The Eric Metaxas Show - #227 - Dinesh D'Souza

Episode Date: October 21, 2026

Was the childhood home of Jesus found beneath a convent in Nazareth, and why won't the scholars say it out loud? Dinesh D'Souza joins Eric to walk through the discoveries in his new book, The Stones Cry Out: Biblical Archaeology, Prophecy, and the Last Days, and his companion PragerU documentary series.Dinesh describes standing in the pit where the prophet Jeremiah was thrown and trapped in mud, and how the seals of the two officials who put him there have been dug up in Jerusalem. He tells the story of archaeologist Eilat Mazar, who used the Bible as a map to find what she believed was King David's palace, and of a seal that may bear the prophet Isaiah's name. He also explains the Pool of Siloam and the Pilgrimage Road that Jesus almost certainly walked.Plus: why Samson's feat is more plausible than skeptics claimed, the inscription naming Balaam son of Beor, how the pagan emperor Hadrian accidentally marked the site of Jesus' tomb, and why Eric believes the secularists are on the ropes.The Stones Cry Out is available now from Charisma House. Watch the documentary series at PragerU.com.⭐ ORDER NOW:Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World📕: https://a.co/d/0ir3NlapTODAY'S SPONSORS:🪙 Grace Precious Metals: https://www.metaxasmetals.com/🛏️ MyPillow — Save BIG with code ERIC: https://www.mypillow.com/☀️ Chapter -- Honest, fast, and free Medicare plan guidance: https://askchapter.com/metaxas/🦅 Patriot Mobile -- America's ONLY Christian Conservative Wireless Provider: https://patriotmobile.com/partners/metaxas🏛️ Socrates in the City CRUISE: https://socratesinthecity.com/cruise/00:00 Dinesh D'Souza: Are the Secularists on the Ropes?03:53 Samson's Pillars and the Armchair Skeptics06:00 Balaam, the Talking-Donkey Prophet, Found in Stone11:21 Isaiah's Seal12:58 Jeremiah's Captors and the Pit Dinesh Stood In18:14 The Pool of Siloam and the Pilgrimage Road23:01 Eilat Mazar and King David's Palace26:46 Jesus' Tomb and Hadrian's Mistake33:08 Jesus' Childhood Home in Nazareth40:04 Abraham, Jesus and the PragerU Documentary- - -LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/@ericmetaxas#EricMetaxas #TheEricMetaxasShow #News #PoliticsChapter and its affiliates are not connected with or endorsed by any government entity or the federal Medicare program. Chapter Advisory, LLC represents Medicare Advantage HMO, PPO, and PFFS organizations and stand alone prescription drug plans that have a Medicare contract. Enrollment depends on the plan’s contract renewal. While we have a database of every Medicare plan nationwide and can help you to search among all plans, we have contracts with many but not all plans. As a result, we do not offer every plan available in your area. Currently we represent 50 organizations which offer 18,160 products nationwide. We search and recommend all plans, even those we don’t directly offer. You can contact a licensed Chapter agent to find out the number of products available in your specific area. Please contact Medicare.gov, 1-800-Medicare, or your local State Health Insurance Program (SHIP) to get information on all of your options.

Hey, the folks. Welcome to the Eric Metaxus show. Lucky for you, it's not just me. I have fabulous guests. One of the most fabulous is Dinesh D'Souza. He's my guest right now. He's got an exciting new book out with a title that he stole from the New Testament. Dinesh, welcome. Thank you. Good to be here. Listen, I am so excited as you are about biblical archaeology. Both of us are nuts on the subject because we realize We are living in a season in the world where the evidence for the Bible as history has become overwhelming. And I want to know first, if you feel the way I do, that the secular left, they are on the ropes. They can't even respond anymore.

