? So in the NIV, which is the most popular translation at the top there, then Jesus cried out, whoever believes in me does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me. So he's saying like,

Starting point is 02:35:58 he's basically saying that I've come from the Father. Like if you believe in me, you don't just believe in me, you believe in the Father too. So he's sort of claiming to be God here, right? However, look underneath, look at all of believe in me. You believe in the Father too. So he's sort of claiming to be God here, right? However, look underneath. Look at all of the other translations. Jesus shouted to the crowds, if you trust me, you are trusting not only me, but also God who sent me.

Starting point is 02:36:12 Take a look at the English standard version. And Jesus cried out and said, whoever believes in me, believes not in me, but in him who sent me. Do you notice a difference? He's separating the two. Do you notice a difference in the ESV there and the NIV? It's the word two. Do you notice a difference in the ESV there and the NIV? It's the word only. Yeah. So in one of them it says, whoever believes in me does not believe in me only,

Starting point is 02:36:30 but in the one who sent me. In others it just says, whoever believes in me does not believe in me, but believes in the one who sent me. Now here's a question for you. All of these have been translated from the same Greek manuscripts. Which one do you think the Greek aligns with? Do you think the word only is in the Greek? The answer is no, it's not. So how did it end up in the English? Because of translation philosophies. There are literalist translations. Translation philosophies. Yeah, because there are different ways to translate a phrase. Are you trying to translate the words, like word for word, or are you trying to translate the phrase? So for example, in the Old Testament, there's a verse about slavery where God says, he says of slaves,

Starting point is 02:37:18 he says, they are their silver, I think he says. Like that slave is your silver. Now what that means is that the slave is your money because silver is like a euphemism for money now as a translator into english you've got to look at the hebrew and decide are you going to translate it word for word and say the slave is his silver or are you going to translate the idea for an english reader and say the slave is his property yeah so depending on what you're going for it's going to do a different thing so the niv the most popular translation of the bible is a so--called phrase-for-phrase translation. So it tries to get at what the Bible means.

Starting point is 02:37:50 Whereas if you read something like the NRSV, which is my favorite version, the New Revised Standard Edition, the New Revised Standard Version, updated edition, so NRSVUE, this is an attempt to accurately translate the Greek terms, which I find most helpful because that's what I'm interested in. But if you're just trying to read for the stories, you might prefer the NIV. But you've got to realize when you're reading an English translation that you are reading through the lens of an interpreter. Yes.

Starting point is 02:38:16 So in this instance, this is the most obvious case. Bear in mind that I'm debating whether Jesus claimed to be God. If you read the ESV there, and imagine I'm up and I'm at the podium and I'm doing my debate, and I say Jesus didn't claimed to be God. If you read the ESV there, and imagine I'm up and I'm at the podium and I'm doing my debate. And I say, Jesus didn't claim to be God. Because look, he said, whoever believes in me does not believe in me, but believes in the one who sent me. So he's separating himself from God. But now imagine my opponent gets up. He's saying, Jesus did claim to be God. And he just quotes the other translations of Jesus claimed to be God, because he says, whoever believes in me doesn't't just believe in me but believes in the one who sent me so I must have this connection

Starting point is 02:38:48 So that translation that one word is crucial to Understanding the nature of Jesus and what he was claiming to be and that is an interesting example of how I think They've taken too much, but you can understand the NIV translators. They've already assumed that Jesus did claim to be God So when they come across the Greek, they're like, well, what did Jesus mean here? What was it? What idea was he trying to get across? And how can we convey that to an English reader? And when he said that they don't believe in me, but the one who sent me, what he means is like, they don't just believe in me. So they translated it that way. But if you've got a different interpretation, that's not how it reads. So if you are ever

Starting point is 02:39:24 reading the Bible and either something jumps out at you, you think it's important or interesting or definitely if it's confusing, the first thing that you should always do. Look on Bible Hub. Scroll up to the top here. See where it says Greek up a bit. Yeah, that should. No, no. Up a bit. Sorry. Yeah. Just click on that. Any time. What you have is a breakdown of the original Greek text next to the words that's been translated. So if you scroll down a tiny little bit,

Starting point is 02:39:51 whoever believing... The one believing in me not believes in me, but in the one who sent me. So you can investigate it for yourself. And there's brackets there too. Yeah, so the brackets are kind of because of because you know it's not like a perfect translation into english like there are like greek uses the definitive article so it says the equivalent of like the god a lot of the time which that itself becomes really interesting when

Starting point is 02:40:15 you look at john chapter one like there's so like when when john in john chapter one it says the uh in the beginning was the word and the word was with god and the word was god and later it says the word became flesh so the word is jesus says the word was with god and the word was god in fact yeah let's just do it just put can you pull it up can you go to john 1 um it's like in john 1 greek and then yeah click that interlinear bible that'll do okay so check this out so you can see the orange text there. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. Right?

Starting point is 02:40:50 Notice that where it says, and the word was with God, it says with ton theon, which in Greek sort of crucially is something like, so there's a dash there because the word, we don't do that in English. We don't say it was the God. But in greek you have this definitive art you have this you have this tom which kind of crudely in english would mean something like the god but notice how it says the word was with ton theon the god and then it says and the word was ho logos sorry the and god was the word so you've got ho logos the word you've got ton theon the god but it says the word was with ton theon but the logos was with theos there's no ton there's

Starting point is 02:41:36 no definitive article so in other words it basically reads as the word was with the god and the word was god so some people look at this and say that yeah so that so the difference between god and the god in this instance is the difference between something like god as like a being and like god is like uh as like meaning just like divinity or the same thing as god so jehovah's witnesses are huge on this, for example, you know, so they translate this, I think, in their Bible as the word was with God and the word was a God or something like that, you know? And so some people look at this and say, well, we should translate this as in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was divine or something that means something similar, right? If you look at the Greek, at the very least, it's interesting that in one of these instances, it's tontheon. In the other instance, in the next usage, it's just theos. There's no definitive

Starting point is 02:42:30 article. And does that make a difference? Well, who knows? I don't know. But that's not even a question you can ask if you're just reading an English translation and you trust it all the way. Anyway, we were just about to look at John 17. Stop if we're going too long by the way no you're good this is great john 17 so this is this is you can yeah you can click off that this is the most interesting chapter for me so he's he's if you scroll down a bit a little bit more a little bit more so he's praying for his disciples there we go praying for all his believers so he's just prayed for his disciples and then he says my prayer is not them alone. I pray also for those who believe in me through their message. That is all Christian believers, that all of them may be one father, just as you

Starting point is 02:43:11 are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us. So the world may believe that you've sent me. I've given them the glory you gave me, that they may be one as we are one. I in them, you in me, so that they may be brought to complete unity. So he's talking about the disciples and all Christian believers all being in me as I'm in you and we'll all be one and we're all going to be together. This is like, whoa, what do you mean? Like Jesus and the Father have a distinct, unique relationship. What do you mean that I've given them the glory that you've given me? What do you mean that they're all going to be one with me in the way that I'm one with you? What on earth are you talking about?

Starting point is 02:43:53 So what do you think? And I'm seeing Jesus here. So Christians will look at the way that Jesus is like amplified and glorified and say he's claiming to be God. If that's what he's doing, then he's making the disciples gods as well. So for example, in John's gospel, Jesus says things like, I and the father are one. In John chapter 10, verse 30, he says, I and the father are one. And the Jewish opponents pick up stones to stone him to death because they say you're claiming to be God. And he says to them, haven't you read your scripture? There are other people in the old Testament who are called gods. Why can't I do the same thing? Why are you accusing me of blasphemy for claiming to be God. And he says to them, haven't you read your scripture? There are other people in the Old Testament who are called gods. Why can't I do the same thing? Why are you accusing me of blasphemy for claiming to be the son of God? So he clarifies that he's not claiming to

Starting point is 02:44:32 be God in the way that they think. And then, I mean, another important part of the gospels is when Philip, the disciple Philip asks Jesus to see the Father. And Jesus says to him, anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. And again, Christians point to this and say, see, he's claiming to be God. Anyone who's seen me has seen the Father. But when he explains what he means, he then says, I am in the Father and the Father is in me. So when Philip says, you know, when do I get to see the Father? He says, Philip, how long have you been with me? And you don't know that if you've seen me, you've seen the father, because the father is in me and I'm in the father. So when he's asked about his relationship with the

