Julian Dorey Podcast - #318 - The Nephilim, BANNED Gospels, Wes Huff & TRUTH About Christianity | Gnostic Informant

Episode Date: July 11, 2025

SPONSORS: 1) GhostBed: Use Code "JULIAN" to get 20% GhostBed Sitewide: https://ghostbed.com/julian PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/JulianDorey (***TIMESTAMPS in Description Below) ~ Neal Sendlak (aka "Gnostic Informant") is an Ancient History Researcher & Youtuber. He focuses on History, Mythology and Comparative Religion. GNOSTIC INFORMANT's LINKS: YT: https://www.youtube.com/@UCtdweFMJ5DGj7_q5IcpQhPQ FB: https://www.facebook.com/GnosticInformant X: https://x.com/Gnosisinformant FOLLOW JULIAN DOREY INSTAGRAM (Podcast): https://www.instagram.com/juliandoreypodcast/ INSTAGRAM (Personal): https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey/ X: https://twitter.com/julianddorey ****TIMESTAMPS**** 00:00 – Wes Huff Disagreement, Bible Misconceptions, Ending of Matthew Explained 09:42 – Fascination with Gnosticism in Prison, Bible & Ancient History Studies 15:15 – Hilari Festival, Gospel of John vs Dionysus, Wedding at Cana Parallels 24:34 – Dramatic Worldview Shift, Leaving Christianity, Pentecostal Church Experience 36:14 – Drawn to Gnosticism, Luke Verse on Leaving Family 46:47 – Roman Noblewoman Julia Avita Mamaea, The Great Persecution, Luke’s Contradictions 59:11 – Christianity Arrives in Rome, Valentinianism, Holy Trinity Finalized, Marcian, 70 vs 12 Apostles 01:11:11 – 70 Disciples vs 12 Theory, Flavius Josephus, December 25th Debate 01:20:20 – Council of Nicaea Truth, Arius’ Letter, Trinity Rejection 01:32:23 – Why Constantine Made Christianity Rome’s Religion, Naasenes & Hymn to Attis 01:46:05 – Jewish vs Christian Sin Traditions, Leviticus 16, Alexander the Great vs Dionysus 01:58:39 – Crucifixion History, Roman Empire Divisions, Visiting Israel & Jesus Depictions 02:12:45 – Mystery of Jesus, Biblical Interpretation, Council of Nicaea Power, Drugged Eucharist Theory 02:21:45 – Burning Purple Theory, Ammon Hillman Rebuttal 02:25:49 – Gospel of Mary, Jesus’ Relationship with Mary, “Disciple Whom Jesus Loved” 02:33:00 – How the Gospels Were Written, History of Banned Gospels 02:40:45 – Nephilim & Giants, Christianity’s Global Impact (Good or Bad) 02:52:30 – Pope Gregory Letter, Understanding Other Faiths, Leaving Gnosticism 03:04:22 – Modern Greece & Ancient Studies, Losing Plato in the West CREDITS: - Host, Editor & Producer: Julian Dorey - COO, Producer & Editor: Alessi Allaman - https://www.youtube.com/@UCyLKzv5fKxGmVQg3cMJJzyQ - In-Studio Producer: Joey Deef - https://www.instagram.com/joeydeef/ Julian Dorey Podcast Episode 318 - Gnostic Informant Music by Artlist.io Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is the biggest misconception about Christianity in my opinion. First century, there's all these different groups of Christianity. There's the Carpocretian who believed that anybody, through Gnosis, can attain Godhood. Jesus was one of them. And they also deified another person, Epiphanes, who was only 17 years old when he died. He was writing books, philosophical treatises. This kid was a genius. And they built a temple to this person as another Christian god.

Now, pause. There's another story about Marcus the Magus. His ministry was also ran by women. Their role in the church was to lead the oracle, and he got caught putting psychedelic drug in the Eucharist. These women were tripping on this drug, getting prophecies from him. His group called the Marcosians

are responsible for spreading Christianity into Europe. The other one is the Borberites, and they get accused of eating fetuses in the Christian rituals. They have their own gospel called the Greater questions of Mary. And in this gospel, Jesus comes to Mary and says, unless you drink my, eat my flesh,

you cannot get to the kingdom of heaven. Then it gets even crazier too, because... 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. So when I had Alex O'Connor in here, he's like, have you heard of this chap, Gnostic Enformant? Yeah, I saw that. Yeah. Oh, do I know I've heard of him? Yeah. I was, I was, I was excited to see that. It was cool.

It's good to have you here, man. I know this has been a long time in the making. And I really enjoyed your podcast, your first one with Danny Jones, when that came out like a year ago. That was fun. Very entertaining stuff. Danny's a really good friend of mine.

He speaks really highly of you. But before we get into everything today, there's a lot we can go through between, as you were saying, like 500 BC and 500 AD and all the history you look at and obviously your backstory. What was this whole thing that came up in the episode I had with Alex? Like obviously he explained it, but I want to have a chance to air this out in the open and then we'll let that lie where it is, give everyone their equal time because obviously

you came up. But there was something that happened where my friend Wes Huff put out a video that had something to do with a clip that was going around online of you related to, I think, four different Gospels and a claim you were making, and then things got mixed up and people had a disagreement. So would you mind just explaining what it was and giving the context?

Yeah, so what happened was I was on Danny Jones' show, he asked me a question about what I think the biggest misconception about the Bible is. And my response is that there's a misconception about the order of the Gospels, and a lot of people don't know that Mark came first. Mark's the oldest, not everyone, there's different scholars who think Matthew is first. There are some scholars who think Marcion,

one of the Gnostic leaders of the church, wrote the first gospel. I don't even, I'm still looking into that, I'm not sure if I'm sold on that. But anyways, most scholars think Mark. That's like the consensus, that Mark is the oldest gospel. And why do they think that? Because it's very simple, it's like a very shortened version

of the other gospels. The other gospels seem to be quoting from Mark and citing Mark and then adding stuff to it. So it looks like it's the simplest, the most, the Jesus doesn't have a high Christology. He's not literally called God like he is in John. John is basically like is divine. He's the low ghost that was there in the beginning

with the father, all that stuff. And Mark, he's just the son of man. He's the low ghost that was there in the beginning with the Father, all that stuff. And Mark, he's just the son of man. He's the Messiah. It's a little bit like less higher, lower Christology. So that's why people think Mark came first. But the reason why I brought that up to Danny is because in the oldest manuscripts that we have of the Gospel of Mark, it ends abruptly It ends abruptly in chapter... in chapter... in the last chapter, when I think it's verse 12, 11 or... And then there's 11 more, so it ends up at 21.

So there's like a blank space, basically. Yeah, and so it ends with the angel telling the women at the tomb, Jesus has risen, and then it just kind of just drops off. And he says, like, he'll be back later or something, like, you know, whatever. So it doesn't necessarily say directly, like, here's where he went, here's the meaning of it, here's the resurrection itself. It's just like, oh, he's risen, and it's a phrase. Just like the other Gospels have, he literally comes back and some, and John, he's physically

touched by Thomas, doubting Thomas. He's like, I guess he has to touch Jesus to see, oh, it's really him in the flesh. Mark doesn't have that. So I thought, when he asked me that question, I thought that's a big misconception, is that when the first time they, if we're gonna assume that the scholars are right, that Mark is first, let's go with that,

and use that as an axiom. The first time that the story about Jesus was told to a wide audience, the author, who we call Mark, for some reason left out probably one of the greatest miracles in Christianity was that Jesus comes back in the flesh. And like that's like what required belief of as most Christians, that you have to believe he died and came back in the flesh. Like that's part of the the doctrine a dogma of Christianity. Mark leaves that out so I thought that was interesting and then I pointed out to Danny four centuries go by and in the in the evidence the manuscript evidence

before we start seeing that longer ending in Mark so fourth and fifth century the church manuscripts you start seeing mark with the longer ending in it now what happened with with West Huff is there was a clip going around of that podcast that was highly condensed. So a lot of the nuances were taken out and it was just me. Your podcast with Danny. Yes, it was going on Instagram and in that clip, in defense of Wes Huff actually, he only saw me saying, Jesus never returned, and then

in the fifth century they fixed it, and then they added him in. So he thinks I'm saying to people that there was no, there was no, even in the other gospels, that there was no return. So in his defense, he saw that, and that was a fair assessment of what he saw. But in the original podcast, that's not what I said, I obviously gave the nuances, I told him about the angel, and he realized, when he found that out, he actually pulled the video down. Right.

And apologized to me about misrepresenting my statement. Oh, he did? Yeah, he did. Okay, great. But on top, but then he goes a little bit farther in his video, the one he took down. He actually starts bringing up the manuscripts that I talked about, but he's showing blank,

he was saying that at the end of Codex Alexandrinus, Codex Vaticanus, and Codex Sinaiticus, which are the three major church gospels, manuscripts, he was pointing out that there was gaps at the end, and because of these gaps at the end, it indicates that the scribes knew about this longer ending and left it open just in case another scribe later would come along.

The problem with that- They knew about it, but didn't write it? It's all speculation. Yeah. It's all just, we're just looking- You can't have proof of that, right? No, and the reason why I pointed out that I think this is a bad argument

is because there are other manuscripts that we can point to that have these gaps at the end, and they don't mean there's no longer any of those texts. So, and then, but the big mistake he made, this was like the big, womp, womp, womp, mistake that he made, and he's since, you know, admitted this too, is he put up Alex Gynas on the screen

as one of these manuscripts, and that manuscript has the longer ending in it. So he's throwing this manuscript on the screen and going, look at this gap at the end. Yeah, but he showed it with one that had a gap, right? He showed it, yeah, he showed two that have the gap without the longer ending, with a third one on the screen, Alexander Gynas, which has the longer ending

in the manuscript already and still has a gap at the end. So it defeats the whole purpose of his argument. If his argument is the gap at the end means the longer ending should have been there, but is not. But then you find a manuscript that he mistakenly puts on the screen that does have the longer ending,

but still has a gap at the end, then your whole argument goes down the, you know, it's in the garbage now. Because you're showing a manuscript of the longer ending that also has a gap. So it just made no sense at the end of the day. For people out there, just to follow along with some things, like there's some stuff I'll have you define today just so that everyone can stay with it. And then obviously there's people who are listening who are very aware of this.

So sorry for some of the going over things. But when you say Codex Sinaticus, I'm not even gonna try with the names and all those, what specifically are they just so people understand? Those are the church manuscripts of the New Testament and Old Testament, both these ones do. These are like the first official church Bibles

that were put together by the church in the fourth and fifth century. Alexandrianus is fifth century, and I think the other two are late fourth century. And yeah, that's the name of the manuscripts, I think because of where they were produced. I think one of them was produced in Alexandria, that's why it's Alexandrianus,

and then the other ones was in Jerusalem, Sinaiticus, and then Vaticanus was the Vatican. So that's why they had those names. But those are later manuscripts of the church in the fourth and fifth century. And like I said, two of those didn't have, they still didn't have the longer ending even in the fourth century. And then that last one, that Alexandrianism, does have the longer ending. So then, like, just to say this one, just to, like, clarify what I meant by how this is a mistake,

if your whole entire argument is, oh, these gaps here signify that the scribe knew there was more to be written, but then the full ending is already there then you just defeated your own argument by putting that on the screen. So he took the video down but like in his defense he didn't necessarily misrepresent me as I thought he did but his only mistake was that at the end was the manuscript thing. That's cool.

Yeah so it wasn't like this is peaceful. Yeah I'd love to see you guys talk. I would love to talk yeah. And have a not even a debate but a nice discussion back and forth on interpretations I think that's a better way to do things a hundred percent the whole like Jay Dyer or throw bro debates scene is all about who can make the other person look dumb and like gotchas and It's all sophistry I think when people sit down and two opposing ideas

sit down and just talk and just hash everything out without trying to get the other person, the audience learns more and it's more productive. Yes, I agree. That's what I think people should be doing. I agree, man. How did you initially even get into all this stuff? You've been doing this for years now, right?

Yeah, oh yeah. Oh, I started getting into, so I was actually, I talk about this all the time on my channel and I talked about this on Danny Jones as well, is that in my early 20s, I was kind of a troublemaker and I wound up in prison for possession and using and selling pills and stuff like that. You can bleep that out if you have to. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. But that's just reality. This is what happened to me. I turned 21 in prison.

So I went to jail when I was 20, turned 21 in there. This is in 2021. What's that like being in prison? Pretty wild. Especially that young. It's pretty wild. It's a very, it's a different world. It's a dog eat dog world.

It's you gotta get in where you fit in type of thing. You know, you stick with your kind, all that stuff. Um, it's wild. It's, yeah, it gets like that. It's just like the politics in there. I didn't make the rules. That's how it was. But, um, but yeah, when I was in there, my escape from prison was reading.

So I went to the library. Every time I got a chance to go to the library, I'd go to the library, and for some reason, I So I went to the library. Every time I got a chance to go to the library, I'd go to the library. And for some reason, I was just attracted to the section on ancient history, Roman Empire, even Indian religions like Hinduism and Buddhism, Zoroastrianism and reading about Greek mythology wrote... One of the things I did in there was read the Bible cover to cover. From Genesis all the way to Revelation. Had you ever been into this before that?

Any of this stuff? No. I was never into... never religious, never into anything. I was actually a bad student. Barely graduated high school, dropped out of college. Was never an academic type. Were you just disinterested? Just disinterested and, like I said, running around doing different stuff

that was not productive, we'll say. But then when I got into prison, I actually became a reader and a writer too. I started writing about stuff I'm reading and I'm writing notes and I have my own notebook and I just started getting into doing private research in prison like and I would go to the library and there was a cool librarian there who was like who can order stuff if you

if you request that you can like put it on a list and you can get it so he was ordering I was reading all types of stuff in there uh I even read Jordan Peterson his older book maps of meeting back in the day I found that in there because my mom sent it to me. She was looking for self-help books. For some reason, that book was listed as self-help, I guess. Ghostbed. Sleep so good, it's scary. You ever lie down after a long day of diving through Reddit threads or listening to a three-part

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Sleep cooler, sleep better with a GhostBed mattress. Go to ghostbed.com slash Julian, link in description below, and use promo code Julian to get 20% off site-wide. This episode is brought to you by Adidas. When the frustration grows and the doubts start to creep in, we all need someone who has our back. To tell us we'll be okay,

to remind us of our ability to believe, because their belief in us transfers to self-belief and reminds us of all that we're capable of. We all need someone to make us believe. Hashtag you got this. And like that book Maps of Meaning, I didn't understand a word of it. It was all gibberish. I'm not, it's a very academically sound book. It's got all this Carl Jung jargon, Fredric Nietzsche. I had no idea what I'm reading, but I was trying, but I plowed through it. And I think that kind of shaped my mindset a little bit too.

The early Jordan Peterson, not today Jordan Peterson, but you know. Not today's. Yeah, no, he's all right, I don't care. I'm not gonna talk crap about him, but. Talks about a lot of things these days. Talks about a lot of things now, yeah. But no, that Jordan Peterson was influential

on just me looking at religions through like this symbolic lens, this Jungian archetypal lens. I got that from him, I would say. And I started looking at ancient religions and comparing them, doing comparative mythology. I got into The Golden Bough by James Frazier, which is a book that was written in the late or early 20th century

about an English scholar who went around to all these different ancient religions and compared their rituals, and he came to the conclusion that there was this archetype for this sort of dying and rising god figure. And he points it out in the myths of Attis, the myths of Dionysus, the myths of... Uh... Um...

Adonis and Osiris and different Persephone. He has this all in his book, Golden Bow, and that... When I started getting into that, that fascinated me. I remember there's a documentary called Zeitgeist. Ever heard of that? It's this documentary that these people put together where they try to make this claim. And I believe that at the time when I saw this, this is how uneducated I was at the time,

when I first saw this documentary, that Jesus is just like a copy of Addis, of Mithras, of Dionysus. It's not true. But at the time- Yeah, I never heard this before. Yeah, that's it right there. It was a huge, it blew up. What is it, 2007 when that came out? Oh, it was a series. Yeah, there's three of them, but the first part

the first part of that documentary was about religion and It was it went it went through this like completely off It was not sound academically like this guy was just like basically saying all the gods are the same They all had 12 disciples. They were all born on December 25th. They all were crucified, which is not true. But the reason why I even brought that up in this discussion is because this for some reason took over on the internet. And you see people posting memes about this stuff.

Even to this day during Christmas time, you'll see the memes where it says, Mithras had 12 disciples, Dionysus, born on December 25th. Everyone likes to simplify these days. So, but it poisoned the discourse a little bit. So when I get into like James Frazier and when I actually do bring up actual examples, for example, let me just give you one, just want a quick detour and come back to this. Do whatever you want, bro, your show, let's go.

Well, there was a religious ritual that the Romans performed called the hillaria. The hillaria. Yeah, H-I-L-A-R-I-A, hillaria. Like hillaria, Baldwin. It means in Latin, it means to rejoice. The hillaria, we get the word hilarious from that. Hilarity. And in

this festival, they have a, during the spring equinox, so right around March 25th, they bring out an effigy of the god Attis, he's dead. They pin him onto a tree, on a pine tree, and they bury the pine tree, and they mourn for three days. And then they rejoice of his resurrection after three days. Now- When does this trace back to? So there's a debate, people debate this. The primary sources claim, so John the Lydian writes this,

and then Robert Turkin wrote a book called Cults of the Roman Empire. And he says that all the evidence points to the reign of Claudius, which would be in like the 40s AD. So it was like right around the same time Christianity is before the gospels. Right. But it's like contemporary with the rise of Christianity.

But a lot of, but just to cover myself here and just to be fair and give the nuance, a the nuance, there's a lot of scholars who go, well, the actual details about the three days and all that stuff comes in later sources. So they might, some people think that they're borrowing from Christians or borrowing from each other in some way. But either way, we have sources that say the Halaria starts with Claudius in the 40s AD.

By the time you get to Marcus Aurelius, we know for sure that the festival was in full swing because he adds a day to the festival called the Day of Washing. What's he like 160, 170, 180? 160s, yeah. Yeah. So yeah, exactly. 161 AD. Yeah.

So this would be in the middle of the second century. So now we're talking, okay, so at the very least, this cult is contemporary, contemporaneous with the rise of Christianity. Yeah. Now the reason why I brought that up is because that's an actual example that I'm not making up from the sources. That's real. It's there. We can debate it. We can talk about who's borrowing from who, but it's real. Zeitgeist on the other hand is just kind of throwing out these random, oh, Mythros had 12 disciples based on nothing. So when I do talk about hilarious, what happens is I'll get comments going, this is Zeitgeist nonsense.

And I'm like, none of this is even in Zeitgeist, but Zeitgeist was so damaging to the discourse that whenever you make any argument that's even close to what sounds like Zeitgeist was so damaging to the discourse that whenever you make any argument that's even close to what sounds like Zeitgeist, they immediately go, they just label it Zeitgeist. Yeah, they can label you like a, like they say, conspiracy theorists and shit like that. Yeah, and then it's, so that's why I brought up Zeitgeist.

It damaged the discourse, because there is actual, Dionysus does get torn apart by the Titans, and then his body's put back together and he resurrects. Now that's not the same as crucifixion. We have to make sure we give the details because it's not the same. He didn't get crucified. You're here, we'll say this,

Dianysus was crucified. Where's your primary source? Well, he got torn apart by the Titans. So it's pretty much like getting crucified. No, it's not, it's different. You gotta, so I make sure people understand. These are different cases, these are different myths, but the similarities I'm also interested in as well.