I mean, when I wrote about science pointing to God, it's open and shut. The archaeology pointing to the Bible as history, it's becoming, I would say, embarrassing for the secularists who 20 or 30 years ago, they would have had an argument, they would have tried to mock what we believe, but they have gone pretty silent. Well, let me frame it this way. I think that since the Enlightenment,

but certainly since the 19th century, given that Western civilization is founded on Athens and Jerusalem, the project of modern secularism was to use Athens against Jerusalem or to use the techniques of, reason and evidence and science to become a kind of battering ram against the Bible. But what biblical archaeology is showing some 150 years later is that Athens supports Jerusalem. In other words, the evidence of the dirt and the stones is that the Bible can be confirmed

in some cases down to its minuscule details. and there hasn't been any significant archaeological findings to undermine or refute the Bible. So think of what that means for the secular project. Jerusalem is holding up not only firmly, but holding up firmly in a sense by the endorsement of Athens itself. That's a beautiful way of framing it. And it's quite true. Again, it's the irony. It's why I titled my book is Atheism Dead, because for a year,

years, we have been, you know, on the defensive, we have to try to defend the Bible and God and whatever. Things have shifted so dramatically that the very tools, as you just said, that they claim that they are using to dismantle Jerusalem, the things of God, revelation, the Bible, the very tools of rationality and science are working against their thesis. So your book is titled The Stones Cry Out, and in it you talk about, I mean, there's so much evidence, it's almost, again, I find it overwhelming, amazing that there are people who would deny that the Bible is historical. And it's almost, the difficulty is almost to know where to begin, because it becomes so everywhere you look, minuscule things. I think you cite, for example,

the prices, when you're looking at what would the price be for something in 1800 or 1900 BC that Abraham would pay for this or that, even that kind of thing is being corroborated. It's almost unbelievable. It's true. Now, a lot of the atheism that emerged in the 19th century was a kind of armchair atheism. and it was based on what I call the argument from personal incredulity. So you'd have this professor saying, sitting here in my armchair at University of Oxford,

I don't think it's possible that Samson could have pulled down a temple. It's ridiculous on the face of it. And so there was a certain kind of commonsensical skepticism toward the Bible. The problem is that once archaeology got into it, you began to see that, guess what? If you go to Philistine country, then called Philistia, you look at these Philistine temples. They're not like the Salomonic temple in Jerusalem. They're actually quite small. They're almost like a large hut.

And not only that, they're held up by these two somewhat flimsy wooden pillars that are about five and a half feet apart. Even today, a large, strong man could reach out both arms and hold. both of these pillars. So the notion that say Samson could have ripped down two wooden pillars and brought this structure crashing down, suddenly doesn't become so outrageous. And suddenly the argument, again, the armchair argument from guys who have never got out of the armchair or looked inside the dirt, never done any archaeology, suddenly that just doesn't seem so clever. Well, that's, again, there's so many things you don't even know where to begin to look, but you're quite right. For years, people like the folks you've talked about, they have had this

sneering attitude toward the things of the Bible, like, oh, come on, people can't believe this or believe this. But bizarrely, we are more and more uncovering evidence, sometimes literally, that says, wait a minute, either that skepticism was flat out wrong or we at least have to take another look at it. Agreed. Think about the famous incident. This is from when the Israelites are crossing over into the promised land. The king of Moab finds this fortune tell of Balam, or Balam, son of Beor, tells him to curse the Israelites. Now, Balam is a very eccentric figure because in the Bible, he is accompanied by a talking donkey. So, and Balam, like, has conversations with the donkey. You can just imagine the field day that the same. skeptics had with this one. They were absolutely convinced that this is a made-up, legendary character, some sort of fairy tale that made its way into the Bible, except that digging in Jordan, many centuries later, in fact, within our lifetime, they find an ancient plaster inscription,

which says the warnings and sayings of Balam, son of Björ. I mean, same name, same dad, same location, Jordan, which is the modern-day name for that Moabite country. And same profession, because the warnings and sayings of Balam or Balam suggests that he was some sort of a sootseyer or fortune teller. So suddenly again, even this sort of fantastical account in the Bible, you're like, you know what? It probably was based on an historical guy. Well, it's so interesting because, you know, when you mention Balim's ass, we're talking about something that you can understand why skeptics say, oh, this sounds like folklore. This sounds like a fairy tale. But when you dig a little deeper, when you really understand what's going on, it's quite different.