Starting point is 02:45:13 father, he says, well, the father's in me and I'm in the father. Then he jumps as John 17, where he's saying, well, I pray that one day all of the disciples will be in me just as I'm in you and we'll all be in each other all together so we can be equal yeah so all of these indications of like jesus apparently claiming to be god in a unique sense seems to be things that he's saying that the disciples and maybe all christian leaders can do i don't believe that the 12 apostles let alone the rest of christian like christendom can become yahweh so i've got to reinterpret this i've got to say like when jesus says'm in the Father and the Father's in me, if that's something that's also accessible to the disciples, it can't be Jesus claiming to be identical with Yahweh. It must mean something

Starting point is 02:45:52 else. So a lot of these arguments I reject for those reasons. So when you ask me about what I think Jesus is doing, I think he's providing some kind of idyllic example. A really interesting examination or explication of that comes from him walking on the water. As I say, he walks on the water. Peter then walks on the water as well, but he starts sinking because he doesn't have enough faith. So Jesus is the idyllic faithful. Jesus is the idyllic faithful person. It's like, if you have the right amount of faith, you will be able to walk on water. And because Peter can do it for a bit, it implies that that is the kind of power that he could have had if he had enough faith. At the very least, it's an indication that you don't have to just be Yahweh

Starting point is 02:46:27 incarnate to be able to be given the power to walk on water. You can be given it by God without having to be God himself. And I think that theme is consistently throughout the gospels. What really sucks about this stuff is like, you want to know the truth. You want to know where it all comes from. You want to know why the universe is here yeah who controls it where god is if he exists what he's like which of the religious books gets it right which gets it wrong if there's a mix of whatever but sadly everything is set up where it's a layer that leads to a layer of 10 things that leads to a layer but it's exponential but i love it for that reason no it it's it's it makes it fun yeah but the complexity makes it also it may be fun but it's also exhausting because the average person is like man i gotta work my fucking i gotta pay the bills

Starting point is 02:47:16 you know what i mean i'm trying to fucking look through codex synaptic quadrature whatever the fuck it's called you know what i mean and? And yet, you know, you can run, you've already done it, like melted my brain today, where you can run in circles with some of these phrases that, by the way, are just one translation of the fucking 45 translations that also have all different meanings.

Starting point is 02:47:37 And then we're trying to decide which one is which. And it's like, at the end of the day, I see why the church has been able to just sell this. Like, listen, there was a guy named Jesus. He said he was God, came down, died for for your sins now take this fucking community and live a good life like it's simple yeah people are like that's a simple story sounds cool i want to do that and i get that and by the way like that might be correct like because all of this goes on and bear in mind like you know when these documents first emerge and people are like this is the

Starting point is 02:48:01 stuff that people are doing they're like oh my goodness there's so much here what the hell are we going to do so they all get together and that people are doing. They're like, oh my goodness, there is so much here. What the hell are we going to do? So they all get together and decide on their doctrines. They're like, we're going to get together and we're going to work it out. So they go through all of this kind of stuff. And they're like, this is what we think. Are we all agreed? Cool. Set. And then no one has to worry about it because this debate has already taken place. It's already been done. And that's that. And what like Catholics in particular will say is like, these debates happen, the issue issue is settled and we have to accept that the Holy Spirit has guided them to make the right decisions and we have our doctrines and that's what we believe. The problem is that that does offer you the ability to not have to worry and look into it yourself.

Starting point is 02:48:37 But then if you start reading it yourself and you're like, actually, I'm not actually so sure they got it right. Then cool, you've regained your spiritual freedom and whatnot, but you've now got this massive problem to deal with, which is you've got to go back through absolutely everything and see what you find. So that's why I'm glad I came at this not as like a Christian who started questioning, going, oh, but what about this? Oh, but if that's that, then what about this?

Starting point is 02:48:57 Because then it's sort of like stressful and you're all over the place. For me, I'm looking from the outside. Yes. John the Baptist is interesting. I'm just going to look up him. And as a Christian, you might be like, oh, but that means I'm going to have to think about this. And that's for me. I'm like, I don't have to worry about that at all.

Starting point is 02:49:10 I'm just like, who's this guy? What's interesting about him? And you can just look at what's interesting. And the funny thing is, right, we opened this conversation talking about the Gnostic Gospels. And we opened up like a tab about the Gospel of Judas because I was going to get into explaining all this, all this stuff in the Gnostic gospels because I find it really interesting. And we didn't even do it because we got so caught up in the Bible. But like, I just find it quite funny that I just realized that we didn't, we didn't even talk about it because all of this stuff. You can go for it now if you want.

Starting point is 02:49:35 All of this stuff is in the canonical tradition. And then you've got this Gnostic tradition, which has this wacky other, like this completely different. In fact, one of the most important Gnostic groups are called the Mandaeans, who still exist. These are guys who believe that John the Baptist is the most important and final prophet. They believe Jesus was a false prophet, and that the reason John the Baptist didn't want to baptize him isn't because he was unworthy, but because he knew he was going to be trouble. It's's, it's so, so cool to think. I mean, these Mandaeans, they claim to be the descendants of the original followers of John the Baptist,

Starting point is 02:50:09 but anthropologically, we know that's probably not the case. Type in, yeah, Mandaeans, there you go. Oh, I thought you spelled that right for a minute or less. Yeah. It was a different Google. There's John, there's John the Baptist. He's, he's great. And so you see where it says John the Baptist and the Essenes underneath. The Essenes are a religious group that a lot of people think John the Baptist belonged to. And by extension, some people think that Jesus belonged to this too. And it explains many of the... If you type in Essenes and pull up the Wikipedia, it's quite widely accepted that John the Baptist was an Essene. But I know that James McGrath,

Starting point is 02:50:42 who wrote the John the Baptist stuff I was talking about earlier, I think he disputes this Essene zego. So a Jewish sect that flourished between the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century CE, so the right time period. So they're part of the Jewish religion. Yeah, as Jesus himself was and John the Baptist would have been. So you have Orthodox

Starting point is 02:50:59 Jews, you have secular Jews, and you have Essene Jews. It's not quite delineated like that. I'm fucking with you. Okay, okay, okay. Okay, that's good, that's good. But yeah, you can see, for example, they've got an emphasis on ritual purity. So the Mandaeans who exist today as followers of John the Baptist, they see baptism as a continual thing. They're constantly washing themselves. In Christianity, it became something you do once, and then you're done with it, and you're in the faith. For them, it's like a ritual thing. They're constantly washing themselves in christianity it became something you do once and then you're done with it and you're in the faith for them it's like a ritual thing they're constantly

Starting point is 02:51:27 washing themselves uh and so the essence emphasis on ritual purity asceticism you know what asceticism is so like i've heard of that throwing off like earthly goods and like sort of living in essentially like yeah chosen poverty and you see how john the baptist is described as living in the wilderness eating locusts and honey wearing like like, you know, camel skin. So he seems to be an ascetic as well. And their community at Qumran, which is where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, which is kind of interesting as well. So, yeah, some people think if type in was John the Baptist an Essene, it probably give you like an AI view of the kind of stuff I'm talking about. But the thing is, it's it's the thing is, it's kind of interesting. And so, yeah, so it says,

Starting point is 02:52:10 while the parallels between John the Baptist and the Essenes are striking, there's no definitive evidence to prove that John was an Essene, though some have suggested it. So yeah, as I say, it's debated, but it's a popular scholarly view that he was an Essene. But the thing is, we just don't know very much about these people. But we know that the Mandaeans... Can you type in... Can you just type in Mandaean Book of John or something like that? I forget what they actually call it. Book of John, I think. And try and find an online version.

Starting point is 02:52:41 Yeah, go down to gnosis.org. Go back. Down there. This one? Yeah. find like an online version yeah go down to gnosis.org go back down there this one yeah and then ctrl f or command f for jesus so this is the mandans actual literature okay so now go go down sorry go down instead of up this one yeah click down and then click it again okay check this out so this is this is that the mandans literature which we're not supposed to be able to read by the way because they don't want other people reading it but this out. So this is the Mandaeans' literature, which we're not supposed to be able to read, by the way, because they don't want other people reading it.