I do think that some of these myths that James Frazier points out in Golden Bow, I do think there's some credibility to the idea that the gospel authors are heavily inspired by the cultural milieu, which would be, you know, the cult of Attis, the cult of Dionysus, cult of Adonis, cult of Osiris, especially Osiris. I mean, there's, there's,

Plutarch talks about Osiris being mourned over by two women at his tomb, which is very reminiscent to what we were just talking about at the end of Mark, where you have two women at the tomb mourning. There's some mimesis going on, and there's a lot of scholars, Dennis McDonald's a scholar at early Christianity, and he's also a classicist. And he thinks the Gospel of John is just full-blown riffing off the Bacchae. The Bacchae. And it's a play by Euripides from the fifth century BC,

or fourth century BC. And why does he say specifically the Gospel of John? Because he thinks the Gospel of John in particular has all these elements, like for example, Jesus is called the true vine in John, only in John. True vine. The true vine. And Bacchus Dionysus is the vine god. So he's getting this title, the true vine. The true vine. And Dianysius is the vine god. So he's getting this title,

true vine, which would sound to a Greek ear, to a Greek audience, oh, he's the true vine. Dianysius is the false vine, in competition with, or a polemic. And then he has in his book, the Dionysian Gospel by Dennis McDonald, he lays out the sort of structure that you find in the Bacchae that you also see in John. So he thinks there's like a parallel going on between how the story is told and the figure of Jesus like coming in the beginning. And John's gospel starts off in the beginning was the Logos. Logos was with the word, but very different from the other three. But the Bacchae also starts off with,

the Son of God has come from the bosom of the Father, or the Son of the Son of the Father. And so the Son of the Son of the Son of the Father is the son of the Son different from the other three. But the Bacchae also starts off with, the son of God has come from the bosom of the father, or the son of Zeus, Theos. So you think it's following, the theory there is that it's following the story too much rather than being inspired. Cause like, my dumb ass when I was making clips

for this thing, right? I was inspired by Marty Scorsese. The way he films, the quick cuts, the motion, the music, the scoring, right? Spot on. So when you go watch my clips, obviously they're terrible compared to him, but like you can see the similarities

as far as like where the stylistic is coming from, but I'm telling my own stories. You're saying that this is- That's what the gospel authors, that's what I think the gospel authors did, is they're using this sort of framework that these famous playwrights are doing the tragedy The gospels are tragic, you know, it's a crucifix. They're keeping their own story. They're there. They're telling the story about Jesus

I actually think Jesus exists as a real person. I'm not Yeah, but so I think they're telling the story about a real person who did some of these things really did happen But they're also sort of using the framework that some of these more popular playwrights are also using. So that exactly how you explain that. That would make sense because, you know, everything's downstream pop culture, like even throughout history, it's just on a smaller scale

because we have way more media and outlets and I see stuff now. But like, it would make sense to me that even, like let's steelman it, let's steel man it. And let's say that everything they say about Jesus and the claims is actually true. You still have to tell the story. And yes, it's an amazing story. But the way you do it, I could see if it's like, you know, someone's inspired by Jay-Z's 96 album to make their first album in 2025. Great. Like they may be like, yo, fucking Plato was dropping some heat right here.

Let's make sure we get a heat check on our own shit about Jesus. Cause like he's a gangster. I could see that. Yeah. And so like for another example from John, no, that was well said. He's a big God guy. Nice. Well, well in John's gospel, there's this, there's an, in John two, there's the wedding at Cana and the wedding at Cana. What happens in that scene is he's at a festival, a marriage festival, a wedding, and he's bringing out these jugs of wine, he's making wine from the water jugs.

Well, it's funny that this is the Dionysian gospel, according to Dennis, McDonald, and others, because in other sources, from Aristotle's one of them, Plutarch's one of them, and there's a couple other primary sources, Seneca, and I think there's a couple other primary sources. I think there's like five total that talk about a story of in a city called, what is it, Elis, in the city of Elis, in the Peloponnese in Greece,

there was a temple of Dionysus where every year, on the night of January 5th, Pliny the Elder talks about this too, on the night of January 5th, they would have empty jars. Now these aren't full of water like it is in John, so there's a difference here. But the story went that they would seal the jars, close the temple up, and then the next morning on January 6th, that they would go in there and miraculously the

jars were full of wine. Dionysus was like the wine god. There was other stories where Dionysus would turn rivers of water into wine. So there's flowing rivers, and they would come there on a certain day, and that water would be flowing with wine. So it's interesting that out of all the gospels, the one that everyone thinks is Dionysian has a wine making miracle in it. That's John's gospel. That's fascinating.

And then it gets even crazier too, because the Orthodox church commemorates the wedding at Cana on January 6th, which is the same day that according to Pliny the Elder, with late first century texts, says this miracle, they call it the Theodosia, that's the name of the festival that happened in Elis, that was the same day that the priest of Dionysus

did this sort of wine miracle every day of that year, same day. So you're paying, when you, take me back to like, when you were first reading all this stuff, when you were in prison, just wrapping your head into it. You said you read the Bible cover to cover for the first time ever. And you're reading all these other things

and putting it and putting together different patterns where there seems to be things coming together. Like what's happening to your worldview? Are you looking at it like, oh, this is a puzzle I'm gonna spend the rest of my life trying to solve what's true and what's not. Or are you looking at it like, this feels more evidence-based versus this thing over here or this is a mixed bag here? Like, how are you putting it all together?

I, that's a good question. No one's ever asked me that because early on, I just wanted Christianity to be true. I was like, my heart was with Christianity. It was like, I just felt that way at that time. You found God after the process. Yeah, I actually got baptized, did all this, all the prison jail stuff and got out and went to a church after I got out. But that time after, yeah, for six years, for a long time I was a Christian. I was twice at church twice a week for three years. So even though you had started to become an expert in all this stuff and studied all the other stuff too. Yeah this is like in my pre you know getting like very educated on this stuff years. I would say in

the last seven five to seven years is when I really started getting serious and talking to experts and like actually like doing like legitimate like research in this stuff. What sparked it? So this is, this is good, this is interesting because as I pointed out, I become a Christian in there but I'm also reading other stuff and I'm comparing them. And my mentality was Jesus is just

the fulfillment of everything. Which by the way, in early Christianity, this was actually an idea that was floating around. Eusebius, Justin Martyr point out that it wasn't just the Old Testament that prophesied Jesus, but it was also Homer and Hesiod and Euripides and Aeschylus. And this is what a lot of Greeks thought for a while. I had this opinion too. So I started going to church and I was like fascinated by early Christian Gnosticism the whole time. Early Christian Gnosticism. Yeah like these the heretical groups that became deemed heretics for whatever reasons.

Because they disagree with something disagree with something that the Orthodox people didn't like. Right. I'll get into that in a minute. This is a bunch of them. But just to answer what happened, how I got into where I'm at, as I was a Christian, the church I was attending was a King James only church. I don't know if you've ever heard of these people. They think that the only inspired Bible by God is the 1611 King James English Bible. It's written in like old English, thou spakeeth, thou... But on what basis do they think that though? The whole time I was at this church,

it was blowing my mind that people thought this was true. The whole time I was there, I was like, this doesn't seem right. The gospels are written in Greek, I always knew this. The Old Testament's written in Hebrew. English is a translation. No matter what you say to me, this is a translation of the original text.

And I would have meetings with the pastor on this one on ones where we would like hash this out and he would end up just throwing up his hands and going, you just got to follow the spirit. Like if you don't believe me, then I don't know if to tell you what he would say. He was like, Oh Lord. Yeah. He just didn't know how to answer this. And I would say, but then, and then so, so one day, and this is what he was trying to tell me. He was like, um, they took verses out of the Bible. And I one day, and this is what he was trying to tell me, he was like, they took verses out of the Bible. I was like, what do you mean they took verses out of the Bible? He pulls out an NIV, a New International Aversion, and he pulls out the King James,

and he says, look right here. And he's like showing me 1 John 5-7, one of the letters that's in, not the Gospel of John, but the letter of John. And he goes, see, see how short this one is? And I was like, these three bear the same record. And then the other on the King James one, it says, for these three bear the same record, the Son, the Father and the Holy Spirit. And there was another, I was like, holy, they did take a verse out there. I was like, huh, maybe he's right. Maybe they are messing with the Bibles. So then I what I, the way I tested this is go online and look up Greek manuscripts and find the oldest manuscripts and what they say. None of them have the longer version. They all have the shorter version. So it's not that they were taking verses out. The King James was

adding verses that were in the Latin manuscripts not even in the Greek manuscripts. So I brought this back to him. I go, look, the Latin says this, the Greek says this, follow the Lord. And he's, he was like, no, that's not true. The scholars are lying to you. And I was like, I got to leave this church. This guy's full of shit. So I left that church. I ended up going to a Pentecostal church where there was speaking in tongues and the Holy spirit. Speaking in tongues. Yes. I went to a Pentecostal church.

What's that like? Yes. Exactly. Oh, really? Yeah. I'm not kidding. That's real? There was snake handling. Why are you talking like you know about this, Alessi?

Oh, it's a real thing. You have Pentecostals. They have the... It's like I went last week. No, they're just known. They have a reputation for being the ones where they speak in tongues and they're very upfront about some of the things that are done in the church. So it scares people away.

Yeah. Like people are always like, wait, what the heck are you doing? Like, this is so weird. So that's why when people go to Pentecostal, they're all about the New Testament. They're all about speaking in tongues. They don't like talking about the Old Testament. And so when I see that, I'm always like,

this is definitely not the way to do it. In my eyes, I'm like, this is overwhelming. I went there. Real quick, Neil, I just wanna see what the fuck they're doing on the street out here. Let's pause for one sec. Sure, no problem. All right, sorry about that that everyone. We are back So the reason why I went to this church

Well, if I next you knew a girl that I was kind of talking to for that's how it starts It's sort of started that way I was I did I was interested in the Pentecostal tradition because I was all I was reading about early you know the Gnostics and bucket cults and The Holy Spirit and all this stuff. And I thought the Pentecostals were onto something like, why not get into the spirit? Why not get into that? And I remember coming to these churches and feeling like the vibes were on. Like it was a good, good experience on Sunday morning. It really was. And yeah, there was, it was in the

heart of the west side of Buffalo. It was right in the ghetto, Puerto Rican. And they did Spanish and English both at the church in tongues. And they were so the the the the priest would speak in English and his wife would translate it in Puerto Rican and Puerto Rican in Spanish. I can't believe I just did that. Anyways, but then everyone in the crowd would be just going, we're all just going because you're encouraged to just kind of just wig out. Are there like recitations or you literally just make whatever noise?

Whatever noise comes to your like you're trying to channel a spirit and take you over. So I could go like yeah you can do that and everyone would be like yeah he's feeling the spirit. This is how it is and I enjoyed this. I'm not gonna lie. I did um Enjoyed that or her? No, whatever. Yeah But anyways, here's what happened though one day I was friends with the pastor too or the priest or whatever pastor I think is yeah and He's hanging he's hanging out of my house and I my house and I'm like driving him crazy with my research. I'm going, what about these Gnostics right here?

What about this? What about that? And he was like, listen, dude, I think you need to get baptized again. I think- The devil's inside of you. Yeah, I think you need to like take a step back and just be a student for a little bit. Don't be, you know, you're doing too much.

You're gonna fall into heresy. He's like, how about this Sunday, I'll set up a service just for you and we'll get you baptized, we'll start you over. And I went to this Sunday, God baptized, and as I'm getting out of the water, I just remember thinking to myself, I don't believe in this anymore. It was the weirdest thing.

It was the exact, instead of baptizing into Christianity, I baptized out of Christianity. I just got out of the water thing. It was the exact, instead of baptizing into Christianity, I baptized out of Christianity. I just got out of the water and I can't explain it. But there's a feeling that came over me that was like, I don't believe this. This is not the vibe was off. Like I'm not, and I never went back to church ever again. That's where things get strange. And this is, this is a people problem versus like even going at religion, but yeah when people Like this pastor for example are such strict adherence To almost robotically. Yeah to every single thing they've ever been told to the point that they tell you no

Don't go research things right? That's bad. I've never understood that. I think that is, I think that's actually totally counterintuitive to religion itself because we now live in this world to me where it's like, if people found out that one minuscule thing out of the millions of things listed in religion X, whatever it might be, might not actually stand up to wait,

that means the house of cards is down and it's all wrong. And I don't think that's true. I think when you look at anything that is historical record, I could even go back to the 1800s with this, let alone like, you know, 100 AD or 500 BC, whatever it may be, whatever religion, whatever ancient culture, there are gonna be things where interpretations,

we learn better things over time, like, oh no, they might actually meant this, and there's gonna be stuff that's lost forever, and stuff that we never fucking know, and you have to be okay with that as part of the human experience, if you ask me. Well, I couldn't agree more. And like after I left there,

now I was kind of like free range. And at that point in time, I was, I thought I wanted to like call myself a Gn I was, I thought, I wanted to, I wanted to like, call myself a Gnostic. Like I thought, I thought that I identified with the early Simon Magus tradition of Marcion and Valentinians and the Sethians. These are different Gnostic groups. I was just fascinated by these groups.

And I thought that they were the real Christians who got persecuted first. What, what drew you to them other than them just being Gnostics who got persecuted? I think there was I was their ideas were so complex, like the idea that there is there's this pluroma and there's this one monad God on top that's so perfect and pure that you can't even pray to it because it doesn't need anything as no need for anything. But then underneath that, there's these ions and they sort of, that's the the the monad is the brightest light. And these lights get dimmer and dimmer and dimmer until it gets to Earth. Right. And I was like, this is like this complex theology

that was way more intricate than you get in, you know, Orthodox Christianity, for example. And I was just drawn to it. I just thought there was something with something going on with this tradition And I was just drawn to it. I just thought there was something going on with this tradition that I was really drawn to. Did you find yourself, like this is a human kind of thing, did you find yourself wanting to believe in something because you lost belief in something else? Yes, I was looking for something to latch onto

as a strict belief system. But then around the same time, I started getting into real skepticism and athe... I started watching a lot of atheist content. Christopher Hitchens. I started going into the exact opposite, just like... I don't know, I was just bouncing around from, I believe this, but is it true now?

And then I was going to the complete opposite direction. I'm not an atheist anymore. I don't think I ever really was an atheist, but I definitely like Tried that out like I experienced like what do I believe in? Yeah, I took it for a test drive and I'm not an atheist I believe in something. I don't claim to know what it is. I'm not dogmatic about it I'm just I just think there's something greater out there that you know But that's kind of like that's kind of my trajectory to where I'm at. Like, I'm not a Gnostic anymore.

You're not. No. But you're Gnostic in form. But I kept the name because it's part of my, it's part of my- Branding. It's as well as branding. And I talk a lot about them too, on my channel. So a lot of my videos are like showcasing early Christian heresies and Gnosticism.

So it's a big part of the channel either way. And it's part of my story. I went through that stuff. So I still keep the name, obviously. Well, let's keep that timeline going. This is actually really helpful. So you first, to get to where you are now, you first make this switch up where you're like, I don't believe in this anymore. And you're drawn to these different groups whose names are eluding me that were the initial Gnostic groups. So what it, in your research of those groups, obviously they were being persecuted because they were going against something in the grain, but like, let's get more specific

on what you were learning about them. And you know, cause it's all historical records. Yeah, so another misconception about Christianity that I think that I probably should have brought this up is the biggest misconception. Well, actually Danny brought, asked me about the Bible. So this is my this up is the biggest misconception. Well actually Danny asked me about the Bible. So this is the biggest misconception about Christianity in my opinion, is that we think that there's a straight line

from Jesus to Peter and Paul, all the way to Constantine in the Orthodox Church. And there's a straight line from them and there's no deterring, no changing of anything. It was all, there's an Orthodox line and anything that's deterring, no changing of anything. There's an Orthodox line, and anything that's not on that line is heresy. Actually, in my research and talking to a lot of experts and scholars, the truth is the opposite, is that early Christianity in the first century and early second century is complete. It's like a big bang. It's an explosion of ideas. Yes. There is no orthodoxy early on. And they were also

underground. Yeah, there weren't illegal religion. Yeah, there weren't illegal religion per se. The persecution thing is, we can get into that, it gets over, I think it gets over emphasized of how much they were persecuted. They did get persecuted under Diocletian. That's in the fourth century, that's way later. First couple of centuries, there's not a lot going on as far as like Christians being singled out. There is obviously the rumor that Nero blamed them

for the fire, but whatever, that's a whole other thing. Yeah, whatever, it's part of the view. The misconception I was getting at was, instead of seeing a straight line and then like people deterring from that straight line over time, what you see is you see chaos in the beginning. The first century, there's all these different groups of Christianity. There's the Carpocretians out in Alexandria, and they believe that Jesus was like another prophet, like another philosopher prophet, like Pythagoras and Plato and Aristotle they put him just profit they put him

Yeah, they put him at well, they do think he attained salvation They think he attained apotheosis apotheosis, which means like becoming God as a from a man to God God they believe that doctrine called apotheosis and they but here's the thing They think anyone can get that the Carpocretians though This is a late first century, early second century Christian group in Alexandria, Egypt, who believe that anybody who through gnosis can attain Godhood.

Jesus was one of them. They use Jesus as the prime example of how to do it. So they think he found God within himself. Yes. Okay. And they also deified another person. So Carpocrates had a son, Carpocrates is the leader of the group. He had a son named Epiphanius. Epiphanies, not Epiphanius, Epiphanies. And Epiphanies was this like wonder

child kid who was only 17 years old when he died. Um but he in his early teens, he was writing books and philosophical treatises. This kid was a genius and they deified him. We actually have a record in the sources from the from the Christians that we actually know where it was and what year it was. It was 117 AD I think it was and on the island of Catholonia in Greece and they built a temple to this person as another Christian God. So you have, so in their theology you have- Christian God.

Yes, in their theology, they thought that Pythagoras attained Godhood through Gnosis. Plato also attained Godhood through Gnosis. Aristotle attained Godhood through Gnosis. Jesus attained Godhood through Gnosis. And then this Epiphanius character. But why were they calling themselves Christians when there's multiple that they seem to put on us at least similar?

Yeah level because well, like I said Jesus is like their main figure. He's the example of most recent In their opinion. He's the he they're still Christians. They still follow Jesus. It's a follow his teachings In fact, the Carpacreates follow them more than else, in my opinion. They took everything he said so seriously. For example, there's passages where Jesus tells his followers, if you don't leave your family and you don't leave your children and your brother and your sister to follow me, you're not an apostle. Yeah. He said that?

Jesus, yeah. We can look at the verse, actually. Yeah, let's do that. Yeah, because that would be good for context. Unless you can pull up that. Yeah, yeah, pull up the Jesus... Alex had us pull up. Jesus telling his disciples to leave their family and then it should come up. Alex had us pull up so many goddamn verses. Yeah. Pull up verse 11, 12, Mark, Mark, Mark. There it is, Luke 14. 500. So, okay, the many people who were traveling with jesus he said to them if you come to me but will not leave your family you cannot be my follower you must love me more

than your father mother wife children brothers and sisters even more than your own life whoa and so the carpal creations took this to heart they believe This is in one of the Gospels. That's in Luke. In Luke. Yeah. Is this in the other Gospels? Well, his attitude is very similar in the other Gospels. I don't think it's contradictory to the other Gospels. His attitude was, follow me above all else. That's very... The Carpocretians actually, their doctrine was drop out of society and join the Carpocretians actually, their doctrine was drop out of society and join the Carpocretian sect and become a new family member. You become born again as a new family member. You leave your family aside.

If you can't leave your family, if you can't sell all your property, they would say to become a Carpocretian Christian, you had to sell all of your property and give it to the church and come here with nothing. So if you were a wealthy aristocrat, you were expected to sell your property, give it to the church, and become a nobody. That's not crazy dissimilar to priesthood today in the Catholic Church. It's not quite this, but you understand what I mean,

right? Yeah, and there's a passage in Acts where Ananias and his wife, they sold their property, but they kept some of the money and they didn't tell anybody. They sold most of their property and gave most of the money to Peter, but they kept a little bit just for themselves, just thinking, you know, we need a little bit. And they die for that.

