The Eric Metaxas Show - Jeannie Constantinou (continued)

Episode Date: April 2, 2022

Jeannie Constantinou continues exploring the incredible events that shaped Holy Week with a look into her new book, "The Crucifixion of the King of Glory: The Amazing History and Sublime Mystery of the Passion."

Folks, welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m.investments.com. That's legacy p.m. Investments.com. A taxes show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Folks, welcome back. I continue my conversation with Eugenia Constantinu, author of the Crucifixion of the King of Glory. How would we say this in Greek, Jeannie, the Cruciction of the King of Glory? Is Stavrosis to Vasileves These doxes

Stavrosis Stavrosis, yes Stavrosis I know I get it I get it Istavrosis These Vasi

Ovasileves These doxis These doxis Sees the endings Would be Ovasis too The crucifix of To do

Vasileu Diz doxis Is the endings That I get screwed up Doxis Voxa doxology. Yeah, right. It's all Greek.

Okay, so we're talking about many things, but I want to say, because I haven't, that to me, this book would be a perfect thing for people to read during Lent. What you have here really is, in many profound ways, it's a work of devotion. It's devotional literature, that when you read this, even though it's history and theology, it's very readable, it's beautifully written, and it's a work of devotion. And I think that if people are looking for more in their relationship with God, this is the kind of a book that I would say, grab this book and give it to your friends who are looking for the same thing,

because we need more of this. If there were tons of books like this, I wouldn't have to praise your book, but I really do. So we're talking about things that you discovered that were important during the time of Jesus that we've forgotten. And so let's go back to, The story of Isaac, you say that the Jews saw the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac as central, and they relate it to the Exodus.

Now, do they relate it to the Passover lamb? So they didn't, I don't know that they related it to the Passover lamb, but they definitely related it to Passover. So they always identified Isaac as the reason why God delivered them from Egypt. And because of this, you make, they have that connection. Of course, Abraham did not sacrifice a lamb when Isaac was not sacrificed. He sacrificed a ram, right, which is still a sheep, but a full-grown male sheep. So there's a connection there with Jesus Christ who was not a child.

See, this is another timeout. Like, that's huge. What you just said, I know it's in the book, but I kind of glanced over it. Yes. I don't know that I've ever heard that. Please say this again. Well, when Abraham was stopped from sacrificing his son, he was stopped and he looked up and he saw a ram whose horns were caught in a thicket. And that is that, you know, it was standing, the idea is that it was standing on its hind legs and his head was caught.

So it was standing up on his hind legs. So he went and took the ram and offered the ram as a sacrifice. So when Passover came around when there was a temple, of course the Jews, don't have animal sacrifice anymore because the temple was destroyed. But they were required at Passover to sacrifice a lamb. So they wouldn't have them all sacrifice Rams. That would have been just too big of an animal. So they sacrificed a lamb.

So the Passover, I think one of the points that you liked that we didn't mention, the Passover comes to be associated with the Aketa, the binding of Isaac, because of their belief that God showed mercy upon Israel and delivered them from their slavery in Egypt because of the merits of Isaac. And then when the Jewish scholars were thinking about the Aketa, about the binding, they determined that Abraham, they decided on the date that they believe that Abraham left to offer the sacrifice, and that by the time they arrived through, days later, because it tells us in Genesis 22, that Abraham walked for three days, then they arrived at Moriah, and then he bound his son for the sacrifice. That was the 14th day of Nissan, which is the first month of the Jewish year. It's the spring month when they have the Passover. So that's the day of preparation. So this is why the Christians, the first Christians,

all of whom were Jewish Christians, they were Jewish believers. They understood what that meant that Jesus died on the 14th day of Nissen, on the day of preparation. the same exact date that Isaac was offered. So it's another level that, again, I've never heard this before, that the date of the crucifixion, the date of the Passover, we know the parallel, obviously, between the crucifixion and the Passover. We know that. That's clear.

But what I had never heard is not just this link that you made between Abraham and Isaac and the Exodus, but the idea that the date, the 14th of Nissan, the month of Nissan, I mean, where would you ever bump into this unless you're reading the Jewish sources, which you did and you put it in the book? That's right. That's the point. These are things that didn't have to be explained in the Gospels because the people who were reading the Gospels were either already Jewish Christians. The majority of them in the first century were all Jewish Christians. Or secondly, they already knew that from the tradition when they were catechized. They learned all of these things. The Gospels are just a very tiny sliver. They're just the most basic things about what happened to Christ. So they learned all these things by the oral tradition.