Starting point is 02:53:07 But this is what they're telling them, you know, and they do it sort of in the form of a poem. Who told Jesus? Who told Jesus Christ, Mary's son? Who told Jesus that he came to the Jordan's banks and told him, John, perform your baptism over me and pronounce over me the name you pronounce. If I become your disciple, then I shall mention you in my epistle. If I do not become your disciple, then erase my name from your scroll. So Jesus goes to John the Baptist and says, if you baptize me, if I become your disciple, I'll mention you in my epistle. I'll write about you. But if you don't, erase me. And then they have this debate. John spoke to Jesus saying to Jesus Christ in Jerusalem, you have lied to Jews. You have deceived men, the priests. You've cut off the seed from men and labor and pregnancy from women. You loosened the Sabbath that Moses ordained

Starting point is 02:53:49 in Jerusalem. All of this kind of stuff. And they're having like a debate and a discussion. Jesus Christ saying to John in Jerusalem, if I have lied to Jews, then may a burning fire consume. This is like, what the hell is going on? And this is their belief as to what happened at the baptism of Jesus. John is like, no, man, you're a deceiver. You're a liar. You're a false prophet. Totally different.

Starting point is 02:54:10 And Jesus is like, come on. And then I think eventually God tells John, go on, just baptize him. And then Jesus becomes this false prophet. There's something interesting about the fact that John the Baptist accuses him of loosening the Sabbath. And I can't remember what it is exactly, but James McGrath lent me this view where basically there's something about it which means it probably wasn't like made up by the Mandaeans because I think the Mandaeans don't care about the Sabbath.

Starting point is 02:54:33 Like you know how Christians don't like care about the Sabbath in the same way that Jews do? That's right. I'm pretty sure, I'm not 100% sure but I think that the Mandaeans also don't keep the Sabbath which means that the fact that they have their final prophet saying you you loosened the Sabbath as a criticism of Jesus, that's not something they would make up because they don't keep the Sabbath. So they wouldn't make up this criticism of Jesus. Well, you've messed up the Sabbath because they do that too. So wherever

Starting point is 02:54:57 this text came from, it wasn't just like invented out of thin air, you know, that's not something they would invent. So really interesting text that you can sit and read at home um but yeah they're a gnostic sect so they have this weird cosmology like all of the gnostics but i just thought it's worth a mention these followers of john the baptist are really cool um but there's a whole series of gnostic gospels and some of them are extremely weird so like the gospel of john uh gospel of judas you can imagine this gets discovered in the 1970s and again we knew that this existed because irenaeus wrote about it so we know that it's pre 180 because he wrote about it in 180 and finally we discover this text and we're like we think this is the gospel of judas so bart ermin is one of the guys who goes to validate this for national

Starting point is 02:55:38 geographic and they want to give them enough to see the guy who owns it they're like we want to give them enough to to verify it but not so much that they can just read it because they haven't bought it yet so national geographic buy it for like a million like a million dollars or something um you can probably look gospel of judas it might have been a lot more can you type in gospel of judas and find like the actual pdf of the text because the crazy thing is right so they're reading this text and you can imagine we know that this is actually can you go back and go on? Yeah, no, this is all gospels, something like that will do. Yeah, so this is the actual translation of the thing itself. So it opens underneath the introduction.

Starting point is 02:56:12 You can see, this is the secret message of judgment Jesus spoke with Judas Iscariot over a period of eight days. Can you scroll down? Yeah, go down. When he appeared on earth, right there. So check this out, right? So you can imagine imagine you're a biblical scholar you know that this gospel of judas exists and then somebody comes to you and says hey we've dug up this papyrus and you know how it opens it says this is the message this is

Starting point is 02:56:35 like the secret message that jesus gave to judas and you're like oh my that's like holy grail if this is like unbelievable it's like judas for those who don't know is the man who betrays jesus he's the man who comes and kisses him on the cheek and betrays him why does he betray him well the christian tradition has it that he is evil john's gospel says that satan entered him and that's why he betrayed jesus the synoptics seem to kind of imply that he might have done it for money or for some other reasons that's a really interesting question too but this gospel opens. One day he was with his disciples in Judea. He found them sitting, practicing their piety.

Starting point is 02:57:13 And his disciples are sitting together praying over the bread. And the word there is the same word for Eucharist. So they're doing the Eucharist. They're praying over their bread. So Jesus comes upon his disciples praying over their bread and Jesus laughs at them. Jesus doesn't laugh in the canonical gospels. In the gospel of Jesus, he laughs at them. Jesus doesn't laugh in the canonical Gospels. In the Gospel of Jesus, he laughs four times. So they're praying, like saying grace. They're doing the Eucharist, and Jesus laughs at them. And they say, Master, why are you laughing at our prayer? What have we done?

Starting point is 02:57:37 We've done what's right. And he answers them and says, I'm not laughing at you. You're doing this because you want to. Not because you want to, but because through this, your God will be praised. Your God. Your God. So Jesus sees them praying over their food and he starts laughing and they're like, why are you laughing? It's like, oh, no, no, no, no. You go ahead.

Starting point is 02:57:57 You worship your God. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and it's like, whoa, what is going on here? Right. So then they say, but master, you are the son of God. And Jesus says to them, how do you know me? Truly Truly I say to you, no generation of people among you will know me. When the disciples heard this, they started to get angry and furious and started to curse them

Starting point is 02:58:13 in his heart. And Jesus says to them, why are you letting your anger trouble you? And he says, if any one of you is strong enough among humans to bring out perfect humanity, stand up and face me. So he's basically, so they're saying, but you're the son of God. And he's like, you don't, you don't know anything. And they're getting angry and he says well if anyone if anyone of you knows anything go on stand up speak to me guess who stands up guess who's got the confidence judas iscariot so judas stands up this is where this is by the way i'm getting told the story of a dinner when i first hear about the gospel of judas someone says have you heard of it i'm like no i don't think so and they're telling me how many years ago I don't know, a few years ago. It's not actually that long ago.

Starting point is 02:58:46 It's probably like three years ago, four years ago, maybe even less. I'm not sure. But at dinner and he's like, you know what it says, right? And so he tells me all this. I'm like, this is so interesting. Then this is where I like nearly dropped the knife and fork and just ran home to read it myself. So Judas actually stands up to him and he can't quite look him in the eye. He stands before him and Judas says to Jesus, I know who you are and where you've come from. You've come from the immortal realm of Barbello and I'm not worthy to utter the name of the one who sent you. Barbello? Barbello. It's like, what is going on? This is when the scholars are reading this and they're like, okay, we know that this is a Gnostic gospel because Barbello is a name of one of the emanations of God

Starting point is 02:59:25 in the Sethian sect of Gnosticism. So there are different kinds of Gnosticism, one of them called Sethianism. Don't want to get too wordy or technical. We passed that point two hours ago. But Barbello is recognizably one of these sort of divine figures within the Gnostic religion, within the Sethian Gnostic faith.

Starting point is 02:59:41 So scholars reading this are like, Barbello, dang, it's a Gnostic gospel. So this is a proper Gnostic faith. So scholars reading this are like, Barbello, dang, it's a Gnostic gospel. So this is a proper Gnostic gospel. And so, yeah, it begins with this remarkable drama where the disciples are praying, Jesus laughs at them, says, you're worshiping your God. So who is their God?

Starting point is 02:59:59 And remember what I told you earlier about the Gnostic view that there's the evil, evil material world and the good spiritual world. The evil Demiurge is the creator of the material world so these disciples are praying over their bread the material stuff and so jesus comes in he's like yeah you're worshiping your god you're worshiping the evil demiurge and that's why he says to them none of your generation will like will be worthy of this like you're all you're all getting it totally wrong. And Judas is the one who knows. He stands up and says, I know that you've come from the realm of Barbello. The realm of Barbello is the plethora, the spiritual world. So the one who is the alleged traitor of him is the one who

Starting point is 03:00:37 knows where he comes from, according to this. Exactly. And so scholars begin reading this, and it's popular to think that this is the gospel that paints Judas as the secret hero. it's not that he's the evil betrayer he's the secret hero because he was the one who truly understood where jesus came from and so he enacts this plan because because he knows what it's all really about that view then came into con like it got contested because there's some stuff which i would imagine judas and judas himself in this gospel at points is depicted as someone who himself he also isn't going to like enter into the plethora. He's also not part of the generation that's going to like, you know, essentially experience salvation, I suppose. Which means although he's the guy that understands it, he's not like the hero of the story.