But you have to be familiar with fairy tales and have to be familiar with how the scripture is written. Parts of the Quran very much sound like crazy fairy tales. I mean, you know, Muhammad riding across the sky on a flying donkey or horse or whatever it is, that challenges somebody, I would say, a skeptic, in a different way than the Bible. But it seems like the secularists, they want to focus mostly on the few places in the Bible that seem difficult, you know, a floating axe head, whatever it is.

It's very telling that the skepticism has singled out the Bible. Only the Bible has been subjected to 150 years of withering skeptics. scrutiny. Quite frankly, the archaeology that I'm describing in the Stones Cry Out, it cannot even be attempted on the Quran or the Hindu scriptures or the Buddhist scriptures. And that's very telling, isn't it, that the Bible is the only book that whose historicity can be affirmed. And, you know, skeptics have now said sometimes, they'll say things like, well, you know, the Bible is, you know, unfalsifiable because it's basically just all these claims out of revelation. But that's not really true. The Bible, if you read it carefully, has in it thousands of densely packed historical facts. They begin with the patriarchs. They go all the way to the book of Acts. Minor details about where the winds are north of Cyprus and what is the name of the chief man of the island in Malta. And what is the price of a slave in Joseph's time? which is about 1900 BC, and on and on it goes.

So the Bible is in fact eminently falsifiable. All you'd have to do is show that 35 of these facts are completely wrong, and you will have cast some serious doubt. But archaeology, as I say, in over a century, hasn't been able to contest a single fact. I admit there are many things that have not been discovered yet. I admit that there are arguments about dating, dates, and about, you know, when Jesus walked the Via Dolorosa,

Did he go down this street or did he go down that street? This is all the normal give and take of archaeology. But I'm talking about actual refutation. Hey there, folks. Suzanne and I want to invite you to join us for something extraordinary. It is a Socrates in the city cruise on the Mediterranean, August 24th through September 1st, 27. That's a year from now. We'll spend eight glorious nights aboard the magnificent sea cloud spirit sailing under full canvas through Sardinia,

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Come sail the Mediterranean with us. Well, the title of the book is The Stones Cry Out and it is loaded with proof of the Bible as history. You mentioned before we went on the air five things that you wanted to touch on. Let's go into some of those. those. So let's start with the evidence of the seals, I call it, because these are little clay impressions called bula. They're clay seals. They were used to seal correspondence. And the correspondence is lost, but the seals remain. So the prophet Isaiah is an example where a seal comes out of the ground in Jerusalem near the temple. And it says on it, Isaiah, the, and then it's spells out in Hebrew the word prophet, but the seal is broken, missing the last letter. So

for our discussion, let's just say it's missing the letter T. It's like Isaiah the P-R-O-P-H-E blank. And so there's a bit of an archaeological debate because it's true that if it was another letter, it might be a different Isaiah. But the fact that it is missing one letter, there's in fact just enough room for the correct letter to be there. It's found in the so-called priestly quarter of Jerusalem, and it's found next to a seal that is confirmed by King Hezekiah, who was essentially the partner of Isaiah. All of this, I think, gives you very strong evidence that we have actually found a seal made by the prophet Isaiah's own hand. This is very telling, and it brings Isaiah into history in a very powerful way. So that would be, if we were doing a countdown from

number five to number one, that would be sort of my number five. Okay, well, let's keep going. Let's go to number four, and I'll give a second example of seal evidence, because this time involving the prophet Jeremiah. So this is to me really fascinating. It shows really how archaeology can confirm not just the big guys in the Bible, but even what can be called the biblical extras or the cameo appearances in the Bible. So Isaiah is a doom and gloom.

I'm sorry, Jeremiah is kind of a doom and gloom man, and he is preaching against the king, Zedekiah, and the king is annoyed, and the king rounds up two of his sidekicks. Now I'll name them, Jehukal son of Shalamaia, son of Paschur. And the king says, hey, guys, you go keep an eye on the prophet Jeremiah,

make sure he's not causing me too much trouble. And so these two guys followed Jeremiah around. At one point, they grabbed Jeremiah and throw him into a pit, And I've actually stood inside that pit. It's a very eerie feeling, but the prophet was trapped in there and had to be pulled out by 35 men using ropes. So Jeremiah survives. Now, fast forward 2,500 years to our time. And they're digging in Jerusalem and out of the ground are coming these clay seal impressions.