They knew this, but as time passed, we forgot. Well, we're not forgetting anymore. Starting now. No, but really, this is, again, why I'm so excited about this book, because this stuff is astonishing. It's absolutely astonishing. These parallels are so powerful. They're undeniable.

I mean, I defy anybody. What do you make of this? Are we making it up? Did the Jewish scholars lie? I mean, the evidence is really overwhelming. There's so much else in here I want to talk about. You get into, in depth, the temple at the time of Jesus. I wrote about this a little bit in my book, is atheism dead.

When you start understanding the glory of this temple, I mean, it is just hard to understand how amazing and gorgeous and expensive. this was. And it was right at the time, almost as if planned, right at the time that Jesus arrives and says, not a stone will be all these buildings, not one stone will be left on the other. Once you know how glorious this was, the idea that this itinerant rabbi would make a crack like that, you'd think either he's insane or he's demonic or he's God. And he's a God, but it really is, I mean, I'm saying this just to say that in your book, you really explain the temple and the temple. So get into that a little bit because it's just beautiful.

The temple was something that we cannot imagine. So for Christians, when we know that Jesus went to the temple, we know that he cleansed the temple. And we sort of maybe picture a large church. but the temple was a huge complex. It was the largest temple complex in the world. In the world. In the entire world, because, of course, it was the only temple for the Jews. It was the only place where the Jews could offer animal sacrifice. And as you had mentioned before, you know, talking about Herod the Great and how he really wanted to enlarge it, expand it, and beautify it.

And so he began this program, but the program of beautification of the temple lasted over 60 years. years, a very long time. And it was an ongoing program. So he created this huge flat area around the sacred spaces, which nobody could enter except for Jews who were, you know, ritually pure. This huge courtyard called the Court of the Gentiles. He built this Roman Garrison, the Antonia Fortress on one corner. And then inside the temple, he just made it so elaborate, so beautiful. The temple was made of white marble and alabaster. the purest white marble, and the floor was decorated with a silvery stone called stibium or antimony. And then there were many gates and doors that led to different rooms and things.

And this huge complex, they were all covered in gold or covered in silver, except for this massive door called the Nicanor gate that was so huge, and it was made of the purest bronze. It was considered more valuable than even all the gold and silver-covered gates in the, indoors in the temple. The scale and the scope, and just to enter the temple, the different ways that you could enter the temple mount, the elaborate decorations, it's beyond imagination. You get into all this in the book, because there's no way we can cover it here, which is why I hope people will get a copy of the book, because I learned so much, Jeannie. It's just so valuable. We'll be right back,

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Folks, I'm talking to the author of The Crucifixion of the King of Glory, Eugenia Constantinio. Eugenia, you, in the first part of the book, and this is masterful, and this is where I think your ability as a lawyer comes to the fore, because you delve into the Roman law and the Jewish law, and you show in a way that I have never seen before exactly how Jesus, in a way, is maneuvered into being killed on a Roman cross. It's one of the most extraordinary, heartbreaking things, to read about. But what you do is

you make it come to life exactly. In other words, it's not like we have to guess. And you tell a story using the four Gospels. So talk a little bit about that because it is absolutely fascinating that we can know how it happened. And you put it together. Well, you know, we know the bare bones of the story of what happened. And sometimes for us as Christians, we have difficulty understanding why anyone would want to put Jesus to death.

but I do try to give the background so that people could understand what was happening in first century Judaism, the level of corruption among the chief priests, the high priests. It's beyond belief. And again, this is not something that Christians talked about, but Jewish sources of the first century and the first few centuries, AD, they talk about the corruption. And they believe that God allowed the temple to be destroyed because of the immense corruption. See, that's new, too. I mean, I had not heard that. They know it. They know it. faithful Jews saw this corruption as so wicked that they actually saw the destruction of the temple, which was horrific as God's judgment.

That's right. That's right. And it's in the Jewish sources. It's in the Talmud. It's in when we talk about the Jewish sources, because at one point you'd asked me about that, we mentioned Josephus. Yes, Josephus was a historian. He's a Jewish historian.