Jesus kills them for this. There was, it's in for that Jesus kills them for this there was that it's an axe He kills them. He kills them because they Actually, can we pull that up Peter sort of does it through Peter sort of kills them, but it's it's through it's it's Wait, wait, are you saying kills is as like literally they literally know the heart? No, no, they just they Just die around like instantly smoke Yeah, look at so it's been a while since about selling property and keeping back money specifically acts 5 verses 1 to 10 Describes a nias and sephirah selling a property in line to the Apostles by claiming to give the entire proceeds

While secretly keeping some for themselves their deception is revealed and they both die as a result. The incident contrasts with the early church's practice of sharing possessions. Yeah, but how do they die? They just like... It doesn't say... they just say they just stop breathing. They're just done. So that's one way to do it. Yeah, but here's the thing about... there is why I brought this up for the Carpocretians. The Carpocretians were very communistic. Communistic? Yeah, you went, you joined the car procreation church by selling your possessions, giving all the money away, and then you become equal among the rest of them. So that means you get the same food rations every day, you work the same as everyone else, you contribute the same as

everyone else. It's a tribe. This is how they operated. Yeah. And then, so they're following what they believe to be Jesus's teachings, which I don't think you can argue that they weren't. Oh, let's see. Were you familiar with this passage in Acts? Yeah, totally. What's the... How do they teach this in the Christian church? So the way they teach it to us is essentially is Jesus or God at this point, because Acts, he's no longer around. But essentially, I think he's talking to Apostle Paul, right? Yeah, Peter, Peter.

Peter, Peter. So essentially what's happening is, he's like, all right, you guys are in charge of the money, kind of like a Judas situation where like, you're gonna control, make sure that it's handed out and evenly distributed. And it's showing the selfish desire where, all right, I wanna keep some protection,

so I don't have my full faith in this. Exactly. Because I'm gonna hold on to some of it because I just need a little bit, I don keep some protection so I don't have my full faith in this. Exactly. Because I'm gonna hold on to some of it because I just need a little bit, I don't need a lot. And I'm gonna take that little bit and just hold on to it, no one has to know about it. And then it's like, we know you hit it, boom, dead. Yeah, but what's the, how do they teach the dead part?

Because that sounds like someone whacked them. Or just struck, it's basically just like, you're dead, gone. God just struck them dead. Struck and they fall down immediately. Yeah, it's just completely you're dead gone. God just struck them struck and they fall down immediately Yeah, it's just just completely like um, just done like no longer active Yeah turned off But um, but like like you said, it's about faith

If you are you're fully in this or are you just halfway in this? Are you seven three quarters in this and it's about being fully in this and the carpal creations believed If you're not fully in this you're don't come here if you're not going to sell all your property, don't come here. That was their doctrine and they're a very interesting group. And actually they last a lot longer than most of the other Gnostic groups do. They were well, so there's a, believe it or not, people don't know this. People think like Christianity was like underground in a completely illegal all the way until Constantine. It's not necessarily true. That was like 313-ish, something like that.

Yeah, but there was times where Christianity was out in the open in the cities, in the urban areas, and no one, just because it wasn't legalized by as a Roman imperial cult religion, doesn't mean it was being persecuted or people were being attacked for being Christians. For example, during the Severan dynasty, so in the early third century, 200s AD,

early 200s AD, the Severins were very welcoming to Christians. They even minted coins in Syria and in the Eastern realms with Noah's Ark on it, images of Noah's Ark from the Bible. This is for- Well, that could mean a lot of things because Noah's Ark technically was in a lot of different ancient texts. Did that, was that basically-

No, but not Noah. Because the other versions have different names. They have different names. It was like, you know, Kesey Thoreau was in one of them. I forget. Yeah, uh, uh, Dukalian is the Greek one. So they could have, if this is in Greek, this is in a Greek place, they could have wrote Dukalian on there to go with the Greek legends that people were, but they went with Noah because there was Christians living in these places.

Interesting. legends that people were, but they went with Noah because there was Christians living in these places. And not only that, one of the empresses, the most famous or the most powerful woman in the Roman Empire at the time was Julia Mammaia, sister of Julia Mesa or the sister of Julia Domna. She was a pagan and a Pythagorean. Her sister, Julia Maia, who was the mother of Alexander Severus, the last of the Severan dynasty, young 17-year-old emperor, she was the mother. So she was really in charge of the Roman Empire. She was a Christian.

The emperor's- We know this. It's a little bit debated, but most scholars think she was a Christian. Her sarcophagus has Christian on it. She was like, the sources say she was tutored by origin. She was being tutored by origin. And she's the Roman Empress.

By origin? Yeah, you can look up Julia Mumeya, M-A-M-A-A-E, Julia Mumeya. Yeah, that's her. Let's see, so she was born 180 AD, died 235 AD. And yeah, and a lot of the sources from, Let's see, so she was born 180 AD, died 235 AD. And yeah, and a lot of the sources from, and it's Eusebius, I think it's Eusebius that says she was tutored by Origen,

but that she's like considered to be one of the earliest Christian noble women who like really helped out the Christians and even into the Diocletian persecutions in the fourth century, there were Christians high up in society in aristocratic positions. They weren't just like these lowly, you know, like, you know, completely on the bottom. Like they were high up in society

by the time they get to the fourth century. That's why the persecutions happened. They were kind of becoming a threat to some issues in the Empire that Ecclesiastle was trying to reason with them and Trying to say look just don't get in the way of our sacrifices and our sacred games and we'll leave you alone We want you to be part of our Empire But for some reason they just kept getting in the way of things they kept taking down statues

They kept desecrating statues that kept desec temples, getting in the, so he ended up banning the Eucharist, which is a huge persecution. They were, there is truth to their persecutions. And there was Christians that got pulled out of their houses and killed during this, during this 10 year period from 303 to 313. That's when Christianity can say for sure during 303 to 313 that they were,

all right, like 303 to 311. I think the persecution were lifted in 311 actually. Is there a popularized name for that time period? Like the great persecution? Yeah that's what it's called. So that's the time where Christianity is actually persecuted. Before that there's nothing close. There was uh... meaning there could have been there could have been persecutions here and there, but nothing on a mass scale. Decius in the year 250, 249, 250, he issued an edict basically saying Christians cannot, or the Christians have to like take part

in everyday Roman activities, and they can't be like be outcast. And like that didn't get in, according to the sources that barely even got enforced. It was just like an edict on paper, just like make some people happy and it wasn't really enforced There wasn't people getting fed to lions like there was in the fourth century Anyways, so we covered the one group. Yeah To say all that to say the carpal creations believed in this idea of

Giving up everything giving your all being a being 100% in line and selling your property. Now there are other groups from that period, Valentinians for one. Okay, what was their story? Valentinus was, believe it or not, a Pythagorean Christian. So the way I describe that is he believed in the philosophy of Pythagoras, but he also believed that Jesus was the Messiah and divine. He wasn't just like a, he believed Jesus was a God, like a divine figure.

To get specific, when you say the philosophy of Pythagoras, I'm not just thinking the line on the fucking triangle here. Yeah. What are we saying? So they believed in what was called the triad, the divine triad, which was, there's a father God on top of everything called, who's either called the noose, which means mind in Greek, the mind of the cosmos, completely incorporeal, completely spiritual, doesn't have a flesh body, is perfect in all ways, doesn't have need for anything. But this monad figure, this father figure,

creates from himself a logos or a son who's the heir. And but Philo of Alexandria was a Jewish writer in Alexandria from the first century, from I think he was born in 20 BC, and he died in like 50 AD. And he also was a Middle Platonist, they call it, and he also believed that the God of the Old Testament, Yahweh, was going to give up the kingdom of heaven to an heir called Logos. This is what you find in the Gospel of John. But the Valentinians also seem to be borrowing from Philo, but also Pythagoras and Plato and Greek philosophy. So they believe that Jesus was this Logos figure,

and their central Gospel was John. So the Valentinians didn't read Luke, they didn't read Matthew, they didn't read Mark. They only read, they only cared about John. They thought John was the only gospel. What, but what makes them, that seems so arbitrary to me. That's how, that's how early Christianity was. The idea of having all four gospels together, because like sort of develops over time. And the first, I would say the end of the first century when the gospels are being written

to the middle of the second century, it was more common that certain groups had certain Gospels. And then probably towards the end of the second, third, and early third century, that's when people start putting these Gospels together and trying to unify them and trying to make them all sound, have one one message. Well, you mentioned earlier, you gave the example of the one Bible that the St. John's Bible, You mentioned earlier, you gave the example of the one Bible that the St. John's Bible specific one, that the one church adhered to. I mean, they don't adhere to any others, but there's a greater point, obviously, to be made here, which is that when you go to pull up a verse across whatever fucking 50, 60 English translations there are of this, you can, you know, one word can be here in the sentence

instead of here or there instead of there, and it can totally change the meaning. And now you're talking about a book of thousands and thousands of words where the context can be changed. And now the next layer to that is, yeah, four gospels where they're telling roughly the same story, but they're doing it in different ways. And they have different ways of telling it and they have little tweaks here and there.

Yeah, that's always been so confusing. And there are some contradictions that are like not even like up for debate. Like for example, in Luke's gospel, Jesus is born during the census. What's the guy? What's the guy? The census? Herod? Corrinius, Corrinius. And if you look at the primary sources of what, when he was the governor, it was around 7 AD when that census would have taken place, according to Josephus,

which is the major source for that time period. Well, okay, so that means Jesus was born in 7 AD, seven years after, Jesus was born seven years after Jesus. Weird, weird, right? But in Matthew's gospel, he's born at the end of Herod's reign because the massacre of the innocents, Herod dies in 4 BC. So in one gospel, Jesus was born four years before Christ and another gospel, he's born seven years after Christ.

So there's a little bit, so like, you know, whatever. There's just two people, maybe they both thought different things. Maybe the answer's in the middle. Maybe the answer's in the middle. Maybe that's why, yeah, maybe, who knows? Anyways, I don't know why I got to that, but back to Valentinus. Valentinus had this, he's very Gnostic. He believed in the doctrine of Gnosis, attaining Gnosis, learning the secret doctrines, Gnosis over Pistis, which is faith, and there's chosen people who have the spirit

that can learn and learn the divine nature of God and become deified, all that stuff. Valentinians believe that stuff. Now, when you hear about this right now, this sounds completely heretical to an Orthodox Christianity. The idea of Pythagoras being a part of the tradition, that's nonsense. But in Rome, in 136 AD, Valentinus was running for Bishop of Rome, which is the Pope. Valentinus was the second highest amount of votes. Is this still underground kind of? Yeah, but Christianity is like not legalized.

Right, that's what I'm saying. But they're out, no, they're out in the open in this time period. They're like, they're chilling. So he's like putting flyers out and running for bishop? Yeah, they're chilling among the Romans in the second century.

We have evidence of that? Oh yeah. Now they're not huge, they're only 5% of the empire. Right. At the most. But that's still something, this is the biggest empire in the world. There's a lot of Christians in the second century in the world there's a lot there's there's a lot of Christians in the second century yeah there's a lot of evidence for Christianity and they're

not being chased down they're not being fed to lions in the second century that didn't happen and until the Diocletian persecution that then it happened obviously the story about Ignatius I don't know how people's debate on how true that is he was the story there? He got fed to lions or another story says he was burned alive. And that's in like early second century, something like that. And what did he do? Just being Christian? Just being Christian, yeah. There's a lot of scholars that doubt that this is accurate.

There's some scholars who think the truth's in the middle, that maybe he was... Maybe he was executed, maybe he did something. And what's their basis for saying it wouldn't happen? Is there a written record that says, oh, no, he actually lived to a different year or something like that than we thought? Um, that's a good question.

I do think there was, with Ignatius, I do think there is something like that going on. I can't remember off the top of my head. But I remember someone telling me that there was some contradicting evidence about his story that didn't make sense. But I wish I knew that off the top of my head. But anyways, I'm just pointing out that there is sources about persecutions.

I'm not like ignoring those. But like to the extent that for 300, 400, 300 plus years, Christianity was like hiding in the corners because they're gonna get killed if they got found out, this is not true. Real quick as a tangent, I always forget this. How did it end up that the church made its way to Rome? Like it was through Peter, right?

That's the story of the church. Yeah, but so obviously Rome is the capital of the ancient Roman Empire. I understand that but you know These guys were in Israel and Syria and then they he just settles on I mean, maybe the cannolis were good But so what was the story there? Well, so I this is I actually did a whole video I did a long four and a half hour documentary on this exact subject. How the hell? Let's do four and a half minutes. No, I'll just kind of like answer that because I do want to get back to Valentinus

for an important part. No, this is a good question though. How does someone like Valentinus end up in Rome running for Bishop of Christianity when this is a Jewish religion? And this is only in 136 AD. That's early. A Jewish religion. The gospels are just finished at that point.

The gospels, so Mark, some people think Mark has written around 70, maybe 75, and then Matthew 85 to 95, and then Luke and John is second century, it's 100s. And all of a sudden in 138 or 136, you had this election going on in Rome for the Bishop of Rome, right? Well, how does that happen? I think, so I look at other religions

that were going on in the Levant, and there's Phoenician religion, there's a Syrian religion of Elagobolis, the worship of Molech Bal, and the worship of the God named Dusharis, who was an Arabian God. And they all have temples in Rome in the first, second, third, fourth, fifth century

until Christianity kind of bans all these cults. Rome, for whatever reason, was like this, it's like New York City. When you come to New York City, you have Chinatown, you have the Arabs over here, and they're all from different places. They all come to New York City. When you come to New York City, you have Chinatown, you have the Arabs over here, and they're all from different places. They all come to New York City to sort of make it for themselves.

Rome was like this too. Rome- It's still like that in some ways. Rome was the place where different cults from different parts of the Roman Empire, like I mentioned, Syria, Elagobolis gets his own cult in Rome. Arabian Dusharis, there's a temple in Puleo in Italy that they found.

So people were coming from other parts to go to Rome, to set up shop, to spread their message. And I think Christianity is doing the same thing. Yeah, that makes sense. Christianity, and I do think, maybe, let's go with the story, Peter, maybe Peter really did bring Christianity to Rome. Maybe that's true.

I actually think when Peter got to Rome, there was already an existing group of people that were Jewish, Jewish Greek speaking, maybe Latin speaking people who were already open to the idea of getting away from the temple and bringing something that's more worldly to Rome. And Christianity fits that perfectly. So I think there were people who are God-

Because it had a hero kind of thing? Yeah, like a hero, like a G, like it's very Greco-Roman in the sense of the mechanics behind it, where you have, like in Greco-Roman religion, oftentimes the Platonist who believes in the one, the perfect one God, you don't pray to that God, you pray through a daimon. So you pray through Aphrodite, you pray through Dionysus or Apollo

and one of these lesser gods to get to the one. They get the message. So Jesus fits that role in the Greco-Roman sense where he's the mediator between you and God. Right. So you can see how this would take off in Rome. Makes perfect sense to me. Valentinus though, just to go back to him,

the reason why I brought him up. He's good at the weave. I don't even have to do it. The reason why I brought him up is because the writers like Hippolytus and Irenaeus who are writing about him four or five decades later, calling him a heretic, are not explaining if he's such a heretic, why was he in Rome, why was he the second most popular person to become Bishop of Rome, which if you look pull any Catholic Bible out, and almost every Catholic Bible has the list of popes on there, starting with Peter going all the way to today, he if he would have got a few more votes, this heretic, Gnostic, would have been on the list of popes to this very day.

And he lost by like, according to a bunch of sources, not just the people who call him heretic, Irenaeus and Hippolytus both say he lost by a slim vote to Anacetus, I think his name was. Anacetus, I think his name was. Anasetus, I think his name was. But anyways, whoever the Pope that got elected in 136, that was the one who won that election. And the sources say he built a bunch of churches

in Rome during his tenure. But that would have been Valentinus. And who knows? There's a lot of people who say that the Bishop of Rome at that time didn't have a lot of power compared to the Pope today. It's true. But the sources also do. There's a book called the Liber Pontificalis,

the book, in Latin it means book of popes. Okay. And that book, you can see the early popes from Peter all the way to this Anacetus figure. I think there's 10 popes in between Peter and in the year 136. So he would have been, Valentinus would have been the 10th pope on the list

if he would have won this. There's regular cold. And then there's the mountains are blue cold. Mountain cold refreshment. Coors light. The chill choice. Celebrate responsibly. Must be legal drinking age.

Well, who knows if he would have gotten that position. He lives until the year 180, Valentinus. So he was only 36 years old. He was born in the year 100. He would have been 36 years old, 50 more years of his life as the Bishop of Rome. So I think he could have took the church in a different direction. Sure.

I think instead of having this idea of there's a straight line and they're following the doctrines perfectly from Jesus to Paul and to Constantine, I think if anything, the church is like a ship that goes in different directions based on who's leading the ship. And like, you know, the doctrine of selling all your possessions, that's not a part of Christianity anymore.

You know, that's not like a requirement. But the Carpocreatans thought that was necessary. They're reading the Gospels. The Valentinians are reading John, and they're getting their doctrines from John. So the idea of Logos and Zoe and the Triad. By the way, the Trinity wasn't even a doctrine early on. That's a holy Trinity. Trinity becomes a doctrine at the end of the third century, early fourth century. And what was the Nicene Creed establishes the Trinity. So that wasn't even an official doctrine until the Nicene Creed. But I see a yeah, but guess what? The opposition to the Trinity, which was Arius, Bishop Arius, the Arianism, he calls the Nicene Trinitarians, he calls them Valentinians as a dis, because Valentinus is now a heretic at this time, but the Valentinians believed in a Trinity. The earliest Trinity on the

Christian record is the Valentinian Triad. And what was itan trial and what was it was a same word in greek It was it different from the trinity. We know now. Yes. So instead of having a god father son and holy spirit They have god the father Son and zoe zoe zoe was this female aspect Can't have that. Yes, they cut that out They went strictly male females. Yeah Can't have that. Yes, they cut that out. They went strictly male.

No females. Yeah. This is a sausage factory only. They do incorporate the mother Mary aspect of the divine feminine in that sense, but Mary gets venerated with icons. So they still keep some of that stuff. But anyways, Valentinus was a heretic

for believing in the Trinity. That's the same word trios in Greekreek means triad but it also is the same greek word that we get the word trinity from so they're using the same word trios uh for trinity the valentinians believe this but they were heretics when they believed in it but then later on the fourth century it becomes doctrinal so the valentinians did influence the way the church goes, even if everyone thinks they're heretics. So, you looked at them as kind of an ignored part of history when you're looking at the church. Yeah, and the fact that he was so high up in the church, being in Rome, running for bishop,

tells you that he was taken seriously, that his ideas were seriously, he wasn't a heretic, he wasn't a joke. There's another one, a figure named Marcion, same time period, middle of the second century. Is this gonna be another type of Gnostic religion too? Yeah, Marcionism. Okay. This character, some people think, well let me tell you this actually, in Luke X, it talks about there being 70 disciples of Jesus that were chosen by Jesus. 70. 70, yeah. There's the 12 apostles and then there's a 70 disciples.