I mentioned earlier, Bule, so-called. And one of them has a name on it, Jehukal son of Shalamaya. and two years later, another seal, Gadalia, son of Paschur. Now, again, these are such unimportant people that the archaeologist who discovers the seal has no idea who they are. And so sometimes the seal is placed in an academic department or a museum, and years later another guy comes along, a theology student,

and he goes, hey, that guy's in the book of Jeremiah, and then everybody goes running to look. And sure enough, suddenly these two guys are now sort of historical, authenticated via the pathway of archaeology. So again, if you can ratify Jehocal and you can ratify Gadalia, what does that tell you about Jeremiah? What does that tell you about Zetachy? So much else falls into place.

It's almost unbelievable. And there's a couple of things going on here. I just want to say this to me points to God as having a sense of humor and God being a storyteller. The idea that now, thousands of years later, we would discover these tiny bits of something and it would corroborate the Bible as the Word of God. It's delightful and funny. I just want to go back, though, because I think I saw, you know, I follow you online and I saw you mentioned this pit into which Jeremiah had been thrown. I was really startled to see that it exists or that you could visit. Tell us about this because I had no idea of this until I saw it on your social media.

I thought from the biblical account that we were talking about some sort of a vessel or cistern, but the cistern is essentially a storage pit for water. But when the water runs out, the mud in the pit becomes extremely sticky. And so we're talking about a deep hole in the ground quite large that in Jeremiah's time was filled with the sticky mud and Jeremiah was trapped in it and now the biblical count really makes sense because it's a long way to pull him out. Number two, he was so caked with mud

that the Bible says that they had to put down ropes with rags. Now why the rags? Because frankly, if Jeremiah were to tie the ropes around his arms, it would have ripped his arms because he was stuck in the mud. He had to put the rags under his arms so that they could pull them out. The whole scene takes on a kind of vivid practicality

when you're in the pit yourself and you realize what had to happen. And so, yes, it's a known location. It's an eerie feeling to be in there. It brings the Bible to life in such a vivid way. Now, you were not thrown into this pit, Dinesh, just to be clear for the audience. That's right.

Nor was I pulled out by 35 guys with ropes and rags. I had to walk through a bit of a tunnel and stand in the pit and then my wife Debbie was videoing me. So this is the 21st century version. I'm like, honey, move a little to your left. We need to get a little better shot. Well, but it's still amazing to me that the pit exists and they can identify this as the very place

where, you know, 26 centuries ago somebody was thrown in. I mean, that's just amazing to me. Where is it? Is it near Jerusalem? It's really part of the city of David. It's not far. I mean, it was obviously a close location to where Jeremiah was actually cat. Jeremiah was essentially somebody who was railing against the king and warning about the Babylonian invasion.

So he would have been right in that location somewhere. And this must have been a known pit. And they were like, let's toss him in there. Yeah. Okay. So I guess if we're doing the Casey Kasem countdown, We're at number three in the countdown. Let's keep going.

All right. So three would be the pool of psalome. Now, the pool of psalome is where Jesus healed a blind man. Jesus didn't heal him at the pool, but Jesus healed him nearby and said, hey, go wash your eyes out in the pool of salome. And when the man did it, he could see. So the pool of salome is a ritual bath. It's called a mikva.

But generally the mikvas in Jerusalem are, you know, they're tiny. They're enough for a couple of people to step in and you do the ritual washing before you go to the temple. The pool of Salome, which was only discovered recently, historians in the 20th century thought that they knew where the pool was, but they were looking in the wrong place. They had the wrong pool in mind, basically. But the pool is now discovered. It's the size of two Olympic swimming pools. I was just going to say, it's gigantic and thousands of pilgrims would go there. It's amazing that they have found this.