He has also been neglected a lot by Jews over the centuries. They didn't like him. because they thought he was a traitor because he was captured as a prisoner of war when the Jews finally rebelled against the Romans. And because he was encouraging the Jews to surrender, some of the Jews thought of him as a traitor. So they didn't read a lot of Josephus. Josephus was probably preserved by the church because of the Jewish history. And the early church was very interested in Jewish history. And of course he wrote in Greek.

But he was a very important source of information. And as you mentioned, he was a priest. He was an ordinary priest, but he was privy. He had gone to the temple many, many times. So he's a very good source of information also about the, he talks about the level of corruption among the chief priest. But not only Josephus, commentaries, there are commentaries that are written about the Jewish books,

and those often contain comments about what was happening at the time that the person was writing these commentaries. There are commentaries in Aramaic, for example. And so these are things that we also look at, and they reflect what was in the minds of the people at the time. So this is how we know the situation of the temple at the time. Well, and what I was referring to earlier too, and I marveled at is that you're able using the four gospels, because if you read the four gospels, it can be confusing because some say one thing and they leave out another in it. But when you put it all together, like a novel, like a narrative, and you begin to see the parts that different,

people play and how the Jewish religious leaders at the time were mostly, we say mostly, because of course there is Joseph of Arimathea, there's Nicodemus, there are a number of them that are not guilty of this. But the really powerful ones, Caiaphas and Annas, they are just hell-bent, pun intended, on getting this troublemaker killed. because if they don't kill him, if they cannot figure out a way to get the Romans to do this, they're looking at a loss of power. That's right, exactly. And so I think it's very important that we recognize that because sometimes the way Christians talk about the Jewish leaders,

and I always make the point that it's not the Jews, but Jewish leaders who orchestrate Jesus' death, they make it look like all of the Jews were against Jesus, which wasn't true. And also they make it look like they're completely irrational, but they had their reasons. And of course, as most things that happen today also, you know, you've experienced this yourself, people want to silence you. They want to get rid of you. Okay. So because it impends, it affects their power and their control over others.

Well, what you do really is you show it's a little bit like a chess game, how, you know, they try one thing, it doesn't work, then they try another thing, then they go to pilot. And the pilot is thinking, like, I'm not helping you on this. And like, oh, how lucky, how lucky that Herod happens to be up the street, I can get rid of this problem. I'll send him to Herod. I mean, and it just, it's like a movie. I mean, it's an amazing thing. But what's kind of amazing to me, Jeannie, again, praising your book, is that you put this together.

When you read the Gospels, for example, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we're not thinking of it in the way that you were. They just wrote what they wrote. But you put the pieces together so we can actually see precisely how this happened. And it's just very affecting. Thank you very affecting. I want to talk. This is a crazy thing, but you talk about the darkness that happened. We talked about the last time on the program.

One thing you talk about here, you don't say it explicitly. But it seems like Jesus was a little bit older than what do you say about that? Well, this, I came across, I wasn't really intending to talk about the exact date of the crucifixion. I kind of wanted to, and I know some people might not like this, but it seems that traditionally we have said that Jesus died in 33. You know, we sort of have this idea he was born in the year one. We know historically that can't be true, and that he died in the year 33. But I did look at some articles and some discussions about exactly when the crucifixion

could have happened. And we're really left with only two possible dates. And that would be 31 or 33. And the only one that really makes sense is 33. And that has to do with because we know that Passover that year was on a Saturday. Because Passover falls on the 15th of Nissan. And we know from the Gospels that it was the day of preparation that Jesus was crucified. So he had to be crucified on a Friday.

That means Passover was on a Saturday. So we can tell within that time period in which the first century was, in which the Lord was alive, on which years did Passover fall on a Saturday. And also we can align it with Pontch's pilot. When was pilot serving as governor? And it really leaves us only two options. One is the year 31. The other is the year 33.

And do you want me to say why 31 is eliminated? Should I talk about that? Because the person who is very useful in this is Luke. And Luke tells us exactly when John the Baptist started his minister. If you look at the beginning of Luke's gospel, he is the one who gives us those parameters. He doesn't say when Jesus started his ministry. He says when John started his ministry. So John's ministry started in the year 28 or 29. Obviously, Luke doesn't refer to it that way. What does Luke say?