12 is a nicer number. Yeah. I like that. Yeah. So the 70 are this group of people, they're not named in Luke X, but the church tradition names them. So they have records of who these 70 people were. One of them was a man named Philologus, who was the first bishop on record of Sinope,

which was a city in the Pontic region of Asia Minor, modern day Turkey. So Black Sea coast. And he was the first bishop of this city, and he's listed according to church tradition, both Orthodox and Catholics, believe that he was the father of a heretic named Marcion. Ah, here we go. So this guy Marcion is from, is literally the son of one of Jesus's chosen 70 disciples. And you think, and

so here's where things get crazy. There are scholars who think He's the first one to have Paul's epistles, that He was a disciple of Paul, and that He wrote the Gospels. The Father, not Marcion. No, Marcion. Oh, Marcion. And maybe He got it from His Father, maybe? I don't know. I never even explored that. His Father must have known Paul, right? He's from the first century. If he's born in the 70s. Yeah, if this is true, what the church is saying, he definitely knows Paul.

And how does Marcion wind up with the seven, so there are scholars who think that there are seven authentic epistles of Paul. Some people challenge this. Nina Livesy thinks there's none. She thinks they're all forgeries. We can get into that later. Anyways.

But we're gonna. Yeah, so these seven authentic letters of Paul, She thinks they're all forgeries. We can get into that later. Anyways. We're gonna. Yeah. So these seven authentic letters of Paul, Marcion happened to have in his Bible called the Evangelia. And in that gospel, in his Bible, he has Luke, he has the gospel of Luke, and I think the book of Acts, well like half of the book of Acts,

and then seven authentic epistles of Paul. That was his Bible. He's the first Christian on record to have a full Bible. Cause in this, remember I told you earlier, in the early Christianity, it was likely you would go to a church and they might have one letter of Paul. Maybe you're in Corinth.

Right. Let's say you're in Corinth. So they got the correct. They got the letter of the Corinthians there. And they probably might have Matthew, maybe the Matthew and Luke, maybe they have two. Depends on where you are. But the idea of having all these texts in one book

it comes later. Marcion, this heretic, this Gnostic, has the first compilation of what's called a Bible. He's the first person to put this together. And his ideas are strange too, because he believed in the Old Testament there's two gods. One of them is the father of Jesus, who does all these great things,

gives the laws to Moses, that's the good God. But then throughout the text, he says there's points, there's parts of the Bible where there's a second God. Now, there's actually some truth to this, because in Leviticus 16- Is this going where I think it's going? With the demiurge thing? No, keep going.

That's not what I'm thinking. In Leviticus 16, 16, 11, I think is the verse, there's this idea of a scapegoat called Azazel in Hebrew, and you offer, the way it works is the Israelites would offer a scapegoat and let him off in the wilderness. And that was dedicated to the god, Azazel. And the other god was slaughtered for the sins. And this is during Yom Kippur was for Yahweh.

So there was two gods, an evil god and the good god. That's what I was gonna get at. Is that Satan? Satan is Azazel. They all get lumped together. Christians do think Azazel is Satan. The Jews think it's different. The Jews think Azazel is a different thing. Satan is not the same as Azazel. They have different purposes. Satan is more

like a district attorney figure in Job. Yeah, in Job. He's friends with God. In the book of Job, Satan's friends with God. He's like, hey, what's going on with your buddy Job? Thirty years to life? Yeah, sounds good. Exactly. So anyways, but yeah, later on, the Christians will lump it all together as one evil entity. But this figure, but Marcion's going through the Old Testament. And for example, he gives one, he gives an example of the part where Elijah gets called Baldy by these little kids and Elijah curses them and sends she bears toars to maul these kids to eat them. Yes, this is in the book of Kings. And they kill the kids and eat them and he just keeps going. So Marcion, who's, you know, he's influenced by Platonism, the

idea that one is perfect, that God cannot, God would not murder anyone in these circumstances. He's driven by this dogma. So his way around it is, that's the evil God. That's this other God, one of the evil. So every time in the Old Testament where something happens where God looks... He blames it on the other God. So Marcion believed that the Jews who reject Jesus were following this other God, and that following Jesus is following the good God. Oh that following Jesus is following the good God. Oh, so he's like the original Kanye. Yeah. Right.

But he was a heretic and you could see why. This is not doctrinal church stuff. But what's so fascinating about Marcion is from how much we can look at him and talk about his ideas being weird and strange. His father is one of the 70 disciples and he's the first Christian on record to have a Bible with Paul's epistles in it.

Yeah, I want to go back to this. So he had to have been important. I stuck a pin in this when you were saying it. But the 70 verses 12, what's the history there of how we landed on these? So it's not a contradiction. There's 12 core apostles, you know the 12 the 12 core there the inner sets of the inner circle of Jesus right then there's 70 on the outside circle and you've got like the major leagues and

then like the triple a the triple a team yeah and so Marcian's father would have been one of these so one of the triple a guys got access to like some of the most important scripts he's he's one of the 72 major. I know, but I feel like that would be among the 12, right? You would think, but what's interesting about that. What's interesting about that is there is no, there is no, there's the letters of Peter. A lot of scholars think that's written later.

Why do they think that was written later? There's textual criticism reasons for it. They go through it, they comb through's textual criticism reasons for it. They they go through it They comb they comb through the text and they there's reasons why I don't you know, I'm not really sure I'm not gonna even that's a good answer. Yeah, cuz I don't know much here. You can't know. I don't yeah I don't know why they think Peter is forged but they do a lot of scholars do Obviously Christians don't so they might be right. Maybe there's Peter's letters. But there is no evidence.

So Eusebius does say that when Mark got written, Mark was written by Mark, obviously, in Alexandria, with Peter telling him what to write. So according to Eusebius, the gospel of Mark is Peter's gospel, according to Eusebius. On what evidence does Eusebius base that? He just says it. He just says it, right.

And the reason why it's so doubted is because he's the first person to say this in almost 300 years have gone by. Like, did he talk with him? No. No, so Eusebius is living in the fourth century, he's living in the time of Constantine, and he's just kind of saying shit.

He's just kind of going, yeah, Peter gave us Mark, basically. But yeah, then you had, it becomes, but you see how wild that is. Then that becomes like a record. Like, yeah, no, Eusebius, real straight shooter. This is what he said. Yeah. He, he said a lot of stuff like that. He made like, Eusebius had a lot of weird stories like that. Like, could you imagine me being like right now? Like, yeah, no, I know old Georgie Washington and Paul Revere, they were, they were sipping some mail and 71. But yeah, it was at Frank's tavern. I know this, it happened. Just trust me. And now like, just outright saying that's how you Sibius operated. He was very much like that. Um, uh, what was I going to say? Uh,

yeah, you Sibius gets like, uh, people think that he foraged a bunch of stuff that he's the one who wrote Josephus is, uh, testimony in Fl he forged a bunch of stuff, that he's the one who wrote Josephus' testimony in Flavianum, which is the passage in Josephus that mentions Jesus. People think that's forged. I don't think it's forged. Most scholars think... Meaning like he wrote it in? Completely wrote it in. The whole thing was fake. And the reason why they say this is because Origen, who's living a century, two centuries before this, talks about Josephus but doesn't mention this passage, which is odd. You would talk

about Josephus but not mention a passage that mentions Jesus. It is a very good argument, I'm not gonna lie. But the experts, I'm just gonna go off what the experts say here, Steve Mason is like an authority on Josephus stuff. He thinks that that passage is Legit, but it was heavily edited later on so there he thinks that Josephus did write about Jesus but the the version we have right now and all of our versions is all completely edited and and Interpolated he says the basically they they edited it to make Jesus because it's very odd passage Is he is he basing that this might be a dumb question, but is he basing that on whatever the original record

of it was, meaning like he can look at the original record and say like in modern day terms, oh, they whited that out right there, here's how I know that. No, because the oldest manuscripts from the Josephus are like after the fifth century anyway. So you're going through manuscripts that are already after the supposed interpolation

already happened. There's no like, we don't have any physical fragments of Josephus that go before Eusebius. So it's possible that he did do this, but I think it's still speculation. But I forgot why we ran into that. Actually, there's an important point here and maybe this will lead to some new topics as well.

But like, I think about this all the time and this relates to every religion, every ancient text, whatever it was, you and I were talking about this off camera before we started. It's like, when we look at time, right? We're in 2025 right now. When we look at the 1960s, that seems like a long time ago.

It seems like it was so different, but we have a record of it. Our parents might have been born then. We know people who are alive from that time period. You can still touch it and feel it. But we have this idea that, oh, today iPhones, back then, they were just fucking dancing to Jimi Hendrix or whatever. It's like a whole different world. But it's like this exponential theory of time though, when you look at history and the farther

and farther back you go, the gaps of time become more and more scrunched together in our minds. Meaning, like we look at the 1960s and 1990s as totally different eras right now, but we may just casually talk about 100 AD and 200 AD because it's way farther back and outside of our realm of thought. We may look at that as, oh that's basically the same thing. It's not! It's like it's fucking five generations apart. Like it's a totally different world, no? Yeah, no, and exactly. So like we mentioned 136 is the year that Valentinus is running for bishop.

This is already a century after his death has gone by. Completely different world. None of them met Jesus. None of them know. So they're all like, they're like us. They're trying to figure out what happened. That's pre-stock market crash in today's parlance. Think about that.

And it's interesting, cause it's like, it would be like right now, we're a hundred years after World War I now. And it's like right now people starting to like, add details to what happens. Imagine someone for the first time goes, Oh, by the way, there was an alien recovered in World War I. And I know you never heard this yet. But I'm telling you, this is new evidence that we found. Somewhere James Fox is like, what? Yeah. And so that's, that's kind of how Christian, Christian lore builds up over time. You get new things being added to the stories over time.

But it's everything. It's not just... That's everything. Like, it's literally everything, no matter what you believe or what ancient history you're looking at, whatever it is. It's like, it's always going to be imperfect because it's human beings doing it. They're doing it with their own beliefs and biases

that are put into it, and they're doing it over a length of time. You were just talking about manuscripts written about the Josephus thing in fucking 500 AD or whatever. I mean Christ has been dead for almost 500 years at that point. And I talked to a lot of scholars who do textual criticism who are like big into manuscripts and you know comparing different manuscripts and they say that different manuscripts and they say that after like this after like the medieval period kicks off you get a lot of zealous scribes who want to fix things that so like for example the whole December 25th thing once that becomes part of the church tradition that December 25th is the birthday of Jesus

you get later scribes going back to older manuscripts and fixing the birthday of Jesus to be on December 25th. And they can tell because they can find other manuscripts that have the other dates on there. So they go, oh, what's going on here? What's going on is there's scribes who are like, well, I wanna make sure that these people get the right impression here. And they're going back and fixing manuscripts

to sort of make things equal what's going on in their world. So that's another issue people have to deal with when you're examining manuscripts. You've got to find out, there's the possibility that what you're reading is an interpolation or some sort of like forged little area going on.

Do you think it's possible, and this applies to everything, not just Christianity, insert your religion here, do you think it's possible that one of the religions actually is on the whole mostly right or has the right ideas, but we just live in a world where people felt like, as they was formulating over these early centuries, people felt like religion X needed to be 1000% right. So they went back and personally created an ivory tower around it to the point that now people

are righteously questioning whether any of it's true because they feel like it's a coverup in a way. Yeah. It's possible? I think that's definitely possible, yeah. And I think people always have this like, innate drive to question what they're being told by authority.

Yes. So when you have a church that's like steeped in authority and tradition of like bishops and you know, they pass it on to the next bishop and they people go wait a minute. Is this because they are they telling me the truth here that people want to question that? And I think that's how you get Protestantism and how you get different for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What and and we've been bringing it up a few times today. So maybe it's good to actually go through it. What was the council in I see it to you

and what what really happened there? There's all kinds of theories that come out of that, but I'd love to get your takes. Well, people, a lot of times you'll hear people talk about the Council of Nicaea when the Bible was decided, what the canon was, which is nonsense. There's nothing to do about the Bible canon in the Nicenean Creed. The Nicene Increde was mostly about the Trinity and I think there was, there was an outlaw on castration because there was a problem in Christianity. So people taking Jesus's words to the next level, right? One of the things Jesus says is, if your eye causes you to sin, pluck your eye out. If your right hand causes you to sin,

cut your right hand off, all that stuff. Well, people were sinning because they were horny, so they were castrating themselves, not to be like, not to do the transitioning or anything like that, just so they can stop having the drive so they wouldn't sin. Origen, one of the church fathers, Origen castrated himself.

Oh my God. So one of the, in the Nicene Creed, on top of the Trinity thing, there was an edict that no longer is this allowed in the church. No one stopped castrating yourselves. Like you guys are going way too far with this stuff. And so they straightened that. That was one of the things that happened in Nicene Creed. I think there was something about the Manicheans that was mentioned in that

creed, but it's been a while since I looked at it. But the Trinity was the big one. The major point of the Nicene Creed was that we're all clear that there's a God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are all equal. They're all one. they're all three persons of the same Godhead. That was like, that needed to be clear going forward because there was so much disagreement. There was, there was monophysites, there were people who thought that Jesus was just the Son of God who's subordinate to the Father, the Father's the only God. Then there's the Aryans who, and like I pointed out earlier, they, the Trinitarians get called Valentinians by their opponents as a dis, which is like,

it's just funny because they're still, the Gnostic sects are still influencing the church all the way down to the Nicene Creed. They're still part of the conversation, going, these people believe in a trinity? That's some Valentinian shit, man. Like that's what Arius was saying in his letter to, I think his letter to Constantine.

There's a letter from Arius that we have, I forgot who he wrote it to. I think it was to Constantine though. But yeah, we can look it up if you want. Sure, let's do that. And what made Constantine again, want to do this and want to make Christianity the main religion of the Roman Empire?

So this is a hotly debated, this is not gonna be figured out in one day. It's a letter from Arius. Yeah, let's look at this before we... Yeah, that's a good, hold that thought. Let me show you this for a second. A-R-U-S. Constantine's Dear Arius Letter, 333. That's a good hold that thought. Let me show you this for a second. Yeah a r a r us

Constantine's dear arias letter 333. Yeah, but I think it's the one he writes to Constantine Yeah There we go arias confession of arias, um his confession that might be it. All right, let's hit that Okay. All right. So arias on being recalled presents a recantation to the emperor and pretends to accept the Nicene Creed. They having drawn up a declaration to the following effect, presented it to the emperor Arius and Izoas to our most religious and pious lord, the emperor Constantine. In accordance with the command of your devout piety, sovereign Lord,

we declare our faith and before God profess in writing that we in our adherence believe as follows. We believe in one God, the Father, Almighty, the Maker of Heaven... Oh, wait, no, that goes different. And in the Lord Jesus Christ, His Son, who has begotten Him before all ages, God the Word through whom all things were made,

both those who are in the heavens. So basically he's reciting the Nicene Creed right here. I'm trying to think, is this the one that he mentions, the Valentinians? You're working with an iPhone 6 there? Yeah. Oh boy. I've got to get you upgraded, boy.

Oh, you know what? I know where it is now. I could find it right now. I sent it to someone recently. So just give me a second if you want to clip this part. Yeah, no, no. Actually, this is interesting. It would be interesting for people to see recently. So just give me a second. If you wanna clip this part out. Yeah, no, no. So I do wanna, I think it'd be- Listen, actually this is interesting.

It'd be interesting for people to see this, yeah. I can comment on this for a second, just cause I started to read that as, I remember it from Catholic church growing up. Yeah, yeah. But he's saying, so like, this is him reciting what's already been written to profess belief in that effect. Yeah, I think this is the next letter he wrote after the one that I'm talking about.

Okay. So, let me just see if I can find it here. It never ceases to amaze me, all the layers too. Yeah, so... The Bible and the history. I think I found it. Okay, here we go. So, this is from Arius' letter to Alexander of Alexandria.

This is right around the time the Council of Nicaea is out there. He's fighting against it. He's a big opponent of the Trinitarians. That's why you have the Arians are named after Arius. Anyways, this is long letter. Shall I read the whole thing or just read the part? Sure, please. Our faith from our ancestors, which we have learned

also from you, is this. We know one God, alone unbegotten, alone everlasting, alone without beginning, alone true, alone possessing immortality, alone wise, alone good, alone master, judge of all, manager, director, immutable and unchangeable, just and good, God of law, prophets and New Testament, who begot and only begotten Son before eternal times, through whom he made the ages and everything. But he begot him, not in appearance, but in truth,

having submitted him to his own will, an immutable and unchangeable perfect creature of God." And then he says, this is the most important part, but not as one of the creatures in offspring, but not as one of those born, nor as Valentinus decreed that the offspring of the father is an emanation, nor as Manees, another heretic, another Gnostic heretic, propounded that the offspring of the father is part of the same substance, nor Sibelius, who divides the modad and says father and son. Now what is he saying here? He's saying this Trinity idea is bullshit. This is already heresy. We already been through this. Valentinus said this. We said he's a heretic, right? And they all agree on that. And same with this other guy, Manes and Sibelius.

And these are all heretics. Why are we bringing this back up again? That was his argument against the Trinity. Now he believed that Jesus was divine, but he just believed his idea was Jesus was divine and he's the son of God, and he was chosen in the beginning of the cosmos, but he's still subordinate to the Father. And the Trinitarians were like, no, they're all equal. They're all equal Godhead of the Trinity.

And he said, no, that's that's valentinean heresy basically and so i mean to me i i don't want to oversimplify this but this seems like typical of the times just political infighting for power over who's right absolutely it's not really more than that a bunch of ego uh tripping people who think they're right yeah Yeah. And that's the thing. Battling it up. That's how Christianity develops. It's just debates for centuries. Yeah. You have councils all the way to 1400s. That's the unfortunate thing with anything. You know, something that's supposed to be great too, like religion, whatever it might be, it helps you get peace, explain your meaning of life. Most of the people I know who are religious use it for good, which is awesome.

But then it's just human nature. You're always going to get powerful people who see a vacuum at the top and then they're going to fight to the death. I don't mean that literally, but to get their idea to be right because somehow it's going to give them more pull and more ability to tell other people what to do. And I think that's so unfortunate because it also doesn't mean that some of the ideas being debated aren't legitimate or it can't get to truth. It's just like when you get people in the middle of them, it muddies it up. Right. And it's funny because if we go back to the Gospels

themselves, what does Jesus say about the Trinity? Nothing. There's no Trinity. Never said anything about a Trinity. The word Trinity is not even in the Gospels. There's no Trinity. Never said anything, right? Never says anything about a Trinity. The word Trinity is not even in the Gospels. Right, but did he ever say like, obviously he referred to his father and God throughout that. Yeah, but he's always making it clear that he suborted to the Father. Had he ever said anything related to

or similar on parallel with the term Holy Spirit though? John. Yeah. That's in John's, in John's Gospel. So I'm actually, I agree with the Christians. There, though? John. That's in John's Gosp... In John's Gospel, so I'm actually... I agree with the Christians. There's a lot of critical scholars who think that even John's Gospel doesn't have a trinity. I disagree with that.

I think John's Gospel does have a clear triad going on between God, the Father, and the Son, and then this idea of the Holy Spirit, which is mentioned in John's Gospel. John talks about the one who's going to come, and a lot of people reinterpret it, he's talking about himself coming back. He doesn't say it that way though, he says, the One who comes after me, which is the Holy Spirit, he says that in the text.