It was essentially the one-stop ritual bat for an out-of-town Jew, because you don't have a mikva, you don't have your own ritual bat, so you need a public bath. This was huge. I asked Zev Ornstein from the city of David, like, what's the probability that Jesus bathed in this pool and walked the pilgrimage road, which maybe actually on number four, but walked the pilgrimage road to the temple?

and Zeb was an observant Jew said, you know, 100%. He goes, Jesus came from the north. He would need to have bathed in this pool and walked this exact road. And so while in Jerusalem there are sometimes debates about whether Jesus was here or Jesus was there, I think in this case there is little to no doubt that Jesus was, in fact, at that location. The idea that thousands of pilgrims would bathe in this pool makes me want to ask if you have found any evidence that there was chlorine in the pool. That's an excellent question. I don't want to imagine the actual conditions.

And not only that, but, you know, the Pilgrimage Road, you can, you know, it's now an archaeological marvel because the road today runs underground. It's not, it's not above the ground. And above the Pilgrimage Road are all these Arab homes. So it was an architectural masterpiece to build giant, iron girders under the ground and make it such that you and I can now, and was just opened last year, we can walk the pilgrimage road where, I mean, hundreds of thousands of Jewish pilgrims walked, and it really takes you underground, obviously in Jesus' time above ground.

Even some of the Psalms, which are called Psalms of Ascent, which talk about moving up, up and up, You know, I think as Christians, we tend to read those metaphorically. It's a spiritual type of ascent. But when you walk the pilgrimage road, you realize, no, no, no. It's a physical ascent of about 500 yards from the pool to the temple. It's kind of a bit of a grueling walk. It's like this, I guess it's a little bit like the Sancta Scala in Rome, this idea of the pilgrimage that you're making an effort.

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That's 972 Patriot. Okay, let's keep going. What other things do we want to touch on in the list. Well, the one I want to go into in some detail is David's palace, because the verification of the existence of King David came in the 1990s when the Tel Dan Steli was found in the north of Israel, a monument, a victory monument by King Hazayel of Aram, boasting about his victories over, quote, the House of David. So it became quite clear that there was a House of David, a Davidic dynasty, and there must have been, of course, a David. So that kind of was a blow to the skeptic.

because they had maintained that David was a kind of fictional character, sort of like King Arthur. So David's existence is confirmed, but very typical of the minimalist or the skeptics, they retreat to a fallback position. And their fallback position is, yeah, but the biblical account of David is all made up. David was sort of a local chieftain. Jerusalem was, and I'm now quoting one of the skeptics, a cow town, a kind of a small village. There was no palace. There was no royal architecture. This is why the finding of David's palace is such a sort of a double blow. It's like a one-two punch which puts the skeptic flat on his back. So, Eilat Mazar, an archaeologist at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, this is the story. She approaches the guys at the city of David Foundation, and she tells them, you need to move your visitor center. And they go, why? And she goes because the palace of King David is beneath your feet. And they go, how can you possibly know that?

And she goes, well, it says in the Bible in the book of Samuel that when David built his palace, he asked the Phoenicians from far away Phoenicia to build it for him. Why? Because the Phoenicians were experts at building. And the book of Samuel says that King Hiram of Tyre in Phoenicia sent carpenters and stonemasons who built David's palace. And so, says Aylaut Mazar, she says, a Phoenician artifact called a capital. It's the top decorated part of a pillar,

was found in this location on the hill 40 years ago. She goes, so I asked myself, why would the Phoenicians be here? The Bible tells us they were here to build King David's Palace. And so think of the chutzpah of this woman. She writes an article in biblical archaeology review saying, I have found King David's Palace. She provides a map with a big red arrow saying,

it's right here. And she hasn't even begun to dig. This is sort of her confidence in the accuracy of the Bible. And so she gets some money and then she starts digging. Now, this is in the early 2000s. And sure enough, out of the ground come huge pillars, giant walls, what archaeologists call a monumental structure. It's clearly not some kind of a private home or residential building. And so once again, the skeptics are like caught, you know. And so, They're now trying to say, and think of how dumb this is, they're like, well, we don't know if we would call this a palace. Maybe it was some other type of royal administrative building. Or maybe this building was built in David's time, but completed in Solomon's time.