What they would do because there were no years. Yeah. Okay, they fixed dates for years. He would say that he lists all of these authors who, who were, all of these rulers who were ruling at the time in the days of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontchus Pilate was governor of Judea, this is the beginning of Chapter 3 of Luke and Comptus, governor of Judea, and the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, when Herod was Tetrarch in Galilee and Licinius was Tetar and Abilene, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And Philip Tetrarch in ituria. Then he says, the word of God came to John, son of Zechariah in the wilderness. So that's how an ancient Greek historian would set up the time frame. So when you know that all of these people were in power during this period of time, now you know the historical context. So because we can date the beginning of John's ministry, when we have to allow at least a couple of, if he started in 28 or 29, because the Roman years do not align with, that's another problem, align with our years. We start in January. And ancient people used to start in August or September or sometimes in July.

so that Roman years don't align with our years. We know that John could not have started preaching before 28, and so we have to give him some time for his ministry to develop before Jesus comes along. That's why a year of 31 doesn't really make sense. But if Jesus appears on the scene around the year 30 or 31, a couple years after John has started his ministry,

then it makes sense aligned with the Gospels that he died in 33. but that means that Jesus is older than 33 when he dies. Well, because we know that Jesus, well, we believe Jesus was born around 4 to 6 BC. And that gets into a whole other conversation. But if he was born in 4 BC, he would have been 37 going into 38 when he was crucified. And we often say, no, he was 30 or 33 years. But, I mean, listen, one of the reasons I love this book is that you get into.

some of these facts. There are things that we can know. There are things we can understand. And I just want to know what's true. I don't really care how old Jesus was if he's this. I just want to know what can we know. And what it looks like is that he probably was more like 37. A little bit older. Not ancient. It's not a big stretch from 33. No, no, no. It's not a big deal. But it's just I love to know these things. And the fact that you have broken this down and you give this to, to us. It's so valuable. A lot of people are going to be blessed by the book, the crucifixion of the king of glory. We'll be right back. You said, now, you just fought one hell of a fight, and I know you hate me and you've got the right

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No matter what happens, you own your gold. It is real, it is physical, it's always been valuable since the dawn of time. Legacy precious metals is the company I trust for investing in gold. They can help you roll your retirement account into a gold-backed IRA where you still own the physical gold. They can also ship gold and precious metal safely and securely to your house. Call Legacy at 866-528-1903 or visit them online at LegacyPMinvestments.com. Welcome back, folks. I'm talking to the author of The Crucifixion of the King of Glory, Eugenia, Constantinio. Jeannie, you just said that it's important that we're honest.

And I think this is the beauty of, you know, if I say I'm a Christian, it means I don't have a dog in the fight. I just want to know what is true. I worship the God who is truth. So whatever I discover, I'm not afraid of discovering things. I'm excited about what I'm going to discover. So you discover so many of these different things in here that really help us understand everything a little bit more, a lot more. That's right. It's very important that we be honest, but also when we, not to become so rigid that we become upset.

well, why does this gospel have this detail and this gospel has something else? We have to let the gospel writers be themselves. They were free to tell the story that they wanted to tell. I think I can answer your question about Lazarus, but you know what these little differences are? You know what the Greek father said like St. John Christ's time? He called them Tamikra, little things. In other words, they're insignificant details. Was there one angel at the tomb or were there two?

Let Mark be, tell it the story his way. Why can't Luke tell the story his way? But we want to force them all to conform, and that's unnatural. It's enlightenment and rationalism, and we will have none of it in the Greek church. That's right. All right? But that's one of the, when we talked about how historians decide whether or not the Gospels are reliable, this is one of the issues. Does it seem like they're all saying the same thing exactly?

Then you have a collusion. You have a corroboration between them. But when you have four people giving the same thing. same basic story in four different places, writing in four different times. This really speaks to the fancy word verisimilitude of the Gospels. That's in the book. Or the historicity of the Gospels. Okay, so we're talking about things like the age of Jesus.

And it's just to me, it's at least fascinating, that we can know more and more, and you put these things together, and you just do such a beautiful job. I want to talk a little bit also about, you know, again, you go to these ancient writers. We talked about this, I think, the last time you were on the program, but the idea that we have writers corroborating this great mystery that they say when Jesus was crucified, there was tremendous darkness. And it's corroborated. I mean, it's one of these things that even if you don't know exactly what happened,

you know that the people at the time didn't really dispute it. Exactly. Which is a big deal. Can we talk about the miracles? of the Lord, that's something also. They are undisputed. So the point is we get this idea people say, well, they just made this up to

promote their religion. Well, the fact is all of the early Jewish sources, and even a little bit later Jewish sources, nobody disputes that Jesus did miracles. Right? Because even Josephus says that. He mentions that Jesus was put to death by the Jewish leaders.