Starting point is 03:01:18 It's kind of complicated, as you can imagine reading this as a biblical scholar and just being like, oh my goodness, here we have the actual, we've heard about this for so long and now we have it from the horse's mouth. This is incredible. And so, yeah, they're praying. Jesus laughs at them, says you're worshiping your God, which presumably the evil demiurgic God. And then Judas gets up and says, I know where you've come from. You've come from the realm of Barbello. And he's like, yeah, damn right I have. It's like, whoa, what is going on here? So then there's this whole, the rest of the gospel of Judas, a lot of it is just about Jesus explaining cosmology. So the Gnostic cosmology is like insane. There's this ineffable creator being called like the invisible spirit and the invisible spirit for whatever

Starting point is 03:02:05 reason emanates like other beings so sometimes it's his attributes so i've done a whole episode of the gospel of judas with bart ermin one of my favorite episodes if people are interested because he's actually an expert in this and it's like emanating different beings so like wisdom is a being sophia you know the word philosophy means love of wisdom. I didn't know that. So philo-sophia. So philo meaning love. As in phile, you're an Anglophile.

Starting point is 03:02:34 You love England, phile, love. Philo, love of wisdom, Sophia. So the name Sophia means wisdom. So there's this God in the Gnostic, or emanation of God in the Gnostic cosmology called Sophia, who is wisdom. But yeah, so all of these different emanations. And then for some reason, something goes wrong and there's like this, one of these emanations is kicked out of the plethora. The plethora is the big collection of all of the spiritual beings, right? And this is where it does sound a bit Billy Carson, but I don't think any of this is true. This is what the Gnostics believed.ics yeah it's fascinating and so you've got this some kind of disaster where one of these

Starting point is 03:03:09 gods seems to sort of get kicked out of the plethora and tries to recreate the spiritual world but does and that's what the material world is some traditions say that it was an accident like he was just incompetent he was trying his best, but was not good enough. Some people say it was evil. I think that the Sethians, I'm not sure about this, but I think that they might believe that, you know, when God says like, I am the only God, you shall have no other gods before me, that he was mistaken because he'd fallen out of the pathora. And so he creates this material world and mistakenly believes that he's the only God. But he's just the God of the material world because that's like all he But he, so he mistakenly says, I am the Lord, your God, you'll have no other before me. I'm the big dog. I'm the guy I'm like, this is my, and that explains

Starting point is 03:03:53 why you have this old Testament God who creates this material world and then walks around like he owns the place, you know, like creating Adam and Eve and saying, you got to worship me and I'm in charge and you shouldn't worship anybody else. And so who's Jesus? Well, Jesus comes up from the realm of Barbello, which is the Pithora. He comes into this material world and basically to tell people, you know, you need to understand that you're trapped in this material world and through the right knowledge, you can be, you can be saved. So that is the cosmology that is, that is at the base of the gospel of Judas. So Jesus explains this whole cosmology. Just scroll down to like a random point, maybe like two thirds of the way down. Scroll a bit further, about there.

Starting point is 03:04:32 Okay. So like, and Adamus was the first cloud of light that no angel could ever see among all those called God. And Adamus begets Seth in the place after the image and likeness of the angel. And he must be made the incorruptible generation of Seth appear to the twelve. It's like all of this crazy. Then 72 luminaries themselves made 360 luminaries appear in the incorruptible generation according to the spirit's will so that there'd be five for each. I'm honestly, man, don't even try to read this. It is just like the most wacky. It's crazy yeah like but this is

Starting point is 03:05:07 jesus explaining how the cosmos came into being how adam and eve came into being and it's the gnostic version of it which is like completely different to the orthodox christian position which is why these guys get condemned and why it ends up buried in the desert if you scroll right to the bottom we'll see how it ends. Up a bit. Here it is. Immediately there was a disturbance. Okay, so this is at the end of the vision. Then Judas looks up at the luminous cloud, which is the plethora, I guess, in his vision, and entered it. Those standing on the ground heard a voice from the cloud saying,

Starting point is 03:05:39 some stuff missing, great generation, and Judas didn't see Jesus anymore. There's a lot missing because it spent 16 years in a safety deposit box in New York City. Immediately, there was a disturbance among the Jews. The high priest grumbled because he'd gone into the guest room to pray, but some scribes were watching them closely, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they approached Judas and said to him, what are you doing here? Aren't you Jesus' disciple? Then he answered them as they wish.

Starting point is 03:06:02 And Judas received some money and he handed him over to them. The Gospel of Judas. That's where it ends. So it ends with Judas handing over Jesus. The actual story. So Jesus explains the secrets of the cosmos to Judas. And maybe because Judas now understands the mission. He's like, all right, get the fuck out of here.

Starting point is 03:06:20 Yeah, he's like, dude, I can't handle this. But yeah, that's where it ends. It's kind of eerie because that's where it ends. You're going to make them shut up. Take them. Yeah, give's like, dude, I can't handle this. But yeah, that's where it ends. It's kind of eerie because that's where it ends. You're going to make them shut up. Take them. Yeah. Give me some money. That's fine. Yeah. I didn't say kill them. It's not entirely clear what's going on there. But it's like, it's wacky, right? It's like totally wacky. And so you can imagine Christians looking at this and being like, well, this is obviously nonsense. This is obviously heretical or whatnot. But biblical scholars looking at this and being like, whoa is so cool so the headlines at the time this is like 2006 or something like

Starting point is 03:06:47 national geographic is running like the secret gospel that shows judas is the good guy like oh we've discovered it and it's like a huge huge huge story and like this is like you know dan brown level like like interest because i think the da vinci i don't know when the da vinci code came out 2006 okay not the book the movie came out. 2006. Okay. Not the book. The movie came out in 2006. Yeah. So it's all like part of the hype. I'm not sure if it was 2006 when it was finally published.

Starting point is 03:07:12 It was around then, you know, like it's just all this hype. And this is a real one. Like this is actually the Gospel of Judas. Fascinating. And there's some really, really wacky stuff. Like can you open up the Gospel of Thomas? So this is found in the Nag Hammadi library and is probably dated to the second century some scholars think that it might be dated earlier than the canonical gospels but that's extremely controversial this is what's known as a sayings gospel a saying saying gospel so it just basically contains a

Starting point is 03:07:38 bunch of sayings of jesus not really any other context so for example and he said whoever discuss the meaning of these sayings won't taste death. And like that, that's kind of it. That's how it opens. Jesus said, whoever seeks shouldn't stop until they find. When they find, they'll be disturbed. When they're disturbed, they'll be amazed and reign over the all. And so it's just like a list of sayings. Some of these are sayings that we also find in the canonical tradition. Some of them are definitely not. So scroll to the very bottom, the last one. Yeah, there's a lot of them. And to be honest, it looks kind of long, but you can read this in like half an hour and it's just a bunch of sayings. Some of them are absolutely fascinating. This is the most famous one, the very last one. And Simon Peter said to them,

Starting point is 03:08:16 Mary should leave us because women are not worthy of life. Now, what would you expect Jesus to say from what you know of him to this? You'd expect him to say like, oh, of course she can inherit eternal life just because she's a woman. That doesn't mean that she can't inherit eternal life. Here's what he says in the Gospel of Thomas. Look, am I to make her a man so that she may... I don't like this translation, but okay. Am I to make her a man so that she may become a living spirit too? She's equal to you men because every woman who makes herself manly will enter the kingdom of heaven. That is an incredibly... Every woman who makes herself manly? That's actually a really interesting interpretation.

Starting point is 03:08:47 Can you just type in Gospel of Thomas 114? Because this is what I would describe as a progressive translation. So... Oh, sorry, wait. No, no, sorry. Just 114, not 114. Number 114. And see if we can find the text. So yeah, try it there.

Starting point is 03:09:08 Try that. Click on that. Is this the whole Gospel of Thomas? Yeah. Can you scroll down to 114? That's long. So I want to find a more classical translation. There you go.