So in John's Gospel, you do have three persons happening. You have God the Father, God the Son, and this other figure called the Holy Spirit that's unnamed. So yeah, I agree with the Christians that the Trinity is based on the Gospels. A lot of- It just was never called that. Yeah, a lot of critical scholars will say it was never called the Trinity, and the way the Trinity develops in Nicene and Crete is different than what is in John. Fair enough. It does get developed. It takes three centuries to develop this idea. I could see that both ways, because I see what you're saying. Like the fact that they developed

it three centuries later and put them all together. But I could also see it from that perspective of like, well, maybe it really is a puzzle. And these are the three, these are actually the three things that Jesus really wanted to refer to. And he just never said it that way. Or at least we don't have a record of him saying it that way and Also, this is where you can get into the semantics argument of what did he really say ever we can get the themes Maybe and maybe that is true But when they're written in different ways in all four Gospels and then the Gospels that you know We'll talk about that aren't even you know considered a part of the main Gospels that were also written. It's like

You know, yeah, maybe the messaging is there, but the exact terminology isn't, and that's up to your interpretation. And so are these people interpreting it how they want to interpret it? Yeah, I think that's what's going on. I think after a period of time, after you get to like the middle of the second century, there's no one left who even remembers

the first century anymore. And there were different people, different political situation, everything's different. And I'm sure the tides go with what's more popular. Yes. And then whatever one's more popular wins out. And so those extreme groups like the Carpocreations who are like, sell all your property,

that's not gonna win out. People don't wanna do that. People want something more simple. Just have faith, just come to church and, you know, for sure get a communion, get a get a Eucharist. Simple. That's what people want. People like rituals. People like having, they like going to church and seeing rituals play out. They're Romans. I love that stuff. So I can see it's very, for me, it's very clear why Orthodox Catholicism wins out. It's very simple, it's very, it's very,

it's oriented towards the masses, towards the average person just to show up and become part of the church. That's it, that's all they really want, you know? Let's go back to that question I put a pin in. Yeah. Where I was asking about what made Constantine basically decide, you know what?

I wanna make Christianity the main religion of the Holy Roman Empire. So it's interesting because it's actually Theodosius after Constantine who completely makes all the other cults illegal except for Christianity and Judaism is still legal actually. The Jews get more rights than the pagans do under Theodosius. The pagans that they used to follow.

Yeah, pagans that used to be in charge of everything are now out the door, completely gone. Unless he thought that was funny. Yeah, but no, it's true. They got taken out of their power situation and now they're nobodies. Now they're completely legal. They actually were getting persecuted, pagans were. But Constantine tried to go for a different, he had a different attitude where Christians just got off of being persecuted, 313 A.D., they're just getting a year or two off of the persecutions being lifted in 311. What, why were they lifted? Well, diocletian is no longer a lot. Diocletian dies. And it just wasn't popular.

People just wouldn't like the, no, they didn't want to persecute people. No one wants to do that stuff. It just wasn't, they didn't want to enforce it anymore. And they just wanted to lift it. It just naturally got lifted. It just got, it played its course. Okay.

And Constantine's mother was a Christian, so that might have been a big influence on her. She's the Empress basically. She's in his ear telling him not only do I lift this ban, but let's give them funding. Let's get them legalized, which is what happens. Yeah. But what I actually think is really going on, I I think there's a lot more I think there's a something way more clear that people aren't looking at and it's when we look at the political situation of the three tens 320s Persia is becoming more and more dominant in the eastern realms so they're starting to take over Armenia. They're fighting over Antioch, Syria, which is the western or the eastern

capital of the Roman Empire. Yes. That's must. Rome needs that. That's a big port city. It's a huge trading hub. Also huge Christianity. Huge Christian city. Right. So what's a good way to get that city in your Christians legalize the Christians So and a lot of Christians in Armenia, there's a lot of Christians in Antioch, Syria at that time which is it's odd that Constantine's dealing with the he's dealing with the Persians right at the same time when he's legalizing Christianity Which gives him more of a foothold in Antioch, Syria, and in Armenia, the places that he's trying to keep as part of the Roman Empire, which he

successfully does. Constantine did a good job of maintaining those borders during his reign. He did a very good job, actually. And I think part of that was the Christians were fighting in his armies, because in the Eastern legions are full of Christians and full of Arabs, full of all types of people from that part of the world, Armenians, whoever, and a lot of them are Christians. So they're fighting in your army already. So why are they, we should give them more credibility.

So he legalizes Christianity, gives them funding. He actually constantly himself built three churches in his life during his reign. But he's an odd character because he didn't, it doesn't seem like he's a very devout Christian. He doesn't know much about the letters that he's writing about Christianity. He calls Jesus the second God. So he's getting a lingo all mixed up. It sounds like he's just learning about Christianity for the first time. Some of it felt like, oh, we need new wallpaper, put it up. Yeah. Like when, I don't know if I'm oversimplifying that. And then his, his arc, the famous Constantine's arc, um, arch, arch, yeah, arch of Constantine. Uh, someone will hit you on

that. Yeah. Someone's going to say it's this. But it's this. But on that, the artwork on that thing, there's nothing Christian about it. There's no crosses on it. There's no Jesus on it. There's no Mary on it. It's just like soldiers and then there's like the four winds, which is very pagan. And then some of the senators that were following Constantine's lead in getting converted, there's a few of them on record. At this time though, most of the senators,

which represent the average Joe, are still pagans, up until 380, until Theodosius' decree. They're still pagans, and they're actually fighting against Constantine in Rome. A lot of them are fighting, are trying to, they don't like what Constantine's doing. A lot of them are fighting, are trying to, they don't like what Constantine's doing, or his sons. And his son, Constantius, actually got rejected by some Roman aristocrats when he came to visit Rome. So this wasn't that popular. It was popular in the

East, not as much in the West. But Constantine, he, what was I gonna say? He, oh yeah, the senators that were following suit, the ones that we have that converted, they're, it's funny because you look at their sarcophagi, I look this stuff up, I'm like, I wanna know, like, are these people really Christians? Are the Christians saying they converted and they didn't convert?

I'm asking all these questions. And the sarcophagus of this one senator who was a senator during Constantine's reign has Christian scenes on his sarcophagus. So he was a Christian, but he also has other scenes of pagan stuff on there. So he has, there's a scene on his sarcophagus where it shows the erotess, which there. There's the little Cupid babies Now, okay, someone might look at that and go. Oh, how do those are just Christian angels? That's because the baby angels are as a medieval thing. This would be this would be anachronistic It wouldn't make sense in this time period. He's just by religious. That's what I'm saying

I think at this point in time. It was kind of common for people to like, still, still like adopt their average, you know, they still go to the sacred games of Apollo. Sure. And they still, they still go to the Olympics and watch the torch. And they still, they're still following certain customs, but they convert to Christianity. Because there's this new hot religion

that Constantine just legalized. Yeah, it's like the Bruce Lee thing. They're taking what's good of all different stuff and discarding, yeah, I get it. Yeah, and this is reflected in the Greek Magical Papyri, which is a collection of papyri that have been found. It's like the Bruce Lee thing. They're taking what's good of all different stuff and discarding, yeah, I get it. Yeah, and this is reflected in the Greek magical papyri, which is a collection of papyri that have been found all over Greece and Egypt and Syria and all over Rome.

And it's a collection of like, magic incantations that's mixing and matching paganism and Christianity. So you have like, one hymn to Osiris, and then the next page over it's ya-oh, ya-way, sabba-oth, and Dionysus, and Jesus. They're all there in these random, it's called the Greek Magical Papyri. And these are not like church documents or anything.

These are not like elites that are writing this stuff. These are average people just writing stuff. They're like new age people. The people today that mix, you see people online mixing Jesus with Buddha. They're doing, I haven't even seen that one. No, I'm just like, you know, new age people are mixing and matching religions. Like, Oh, Christ was the, you know, he was him and Buddha were like, you know, you get this stuff all the time online. Well, people were doing that in the Roman Empire or mixing and matching Judeo-Christianity with pagan stuff

Sibyline oracles is another prime example of this. Sibyline oracles are a collection of sources that are prophetic. It's coming from the mouth of the Sibyl which is the voice of prophecy and they start off pagan. It's all about like Achilles and Apollo and Dionysus and Zeus and then in Alexandria Egypt at some point in third century to first century BC, somewhere in that period, second century BC, you start to see Noah get written in these sibling oracles. They're still written in Greek. They still have pagan themes in it. All of a sudden Noah's being cited as a character. All of a sudden Adam and Eve are being mentioned.

All of a sudden Abraham's getting mentioned. All of a sudden they're mixing Judaism and paganism in the Sibylian oracles. And then after the first century, what you see is those same collection of texts called the Sibylian Oracles start to Christianize and you start getting about prophecies about the birth of Christ under Augustus and um and so that's what you can see the transformation of pagan literature into Christian literature.

Eusebius, another example I mentioned Eusebius, he thought that Virgil's Echologues, I think it's Virgil's Echologues 11, I think it is, it's one of the Virgil's Echologues where he mentions the birth of the divine child that's gonna come and save the world. And he thought this was about Christ. So people are- I mean, I can see where he draws that. Yeah, I can see why he can draw that. And so people are looking at pagan literature and going, well, even they're pointing out, even they're pointing to Jesus. Another Gnasta group that ties in with this is called the Gnaseins, N-A-A-S-S-E-N-E-S. Alex talked about these guys. Yeah. These are the prime example of early Christians in the second century around 150 A.D.s when they're thriving. This group,

this group called the Nossians, believe that Jesus was the fulfillment of not just the Old Testament, but everything. They believe that Attis, remember I pointed to Attis and how he had the Helaria festival? The Nossian preacher in the sources tells his followers to go to the hilarious and Witness the rights of Addis because in those rights you will find the mysteries of Christ He had a hymn Called it's called the Nossian hymn. But really it's all he's doing is he's ripping from the Homeric hymn to Addis in this Homeric hymn to Addis is a

Him to Addis. And this Homeric Him to Addis is a... No Frills delivers. Get groceries delivered to your door from No Frills with PC Express. Shop online and get $15 in PC optimum points on your first five orders. Shop now at nofrills.ca. Is a mixing of different gods. So it's basically starts starts off with actually we don't pull it up Yeah, I'll show you. Yes. Yeah better pull this up. What do you want to search? not seen him NaS s e ne

Hymn Yeah, I hadn't heard of these guys till I talked about yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a lot of these groups where... Let's see if you could find the actual hymn. Okay, or you could say about Homeric hymn to Attis. Attis. A-T-T-I-S. That's it, yeah. Okay. So, there's two of them, and this is also in the Nassim hymn, too. If you could just zoom in on that so I could see it.

So this hymn right here is very fascinating. Just keep going down where downwards as first hymn. Whether you are Kronos offspring, or that of Zeus, blessed one, or of Rhea, so now he's switching up gods here, be greeted, oh great one, at the sound of whose name Rhea cast down her eyes, Attis. But in the in the Naseem version, they cross off Attis and put Jesus there. So they literally- They changed this hymn for Jesus, but then it continues. The Assyrians call you thrice beloved Adonis. All of Egypt calls you Osiris.

Hellenic wisdom, horn of men upon heaven, Samothracians, August, Adamus, unconquered one. The Haemonians call it Koribos. The Phrygians, Papas, these are all gods, these are all gods that have myths tied to them of like them dying and coming back to life. So these Nossians, these Christian Gnostics were saying that Christ was an incarnation

of all these pagan gods that came to live on earth. Meaning it's legitimizing the pagan gods. They're legitimizing the pagan tradition into the, and that's his heresy. That's why the church called him the heretic. Like, no, that's pagan. We're not pagans. We're, you know, we don't believe that.

Eusebius though, was more accepting of these ideas though. He actually did play around with this in a book he wrote called Preparation for the Gospel. And in the Preparation for the Gospel, he does actually make a way more intricate argument for what this hymn is doing, where he does actually go into pagan literature, into the prophets, or I'm sorry, into the philosophers,

like Plato or whoever, Homer, and he's actually pointing out, like, look, these people were inspired by God. They just didn't know about Jesus yet. But anyways, the point I'm making about the Nassim's is, in the second century, it was common to find Christian groups that were still holding on to their older traditions of paganism.

So it wasn't like, and just to be, just to completely like show you that the opposite is true too, because there were groups called the, uh, Alka sites and the, um, um, what was the other one called Alka sites and the, um, I can't think of the name right now. There's a, yeah, there's just, there's this second group, there's two groups that were completely non-pagan,

and that they believed in the Old Testament, they read the Old Testament. Christ's literalists. Yeah, they were, they believe that Jesus was the Messiah and not God, that he was just chosen to be the Messiah, and the Jewish definition of the word Messiah. The Jewish definition of the word Messiah is, Messiah is not God, The Messiah is a man.

He's chosen by God to fulfill xyz. But is he related to God or not in the Jewish sense? No, and the Jewish definition of the word Messiah is he's just a man chosen to take to take on God's purpose and usher in the kingdom of heaven. Got it. it um what the hell's the name of that group I can't think of the name right all anyways but there's there's a few groups in the early Christian world that didn't believe in the pagan stuff they were completely but but they were so Jewish that even they become heretics so they're like no you have to believe at least Jesus was divine you have to believe in this treat like obviously the, the Nicene Creed comes in later.

But these particular groups end up being heretical for being too Jewish. So there's two, there's two spectrums. You have, in early Christianity, you have two sides of the spectrum. On one side of the spectrum, you have the, this like, Greco-Roman, Nassim's, Carpo-Cretians, all that stuff, Valentinians. And on the other side, you have these other groups who are more on the Jewish side. The Elkocytes is one of them. And I can't remember the big one. I can't remember for some reason I'm thinking of it, but it'll come to me later. Right. So they're in the old school category. They're in the old school category.

And now the new school is like, no, this is how it's got to be. Right. And the old school category, the groups that I mentioned that are completely on the Jewish side, they thought that you had to uphold the Torah and follow the commandments of Moses and get circumcised and go to Sabbath and follow all the Torah, plus Jesus is the Messiah. Right. But the new school guys, they still have the Old Testament, they still accepted that as... because effectively, I mean, this is way oversimplifying it, but when you look at the Jewish religion,

and when you look at Christianity, Jewish religion is the Old Testament, Christianity is Old Testament plus New Testament. So they still take it as what it was. But they believed that because Jesus came and gave his life, that you no longer were obliged to follow the laws of Moses, you now just needed faith to bypass this. So I could go kill people if I want.

I don't know about that. But I mean that's literally what that would mean. Theoretically, you could kill somebody and then confess your sins and be forgiven. And that's not what was in the Old Testament. The Old Testament was you do this, you're fucked. Well no, because the the Jews had a different way of getting through sin. They have Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur is once a year

that they would sacrifice sin offering for all the sins of, if you attend to Yom Kippur, your sins are free. Really? Yes. So they had their, So you get out and you're free to are. The Christians are acting like they had this new way of getting out of sin.

The whole time the Jews were like, no, we've already been doing this. They just stole that bar for bar, word for word. Well, guess what? Interesting. I'm glad you pointed that out. I forgot about this. Because the scene when Jesus and Barabbas are both being presented by Pilate, that's a yom kippur being played out.

What do you mean a yom? I don't understand that. Let me explain. Please. In Leviticus 16, there's the yom kippur where they take one goat who's the sinful goat that needs to be let free into the wilderness. And the other pure unblemished lamb, or I think it's actually a goat or a lamb it depends

it doesn't matter either way but the unblemished lamb or goat gets slaughtered for the sin offerings in the temple area now what happens in in in the gospels and all the gospels basically is um all the gospels basically is Jesus and Barabbas are both being presented to the audience. One of them is a sinful man. Barabbas is sinful. He's a murderer. He's a pirate, remember? They call him a Lacedaes. A Lacedaes? Lacedaes, that's the word they use. A brigand, like a criminal. Pirates way better. Yeah, pirate. You could call it. It's used for pirate.

They let him go and then they kill Jesus who's sinless and perfect and unblemished. So it's, I get it now. It's an allegory. The Gospels are giving you an allegory of Yom Kippur. But they're literally drawing from Leviticus. All right, hold on a second though. But playing historical record on this, are we saying that that is just an unbelievable symbolic coincidence that that happened and scholars have pointed out that this idea that The governor would come out with two people and go which one do you want me to kill? Which one do you want me to leave? There's no evidence of this. There's no evidence that ever never I mean, this is the same never hire There's this is the same empire that would have gladiators

in the middle and they'd come out and, you know, give the thumbs up or thumbs down. There was, there's one source that a lot of Christians like to point to as evidence for this, where Josephus decided to let some prisoners go on some occasion. He was trying to like- Like a pardon.

But it wasn't like a scene where one gets killed and one lets, there was none of that stuff. The details are way different. It was just a mass letting people go thing. I wouldn't be surprised though, if it were real. And I mean this dead seriously, the drama of that for the entertainment of the plebeian masses, if you will, is incredible.

Anything's possible. I mean, that's cinema. I'm not saying it's impossible, but think about this. You're Jewish. You know what Yom Kippur is. I'm not. No, I'm saying, like the person, you're living, let's put ourselves in the, let's put ourselves in the 30, yeah, I didn't mean to say that. Let's put ourselves in 30 AD or whatever the year Jesus gets crucified. If you think he was born in 4 BC, he died in 30 AD, 33, whatever. That's the magic number, right? Let's say this is the case.

And you're sitting there, and all of a sudden, you've attended Yom Kippur your whole life, every year. So you know about the sin offering and wanting, letting one free. All of a sudden, Pontius Pilate comes out with two criminals, one of them who didn't do anything wrong, another one who did a bunch of things wrong, and he lets one out and kills another one

during the same week where Passover's happening, wouldn't you go, what is going on here? Is this my simulation? I think you would do, like, is this really happening? Now, maybe, it's not impossible that this could have happened. It would be a weird coincidence. It would be sort of divine if that happened,. Like this all plays out exactly according to how

Leviticus presents the sin offering. I don't know if you want to show the sin offering in Leviticus, if you want to give the people context to that. Let's do that. I love context, especially with this stuff. That's why I like watching your channel. You're always pulling stuff up. We're trying. We're trying, man. Leviticus 16. This stuff gets so complicated and there's also a lot of opinions in the middle of it with people who have beliefs and stuff like that. Yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah. That's why I'm trying to give the nuances as much as possible and not just give one side. In Leviticus 16, the sin offering involves two goats, a bull and a ram, and is performed annually on the day of atonement to cleanse the nation of Israel from their sins. Yeah, now go, if you want to just read the passage,

we can go down right there, Bible Gateway. Okay. The Lord spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron who died when they approached the Lord. The Lord said, well, that's my spot, the Lord said to Moses, tell your brother Aaron that he is not to come whenever he chooses into the most holy place

behind the curtain in front of the atonement cover of the ark or else he will die, for I will appear in the cloud over the atonement cover. This is how Aaron is to enter the most holy place. He must first bring a young bull for a sin offering, and a ram for a burnt offering. He is to put the sacred linen tunic with linen undergarments next to his body. He is to tie the linen sash around him and put on the linen turban. These are sacred garments, so he must bathe himself

with water before he puts them on. From the Israelite community, he is to take two male goats for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering. Aaron is to offer the bull for his own sin offering to make atonement for himself in the household. That's the priestly offering, yeah, that's different. But keep going. "...then he is to take the two goats and present them before the Lord at the entrance to the tent of meeting. He is to cast lots for the two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other for the scapegoat." Now, pause. If it says B right there, you want to put your cursor over that B, where it says scapegoat, down a little bit?

Right there. See that B? I'm says scapegoat, down a little bit. Right there, see that B? I'm just curious what that in footnote says. It says, the meaning of the Hebrew for this word is uncertain. All right, the word in Hebrew, if you look up the Hebrew version, we can if you want, but it doesn't really matter. People can watch and do this themselves.

The word is Ezezel, which gets translated as scapegoat, but in Jewish tradition, Eazel is like a deity. It's like a second God, like a figure, a sort of a demonic figure called the scapegoat. So the word gets translated as scapegoat, but the reason why there's a footnote there is because in Hebrew, the word literally just says Azazel. So it's an actual noun, a proper noun, a being.