He said that he was a wonder worker. So the fact is when you have later Jewish writers say that Jesus did miracles, but he did them with sorcery, or he was a trickster or a fraud. But they never dispute that it happened. It would have been very easy. Because remember once the Christians were excommunicated by the Jews, and they broke off, they were really being criticized and attacked and rated out basically to the Romans by the Jews who were opposing them because the Jews weren't happy with what the Christians were saying. And one of those Jews was

named Paul. Okay. Remember the Apostles? Paul. So that's exactly right. But the point is that they were saying things, it would have been very easy for them to say, Jesus never did any miracles. This is all a fabrication. But they couldn't deny that. So instead they said he did it with the power of the devil. Something we actually see in the gospels themselves, right? Which brings me back to Lazarus. One of the things that I'm surprised that I never noticed this before, but the idea that the astonishing story of Lazarus, of Lazarus being raised from the dead, that it's not in the synoptic gospels only in John.

Why do you suppose that might be? Because if ever there was something that I was going to put in my gospel, I'd be like, well, we know that's going to go in there. What happened? Yes. I think, first of all, when you look at the synoptic gospels, the reason why they're called synoptic, which means same point of view,

is that they present the story of Jesus from a particular, with a very similar manner. They have the same kind of timeline. They have Jesus telling parables, you know, talking to people about how you have to help your neighbor and forgive others and things like this. So they're very similar. John is off doing his own thing. So there's a couple of reasons for this. First of all, the synoptic gospels focus heavily on the Galilean ministry.

Luke sort of hints that Jesus was down in Judean, but it doesn't really talk about it. So they focus on the Galilean ministry, and they only talk about the one. trip to Jerusalem, the important one, when Jesus was crucified. Now, we know that Jesus, as a law observe a Jew, had to go to Jerusalem at least three times a year for what they call pilgrim festivals, but he was also there for other ones, other festivals. So Jesus was back and forth and up and down from Galilee down to Judea all the time. But they only talk about the one, because for them, that was the most important trip. But the Lazarus is the last one. So John wrote last after all of this, after the synoptics was written, and partly to clarify what's in the synoptics and to add to that.

Now here's why, because John explains and he tells us, this is why Jesus received that welcome the following, you know, and for Palm Sunday, what we celebrated Palm Sunday. This is why Jesus was welcomed into Jerusalem. The synoptics just assume that you know it. They don't tell you why Jesus was welcomed into Jerusalem and hailed as the Messiah. John thinks it's important to know. It might also be because the woman who anointed Jesus' feet is not named in the synoptic Gospels. And that's Mary, the sister of Lazarus, not a sinful woman, right?

And that's where Mel Gibson screwed up big time. Right. And we're going to call him out when we come right back. Don't go away. Hey, folks, Mike Lundell has a passion to help everyone get the best sleep of their life. and with that in mind, he created the Giza dream bed sheets. They look and feel great, which means an even better night's sleep for me and you and everybody. And you know that Mike found the world's best cotton for his sheets called Giza.

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Call 1-800-378-3057. Use the promo code Eric or Mypillow.com. Use the promo code Eric or call 800-9783057. and use the code, Eric. Welcome back, folks. We're talking to Eugenia Constantinio, the book's Crucifixion of the King of Glory. I hope you will get a copy or several copies.

It's just, Jeannie, you've done, it's a masterwork, and I'm just so thrilled that you wrote this, and I hope you're going to write many more books. But I was just talking about, you say at some point in the book, that in Mel Gibson's The Passion, which in many ways, I think, is a magnificent movie, and a work of devotional art.

It's not like, hey, you want to see a fun movie, get the popcorn. It's a devotional art. But the identity of the Mary, talk about that for a minute. Well, it was Mary Magdalene, of course, is the most famous of Jesus' female disciples. And unfortunately, in Mel Gibson's movie, he portrays her as the woman accused of adultery. that is a very famous story that Jesus saves from being stoned to death, and then she becomes his follower. Well, Mary Magdalene was not even a prostitute.