Starting point is 03:09:25 Yeah, okay. So this is how it's more commonly translation. There you go. Yeah, okay. So this is how it's more commonly translated. Simon Peter said to them, let Mary go away from us because women are not worthy of eternal life. Jesus said, look, I will draw her in so as to make her male so that she may too become a living male spirit similar to you. I don't like that. But I say to you, every woman who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven. So this other translation has clearly tried to posit this as like slightly differently it's tried to reinterpret the words

Starting point is 03:09:51 and i don't know which is correct because i don't i don't read you know coptic um people think it was originally written in greek by the way but the version we have from nakamadi is coptic and so this is the most famous saying where jesus says you know, well, I will make her a male because any woman who makes herself into a man will inherit eternal life. And it's like, what does that mean? You know, it's I don't want to know. It's really weird. Can you can you command F for, let's say, prostitute? OK, try.

Starting point is 03:10:24 Actually, I don't want to throw out a bunch of words do do son son of a yeah check it out okay so whoever will come to know father and mother he will be called son of a whore jesus said that well no he probably didn't because this is a non-canonical but there is a tradition very not Jesus-like. So again, a bunch of sayings, which like 105, again, no context, just a sayings gospel. It says, whoever will come to know the father and mother, he will be called the son of a whore. I don't think you said that. Some translations have, he will be called the son of a prostitute. And that is like it.

Starting point is 03:11:00 That's the same thing. The thing is, I read an introduction to a gospel thomas once because this mystified me i was like what does this mean and i read an introduction once which said that the coptic word for whore or prostitute is extremely similar to either the word for like father or the word for like god or something like that and so it seems like this like in the original greek it might have been whoever will come to know his father and mother will be called a son of god or something like this but the coptic word is very similar and so there was a little mistake that was made and that's why we end up with this really straight

Starting point is 03:11:34 i mean that seems to be that seems to be the explanation because otherwise what on earth could this mean but it's weird enough that you like you don't know. So read through all of this. And it's so interesting. Can you, can you control F4 divider or just like divide? Divided. Yeah. And then go, go up, go up. So we're not in the, that, that, okay. So check this out. So this is really fun to me when I was reading this. Now this is just my interpretation reading through the gospel of Thomas and all the sayings. One of the things you'll notice is there's a big emphasis on unity. there's the idea that people have become disparate and they need to be unified and it's all about unity you know you must be unified to each other some people that's their explanation for the woman verse as well they say that because you

Starting point is 03:12:16 ever heard of the platonic myth of how human beings originally had uh four arms and four legs and two heads and they were split in half and spent the rest of their lives trying to search i don't think i've ever heard that so there's this there's this sort of you know platonic myth that that's the original form of human beings and that's why we all long to find a partner and come together because our idyllic form is this you know uh eight-limbed being with two heads who gets separated and we have to sort of find the other person so we can come together again. And it's all about unity. And a lot of that, like platonic thought, seems to underlie some of at least the gospel of Thomas.

Starting point is 03:12:55 And so there's this emphasis on unity throughout the whole gospel. And then I was reading this saying here. So a person comes to Jesus and says, tell my brothers that they have to divide my father's possession with me. Or might be translated as like, tell them how to divide my father's possession with me. So someone says, my dad's just died. Can you tell me how we should divide up the property? And Jesus says to him, man, who has made me a divider? He turns to his disciples and said to them, I'm not a divider, am I? Or some translations say, I'm certainly no divider. I was like, well, what could this mean? And I was like, is he making a joke? I think Jesus is making a joke here because all of these sayings are about

Starting point is 03:13:40 his emphasis on unity. Remember in John 17, I will be one with you, you'll be one with me. It's all about unity and it's really important. And he's constantly emphasizing unity. And then someone comes up to him with a trivial question like, oh, how should my father divide up my property? And he says to the man, you know, like, who's made me a divider? Turns to his disciples, I'm certainly not a divider. Do you know what I mean? Because they know that he's all about unity. So he's like making a joke. So he's like making a joke. He's like, well, I'm not. Because it's the fact that he says to the man, who's made me a divider. And then he turns to his disciples and goes, I'm certainly no divider. Do you know what I mean? I sort of read

Starting point is 03:14:12 this as like a joke because this whole thing's unity. And he's like, this guy thinks I'm a divider, lads. Isn't that funny? You know, like it's fascinating, man. And again, I don't, I don't know if that's a legitimate interpretation, but they're're just they're just a bunch of sayings it's it's fascinating and again this is something that we know is a is a genuine fairly ancient well it is ancient but it's it's christians will argue like because this is really important like if the gospel of thomas is early if it's like written at the same time as the gospel of mark then you've got a big problem on your hands because you've got two contemporary accounts that say totally different things about Jesus. So the majority of scholars date it to the mid to late second century. And for Christians, that's enough to say, okay,

Starting point is 03:14:53 it's a later document, it's a development, and a lot of it's just like BS. If it is the case that it's dated earlier, it causes a lot of trouble. I have no idea. As I say, dating is very speculative, but there are suggestions either way. So some people think that this has like an Aramaic core of sayings that are legitimately Jesus's and date really early. There's also a hypothesized sayings gospel that we don't have access to. It's called Q. The word for source in German is quell. So remember how I said that Mark's gospel came first and then Matthew and Luke both relied heavily on Mark. So they're quoting Mark all the time. Like all of Mark's, almost all of Mark's gospel is also in Matthew and Luke. But Matthew and Luke also have

Starting point is 03:15:35 new material that they've written about. Some of that new material is also identical in Matthew and Luke. You hear what I'm saying? So you've got material that's only in Matthew and Luke, but it's the same in Matthew and Luke. So some scholars think that they had this other source that they were drawing from. You know what I mean? So they've got the gospel of Mark and they've got this other source that they were drawing from. That source is called Q because it doesn't have a name. Q for quell, which is just the German word for sources, comes up in German scholarship. Yeah. If you type in like Q source into Google, it should come up. That's right.

Starting point is 03:16:13 It refers to a hypothetical lost Greek language collection of Jesus' sayings, also known as the Sayings Gospel, that Jesus believed was used. So what I mean to say is that some scholars believe in the existence of this document called Q, which is a list of sayings of Jesus. It's another so-called sayings gospel that Matthew and Luke used as a source.

Starting point is 03:16:31 We've never found it. We don't know that it exists. We just from textual analysis, people think that it exists and there's some debate around that. But the interesting thing is it's a sayings gospel. So the materials that Matthew and Luke both share that aren't in Mark are sayings of Jesus.

Starting point is 03:16:50 So there is this known, but we know from the gospel of Thomas that this is a kind of gospel that does exist, just sayings. And so it's kind of interesting how the gospel of Thomas, if it were early, might be something a bit like Q. And because some of the quotes in the gospel of Thomas show up in the synoptic gospelsels, the canonical Gospels, you then raise the question, well, were the Gospel writers using the Gospel of Thomas as a source? Most scholars reject that. They think Thomas is later. But some people like to entertain it as an idea. At the very least, it's incredibly fascinating.

Starting point is 03:17:18 All of these Gospels are absolutely mental. There's an apocalypse of Peter where Jesus just describes in detail what happens in hell. And what happens to individual people. What does he say? So it depends on your sin. I think people who've blasphemed will be hung by their tongues on a bit of rope over the fire. Damn it.

Starting point is 03:17:37 I think women who've had abortions have to watch their screaming babies get boiled alive or something like this. It's described in great detail. These texts are absolutely fascinating, man. And there's loads of them. There's just loads and loads of these different texts, and they all say different wacky, crazy things. But the thing is, a lot of these date much later than the Gospels. We're talking possibly hundreds of years afterwards. Which questions the legitimacy of what they claim. Of course. So you have to bear in mind that a lot of these won't be attached to genuine traditions, but what they do tell us is like, they give us insight into what some early Christian communities believed.

Starting point is 03:18:13 Even if you think it's not actually historically connected to Jesus, we know that these are texts that people, this is what people actually thought about Jesus. To the extent Gnosticism was so popular, there's a church father, I can't remember which one, I never can, who is advising early Christians as they're going out to spread the message of the gospel that when you come onto a new town, don't say to them, take me to your Christian church. Say to them, take me to your Catholic church, because Catholic just means universal, like small c, because otherwise they might take you to a Gnostic church. So Gnosticism is so popular that Christian believers are being warned to specify what kind of Christian church they want to be taken to, because it's just so popular that you might end up in a Gnostic church.