So if you continue this, it says, Aaron shall bring the goat whose lot falls to the Lord, go up a little bit, go up, whose lot falls to the Lord and sacrifice it for a sin offering. But the goat chosen by the lot as the scapegoat shall be presented alive before the Lord to be used for the making atonement by sending it into the wilderness as a scapegoat." So the one that's chosen to to be the sin offering gets let go and the unblemished one gets slaughtered. And that, a lot of people have pointed out, not just me have pointed this out, that looks like what's going on in the scene of Jesus and Barabbas. So it's a perfect, it's a coincidence

and symbolism or the connotation could be that it's made, the story is made to match. Yeah, yeah, they're sort of like mixing, like I'm not saying that it didn't happen that it wasn't a trial, maybe there was another character involved, but I think the writers are drawn from the Old Testament to make the New Testament, and this is actually common typology, they call it. For example, like Jesus carrying his own cross to his own death is analogous to Isaac in the Old Testament carrying his wood because he's the sin offering that Abraham sacrifices only son. So Abraham is a picture of the father sacrificing his only begotten. So Abraham is a picture of the father sacrificing his only begotten son.

Isaac is a picture of Christ carrying his wood to his own death. But there's also, and this is where it makes sense to me too looking at that story. Throughout human history, anything, not just religion or whatever, history repeats itself in different forms. It really does.

So I could see something like that being that way. I have a couple of tangents within this topic I wanna go into. And real quick, Alexander the Great is a real person who really lived and did a bunch of crazy stuff. But he gets the same birth narrative as Dionysus, because Dionysus, his original birth was, Zeus comes in the form of a dragon

and impregnates Persephone. In the Alexander romance, in the Alexander romance, Zeus, Amon, Amon Zeus, comes in the form of a dragon and impregnates Olympias, gives birth to Alexander. And then later, Augustus- But not his father who was murdered? Not Philip.

So he's like a Joseph. In this story, Philip is not the father. He's like a Joseph. He's the son of Zeus.. So he's like a Joseph. In this story, Philip is not the father. He's like a Joseph. He's the son of Zeus. Yeah, he's like a Joseph, exactly. Yeah, exactly. He's not the real father. He just raises him.

Later on, in Suetonius' works, Augustus gets the same exact birth narrative as Alexander and Dionysus both get, where a serpent comes and impregnates serpant Olivia Olivia and gives birth to Augustus now the reason why I brought that up is because This is how people wrote stuff in the ancient world It doesn't mean Jesus didn't exist or it's all made up just means they're right This is how they write their stories back then they do mimics of other things. They they rewrite things They they do like

DLCs of stuff like there's redoing things. But anyway things. They do like DLCs of stuff. Like there's redoing things. But anyway, that cut you off. No, no, all good, all good. That's good context. What I was saying is we'll come back to, I have other questions around the Council of Nicaea and some other things there.

We'll come back to that. But because we've been honing in on like the story of Jesus and the death so much right now. Let's start with this. What was the history of crucifixion and how common of a practice had that been within the Roman Empire at that time versus other ways of people being put to death? During the great persecution you're talking about?

No, no, like during when Jesus was crucified. Oh, you're talking about when Jesus, oh, crucifixion. Yeah. Oh, that's what the Romans were doing. This is like well documented that the Romans used crucifixion for the worst outlaws. So they wouldn't crucify their own Roman citizens unless it was something horrible. I don't know, I can't think of any on the top of my head. Wasn't Jesus technically a

Roman citizen? No, no, Paul was. Wait, why? All right, explain that. Paul was living in the Roman Empire. Yeah, Paul. Well, here's the okay. Good question. People don't this is a lot of people don't know this. I've never heard this explained. The Roman Empire has senatorial provinces and they have imperial provinces. The senatorial provinces are Italy, Greece, Carthage, and I think North Africa. And they're scrunched in the Mediterranean. And those are the original, those are the senatorial provinces. There's more rights there. Meaning they have representatives.

There's more representatives. They have more rights. They have more, they get more funding all that stuff and then in the outskirts, which is Judea which is Asia Minor which is The outskirts they're like Puerto Rico it's exactly they're there they're the imperial provinces So they're still proud they still claim that land as part of the Roman Empire, but it's it's the imperial We got took over his lands got lands. They're not our people. Now you could have citizenship in an imperial province,

but it was hard to get it. Way harder to get it. So the Judeans were not necessarily, like their religions aren't legalized, and part of the, they're not recognized as the Roman imperial religion, but they're allowed to do it. They don't want problems.

They're not trying to like make people do things they don't wanna do. They want people to be happy. So they just want you to pay your taxes and honor Caesar and just do it, stay out of everyone else's way. But you were saying their own Roman citizens, they wouldn't crucify.

They wouldn't crucify. Crucifixion is so horrible that they would do it as a way to deter people from doing whatever the person got crucified for. And so people who were, like, religious fanatics who were, like, claiming to, like, take down the Roman Empire through their divine power, that's a problem. That needs to be stopped. And not only does it need to be stopped, we need to make a message for anyone who tries

to do this, that they'll be crucified, and they'll, they're gonna have a horrible, uh, the worst death you can imagine all day long, you're just dying slowly. Now how would, but there's multiple ways they would do it. One would be they would nail people in, the other way would be they would literally tie their arms and it would take days I think to die, right? Yeah.

So did they just do both of those indiscriminately? I'm sure it depended on where you were and who's doing it. Got it. Because this is not easy to do. Right. So imagine trying to do this to somebody. I couldn't do it. So like you gotta think, so whoever's gotta do this,

do they want it, do they want it to draw it out or do they want to just get it over with? Right. So my guess is depending on where you're at, who's doing it, it probably was different everywhere. Okay. There probably was a different way of doing it. And there might have been someone

who just didn't want to do crucifixion. So they just wanted to do a quick, I don't know, stab or something. Yeah. The second big question I had here is kind of at the center of what we're talking about today, just with you and your perspective and your own journey and like how you're looking at all this and evaluating it. But like based on all your research and what you think, who was Jesus like to you? So, like if we just accept Jesus of Nazareth is a real person and like the bare minimum of what I think he was doing.

So I've been to Israel, I spent a whole month there, and I was fascinated by the Galilee where Jesus grew up. I was fascinated about how Hellenized it was. How, how, yeah, how, how much they had stadiums there, they have theaters there, they have temples to greet gods everywhere. There was a temple built to, dedicated to Augustus, right, right before, right around the time Jesus was alive, probably like the first century BC, that would have been like 30 minutes from him like in Nazareth right there there's a temple of Pan there Pan the god Pan two M's PAN two M's oh Pam he's not getting the joke what's that remember

from step brothers when he's like are are you saying Pam or Pam? Oh yeah, oh I just remember that now. Pam. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's funny. Damn it. So they have a- Right over his head. Yeah, yeah, it went right over me. I thought it was like Pam Anderson or something. I was like, what? Pam? No. Anyways, no.

So it's very Hellenized. In comparison, when I went to Jerusalem, not Hellenized, not as Hellenized, very more traditional, very more Jewish. But in, you know, Jewish. But in the North, it was way more Romanized and Hellenized especially in that period, looking at the research and when the theaters were built and it seems to be projects of Herod.

Herod the Great in the first century BC built all these building projects all over Israel and completely got the place up to par with Roman standards at the time. Did a great job. Jesus would have grew up in that. Yes. So he would have been what Seferus is the big city hub for where Nazareth is. So he would have been, you're saying he would have been in some ways culturally Hellenized. Yeah so think about like this New Jersey right now with Hoboken, New York City is the

big city, right? Right. That's where everyone goes to go do stuff. Nazareth would be like Hoboken and New York City would be like Sepphoris, the big city. Walking distance too. Yeah. So you can literally walk from Nazareth to Sepphoris, it's the same general area. Yeah.

There's literally two hills on the same area. So you would walk from one hill to the next hill, go to Seferus, where the big market is, where the theater is, where the columns are, where the governor would be. And Jesus would have probably been there during a time where there's plays going on. And I think he was educated enough to know what the cultural milieu was. He was able to read the times and understand what was going on. And that's why I think Jesus, a lot of the, so there's this, they call it the Q theory. And basically what it is, is they take the three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke,

and they look for the common, like what are those three having common? Can you tell people what synoptic means? Synoptic is the first three gospels besides John. So Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Now, Matthew, Mark, and Luke have a lot of information in common, in fact, a lot of it's word for word the same in those three gospels. So what people have come, scholars have theorized

is that there was a proto-gospel called Q, they just named it Q, it means source in German, Quell or whatever, and this the source for the Gospels that came before Mark and it was just basically sayings. Jesus says this, Jesus says this, and Jesus says this. And if we look at those sayings that all these three Gospels have in common, you get a Jesus who is concerned about his fellow Jews being too dogmatic and not living with reason and just being like common sense. For example, one of the phrases that you get in Q is, you know, if your animal falls into

a ditch during the Sabbath, are you gonna leave it in the ditch because you can't work on the Sabbath? You're gonna get that animal out. You're gonna save that animal's life because it's gonna have a better outcome. That's reason. Well, Jewish law says that you can't get your animal out of a ditch if it falls during a Sabbath.

You have to wait till the next sunrise. So the animal might die in the ditch. You might lose the animal. Jesus seemed to have this attitude where he was trying to like combat illogical dogma that he was seeing in his circles of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. And I think he was trying to reform his religion to be more worldly, to also to stop thinking in terms of bloodline and Abraham this and 12 tribes that, think of more of a spiritual-

Even though he came from one. Even though he came from one. But I think he wanted people to think more spiritually instead of physically. Get off of the material things and think more spiritual. That seems to be his, from what I gathered, Get off of the material things and think more spiritual. That seems to be his, from what I gathered, his reformation of Judaism at the time period. So, and correct me if I'm wrong here,

are you saying he's like a prophetic type figure? That's what a lot of the, I mean, so I do think that there might be some truth to him calling, like that's, like, one of the things that they credit him for is prophesying that the temple is going to fall. Like, one of the things Jesus says in the sources, in the gospels, is that some, there will be no stones here standing when the Lord comes. Like meaning the temple is gonna be destroyed

and not a single stone will be standing. Now the reason why I think that that might be something he actually said is because it's technically not true. There technically is a few stones still standing from the old temple. That's what the Wailing Wall is. Now some people dispute this. Some people dispute this. They know the Wailing Wall, that wasn't standing from the temple, from the old temple. That's what the Wailing Wall is. Now some people dispute this. Some people dispute this as they know the Wailing Wall,

that wasn't part of the temple. Most people think it was, which means- Can't they carbon date that too? Yeah, they know it was built by Herod. They just think that that part, for some reason, is different, I don't know why. I'm just making sure people know, I understand that people do debate this.

But most people agree that part of the temple I'm just making sure people know, I understand that people do debate this. But most people agree that part of the temple is that wailing wall that Jews today go and they, you know, they wail at the wall. I was there actually, I stopped by that spot, it was interesting. But if Jesus didn't say that, why would you make that up? Why would you write in the mouth of Jesus, oh, no stone will be standing, and there's a few stones standing? Yeah.

Unless he did say that, and he just was close to the point where the temple does get destroyed, so they might have been like blown away that this guy was predicted the temple would fall, which also would explain why the Gospels get written right after the Temple Falls. So the first Gospel of Mark is written right after 70 AD, which might have been a response to going, oh shit, Jesus predicted this was gonna happen, and it did. And that detail about the rocks, they didn't really care about it. There was enough who's correct enough that they just put it in the Gospels. That's my thought. Yeah, close enough, right? It's all there. Another one that I think he actually did say is that Jesus tells his disciples, some of you will be standing, some of you standing here today

will not taste death before the Son of Man comes returning in his glory. I think we should pull that one up so I can get that one right. Just do, Jesus, some of you will not taste death. Okay. Matthew 16.28. Yeah. Okay. So, truly I tell you, some who are standing... Wait, what just happened? Go back. Go back. Yeah. Yeah, that's it right there. That's it. That's right. This is what we want. Yeah, those are all those reverses. Truly, I tell you, who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming into his kingdom. Now, 2000 years have gone by. That's a bar. 2000, it's a cool bar. Yeah. 2000 years have now gone by, and is there anyone still alive from Jesus's time? That I'm aware of? No. Exactly. So this is technically a failed prophecy in a way, which makes me think he did say this.

Well, no, because hold on a minute. Here would be the divine counterpoint. Sure. If he's referring to himself and saying that this is like some greater symbolism for his resurrection, which says that happened. That's what people say. That you were spot on. That's exactly how they were. I'm not saying that's right.

No, I'm not saying, I'm not even saying it's a bad counter. I think that's possible. But I do think they could have been a little more clear on that. Like, some of you guys, cause like, why would you even, I'm gonna resurrect. There's a lot that could have been more clear here's my problem with that if he's about to die in the next couple days why would

anyone else die before him so it's just like that's just a give me that's just like given that they're going to be all going to be there when he comes back from his resurrection so this makes me that again so if you were to die why would anyone if he's so jesus is telling his parables in the last couple years his ministry Yeah, he's 30 to 33. Yeah, we missed him from 13. Yeah 30 so he's only he's telling people about his death coming and If he's if he really if this is really about his resurrection Then why would anyone even taste that to begin with they're all gonna be alive still is part of it though

Like he couldn't be so obvious about it because then he you know It wouldn't happen because they wouldn't give him what he wants. They wouldn't, you know what I mean? Like if he ran around and said it simply, like he's standing here, I'm Jesus for a minute, right? You're not to be confused. But he's standing here talking to these people in a crowd and saying, this regime is going to kill me in approximately three years. You know, I'm gonna be crucified, it's gonna be terrible, everyone's gonna watch, and then three days later, boom, shock-a-lacka, I'm coming out of this fucking cave,

son of man's alive, I'm God. If he did that, maybe they wouldn't then make that happen. Whereas if he kind of speaks in like, you know, rhythms and rhymes here, like, yo, some shit's gonna go down, whatever, yada yada, then punches Pilate, falls right into his plan, he does the crucifixion, he goes into the cave, he's dead, now he comes out alive, boom, everyone's happy.

So maybe he, what I'm saying is, he's being actually mysterious for the sake of being mysterious so that the prophecy could come true. That's one way to look at it. Wow. But I do think, I think the reading, I think the simple reading on this

is he actually is saying, when I come, coming in his kingdom is of specific, like in Revelation, at the end of Revelation, it talks about the New Jerusalem, the kingdom of heaven being ushered on earth. That's at the end of the world. So if you, if you kind of align this with what's being said in Revelation, all of a sudden you're, it looks like he's talking about at the end of the day, so he's basically telling his followers, I'm gonna go away for a little while, but before you even, all of you die, the world's gonna end, and I'm gonna come in my kingdom. That's what it looks like to me.

Which makes me think he did say this, because why would you add that in there, knowing, why would you keep this in there, knowing that the world didn't end and the world's still going on? Yeah, that part's throwing me off. That's why I think he actually said something like this. You know what I mean?

Because it's kind of a little bit embarrassing, not like that bad. Yeah, it could be like- It's not that horrible, but it almost looks like it's pointless to keep that in there. It could be like a metaphorical though. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. Because like, I die for three days and that's like effectively, metaphorically, the world ending because sin is one, but then boom, I come back, y'all are forgiven, I'm the gangster. And now you're forgiven. Yeah. That would be the way around. I think that's the best explanation of the other way. Got it. You're very fair. I like how you present things. You're very fair about things. You have your opinions,

but it's based on studying every side of it, which is pretty cool. And I think, you know, especially, you know, how hard better than I do, how hard these conversations are, because you're you're talking about things that people clutch their whole meaning of life onto, right? And you know, people don't want to be like, well, if that's not true, then does the whole thing fall down? But there's so much we don't know. And if you're going to have these conversations, it should be done in a way where there's nuance and where there's, you know, all right, well, what is the other history of other religions or other teachings or beliefs that could tie

into this and maybe make more sense? Like to me, it should be very scientific in actual science, not the way it's done these days in some ways. You know what I mean? And that's definitely useful. But going back to the Council of Nicaea, because there was a lot there that we got off. Was this also where, like, obviously the Catholic Church, we know it is a male dominated church. They have nuns, but they're there to cook the food. No offense. But you know, like they made it all about the men doing stuff. Is that how Jesus really wanted it? Or is that

was that edited? I think so. I think it was because I mean, like going off the Gospels, for example, you have Martha and Mary and a bunch of women around them. They're anointing his feet and they're deciding on what oils are being used. People are being pissed about it. And he's defending them over the guys. He comes off as very egalitarian and allowing women and men to have certain, have high roles in his ministry. Also, you have, in some of these early Christian groups, there was women in the church who were chosen to be the Sybil voice, the prophetesses. There was a group called the Montanists. And they had the leaders named Montanists. And he was the one who baptized Tertullian, who's called the father of Western Christianity,

Latin Christianity. So this was a big deal. Montanists movement though, was led by a group of women who were like leading the church. Like they had high roles in early, for second century, third century, first three centuries before the Constantine Roman era, women had high places in the church.

It's not until the Romans, like I think the Romans didn't like that. So I think when you get to, you know, past post-Council in ICO, when the church is now a Roman entity, that sort of gets cut by the wayside. And then that whole idea is not. There's another story about Valentinus

that I talked about earlier. His successor, his name was Marcus, he's called Marcus the Magus. And his ministry, he changes the name from Valentinians to Marcosians, and he takes his ministry to France, and he becomes like the first real church in France in the second century. But his ministry was also ran by women.

He also had women that were, and their role in the church was to be the oracle, was to get the visions from Christ and tell them what Christ is saying and he got caught according to hipolytus he got caught putting psychedelic drugs in the eucharist and giving it to women yeah what kind of drugs we talk it says a purple drug i can show this to you too if you want to pull pull it up let's pull it up so type in we're talking H-I-P-P. This is going to be fascinating. It was H-I-P-P-O-L-Y-T-U-S. And then it says um, Against Heresies and then Marcus M-A-R-K-U-S.

It should come right up as New Advent the website. New advent? Yeah. All right let's pull the window over. H-I-P-P-O-L-Y-T-U-S. Okay so reputation, Hippolytusus that's the first one I think okay you want to read this so yeah I'll read it for you can you just do a word search and type in Marcus and a are there it is yeah keep going down that's up Marcus refuted by irony oh is this irony yeah is this Irenaeus? Yeah, there it is. Here it is. Okay, cool. So, look at this. A certain other teacher among them, Marcus, an adept in sorcery, carrying on operations by sleight of hand and partly by demons. This is a church,

this is a saint that's writing this. Saint Hippolytus is writing this. So this is an official- We've got a lot of keywords in here. This is an official church text. Okay. And this is from the late second century. And he says, "'Partly by sleight of hand, partly by demons,

"'deceive many from time to time. "'This heretic alleged that they're resided "'in the mightiest power from invisible "'and unnameable places, and very often taking the cup, as if offering the Eucharistic prayer and prolonging it to a greater length than usual, the word of invocation, he would cause the appearance of a purple and sometimes red mixture so that his dupes imagined there be grace descended and communicated that to the potion of a blood-red potency The knave however at the same at the time succeeded in escaping detection from many

But now being convicted of the imposture He will be forced to desist from it for infusing secretly into the mixture some drug That possessed the power of imparting such a color as alluded to above uttering for a considerable time nonsensical expressions yeah so they're tripping out right yeah he was in the habit of waiting for an expectation for the drug obtaining a supply of moisture might be dissolved and being intermingled with the potion might impart to the color this sounds like GHB psilocybin. Yeah, yeah, and if you, there's a whole, people can read this

on their own, but like the next paragraph it says, Marcus infusing the drug mixture into a smaller cup was in the habit of delivering it to a woman to offer a Eucharistic prayer while he himself stood by and held in his hand another chalice larger than that. So he's like doing a sleight of hand. And basically this some of the Psalms read the whole thing. He basically says that these women were tripping on this drug and having getting prophecies from it. And he was like reporting the prophecies to the church and then he got caught. So he became a heretic. But it turns out that his group called the Marcosians are responsible for spreading Christianity

into Europe, into France. So it was worth it. So it was worth it. His job was done, even though he got caught. So he took an idea that he viewed his truth, decided to spice it up a little bit to create some lies to spread it so that the original truth could actually be spread,

but it's now gonna be sprinkled in some stuff that maybe isn't so true that it's gonna cause the problem of muddy the waters moving forward. Yeah, he's like an ominous, he's like an omin Hillman of like, okay, like putting purple drugs, let me tell you,

putting purple drugs into the Ukraine. It sounds like something he would do. Let me tell you about the purple drugs. He's obsessed with it. By the way, the purple, the burning purple thing, it's kind of made up. about the purple drug. He's obsessed with it. By the way, the burning purple thing, it's kind of made up. The burning purple thing? The Ammon Hillman's theory about the burning purple.