And my point is, well, whoopty-do. You know, it's a monumental structure. It is dated to the 10th century BC, the time of David. So call it what you will. But I believe Alat Mazar has found King David's palace. Honestly, I just find it delightful and humorous all of this. It's amazing how people try to backpedal. They can't bear to think that the Bible really is true, and they'll say practically anything.

Are we down to the last one? What is the last one in your list? I think I know. Well, the last one is the site of the crucifixion and burial of Jesus. Now, the Via Dolorosa, the actual pathwalk by Jesus, is debated. There are multiple locations. For the burial of Jesus, there has been for many decades two locations, the so-called garden tomb and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Frankly, the case for the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was always very strong.

But there was one objection to it, which is why Charles Gordon in the 20th century went looking for the alternative site and came up with the garden tomb. the objection was this, that the Bible says that Jesus was buried outside the city. And the Church of the Holy Sepulchre appeared to be inside the old city of Jerusalem. So it couldn't be the location many people thought because it's even known from independent sources. The Romans crucified outside the city. But what archaeology discovered in the late 20th century was that their map of Jerusalem in Jesus' time was wrong. Jerusalem was a lot smaller than they thought. And when you look at the actual old Jerusalem in the first century AD,

the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was indeed outside the city. It was outside old Jerusalem. Jerusalem expanded and became bigger. And so that's where the error came from. Now, why the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at all? And the answer is this. After Jesus was crucified, the early Christians began to venerate the Holy Church. sites, the site of Jesus' birth, his childhood home, and also the place where he was crucified.

Obviously, the early Christians knew where that was. In the second century AD, the Roman emperor Hadrian, this is, by the way, only decades after Jesus, decided to stamp out the Christian holy sites. And his way of doing that, he knew where they were, was to go build pagan monuments on top of them, pagan shrines. But little did Hadrian realize that by building these things. pagan monuments on these holy places, he was marking them for future identification. So in the fourth century when Constantine converted to Christianity, he sent his mother Helena

to Jerusalem. He said, go find all the holy sites. And this was truly, Eric, the first archaeological expedition of all time. Helena shows up with the whole team. She knows exactly where to look. She goes and finds these pagan monuments, rips them down, and builds churches. So that is the site currently occupied by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Now, the church Helena built is gone. A Crusader church was built on top of that. And the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is sort of like the third construction on the same site. But the sort of new development here is that there's an archaeologist from Italy who's excavating there now.

And she has found a marble structure that because under the Church of the Holy Sepulcher are these rock-cut tombs. By the way, these tombs are dated to the first century AD. They are new tombs, which is accurate. Jesus was buried in a new tomb. He was not buried in a tomb that it was there for 300 years. It was Joseph of Arimathea's unused family tomb that Jesus was buried in. And those tombs under the Church of the Holy Sepulch are new first century tombs. But one of them has this marble designation, as if to say that in Constantine's time,

it was believed that that particular tomb was Jesus' tomb. It's really astonishing that in our lifetime, these things are being discovered, Dinesh. And I, you know, I have to say again that it seems extraordinary to me that suddenly they're this spate of discoveries. I mean, in the last few decades, it's just ratcheted up and up and up and up. So that, again, I think that secularists are on the ropes.

And I think God, is making himself more obvious and making it more difficult for non-believers not to believe. It really, I think, again, it puts them in a very uncomfortable position. And I have wondered myself whether what happens is, in other words, there will always be some people who will say, gosh, I didn't know, okay, now I believe. But there will be many other people who will say, I don't care. I curse the God whose existence you are proving.

And we're seeing both. In other words, I think that we're seeing people that say, look, I don't care if it's true. I hate this God. And you can present all the evidence you want. I don't want to worship him. You know, the Bible has that very telling phrase

so that they are without excuse. It's almost as if the, as of God is saying, well, listen, you know, here we are in a secular age. are people respect the authority of reason and science and evidence. And so, all right, I'm going to now speak in the language of the stones. I'm going to show you. I'm not going to be able to force you to believe.