Starting point is 03:18:54 So Elaine Pagels, who you should really have on the show, although I can't remember where she's based, I don't know if she would come into the studio, she wrote a book in the 70s called The Gnostic Gospels. And it is about looking at the Gnostic Gospels and reframing this idea that the early Christian movement was this unified, like self-corroborating set of Christian doctrines. And there were these texts and they all basically agreed with each other. And people looked at them, worked it out, set the canon, and that was that. But instead, in the early Christian community, there were all of these different competing views of who Jesus was, all of these different like literatures all of these different ideas all of these different cosmologies and it's all all of it is fascinating i mean it's so fast demiurge creator

Starting point is 03:19:34 in the universe evil material it's so cool but that's why you also have to resist it because it has that dan brown level of interest which it cool, but also makes you susceptible to, if you, this is the Billy Carson effect, I think, is when you hear something like, did you know that like, like Billy Carson thinks that like Catholic churches were built upon like ancient pyramids or something. It's like totally wacky. But if you hear that, if you're the kind of person that goes like, cool. Yeah. All right. I'll run with that. Yeah, that works. That checks out then. And that can definitely happen here. So you've got to be careful not to give it too much. But it also means that people are intentionally forging things. My favorite gospel forgery is the gospel of Jesus's wife.

Starting point is 03:20:14 Mary Magdalene. Can you pull up gospel of Jesus's wife? You're talking about Mary Magdalene? Yeah, well, so I'm not talking about Mary Magdalene, but of Jesus's wife. Yeah. And just go to, yeah, look at the image. Click on that image. So this is a fragment of a bit of papyrus with some... Is that Sharpie? No, no, no. It's not, because that would be an easy tell. So, although there is, there's some really, there's some forgeries of the Dead Sea Scrolls. So the Washington, D.C., you know there's the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.? There's a Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. I don't think I've ever been there.

Starting point is 03:20:54 You don't know about the Museum of the Bible, bro? I'm not a huge D.C. guy, man. Damn it. You're not a big Bible guy? You're not a big D.C. guy? I'm not a big D.C. guy. It doesn't add up together. I've also been on camera since 12.07 p.m. and it's 9.49.

Starting point is 03:21:04 So my memory is like a little off. Yeah, no, no. It's a museum in DC, right? And it opened fairly recently. I can't remember exactly when. Probably like in the 2010s, probably. Maybe even later, like 2019 or something. Anyway, there are these Dead Sea Scroll fragments.

Starting point is 03:21:20 You know about the Dead Sea Scrolls? Oh, yeah. So there are these Dead Sea Scroll fragments. They've got, I think, about 10 of them on display. They're forgeries. They end up being proved to be forgeries. And so they had to... Firstly, they put up a message which basically said underneath them,

Starting point is 03:21:31 these might be forgeries. And then they had to take them down. And my friend Kip Davis, who... I don't know if you've had Kip on the show. Kip Davis was on Danny's show. Yeah, he was. And you should have him on here, too. If you want to do a Dead Sea Trolls episode, he's your guy.

Starting point is 03:21:41 Yeah. He was one of the people, I think, involved in analyzing these documents. And one of the ways they realized that this is fake is that, like, if you look at the text, although the papyrus is real and the penmanship is correct and everything, they found, like, residue of salt on the papyrus, right? Now, they were found near the dead sea which is a very salty place and they could have just been salt for any kind of reasons however they did molecular analysis on the salt some of that salt by the way was underneath the ink so like baked

Starting point is 03:22:15 in like the text had gone over the top of it and they did molecular analysis on it and found that it was table salt which was invented in like the middle ages and so they know that it's forgery right what it means is that people do take uh genuinely ancient papyrus so if you carbon date it it checks out and they and they and they write things on it um like west huff has done that not not an attempt to forge anything but to make a facsimile so just just for like a hobby i thought you were about to blow my mind so like i think he gave one of these to Joe Rogan. So like there's this document, there's this fragment called P52, which is a fragment of John's Gospel. And I think Westhoff like takes a bit of ancient papyrus from the actual time

Starting point is 03:22:54 and then like copies by hand. So you've got like a sort of fake version of it, which is just like for fun. So you can do that. So this here, gentlemen, is the Gospel of Jesus's Wife, so-called, because it's just a fragment of text, which if you click out of it for a second, you'll probably see a bit of information about it. It's 4th century, ignore Forge for now, papyrus, fragment with Coptic text that includes the words, Jesus said to them, my wife, and the text received

Starting point is 03:23:26 widespread attention. Okay, so it's a fragment that has, it says Jesus said to them, my wife. And then at some other point I think it mentions Mary Magdalene and it's written in Coptic. So to be clear though, this is not the gospel of Mary Magdalene. No, no,

Starting point is 03:23:42 sorry, that's a different thing. Sorry, I hear what you're saying now. There is a separate thing called the gospel of Mary Magdalene. Yeah, I just want to make sure people understand that. This is the Gospel of Jesus' wife. And like I said, it's just a fragment. And it gets a lot of attention because, again, whether or not you believe that it's actually tied to the historical Jesus, there's been this conspiracy theory for a while that Jesus is married to Mary Magdalene.

Starting point is 03:23:58 So at the very least, this might be an ancient document from a community that believed that. Really interesting. Do you think there's anything to that, by the way? Probably not. You don't think so? I don't know but i think it's it's it's really hard to say mary magdalene is like hardly mentioned some of the most interesting things about the gospels is these famous characters don't get like mentioned at all like you could read the whole of matthew's gospel i don't think mary magdalene shows up till the resurrection or like after after or maybe the

Starting point is 03:24:20 crucifixion it's just like you sort of imagine them being there and they were historically of course but in the actual text we have so little information it's possible to say we don't even know why she's called mary magdalene same thing with judas iscariot what does iscariot mean no clue who knows some people think that it it's there's a there's a group that there's a there's a word for dagger i think there's a group of people who were called something like the I don't know I can't remember the word for it but like the the Ikari or something which sounds like Iscariot and they were a group of people who would kill Roman officials who were oppressing the Jewish state and so some people think that Judas was one of these people and that's where he got his name because he's Judas the Ikari or however you say it, which would make sense because he is like, he is kind of an assassin, you know, because he sort of assassinates

Starting point is 03:25:09 Jesus. And so that kind of makes sense. Like he might be a zealot. Some people think that he might be, there might be like a place, like he's Judas of Iscariot. Same thing with Mary Magdalene. There is a place called like Magdalene or Magdalena or something in Israel, but it's unclear if that place existed, if that's what she was named after, if the place was named after her, I think. It's a bit outside of my area of expertise, but we don't know what Magdalene means. So we know so little about them. But what we do know is that there's this text discovered, the Gospel of Jesus' Wife, which has this fragment on it and says, in fact, if you scroll down the text word for word, we've got it actually written down, it says, and again, there's a lot missing because it's just a fragment so not to me my mother gave me life gap the disciples said to jesus gap mary is not worthy

Starting point is 03:25:50 of it that kind of sounds similar to the gospel of thomas doesn't it you know like mary's not jesus said to my wife there's a gap she is able to be my disciple there's a gap like so so it's like maybe it's mary magdalene because she's mentioned but it's not entirely clear right and so there's this big debate about whether it's real or not. Now, there's a lot of research done into this. All proven forged. There's a lot of reasons why we might think it's forgery. But here's my favorite nail in the coffin for why it's forgery.

Starting point is 03:26:19 The Gospel of Jesus' Wife quotes the Gospel of Thomas. As I've just said, right? It quotes the Gospel of Thomas, as I've just said, right? It quotes the Gospel of Thomas, but it quotes it in a particular translation of the Gospel of Thomas. What do you mean a particular? Oh, one of the many. So it's like a translation of the Gospel of Thomas on the papyrus. It's quoting the Gospel of Thomas in a particular translation. There is a mistake in the translation of the Gospel of Thomas on the papyrus. So the way the Gospel of Thomas is quoted on this papyrus, on this fragment,

Starting point is 03:26:54 is mistaken. It's not actually what the Gospel of Thomas says. Now, a scribe could have just made that mistake, right? However, there is one other place where this exact same mistake shows up, which is on a website which translates the Gospel of Thomas. And in fact, the line breaking, the formatting of the text was exactly identical to this website that translates the Gospel of Thomas. Because this was presented in 2012, so this is long after the internet. So the chances of that lining up in that way are unfathomably small. So what has happened is somebody has taken, because they carbon dated the papyrus and it's genuinely old.