Of course, this is something that's probably going to be surprising to a lot of your listeners or viewers, because, you know, this has sort of become Western tradition that Mary Magdalene was a former prostitute. And the first person ever to say that was a pope, unfortunately, Gregory the Great, Gregory I, who lived around the year 600. 600.

Yes, much long. So this is the 14 centuries-long screw-up? Yes, yes. Totally. And he made this up and identified her. So unfortunately, Western Christians identify her with her as a sinful, a former prostitute. I would hate to have somebody to say, you know, 600 years later that I was a prostitute. But this has been part of, become part of the Western Christian tradition.

She's in heaven. She's not really worried about this. I hope so. I'm here to tell you. She was an apostle. She's moved on. She was important. She was very important.

And of course there's, you know, redemption and all that kind of stuff. But it is interesting to get this stuff right. And you're a scholar, and it's just important to get it right, to know what we can know, what we can't know. There's certain things we can say, I don't know, we don't know yet. What fascinates me is it seems like we're in a time. And again, in my book, as atheism dead, I keep thinking, it seems like the amount of information, corroborative information, is increasing. It seems like we're getting more and more because of the globalization of the world, because people like you are multidisciplinary. things are coming out that have been kind of hiding for centuries.

I love that about your book, as atheism does. It's a phenomenal book. And I love the fact that you turn your attention to biblical archaeology because this is something I mentioned in my classes that the Bible is corroborated by archaeologists rather than disproving it. And there were many years, like you mentioned the Tel Dan inscription. For many years, people said there was no such thing as David.

He was this mythic figure. And then they proved there really was a David and all these other things. the Bible is true and we can rely on it as historically accurate. And we have to get over this idea. If you don't want to believe in Christ or believe in God, that's your business. But you can't say that all of these things were made up because all of the weight of the evidence is increasingly against that position and for the reliability of the Gospels as historical pieces of information. I mean, I really do feel that because of the information that's coming out like the information in your book here,

that if you don't want to believe, you're in trouble. Like, the evidence is you're going to look more and more full. It's like somebody who says, like, you know, I was once swindled by someone who told me that the earth was a sphere. And so I was so wounded by that that I'm a flat earther. And you go, well, listen, I don't know what happened. But I just want to tell you your ability to believe that the earth is flat is going to become more and more difficult, the more you look into things, you know? And that's kind of how I feel about the Bible and whatever that. You may have problems.

You may have been wounded by someone who is a Christian or who is a hypocrite. But the facts are coming out more and more and more and more, whether from science or from biblical archaeology, in your case, you know, looking back at the historical documents. It really is, it's a powerful apologetic, I guess. Absolutely. Because, you know, as Christians, we believe Jesus is Lord. But the point is, can you back that up? And I would say if you consider that the Gospels are reliable sources of historical information,

yes, we can back that up. It's still up to a person to believe or not to believe. But you can't say that all of this was invented because that's just illogical and irrational. Yeah. And intellectually extremely sloppy and dishonest. Not that there's anything wrong with that. So what else? We just have a few minutes left.

What else can we touch on in the book? Let's talk a little bit more about Lazarus. I mean, the story of Lazarus, what I find almost funny is, like, I find a lot of stuff funny just because it's so crazy. But the idea is that Jesus does the most astonishing thing imaginable. Everybody's minds are blown. It's like the mic drop of history. The slap of the Oscars.

The what? The slap of the Oscars. Yeah, we're not bringing that up. But what happens to, what I find funny is that the Jewish, leaders, these corrupt men, how do they want to deal with this? Instead of saying, oh my goodness, maybe this is the Messiah, maybe this is God, maybe we should. No, they say, we want to kill him. We need to wipe him out. And if that's not enough, they also wanted to kill Lazarus, which I find actually funny. Like, can you imagine they were so angry that they want to kill? It's like, well, he died once.

We're going to make sure he died. There were so many witnesses to the death of Lazarus. You didn't think all these people came and helped prepare the body. He was cold. He was stiff. They put him in the tomb. They stayed with the sisters and they were mourning with them. There were eyewitnesses to the raising of Lazarus. So, of course, they have to get rid of him because he's living proof that Jesus was the Messiah.

And do you know where Lazarus went? Where he went? Yes, to get away. No. He went to Cyprus. He was preaching on. You should know this. So this is very interesting.