Like he always talks about burning purple. Yeah, can you explain the theory to people and then explain why it's made up? This is one of the sources that he points to, but there's a bunch of sources all throughout the, everywhere, that mentions once in a while, you get like, the priest might have purple stained lips or something but what's one source or there might be another source that says if you if you burn the Murex shells be burn the purple

it has medicinal properties to it so Ammon Hillman takes this and runs with it and says that like there's this drug called burning purple that everyone in antiquity was using. And it's like completely, and then he kept, he was telling people that Karl Ruck, Karl Ruck's a great scholar. He agrees with me on this. He completely backs you up on this.

We asked Karl Ruck, what are your thoughts on the burning purple? He goes, what? He didn't even know what it was. So I'm in this full of shit, dude. He's full of shit. He's 75% fascinating, 25% just full of shit. There's a lot going on there. Yeah. Whatever, whatever that is, but interesting guy to listen to talk. That's one of the sources he likes to point to. Yeah. Yeah.

The other one is the Borberites. The Borberites? Yeah, there's this other group called the Borberites. This is another one Alex mentioned. And they're affiliated with a group called the Nicolaitans that are mentioned in Revelation. And they got accused of eating fetuses in their Christian rituals. Yes, Epiphanius says this in the 300s, he writes about this. Eating fetuses. Eating fetuses and having orgies where the men would give up their wives to other men and they would trade, they would do like swing your stuff. And then he says that they have their own gospel called the greater questions of Mary.

And in this gospel, Jesus comes to Mary and says, unless you drink my semen and eat my flesh, you cannot get to the kingdom of heaven. And then she falls to the ground and passes out because she's like, what? This is what it says. This is what it- Wait, and eat my flesh? Eat my flesh and drink my,

it's that the word they use in Greek is like a mission. Right. Which is like semen. Yeah. And he says, that is the Eucharist. That is, in order to get to the kingdom of heaven, you have to do this. And she falls to the ground, he picks her up and goes, why are you of such little faith?

And it's like- How about a blow job? Yeah, Epiphanius, so Saint Epiphanius, who's writing in the fourth century, is reading about this and going, these are fucking heretics, dude. These are the worst heretics I've ever seen. That's what he said.

Or Jesus was a G. Yeah, or maybe. Ammon Hillen thinks this is a true story. Of course he does. It's a fourth century source. Of course he does. So you gotta take it with a grain of salt. Epiphanius, there are no sources that mention this

before the fourth century. So you gotta go, is Epiphanious just trying to, uh, you know how people today will be like, Oh, Hillary Clinton eats babies. That's probably what was going on with these people. That's, you know what? I didn't even want to say it to draw attention to it, but that is exactly the example that was going through my head. Yeah. That's why, so let's, let's take someone who's already corrupt or already bad or in this case, not, you know.

Maybe, maybe they were doing some shit. Let's make them the worst you could possibly be. It's like, this is why we can't have nice things. That's what most scholars say about the borbrates. They think that they might've been real, but the details that are given by Epiphanius might be over done. I got you. Like they're just trying to like, trying to bad mouth them. I got you. You know, what, what about like,

cause we got in this talking about the, I guess, malatization. That's not a word, but mass male, malifying masculinity, masculinity of, of the churches it became. But you know, there's talk that one of the banned gospels is, talking some evidence of it, it appears that one of the banned gospels, for example, is Mary Magdalene. The Gospel of Mary, yeah. That's a great text, by the way. Yeah, so what's the story there? When was that discovered and what evidence do we have of what's being said in there as a narrative being true?

That particular text is not actually part of the non-commodity scriptures. It's part of a different collection of texts they found. I forgot where they found that one, but I think it's dated to the second century. And in that particular text, Mary is trying to tell the other disciples that Jesus gave her secret wisdom that no one else has, and they're all doubting her. And I think it's Peter who comes to her, at the end, he comes to her aid and says, who are you guys to judge her?

If Jesus did give her the secret knowledge, then we should take this very seriously. And then it abruptly cuts off, because we lost the, it's a... all we have is fragments of it. So, but in this very fascinating passage where Jesus is saying like to Mary, oh, she goes, what is sin? He says there there is no sin. You just call it sin. It's a very, very weird, strange, doctrinal stuff going on in this. It's very, very gnostic. It's very hippie. Yeah, very gnostic. But like, basically, the whole point of the story is that Mary was given this secret wisdom that no one else has about the Kingdom of Heaven. And if you want to know

about it, read this gospel, as basically what it's at. Is there, whether it be in this gospel or in other things, this is a question I always ask people, look at this stuff, like, is there evidence to point to a relationship between the two? Like, I mean, you just pointed one out, very extreme example, but that's what I'm saying, like, like Jesus actually having a relationship with a woman, because at some point, you know, the church decided to teach, I guess decide, that's an interesting word to put there, but teach that like, Jesus was sacred,

he came from the Virgin Mary, he did not have take a partner on this earth or whatever, like he's divine, he's above us. And yet I've never fully grasped that because I'm like, okay, if you go with the narrative that he's the son of God, let's play with that for a second. What would be so bad about him having a child? Not even that, but before that, having a wife or a companion here on earth. Like, what's...

I don't understand. I don't see the problem with it either. I don't see any problem with it. But I do think in Matthew and Luke, and I think John too, there's the depiction of Mary, and I think in one of the verses is Martha, anointing his feet with oil, and wiping off the oil with her hair, it's a very intimate scene.

Yes. And you can almost see like, are they trying to tell us something here? Was there something going on? Why Mary Magdalene? Why is she the one brought up all the time? Almost like, it's almost like there's like an underlying narrative that's not necessarily like in your face, but it's in the back, it's in the background of the Gospels that Mary Magdalene and Jesus had something going on. Yes. You almost get that vibe from, from reading all the Gospels. Isn't there. Isn't there one of them where he says, where he doesn't use the word wife, but he refers to her? As a woman, yeah.

As his companion, there's another word there. Yeah, that I forgot, but I think you might be right about that. But you just made me think of something else, though. Are you familiar with the disciple who Jesus loved? Wait, what? Look up, the disciple who Jesus loved? Wait, what? Look up the disciple whom Jesus loved. It's in the Gospel of John. It's only in John. That's it. And go to images. Now look at all these images. Look at there's a little young boy, like a young kid, hanging on the shoulder of Jesus. And look, if you

look at all the images, even going back to antiquity, this is a very common theme. Oh, yeah. Isn't this part of the theory where they say that when they re-drew this, re-wrote this, however you want to put it, with this history, it's supposed to be a symbol that Mary Magdalene was actually one of the disciples and they just made her a man here. That...no, I don't know about that, but in John's gospel, only in John's gospel, they're constantly referring to this disciple whom Jesus loved. It doesn't even say his name. But it depicts him in John as literally hanging on Jesus's shoulder and sleeping and napping on him and like being like laying on him. Like, like, like what? Yeah. It's very, very intimate, very strange. But kind of homoerotic in a weird

way. Yeah. But it's, it's only in John. Yeah. And now in Greco-Roman, in the Greco-Roman world, there was this tradition of the teacher and the student being intimate like that. Socrates and Elkabiotes was like this. And the sources about Socrates and Plato, they talk about Elkabiotes and Socrates being like lovers. So I don't know if John's Gospel, as we pointed out earlier... But it's only in John's. Only in John's. And by the way, John's Gospel is the Dionysian Gospel. It's the most Greco-Roman out of all of them. Interesting. And it has this tradition in there. It's almost like... This could be another

Scorsese example thing. It's almost like giving a nod to the people in Greco-Rome who had these traditions of this like teacher beloved. They call him beloved. That's an unfortunate nod, but I see where you're going with that. And Socrates had his beloved, who was Alcabite, and they're saying Jesus had a beloved student. And then most scholars think that's John. That John is young in John's gospel. He's telling the story about himself in a weird way. When approximately did he write? Did John write it? Was that after the temple? John is the last gospel. Most scholars think John's the last gospel, probably around the 110s or something, maybe even 120s. Oh, so he would have been... There are some who think 90. There are

some people... So he would have been old. More conservative scholars will say, Mark is 70, Matthew and Mark are in the 80s and John in the 90s. He would have been old. He would have been super old. Okay. And then there are others who think John didn't even write the gospel, but they're attributing it to him. What did they do? I don't think I've ever asked this before.

Every time we talk about these topics, I think of like new things like common sense type, like, well, how would this have worked or whatever? But when the gospels were written, you know, on the page, like literally like that, it's not like they had a computer or anything. Right, it's on papyri. What did they do with the gospels?

Like, John finishes the gospel. Yeah. What happens to it? So what they would do is they would have a scribe copy them in a library. And there'd be a copy that would stay in Alexandria's library. There'd be a copy sent to the Antioch Library. There'd be a copy sent to. Antioch library, there'd be a copy sent to, and they

would just start making copies. And they would just start delivering them to different churches, different libraries, immediately. That's how you preserve text. That's how it's all about. One person writes it, give it over to the scribes, they copy it and they send it out. But with such a small percentage of the empire, or you could even say the earth at that point actually, when the gospels are written, actually ascribing

or believing in Christianity, for example, those texts aren't nearly as important until later when the following grows and people are going and visiting the libraries and they're like, oh shit, here it is, here's the record. And it suddenly takes on a life of its own. Meaning I could write, I'm not an author at all. I haven't written a book, but I could write a book right now that little do I know is a fucking thriller and it's going to be like the next great Gatsby or

something. And at first I sell it on my own on Amazon, you know, it does fucking 10,000 copies or something, but it grows a cult following. And then four years from now, now it has a hundred thousand people who have read it and then a million ten years from now and Suddenly like now people are like I got to get to the original thing that was written down because that shit's a legend Okay. Yeah, and that's kind of how the Gospels take on the life of its own Yeah, because at the time at the at the time where Christianity starts to dominate and become popularized time when Christianity starts to dominate and become popularized, like you mentioned, centuries have gone by and the original context is not really known unless you just go... you're basically appealing to the church to tell you what the context is. And they're going to go through

what their doctrines are, what their dogma is. So they're going to give you a trinitarian, they're going to give you... they're going to filter it through their dogmas. And then when you actually take each gospel, one individual by itself, and stop trying to unify them, you'll see that each gospel has a different way of telling the story, and they're not necessarily all aligned. All right, well, we've started referring to it already, even going with like the Gospel of Mary, but there's other banned gospels as well. You've studied all the ones that are available. Can you just go into the history of

when some of the notable ones were written and why they were banned and what the process was there such that they didn't make it into the lexicon? So there's different apocalypses. Like the Apocalypse of John is a famous one that was central to like the Sethians and other different Gnostic groups that were around in Alexandria and stuff like that. And in this one, the reason why this one gets so banned so quickly and heretical is because in this particular source, you have a demiurge who creates the world and the world is evil and this is what we're all trapped in this. We're all souls trapped in our bodies. And so like this is totally diverting from what what's in the Gospels There's no demiurge in the Gospels. Now the term demiurge is

Well known at this time in Platonism because Plato's Timaeus Calls the Creator the word demiurge demiurgos in Greek means creator. So this concept of an evil creator is floating around in early Christianity. And Marcion was one of the people who had a similar idea. But this particular one is like, there's this idea that they call him Yaldabaoth. It's really Yahweh.

It's got Yah, maybe because they throw Yah in the front, it's the same. But it him Yaldaboeth. It's really Yahweh. It's got Yah, maybe because they throw Yah in front, it's the same, but it says Yaldaboeth. And it's the God, basically it's the God of the Old Testament according to these people. And, but like for some reason, this God thinks he's in charge of everything. He thinks he's the only God there is, but he's mistaken. And really, he's actually subordinate to other gods that are above him, including one of them being Sophia, which means wisdom in Greek. So that's the Apocalypse of John,

is this text that I'm talking about. It's probably a second century text. I wouldn't push it later than that or earlier than that. Why do you say it like that? That's when the second century is when the Gospels I wouldn't push it later than that or earlier than that. Why do you say it like... That's when the second century is when the Gospels are being written everywhere. All different Gospels, it's an explosion of different Gospels being written. Christianity is growing.

Christianity is in its like creative early days. And so, Alexandria was an interesting place where you have a mixture of Pauline Christians and Christians that were considered Gnostic. And they're all living together and thriving together. They don't really hate each other yet. But those people in those times are taken seriously. They're not like, whoever wrote the Apocalypse of John probably was writing to a big audience of people that would read that stuff. He probably didn't think, oh, this is gonna

shake some feathers. He probably thought that Christians believe this stuff. It's just that it's so wildly diverted from what you get in the synoptic Gospels, and it's so complex. The Demiurge and the Ions and Sophia, it's so complex the Demiurge and the ions and Sophia it's so it's too much for the average person to follow. Yeah. So you can see why it falls away but at the same time I don't think I think those when we call these when we look back and say that's heretical that was wrong that was that's not a part of the canon we're doing it in hindsight. So at the time when this stuff gets written, it's being written for Christian audiences. There still are,

even all the way through the fifth century, sixth century, there were still like the Gospel of Philip and the Gospel of Peter were still like floating around in Christian circles. It just was never officially included in the biblical canon ever. But were there people that were like this can't be in there? Meaning like the gatekeepers who were like this can't be in there because of... Yeah, like you start like origin is one of the big ones who start getting into like which books are good, which ones are bad. The Gospel of Thomas, origin hates it. Why did they?

He just thought it wasn't aligned with the core teachings that he believed in. Like the Holy Trinity type deal, stuff like that. No, because Origen wasn't a Trinitarian. This was before that. But he thought that the message that Thomas was given was Thomas has a very docetist Jesus, very shadowy figure.

It's not focused on the resurrection and the death and resurrection. It's only focused on just wisdom sayings of Jesus. Origin was like, no, this matters. The deaths and resurrection, the physical appearance of Jesus matters. Where Thomas wasn't really concerned with that. But some people think Thomas is the oldest.

There are some people who think Thomas was like 60 AD. Based on? Based on just how primitive it sounds. When you go through Thomas, it does come off as like very primitive, very unaware of later stuff. Oh, of actual historical events, like the temple falling or something like that. Yeah, it doesn't mention the temple falling. so that's another reason why I can't believe that was a well well said because that's one of the reasons why people

Try to put Thomas in the beginning It's just it just shows no knowledge of like the greater picture what happens because it's so weird like if you if you're saying primitive and you're comparing like 60 AD like 75 AD or something like that, to me it would probably be so hard to distinguish that because that's only like 15 years. The temple of falling is a big deal. But historical record. It's a world shattering difference. It's like before and after 9 11. And took the words out of an opera. Changes that the world has changed after that. It's like when you read something that's from 08 versus something from 98, you know, yeah. Yeah. Okay, so you're going that's that's that's one of the reasons why some people think Thomas is earlier. I'm not sure I'm not sold on that. I think might be it might be just be like second century or something. What about like the Nephilim and stuff like that? Have you studied that extensively as well? Naflom in the word Hebrew, Nafl can mean to fall, and it also can be translated as giants. So there's different translations where you get both.

Some of them call them giants, some of them call them fallen ones. But either way, it seems to be some sort of variation of the myth of the Titans or the... of the Anunnaki and going back to Babylonian myths, where there's this like race of demigods that were before humans, that like... that sort of lived on Earth before us and they built megalithic structures. And in a lot of ways, the ancients were using this stuff to Figure out how do these giant megalithic? Structures get here. Well, maybe giants put them here. That's how some people would explain some of this stuff

But the Bible has their own version of this which is the Nephilim you get in Genesis and it says like in those days the Nephilim ruled the world and they did this and they made with the sons of man and daughters of men I mean and so like it's their way of sort of Explaining how things got to be how they are like there was a race of people that came before us the Greeks talk about the Titans the Titans were in charge before Zeus overthrew them. And it just seems to be to me, and my personal thoughts on that is I think that's,

the Bible is sort of riffing off that worldview in their own way. So like fallen ones or no fall in Hebrew means to fall. And then it also could mean giants. That's why you get both translations. So another like stylistic interpretation, if you will. Yeah, it's interesting because like they're in Genesis, but then they're not given any more attention after that. Like the giant, in this day, the giants were ruling, and it's like,

okay. And then like the rest of the whole Bible, they never talk about it. Don't worry about it. Yeah, it's almost like why they even pivoted, why even have it in there. But it also, it also highlights that the Bible, the old Genesis, for example, is very, it's what it is. It's bits of pieces being put together into one source. So like that gets brought, somehow that made it in the cut. Yeah. And who knows where that even came from? Probably came from something else.

You know, I think the Bible has a lot of that going on. It's very splintered. Like there's parts of the Bible that allude to polytheism. Job, for example. In the book of Job, you have Yahweh and his counsel, and the 70 sons of God are there. And then number 70 again. Yep.

The 70 sons of God, which is the sons of Elohim, and ben Elohim, which means sons of the gods, sons and literally means sons of the gods. And then Satan's also there too. And it says, and then this hasatan, the opposer, which that's what it means in Hebrew. Then the opposer came and they start talking about Job. But like that to me, I don't know how you describe that other than polytheism. You have a bunch of sons of the gods and then the one... I see that. You know, he's like Zeus. He's like, in the same way in Greek mythology, the gods weren't all equal. Zeus was the head Huncho. But like, Zeus had all his sons and they're allancho. But like, Zeus had all his sons, and they're all

gods too. So like, I think Job is reflecting an earlier Israelite theology that later gets sort of like, you know. It's kind of wild though, because you have all these words written, and then you had people early on amalgamate them and say, this is what it means. Therefore, this is what we teach. And you've highlighted that very well today, all the early wars, if you will, that happened within the church trying to formulate itself. And then you kind of cross, obviously there's things that happen afterwards, Protestant Reformation, all that,

but you cross a real Rubicon with the Council of Nicaea and Christianity becoming the official religion of the greatest empire on earth at the time, where you could almost say that that started where we are to where we are today. But there's so many years between now and then, between 313 AD and where we are in 2025. And Christianity, for better or worse,

has shaped our culture. Like everything in the West, when you look at it, like you have people who obviously don't believe in this or whatever, but the traditions we have, the culture we have, has been shaped by that. And I would argue that a lot of that has been for the good. And even if there's like things that happen along the way that are horrible, where like Galileo.