Starting point is 03:27:33 It's like fourth century. So someone has taken a fourth century bit of papyrus. And desecrated it. And created and forged this fragment. In doing so, they've decided to quote a bit of the Gospel of Thomas. And to get the words right, they've used a website's translation and they've copied a mistake that was on the website, leaving this digital footprint on this 4th century papyrus. And that's how we know that it's a forgery.

Starting point is 03:27:56 This is why we can't have nice things. Isn't that cool, man? Isn't that just hilarious? It's like the table salt on the Dead Sea Scroll. It's so fascinating. I might have butchered it slightly. I mean, I'm not, I'm not. Can you type in Gospel of Jesus's Wife and then I guess like, like website maybe or website translation.

Starting point is 03:28:23 See if it comes up with something like that I think I made a note of it somewhere Jesus is that's just the AI overview I want to make sure that I've gotten it you want the PDF? the Gospel of Jesus' Wife, Textual Evidence of Modern Forgery

Starting point is 03:28:39 um oh here we I just wanted to make sure I got all of the details exactly correct Bart Elman's blog probably got something on it yeah click on that and then just ctrl f for website maybe I don't know if he's written about it

Starting point is 03:28:58 no maybe not, okay, online try yeah check this out, okay so I explored the possibility that the text of the gospel of jesus's wife had been prepared using the only coptic english interlinear translation i knew in addition to the gospel of thomas by michael w grondin that has been online in various formats since 1997 i think that might be i can't yeah, so Forge would have needed to do a little more than cut and paste from Grondin's interlinear. So long before 2012, essentially.

Starting point is 03:29:29 So I can't remember all of the details exactly because I can't remember exactly like which language is translated into which language or whatever. But what I do know is that a mistake on the fragment of the papyrus is identical to a mistake that is made on a website indicating that the person who has written this manuscript, written this, forged this papyrus fragment, has used a website as the basis of their text, which is just an immediate indication that it's a forgery. I've always found that quite an interesting story. I wish I remembered it better to tell you here today.

Starting point is 03:30:01 You've done a great job telling details today of all these different nooks and crannies and ins and outs. It's like, it's mind-blowing stuff. But when did you first start even thinking about this stuff? Like, referring specifically to, like, canonical history, Christian history,

Starting point is 03:30:19 how world religion has been formed. Like, were you 10? Were you 15? No, no. I mean, like, it's kind of hard to say, but like, so Bart Ehrman is someone that I had on the show because as a sort of atheist debate to God's existence kind of stuff, Bart Ehrman had come up a lot as someone who was a bit outside of my purview because he's a biblical scholarship, a biblical scholar.

Starting point is 03:30:39 I'm more into philosophy of religion, but I was running this podcast and I was like getting guests in and I was like, okay, yeah, I could probably have this bart and guy on so i looked at some of his work and he did some stuff about whether jesus claimed to be god and i was kind of oh that's kind of interesting i didn't know that there were all of these arguments that's kind of fun if you watch my first podcast with him this is only a couple years ago yeah it's not long ago um maybe you can maybe you can pull it up um alex o'connor bart erman i've done a few episodes with him so wow we can find out when it actually when it actually was so all this knowledge you're spitting uh that was but the second one down the yeah did jesus even claim to be god all this knowledge you're spitting on this stuff is really only in the last couple years you've looked into

Starting point is 03:31:17 that's right when did this come out amazing just click on it june 19th, 2023. 2023. So probably filmed a bit before that. Yeah, that's when this interest... But that's why I say I'm still very much a student here. I really can't pass myself off as an expert because I really don't know what I'm talking about. Something that's fun about this video, if you scroll up, check this out. So if you click to like...

Starting point is 03:31:38 Find where the camera's on me anywhere, like just past the beginning, like about halfway through or something. Where the camera... Halfway through? Yeah, anywhere from then onwards where the beginning like about halfway through or something where the camera anywhere uh yeah but anywhere from then then onwards where the camera's on me there there you go so something so something fun about this interview is that yeah well he does do most of the talking in this conversation there okay so something that viewers of my show might notice about this is that for the entire interview notice how I've got my arm propped up like this. And at other points, I'm holding my notes like this. And it's because when we got into the studio, I said to Bart, do you want a coffee? And he said to me, I remember this distinctly because I found it a little bit strange. He said, I'd best not have a coffee because I always just spill it down myself i was like okay fair enough just me then so i poured myself a coffee and then a few minutes into the interview i spilled my coffee down myself

Starting point is 03:32:29 and bart sees it i can see his eyes like flicker and he doesn't know whether to stop but he just carries on going for the rest of the entire interview i'm sat in this position here with like either holding the cup like over my shirt or i'm like holding my notes so that they cover it up so like for like an hour and a half straight i'm just sat it's really that's so interesting yeah just tell me more really can try position but so i was talking to bart and he said and if you watch this interview you'll notice that i'm asking kind of questions and stuff which indicate that i didn't really know much about it at all because i'm like oh really oh that's interesting what about this what about that you

Starting point is 03:33:01 know compared to to now it's one of my favorite subjects so i spoke to bar and i was like this biblical scholarship stuff is actually kind of interesting you know did jesus claim to be god and all that that's kind of fun and then when i put this video out christians are responding to it saying like oh barman's wrong and jesus did claim to be god so i'm looking into that and i'm like hold on i think they're wrong i think they're about it and then it just snowballs and i'm just fascinated by it so it probably had something to do with bar ermine and suddenly realizing the biblical scholarship is is incredibly interesting uh but also one of my best friends who's actually sat behind the camera for this interview his name is john nelson he he writes a blog called

Starting point is 03:33:34 behindthegospels.com which by the way um you can pull it up actually if you go to behindthegospels.com uh he does essays on all the kind of stuff we've been talking about so it's still relatively he's been doing it for like a year and a half or something and you can see it's like did Luke know Josephus so Josephus is a Jewish historian did the author of Luke know who he was because if he did that would have implications for the dating of of of the gospel did John know the synoptics dating the gospels early what is Q we just talked about Q he posted that very recently um so all of the kind of stuff we've been about q he posted that very recently um so all of the kind of stuff we've been talking about like q as a document the dating all of this kind of stuff

Starting point is 03:34:09 he writes really really well on it um and yeah he's he's one of my best friends in the world and he is like razor sharp on biblical scholarship so i'd have conversations with him and i would always just be like amazed this is so in so, and because he was quite enthusiastic about it and he's not like a debate or whatever. He's just this very happy, enthusiastic kind of guy, very excited about his work. And so you have dinner with him and you're just like,

Starting point is 03:34:35 dude, this is so interesting. Like, tell me more. And he just knew so much that from a mixture of being friends with him and also speaking to people like Bart Ehrman and then doing more episodes and more research. And so suddenly it just became really interesting. And now you're, it's unbelievable.

Starting point is 03:34:50 And then you're like, you accept a debate. I'm like, yeah, okay, I'll do a debate on whether Jesus claimed to be God. And then you've got to go like, you know, head first into study and preparation. And it's just, I've found every single second of it interesting. Because this question of whether Jesus claimed to be God, you're looking at Jesus being worshipped. What does worship mean? What is the word for worship in the Gospels? How is it used? Like, what does it mean? You're looking at the forgiveness of sins. You're looking at glory. You're looking at Old Testament references and what all of that means. You're looking at first century Jewish

Starting point is 03:35:16 monotheism and what that meant. And it's just like, it opens this door. But I'm fascinated by the historical character of Jesus. I want to know who this man was. I want to know what he was actually saying. What I like about you, though, is that you're inherently curious and you're open-minded on so many things. It's so obvious, like you want to just keep learning. And it doesn't just relate to this topic. It relates to other things we talked about as well. And it's obvious looking at some of the videos on your channel, too.

Starting point is 03:35:41 Like it's such a breath of fresh air in our world now where everyone needs to be hardcore this is a hundred percent what it is and it's never going to be something different you know we need guys like you who are brilliant minds but are curious and and you know what was that phrase lee cronin used i have strong opinions loosely held not loose opinions i love that i love that like like other way around, whichever one it is. Where better evidence comes up, you can shift your position. And it's clear you're asking a lot of important questions today that are also going to be like, all right, well, if this is true, bring me the proof on it, and then we'll talk about it.