Wait a minute. Where do we get that from? Island of Cyprus. This is in one of the early church fathers that tells us. It's part of the tradition of the Church of Cyprus. The Church of Cyprus is one of the oldest churches. It's older than the Church of Greece, right? Because Paul went to Cyprus, and there were people who went to Antioch.

There were Jewish Christians who went to Antioch from Cyprus. So if you read Acts, you will see this. So there were believers in Cyprus. And Lazarus went there, and he spent many decades. Lazarus had to lie low until things blow over. Lazarus, get out of town. Because. And you've got to lie low.

That is true. So he went to Cyprus, but this is very interesting because Lazarus went to Cyprus. And the Cypriots were very proud of this, of course. And I know this is because my husband is a Cypriot, as you know. So he went to Cyprus. This is an island in the eastern Mediterranean south of Turkey, in case you're wondering. And so he went there and he died there, and he was buried there. And for generations.

But this time, he stayed buried. He stayed buried. Thank goodness, because it's getting embarrassing for the Jewish leaders. right? Wait, we're going to go to a break and we're going to hear the rest of the story with Evgenia Scarvelis Constantinou. Folks, welcome back. A few minutes left with Eugenia Constantinus. So you're telling us, I love this stuff.

That the Protestant church has lost so much of this tradition. And there's some people that believe that, you know, we skip from the Isle of Pallas, to Luther, or some people, we skip from the Out of Patmos to Azusa Street in 1906 and the Pentecostal movement. All of this stuff that is available there. So tell us more about Lazarus, what we know. I'm going to tell you what we found out, which is very powerful because, because you see, we sort of, in our modern era, we have a tendency to judge the people of the past by our standards and our lifestyle, where we don't remember these things. We hardly have traditions. We don't even know our own family history sometimes.

But in the island, the island of Cyprus, Lazarus died and was buried there, and a church was built over his grave. He was a saint. He knew Jesus. He was, I mean, for goodness sake. So a church was built over his grave, which is what happens with saints. Like St. Peter's Basilica is built over the tomb of St. Peter. Okay? So that's been corroborated. So now you have this church. Well, years later one of the Byzantine emperors Leo one of the Leos I think it was the fourth or the sixth and he wanted to take the relics of Lazarus the bones of Lazarus back to Constantinople so he built this big church

so this is around the year 1,900 he built it I think it's the year 800 built this big church on the spot and so we know people because my husband is Cypriot and we know one of our friends who grew up right by that church that is still there in the island of Cyprus well there was a priest who was there for many years and he wondered whether or not the church had been consecrated because there were no signs of consecration so the only way church is not consecrated is if it's built above the relics of these martyrs or saints okay so it so happened that in the 1970s there was a fire in this church and it was it destroyed the church

and they had to do some digging underneath the church to support it while they did these renovations to restore the church. Well, when they dug underneath the church to support the structure, they found the sarcophagus of Lazarus. And it said, the four-day friend of Christ, and there were still some of his bones that were left in there. So now, when my husband was growing up under the British, because Cyprus was a British colony, they said, oh, Lazarus was never here. There was no proof that Lazarus was ever here. And it took this fire to reveal that this was the actual tomb of Lazarus. So if you go to Larnaca, Cyprus, you can visit the church, and this is where Lazarus was buried. But the point is that people were saying, oh, there's no proof of that.

This was just passed on. But we have to remember that people had power. They passed on these important things. The stories about Jesus. I mean, obviously, you would. We would do that. We would do that. Well, let me ask you.

We just got a minute left. Has anyone written about this? Because I've never heard this. This is beautiful. I think it's very well known among the Cypriots. It's probably in books. There are books probably about Lazarus in Cyprus. I have one, I had one book that I think I reference it in there about this. But about the fire and this rediscovery, no. But this is kind of well-owned. But this is what I think you and I do in our various ways is take this information and bring it to a more popular audience because it's very powerful stuff. Jeannie, we're out of time. I don't know how we can end, maybe Sincti per Maho or something like that. It's just so, it's just such a joy to see the work that you're doing. And I just want to say, I really do hope that you continue writing along these lines because this is, this is really valuable stuff. Let me embarrass you by saying God is really using you.

Thank you. And I got to tell you, it just makes me very, dox aton-Kirion. So thank you very much. Dox at Otheo. Thank you for your friendship and for your support. And may you have a blessed Easter. coming up.