And you might have powerful incentives not to believe. You may not want to believe. But you won't have an excuse in saying, you know, at the last judgment, well, gee, you know, God, I really wanted to believe. But, you know, you just never gave me any evidence. I never had any good reason to think that this could be true. So really the blame lies with you. The Bible's like, no, you're not going to be able to say that. Well, one of the craziest things, and you know about this because I put it in my book.

And again, folks, the book we're talking about is The Stones Will Cry Out, which is brand new. And Dinesh, congratulations. This is a monumental effort. and it's very important that we understand that our faith is historical, folks. It's important we understand this. So the new book is The Stones will cry out. But what I was just going to say

was that when I was writing my book is Atheism Dead in 2020, I thought, you know, I want to do kind of a greatest hits of archaeological discoveries. And so I'm writing about different ones. The one that made me write the book had to do with the discovery of biblical Sodom,

which I devote a whole chapter to. I mean, it's mind-blown. discovery. But as I was doing my research on what else is out there during the time I was writing my book. So in 2020, something is published. And I read it and I think, this cannot be. This is too much to believe. And what I'm talking about, and you write about it, and I want to talk to you about it, is the discovery, folks, of the childhood home of Jesus. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, they're home in Nazareth. To me, that's like discovering Santa's workshop at the North Pole. Never going to happen, folks. They're never going to discover that. You've got to be kidding.

Well, yes, during the time that I was writing my book, so six years ago, some guy finally publishes his findings on this. And it is, it is, it really is almost unbearable that we could discover such a thing, that we could be alive at a time when we discovered such a thing. So talk about that, Dinesh, because this, to me, this is just one of the most. fascinating things possible. The childhood home of Jesus, of course, in Nazareth, some nuns in Nazareth, I think they were called the Sisters of Nazareth,

if I'm not mistaken. We're doing excavations. They were digging, actually, to create the foundations to build a convent, and they discover an ancient cistern, and they're like, whoa, there's something here. And so as they dig, they come across this kind of ancient home,

except it has all this Christian markings on it that indicate it's not an ordinary home. In fact, it had been converted into a sort of Christian meeting place. And this comes back to what I was saying earlier. The early Christians knew where these sacred sites were, and they would come together either just to meet or they would come together, they would come as pilgrims to visit these sites.

Like, where was the Savior born? Where did he grow up? And now, the reason that all of this, I think Eric, is coming out now and is also the importance of your book and mine is this. Number one, the community of pastors in general is reluctant to talk about archaeology. It's a field, a little alien to them. They haven't studied it in divinity school.

They don't want to walk into a minefield. They know that you have to be very subtle. You've got to get it right. There's a certain in-house vocabulary that archaeologists use. And so pastors are like, I'm not going to venture there. I'm going to teach the book of Jeremiah as a parable or as a morality tale. I'm not going to get into it historically. But there's an equal sort of conspiracy of avoidance on the part of the archaeological community.

They will write about the childhood home of Jesus and you will read an archaeological report. and it'll be something like this. First century home found in Nazareth. Scholars perplexed, you know, and you're like, wait, first century home, who's home? Who are we talking about here? They won't say.

Why? Because the archaeologist is like, he's some guy at like the University of Tubing in or, you know, University of Reading. He wants to be seen as a scientific man. He doesn't want to be seen as proving the Bible. The Bible to him is the work of revelation and theology. like lead that to the religion department.

So you have a dual avoidance both by the archaeologists and by the pastors, and therefore it's really important for books like The End of Atheism and the Stones cry out because we are bridging the gap between this academic work that is so relevant to our faith and the sort of general public. If we didn't do it, it would remain in a sense a secret. No, that's exactly right. And so, I mean, in my book, I mock the whole thing. I said, this is the funniest thing I'm ever.

I'm reading something that's like made up that you discover the Holy Grail, almost literally. You discover something that is in an archaeologist's wildest fever dream. You could not imagine that you would discover the childhood home of Jesus. And then the guy who discovers it is embarrassed. He doesn't want to admit that he's discovered the child home. he thinks he'll be mocked by his secular colleagues, which is just unbelievable. To me, it's just they should be embarrassed

that they're embarrassed, but they're not. And so the article, I think if you go on Amazon and you look at the actual thing that was published, it was 2020 roughly, it's a book, an archaeological book, the title of it, it's like what you said. It's something like, you know, the Sisters of Nazarene Convent, colon a crusader era, Byzantine era, and first century Roman excavation.