Starting point is 03:36:20 Well, thanks, man. And look, I don't have like an axe to grind here. Like I find this kind of stuff interesting, but I've got no like worldview that I'm trying to trying to defend exactly. Like I have views about the world, like my view that Jesus didn't claim to be God or whatever it might be. But like it kind of it doesn't like matter to me. It's interesting and it matters because it's important, generally speaking. But it doesn't matter to me on like a maybe there's like a sentimental level because I'm kind of like oh this is fun and i like this idea you know you've got to sort of try and overcome that within yourself but like it's not like if i were a christian youtuber and someone proved to me that jesus didn't claim to be god that would be like pretty

Starting point is 03:36:59 disastrous yes and he's like how do i even approach this whereas if someone comes to me and proves that jesus did claim to be god it's like oh cool hey I even approach this? Whereas if someone comes to me and proves that Jesus did claim to be God, it's like, oh, cool. Hey, guys, guess what? Jesus claimed to be God. And here's the interesting reason why. And here's why I didn't see it before. And here's why. It's just fun, man.

Starting point is 03:37:12 I'm just really enjoying it. And people often get me wrong, like, especially with the Gnostic stuff, because I've done like a whole series talking about the Gnostic Gospels. And I often speak quite like tongue in cheek. So when I'm speaking to a Christian, I might like joke about the gospel of thomas being the earliest gospel or something and uh i think even though there is there are some scholars who believe that um but saying things like that you know christians would be like alex doesn't know what he's talking about and he's obsessed with the gnostic gospels and it's like in a way yeah because i find them really interesting but they act as if i'm like a gnostic christian who thinks that the gospel of thomas is like accurate no you're just talking about it's like no i just i

Starting point is 03:37:44 just i just find it i just find it kind of fun but you see like christians will sort of say like oh this guy he's always bringing up the gospel of thomas but we know that the gospel of thomas is is like forged and it's not correct and it's not true it's like no like yeah i know that i just i'm saying that a lot of that's going on in the synoptic gospels in the canonical gospels too you know i'm just interested and honestly i just like sometimes people do ask me that they're like why are you so interested in biblical scholarship? I have got no idea, man. It's fascinating.

Starting point is 03:38:09 And now I'm so deep into it. Because the thing about Bart Ehrman is Bart Ehrman used to be a Christian evangelical fundamentalist. And so he went to Bible college and learned so much about the Bible. And now he's like an agnostic atheist, but he's still got all of this Bible knowledge. So he's in a very unique position of being someone who's incredibly knowledgeable about the Bible, but not a Christian. Most people who go really in deep, like balls deep on like biblical scholarship tend to be Christians, because otherwise what's the point? In the day of like YouTube and podcasts and stuff, you get more people who are interested in it. But if you're going to like get a PhD, you're going to study, you're going to spend the money,

Starting point is 03:38:46 you're going to get a PhD in biblical scholarship, chances are you're probably a Christian, certainly on the popular level. So Bart Ehrman was in a unique position. If there were a debate about Jesus claiming to be God or something about, not about philosophy, but about the Bible, he's the guy to call. Because who else is doing it? What other like atheist biblical scholars do you have with the same kind of platform? And the more I talk about this, the more I see myself as sort of starting to

Starting point is 03:39:07 fulfill that niche. I'm becoming somebody who is willing to talk and debate and have interesting conversations about specifically biblical scholarship, but from an atheist perspective. I mean, the only other people who like approximate this are like Muslims, because Muslims become interested in biblical scholarship because they don't believe that Jesus was God, right? And so the question for them of whether Jesus claimed to be God in the gospels is incredibly fascinating, but they've also got this motivated reasoning, you know, and they run themselves into trouble because they believe in the Quran. You've got to kind of make the depiction of Jesus in the New Testament line up with the Quran, which is kind of difficult to do, right? So I am fully

Starting point is 03:39:41 just this like dude. Open book. And i'm just coming in and i'm like look i've got this view but i i now occupy this unique niche which makes it then so i fell into it kind of by accident but it's self-motivating now because people now keep coming to me as like someone who's willing to talk about this but but as an atheist i mean who else who else would you go to obviously don't come to me as an expert then you go to bart ehrman or someone like that but like who are you going to go to for like a YouTuber who might have a debate or come on a podcast? You'll talk about the Bible, but as an atheist, but like, you know, has a passion for biblical scholarship or something like. I feel like I'm fulfilling a niche.

Starting point is 03:40:15 Yeah, I think you are. I just find it fascinating. Yeah, man. Because it opens up doors, you know. I'm fascinated on in polemics and the early gospels and whether you can read into something like especially john's gospel when he says that john the baptist isn't the messiah does that tell us something about early belief in john the baptist as the messiah is john responding to gnosticism is john's gospel influenced by gnosticism all of these kinds of questions

Starting point is 03:40:39 it ties together history belief philosophy textual criticism manuscript tradition even just the translation stuff is fascinating translation philosophy earlier you were like what's translation philosophy it's kind of interesting right because you don't think about how to translate a phrase like you know if somebody says um if somebody says that's not cool man and you've got to translate that to someone who doesn't speak english and you translate it so that it kind of sounds to them like that's not cold human being that wouldn't get the idea across so you've got to have a translation philosophy that's not word for word but phrase for phrase so you've got to change the meaning that's really interesting just on its own but we've got the translation philosophy stuff we've got the history stuff we've got the weird

Starting point is 03:41:20 gnostic cosmology in the philosophy of that takes the does it make more sense to define tuning argument you know because we talked at the beginning about the the evil demiurgic creator We've got the weird Gnostic cosmology in the philosophy of that. Does it make more sense of the fine-tuning argument? Because we talked at the beginning about the evil demiurgic creator. In fact, we'll go full circle, and that's maybe where we can end this, because this came up because we were talking about the fine-tuning argument, right? And the reason that we went off on this mild tangent, if you'll now allow me to get back to the point, is that the fine-tuning...

Starting point is 03:41:41 This mild four-hour tangent. It's 10.09 p.m. i've been on camera since 1207 the fine tuning argument says that it's really really difficult to tune the constants so if they were just a tiny little bit out the universe couldn't exist but they are finely tuned and the question that agnostic might ask is like well why is why the meta conditions make it so why do they make it so difficult to create a universe? Why wouldn't God have it so that any strength of gravity or whatever a universe would create? If he wanted to create a universe,

Starting point is 03:42:12 why did he make it so difficult? And then Gnostic says, well, he did make it difficult because he doesn't want the material world to exist because the material world is evil. But the reason that the constants are finely tuned is because it was designed, but it was designed by an evil demiurge. So that explains why it's so finely tuned, because the demiurge tuned it to create the universe. But why the meta conditions make it so difficult to finely tune

Starting point is 03:42:33 is because the creator of everything who sets up the conditions doesn't want the material world to exist. And so philosophy, and whether that makes sense, fine tuning argument type stuff, how believing that the material world is evil deals with the problem of suffering and evil so you've got language history philosophy you've got ethics you've got textual criticism you've got sociology you've got you know beef with wes huff you've got the whole thing all wrapped up into one and it's just it's amazing and i as you can probably tell will not shut up about it until someone tells me you are passionate about it i love it when are are you in New York next?

Starting point is 03:43:06 I have no idea. All right. We got to do another one when you come here. This was incredible. And we got to about 0.01% of what I wanted to talk to you about because we went very deep on a pretty incredible rabbit hole. But for people who haven't seen your channel, you cover a wide variety of topics. It's really fascinating like i said i literally found it like last month so i gotta go through a lot of videos myself but i love the way you think i love your curiosity and i this is exactly you're the exact kind of person that i i want to see be a leader on the internet a thought leader someone who is stimulating the conversation

Starting point is 03:43:41 and getting people talking about things that are fun, but also important. And also, you know, maybe we can trail the path or blaze the trail better in the future through some of the things that, you know, we can come to consensus on. I hope so. I try my best. Anyway, I don't know about thought leader, but hopefully asking interesting questions. And hey, yeah, it was nice to meet you, man. I'll have to come back. Thank you. God bless. All right, you too. Everybody else, you know what it is.

Starting point is 03:44:08 Give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace. Thank you guys for watching the episode. If you haven't already, please hit that subscribe button and smash that like button on the video. They're both a huge, huge help.

Starting point is 03:44:18 And if you would like to follow me on Instagram and X, those links are in my description below.

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Julian Dorey Podcast - #291 - Oxford Philosopher on BANNED Gnostic Bible, Jesus Christ & Wes Huff | Alex O'Connor

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