The Inquisition. Yeah, and shit like that. Like these are terrible things. Like we still have developed out of that fetus, if you will, to formulate this world of innovation and, you know, exchanging ideas and like a lot of good things that humanity has invented. So when you look at Christianity as a whole beyond just like what it believes, do you think it's been a net good? Yeah on society the reason why I think it is because I think Christianity

unlike Islam or or Well, I guess we just Islam or Judaism for example Was able to incorporate a lot of the Greco-Roman elements that made incorporate a lot of the Greco-Roman elements that made Rome and Greece so amazing. So a lot of the Stoic tenants, a lot of the Platonist tenants and stuff like that sort of get adopted into the fold. In the West, they adopt, it's called Thomism. So Latin Christianity, Thomism is Aristotelian logic and Aristotle's philosophy mixed with Christianity. So that's like Catholicism is like core at the core

Aristotle. And the East, the Eastern Orthodox, which is way more mystical doctrine, is based on Plato. And like if you read like Pse pseudo-Dionysius, the Areopagate, he's one of these early Christian, mostly Eastern Orthodox figure who is a Neoplatonist, self-described Neoplatonist, and they backdate him, they say he's a disciple of Paul. But really it's like a fifth century source. But anyways, you get these doctrines of theosis, which is like, you don't become God, like apotheosis does, like Gnostics do. But in Eastern Orthodox tradition,

you can become one with God through a process called theosis. This is a mystical doctrine that's only found in Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Catholicism doesn't have this. So what you get is you get these two different churches. One of them is like Aristotelian, the other one's very Platonist. But the reason why I think that's a net good is because they sort of usher into the world. In the Renaissance, for example, what you get is you get a culture that hasn't forgot where it came from. So you still get all

these great things about Greece and Rome are still influencing the world, whether they like, whether people are even aware of this. I just walked past a building on the way here in New Jersey with beautiful, ionic columns. I know what one you're talking about. Those are ancient Greek columns. And it's like, that is like our standard of beauty.

It's incredible. That the Greeks, pagans handed that down to us. And that's why I think Christianity, even though it, even though it's, people might call it cultural appropriation. I don't know. You know, people say that they're cultural. No, I actually think cultural appropriation could be a good thing in the sense that Christianity brings to the world.

I see what you're saying. A lot of these great things that Greece and Rome had. They didn't forget about it. They didn't just like completely... Because there was this iconoclasm phase happening in the 6th to 9th century AD, where there was a lot of debates on, should we have images in our churches? Imagine if that would have won out and there's no images in churches, how boring Christianity would be. The images, the statues, I think that's beautiful. Yeah, when you walk into a church and you see like, it's right there in front of you,

the full crucifixion or whether it's- And like marble columns, I love that stuff. It's amazing. And I'm glad that that particular brand of Christianity won out and gave us the Renaissance. And the Renaissance was, the reason why they call it Renaissance, a rebirth of art and music and literature. People went back to-

That's what I'm saying, yeah. People went back to ancient Homer, people went back to the Greeks and through the Christian lens obviously, they're all Christians at this point, but they're opening themselves back up to like, what is our roots? And that's why I think at the end of the day Christianity did good as far as allowing itself to be a

vehicle to pass those things down Whereas Islam Islam does not pass down ancient Arabian culture. It doesn't I mean very little like very like basic stuff they're not there they don't have like Like I was reading some pre-islamic Arabian religion stuff, it's pretty fascinating stuff. Islam pretty much just adopts Judeo-Christian thought. Really? Yeah. I don't really know much about this at all. Well, I mean, think about it. You have the angel Gabriel telling Muhammad the Quran. The angel Gabriel is the angel of God of the God of the Old Testament. He's in the book of Daniel. I mean, they still view Jesus as a prophet. Jesus is a prophet. So,

it's like they're taking a different, they're taking this culture and then infusing over this culture and then you end up getting Islam. But like, Islam doesn't necessarily carry this sort of ancient Greco-Roman or ancient Arabian, should I say, traditions with it. It's sort of like killing its old self for a new self. You know what I mean? And just following more modern Arab traditions. Yeah. That includes some stuff.

It includes some of it. Not always positive, by the way, that has lived on. Some of it, some Persian stuff too. Like you can see some of this stuff that you find like Zoroastrianism making its way into Islam You know, there's also like Byzantine legends that get brought in the fold But anyways, the point I was making is like Christianity unlike anything else has this like ability to sort of like use

use its past the past of Greco-Roman culture as like its own thing. Yeah, that was, when I lived in Rome, I used to just walk everywhere and every building, no matter how unknown or non-important historically it might be, the architecture and construction is just so beautiful. It's eclectic, it's rich, but not even ostentatious

in most cases. And I guess, I was looking for that. Like when I came back to America, I'd naturally kind of look for this stuff. And when you walk through New York, obviously way different city than Rome in a lot of ways, but at the base and some of the base buildings and some of the art and architecture design,

you can see that. And it's like, this is built, you know, 2000 years after Rome was. Or something like that. But it's still influencing architecture today. That's right. And so, yeah, like the Christians sort of, they, it's more like, it's not closed off to adopting like ideas that might be considered of, they, it's more like, it's not closed off to adopting,

like, ideas that might be considered pagan or something like that, you know what I mean? Like, for example, when the Christians would take over, there's a letter from Pope Gregory from the sixth century writing to a bishop in London. And there, you know, the Romans are just taking over this London at this point. That's early days in London, yeah. Oh know the Romans are just taking over this London at this point. That's early days in London. Yeah, this is way earlier and the Romans are like moving past London and they're going to more deeper lands where there's the

Celts are living and the Druids are over there. Pagans. Can't have that. Yeah but this is what he says to them. He says, don't kill them or do anything wrong to them. Don't even destroy their temples. Take the idol out. Put a cross in there, sprinkle it with holy water and bless it and make it a church. And this is how this is how the church this is what this is what grew Christianity so fast is their ability to sort of go into other holy spaces, slap across on it, reincorporate it, and it made people happy though. Cause the Druids, the Druids that were,

this is their holy spring or whatever, some waterfall or something, a mountain maybe, some holy spot, some tree that they worship, that was now converted into a church and they thought it had power. It was, they were more likely, I'm sorry, there, there are more likely to continue going there. Even after it got converted. This was part of their playbook. Like Paul,

Paul and Corinthians is telling the Corinthians to go and eat meat sacrifice to idols. Do you want to pull this up? Yeah, please. Paul Corinthians meet sacrifice to idols. That's almost like, maybe I'm to pull this up, yeah, please Paul Corinthians meet sacrifice to idols That's almost like maybe I'm looking at this too simply but it's almost a way of saying like go appreciate the other And where they come from rather than try to exactly rise them So what first Corinthians eight says now about food sacrifice to idols. This is pagan pagan Magical food that was sacrificed to a pagan god. We all possess, by the way, the word is gnosis in Greek. We all possess gnosis, but gnosis puffs up while love builds up.

Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know, but whoever loves God by God. So then about eating food sacrifice, this goes on a random detour, so about the food sacrifice to idols, we know that an idol is nothing at all in the world. There is no God but one, for even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, or indeed there are many gods, many lords, yet for us there is but one God, the Father. From all things came and for whom we live there is one Lord Jesus Christ, blah, blah, blah, blah. Now anyways, what he's telling them is you live in the Roman Empire, because at Paul's time there was like three percent of the empire was Christian, maybe three at the most. 97 percent of the empire is pagan. So don't disrupt the empire. Go out there and be gracious, be

polite, eat the food that's offered to you because it's not gonna do anything to you. It has no power over you. And it basically lays out the blueprint that Pope Gregory picks up on. Go into these places, take the idol out, bless it with holy water, and just convert it into a church. So it's still, it's still, they're still trying to, in a somewhat controlled manner, spread their dogma, but they're trying to do it in a way that they feel is the most respectful. In a way that can contain the beauty of Roman culture as much as possible, without destroying it too much. Yeah, it's a little bit of a, not a perfect example here, but it's a little bit of a Trojan horse. Yeah type

Okay, and this got them through the persecutions and the Diocletian I was reading about the Diocletian persecutions the great persecution one of the one of the Persecutions that he made them do was they had to attend the sacrifices and eat the meat and I don't know if Diocletian knew this, but they're reading Paul and going, Paul says it's okay. Right. So let's do it. And it gets them, it helps them get through these things. It also, it also makes them sort of bulletproof, because like they're not, they don't have anything they can't do anymore. They're just like, they don't, they don't believe in these gods

Those guys have no power over them. So that's like whatever who cares that they worship them and That sort of mentality is why Christianity was able to adapt and thrive and survive throughout the times you know amazing and how much it's grown and Continues to be such a mainstay. Yeah, you were telling me before because your name is Gnostic Conformant online, and when you were first, after you had your first moment where you're like, I don't believe this anymore at your second baptism or whatever, you know, you explain how you were turning to a lot of these early Gnostic Christianity groups and saw a lot in there that you liked and you were looking for something to believe in. But you told me before we got on camera that you're not a Gnostic at this point.

So what do you consider yourself? So in the definition of Gnosticism that Carl Jung provides, which is not necessarily anything to do with Christianity at all, it's just the idea that you believe that gnosis is, knowledge, it just means knowledge in Greek, not gnosis. The idea that you put gnosis over faith.

That I believe in, I believe, me personally, I do believe that knowledge is important to learn. To learn about science, to learn about mathematics, learn about history is important for not just knowing things, but also developing your own character and also learn how you go about the world. I actually do believe that concept makes a lot of sense. The idea of putting knowledge is like the high point

of like what you should be doing instead of just having faith and just whatever, I have faith, whatever, who cares? I think knowledge is important. So that makes, and under that definition, I'm still a Gnostic. I still believe in that. I just don't have the sort of Gnostic Christian beliefs that I used to have six, seven years ago. Right. So it's not skewed towards one of the necessarily like after world belief systems, effectively. Right. Yeah. Like I don't believe in the Demiurge or Yelda Boeth. But you do believe there's something up there.

Yeah. Not very comfortable with that. Yeah, I'm not an atheist. I think, so my belief about God is this. I believe in the muse, the muse. The muse, yeah. Which is divine inspiration for poetry, for music, for podcasting, for film, you know,

for writing books. Anything creative. Anything creative. I believe that people have the ability to tap into what we call the muse, something that gives us inspiration. And I think that that particular thing, and this idea of being inspired by something greater than you,

I think there's something to that. I also think, like Socrates talked about everyone having a personal diamond, it's like a personal inner spirit that tells you not to do things or to do things. I also think there's something like that going on too. As humans, we have this inner voice that sometimes you don't even know why.

Just don't go to that party tonight. Something bad's gonna happen. And then you just don't go and then it turns out to be a good thing. I think there might be something to that. Some sort of voice that we all can tap into. And the Greeks call it the muse. It was, it's basically divine inspiration.

I believe that. That's my current theological worldview right now. I like that. I think the biggest thing for me, and I talk with a lot of people about this, is that, you know, we're just humans who were lucky enough to get on this little rock in the middle of a giant fucking galaxy

that we don't even know the extent of. And it's like, you don't know. That's the one thing we all got in common, two things. We're all gonna die and we're not really positive what happens after this, right? And what it all is. And there's evidence that we can gather from things that maybe have divine inspiration

that have been left here on Earth, which I think would be great if that's true. But I always just try to live my life humble of what I don't know and humble in the idea that something had to put me here. And whatever that God is, that's why I'm very at peace and comfortable with the belief that there is something higher up there

that makes this thing go. Whatever that is, I'm gonna have to answer for that when this is done. So do a lot more good to people than I do bad and try to atone for it when I fuck up and do bad, you know? Yeah, I think there's something to the idea. But it might be evolutionary, but like we feel dread and feel horrible when we do the wrong things.

But we feel good when we do the wrong things. Yeah. But we feel good when we do the right things. So that's something, that's a spiritual thing right there. Absolutely. Now people might say that's all evolutionary, it's how it's survival, you mess up, you're supposed to feel bad. Fine, I don't think there's anything different,

I don't think there's anything different about that, just the way you're looking at it, but also a lot of people, a lot of atheists, for example, they'll like laugh and snicker at the idea of the cosmological argument, which is like everything in the universe has a cause and like going back to the beginning what was the cause of the first cause? Is it a mind? I think there's something, I think that's a decent fair argument that if everything has a cause, then is the first cause God.

I don't think there's anything wrong with that statement. I think that's perfectly reasonable to push for that theory. Yeah, it's you know what in doing this job to I talk with people from so many different backgrounds who have so many different backgrounds who have so many different perspectives on different stuff, but it's such a, this one never gets old to talk about, just because seeing how people, I don't know, rationalize it and rationalize why we're here

and what we're doing, you know, it's not to say anyone's right or wrong. I just find it curious that, you know, to me, it all comes back to whatever that belief is that someone has, it is a part of what makes them tick, whether they realize it or not. You know, there's something so fascinating about that where people, you know, just trying to figure out what the reason they're even here for, you know, can then drive into what

they do is pretty wild. And I had Claudia Duran in here recently, who is such an awesome lady and brilliant physicist who had all these beliefs on what's going on and as far as gravity and has written a lot of, what's viewed as controversial stuff on that and finding, I'll let her explain, but finding like new ideas of what gravity means.

And yet she's so happy- go lucky, and taking in everything and in awe of everything around her as a person. And she thinks it's all for no reason. Really? Yeah, she's like, no, I'm just- She's an atheist? Yeah, I don't even know if I would label her as that, but possibly, yeah, let's go with that just to make it easy.

And I find- Everything's just mechanical and just- I find that so fascinating, You know what I mean? Because it almost is like- Oh yeah, that's very true. A lot of atheists are very good spirited. And like there's this like fake caricature of atheists that are all nihilists.

They all, they're all like wear like black clothing. They're not. No, they're all, there's like, they actually, in fact, a lot of atheists are more likely to be What's the word? You know Joyful of life because they know this is the only life you have. Yes, so they they treat like they cherish life a lot of atheists Yes, it's not like they're all gonna be Richard Dawkins, right or something like that. Yeah, it is

You're typical comes across that way. Yeah. Yeah a lot of them are like they cherish life because they think it's precious. It's like, oh, we're lucky to be here. Yeah. And so I get that. I was in Greece and I was just gonna do you and I are on the same leg today. I was just gonna ask you what the fuck you're doing in Greece. It's this idea of belief systems and like I was fascinating to see that the sort of drive in ancient and modern Greece of people trying to explore the sort of drive in ancient and modern Greece of people trying to explore the ancient rituals in a modern way. So I...

You were there for like a month, too, right? I was there for a month. There's people who wanna bring back the Elusinian mysteries, people who wanna bring back the Keberion mysteries from Lemnos, the Samothracian mysteries, which was practiced on the island of Samothrace, the Arcadian mysteries

of Pan and the country all the way down to the Peloponnese. These are all independently happening right now in Greece from different people who are loosely associated with each other. And they're sort of like exploring this ancient rituals or some of them are Platonist, some of them aren't, whatever. But like, I was thinking about this though. It's only because the Christians preserved all these texts that were able to go back

and read about them and reconstruct them. They didn't have to do this. These monks living on Mount Athos, they could have destroyed every single thing about Homer that ever existed if they wanted to. They had the power to do that. But they wanted to. They had the power to do that. Um, but they didn't, they, they copied meticulously everything that they had passed down all the Herodotus, all the Xenophon, all the Homer and the Hesiod

and the play writers because they believe that there was something important about protecting our history. And now people are able to go back and reject Christianity because of this and find what did Aeschylus say about the ancient rights. And so the Christians could have deleted, they could have just, if they wanted to, they could have got rid of everything,

but they preserved everything for us. And that's a credit to Christianity. That's pretty cool. It is. Because a lot of the narrative, and it's fair in some cases, is like the persecution of non-believers pretty cool. It is. Because a lot of the narrative and and it's fair in some cases is like the persecution of non-believers and sticking to dogma and if you question anything you're fucking cast out like we mentioned those stories today.

But to see that you know there are there are the good ones also along the way who had a chance to destroy things that could possibly go against their narrative. Yeah, like Persian picture. There's Persian historians that are mentioned in Greek sources who we've lost. Arab texts, nothing. There's nothing that survives from that part of the world after Islam takes over. Nothing. Well, it's like only just rock carvings and stuff. But in the West, and it's interesting though, I shouldn't say that, I should be a little fair to Islam, because during the so-called Islamic Golden Age in the 9th century, there was a period in time where Europe was like backwater, was going backwards. They stopped preserving stuff and they almost lost everything. But the Arabs in the 9th century started translating Greek sources into Arabic and they preserved a lot of the

philosophers like Aristotle and Plato and In Latin in the Latin West they were starting to lose all that stuff And then the Greeks in Constantinople did a good job of preserving sources Hmm, and then during the Renaissance, you know, 12th, 13th, 11th, or 13th, 14th century, finally the West goes, oh shit, we're about to lose all of our, we got, we better start getting our ships put together. So they start translating Plato again. They almost, they actually lost Plato in the West for like a couple. They lost it. Yeah. I was talking to a scholar about this and said there was a, there was a time between like the Charlemagne

and like the Renaissance where you probably could not find Plato in the West. And then they rewound it. In any Latin source. Are we talking like, over hundreds of years? It was only in Greek in the Constantinople or in Athens. So they still existed, but in Greek and in Arabic. I don't want to bait and switch here, that's why I'm saying.

Yeah, but it's interesting because there was a point in time where Latin the Latin West was starting to get a little bit like Starting to go backwards and forget about their roots, but then the Renaissance saves that what was the coolest thing you saw in Greece? Such a great temple of Pan and Arcadia was beautiful, but I'll but I have to say the best of all was Delphi Delphi was this ancient temple of Apollo, and the ruins are still there. There's a theater there. There's like a stone, this megalithic stone that they have there that represents Apollo and also Dionysus as well. At the bottom of Delphi, there's a grave for the god Dionysus, the grave for the dead Dionysus as well. At the bottom of Delphi, there is a grave for the god Dionysus, the grave for dead Dionysus. At the top is where the oracle of Apollo lives. So it's Apollonian on the top and Dionysian on the bottom. And they

believed, the Delphians believed, for nine months of the year Apollo was active in their, in their, in their giving oracles, giving prophecy. But then during the winter months, from October to January, Apollo would leave and go to the north, and Dionysus would take over from the grave and become, he would become the oracle

through intoxication. Not through, yeah, not through a regular oracle, through intoxication, through ritual. So like with wine. Yeah, with just wine. Well, that's all we know. That's all we know. Who knows?

It might have been something else going on. But yeah, it just says through intoxication. That's all it says. It's crazy how this stuff has so many layers. You're always going to be finding like brand new shit from the same rock you looked under a thousand times. If the Dunning Kruger is crazy, because one of the aspects of Dunning Kruger is,

not just you thinking you know everything you don't, but there's realizing how much you don't know. It's like the next step of Dunning Kruger. Like first you get all puffed up and think you know everything. And then all of a sudden it dawns on you how much how much information is out there and then you get overwhelmed but like I'll never even

I'll never even know 10% of everything not even close but it's a lot of fun like but it's but it's it's it's humbling to know like there's so much doubt there's so much out there that anyone can just start studying and you would need 10 people in one lifetime to even crack 10% of what's out there. Hell yeah. You know? Yeah. And like I said earlier, I hope that the conversations

across the different perspectives continue to happen. That is like the powerful thing about like the whole independent media space. Like we have the ability to do that. So I wanna see those sit downs happen. I think me personally, cause I've been very harsh against Christians for the last couple of years on like the internet

and on Twitter And I think I think it's turned a lot of them off. They don't want they don't want to have discussions Maybe I think I'm out to get him or something So I'm very critical of what a lot of people are these big Christians say I do want I do think that that's not gonna that's not a good way to go about it Like I think I think the better I do want to be more fair to, you know, the apologetic side, because I get what they're doing. They want this to be true, so they're looking for how to make it make sense. But I still, I would like to see a future where

people can choose between Christianity, Islam, or the temple of Dionysus, or the temple of Aphrodite, a world where people have more options for religious outlets. Freedom. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think the tone, the Neil tone today is good. If this is what you're doing moving forward, especially, like I think that'll help those conversations happen for sure. Yeah, I've really enjoyed this man. You have a me too wide array of knowledge very wide array. So there's a lot more to talk about in the future I'm sure we'll have you on again for sure. Everyone can get your YouTube channel. We'll have that link down below We should also put your X to right. Yeah accent YouTube is good. All right, cool. Thanks so much. No, thanks man It's really great. All right. Awesome.

Everybody else you know what it is. 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. And if you would like to follow me on Instagram and X, those links are in my description below.