That's the title. They leave the headline out. They don't want to be embarrassed by saying that we think we discovered the childhood home of Jesus of Nazareth. So, you know, the fact that it falls to you and me to tell the world about this is just crazy because you would think that this. would be on the cover of National Geographic, it would be everywhere, that everyone would be talking about it. They are so embarrassed. And it reminds me, I have to say, when Einstein in 1915 discovers

through his equations that the universe is expanding, which leads to the Big Bang theory, he is embarrassed at the implications that they're going to say that I'm pointing to the God of the Bible, creating the universe, I don't want that. So Einstein was so thin-skinned and so insecure that he hides this evidence, creates this silly thing called the cosmological constant, because he is embarrassed. So is it any wonder if the great Einstein was embarrassed at something pointing to God in his discoveries that are minor archaeologists at the University of Reading in England would be embarrassed. But again, so it falls to you and me to talk about this and to tell the world, ladies and gentlemen, the evidence for the Bible has become so overwhelming

if you want to convince a friend or you want to help somebody who is having trouble, get a copy of the Stones cry out and say, hey, have you read this? I honestly think, Dinesh, that our problem, you know, yours and mine in a way is distribution, is that you discover this amazing stuff, but the secular world isn't interested in promoting it. They're sort of, they don't speak this language, so they just kind of would rather talk about anything else. So it's why I hope folks will get a copy of the Stones cry out. Is there anything else in the book that we haven't touched on today that you want to mention before we go? Yeah, well, the one thing that was for me a great delight was discovering things where you would not expect to.

So it's not totally surprising we'd find some evidence of King David and Solomon. They're the king. Kings make issue royal proclamations. They build palaces. It's not surprising that we discover some evidence for the Assyrian or the Babylonian invasions. these are military conquests that you're going to leave behind arrowheads

and you're going to leave behind all kinds of debris when you do a battle, for example. But think about this. Abraham. Abraham was a nomad. He never,

he only bought one thing in all of Canaan, a burial cave from Ephron the Hittite. Right? You would not expect to find anything of this guy. He's moving with his herds and cattle.

And in some ways, Jesus is the same, isn't he? Jesus was a nomad. Jesus never owned a home. he's always staying in somebody else's house. He's in Peter's mother-in-law's house. He's visiting, you know, Mary Magdalene's house.

So with Jesus, you would think it'd be fairly difficult to walk in the footprints of Jesus just because of the kind of life that he lived. And so the fact that there is good archaeology on Jesus, and there is some archaeology, very interesting, on Abraham, is mind-blowing. Because it's archaeology where you would not expect to find something, and yet there it is.

Well, it goes on and on and on. Mention the film that has been released. Well, I went to Prager University, and I told them about this stuff, and they loved it. They were like, wow, this is fascinating to Nash, not only because it authenticates the Bible, but because it shows the presence of the Jews in their ancient homeland. And not only that, it supports the Jerusalem pillar of Athens and Jerusalem. So if you think of Western civilization as having these two foundational pillars, Athens and Jerusalem, biblical archaeology uses the techniques of Athens to support Jerusalem.

So I think, Friega, you thought that was wonderful and something that young people need to know about. So they asked me to do a documentary, which they've now released. It's out there. You just have to look it up. Go on their website. And the documentary is two hours long, but it's also broken up into 12 kind of episodes of the Bible, chronological, starting with Abraham and going all the way through Jesus. and so you can even watch those sort of segments one by one based on what you're most interested in. Well, Dinesh, again, congratulations on all of this, on everything you do,

but especially on the new book, The Stones Will Cry Out. Always great to have you here. Thank you. Eric, always a pleasure. Today's show is brought to you by Grace Precious Metals. In an industry that can be confusing, Grace believes in doing business differently with Christian values, transparent pricing, and a focus on straightforward gold and silver bullion, not high markup collectible coins. They even publish their spreads directly on their website so you can see the numbers before speaking with anyone. Learn whether physical precious metals may fit your

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