The Eric Metaxas Show - Socrates in the City: Eugenia Constantinou

Episode Date: April 7, 2023

Eugenia Constantinou is interviewed by Eric at a recent Socrates in the City event which featured her sensational book, "The Crucifixion of the King of Glory."

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. Welcome to the Eric Metaxus show. I shouldn't tell you this, but Eric hired someone who sounds just like him to host today's show. But since I'm the announcer, they told me, so I'm telling you, don't be fooled. The real Eric's in jail.

Hey there, folks. Welcome to a special edition, Holy Thursday special edition of the Eric Metaxas show, where we're going to be airing starting right now. My conversation from Socrates in the city, we did it on February 28th, with the extraordinary Eugenia Constantino. The woman is obviously Greek, but she is, if you've read her book, The Cruciction of the, the King of Glory, an utter genius, not just in her scholarship, but in communicating with super clarity, the events of Holy Week, what happens on Good Friday. We thought it was appropriate to air it today because it's just that wonderful. I can't recommend her book, The Crucifixion of the King of Glory, highly enough, to anybody interested in what happened that week. It's the latest scholarship. It is brilliant. It is powerful. And it's a devotional thing. So that's why I wanted to air that today.

So coming up in a couple seconds, my conversation is going to be both hours today. Don't miss it, share it. Here it is. Eugenia Constantine, welcome to the stage of Soxas in the city. You know, the best thing about you is that you're a lot of fun because you've been on my program a few times. Not to some people. And so it just makes me happy to have you. Seriously, thank you for coming from San Diego, I know that's not exactly around the corner. I read your book a year ago, and I said, we have to do this at the beginning of Lent, because when I read the book a year ago, I said, this is the kind of a work that is, and we'll be talking about this, but it's a work of tremendous scholarship, which I want to talk to you about.

It's also shockingly readable. It's totally readable, although it's, brilliant scholarship, but it's also a work of devotion. There is no question, I publicly identify as a Christian, and there's no question that reading this book drew me closer to Jesus. I can't say that about a lot of books. And so I want to talk to you about this book, but the first question that I will ask you, Jeannie, let me call you Jeannie, is what in the world possessed you to think about writing this book

because there's just nothing like this. Well, thanks for, first of all, Eric, thank you very much for inviting me and for hosting this beautiful event. It's so important. I appreciate the fact that you like to engage in the big questions of life, and so I really appreciate the Socrates

in the cities and events, so thank you for inviting me. I've been talking about the crucifixion of Christ for a very long time in different parishes. I was invited off and spoke about it during Lent. And I just felt like it was necessary to write a book about it. But I realized that actually I wrote a draft and it was so dry.

I said, I really need to present this differently. Punch it up with a few jokes. Not the way you do, but sort of try to present it in a way that was more engaging. So it's not enough simply to give people information. you want to give it to them in a way that really speaks to them that makes them feel as though they are present because these were real people and real events and one of the things that I've been told again and again

the Bible studies that I've led is that I make the Bible come alive and that was my goal with this and to make it, yes, scholarly, so that people can see that I'm not just talking off the top of my head but at the same time something that anyone could understand Well, again, the reason it blesses me and shocks me is because there's so little of this. I mean, I basically try to do something similar in everything that I write, but I have never seen it done in the way that you did it with the events of Holy Week, the events of the passion.

And I guess I just want to ask you just a little bit about your biography. Obviously, you're married to Father Costa, and so obviously you take your faith seriously. you can't be a presviter on the Greek Orthodox Church without taking your faith seriously. But what was your journey, if we can start there, that got you interested in this, just going way back to your childhood, where you raised in a home where faith was at the center?

Because both of us know that many people in the Greek Orthodox tradition, it's a cultural thing, and they tend not to go too deep. It's just like I'm Greek, I hang out with the Greeks, and we go to the Greek Orthodox Church. So we're all for it, but to really take it to this next level. Like, how did that begin for you?

Yes, I was raised in a home with a very devout mother especially. My father, our family was involved in the church, but I know what you mean. This is one of, by the way, Greek, you said if at Eastern Orthodox, I suppose you mean Frederica and Matthews Green. Eastern Orthodox, Greek, Orthodox, Russian were all the same. Oh, I know that. I was just making the point that she's not Greek. Yeah, that's true.

She's not Greek. So, yes, it's unfortunate that sometimes there's a presumption, I think your father made the same presumption, that if you come to the church, you will develop that relationship with Christ. And I think that doesn't happen for a lot of Greek Orthodox, and it's important that we make sure that that is developed. So in my particular case, we were brought to the church. I was very active in the church, and when I went to the University of the University of the United States, San Diego as a student, I had to take religious studies courses, and this is where I really learned about the early church and about the Bible. And so also, it's encounters with priests that I met who were very strong in their faith and very inspirational. They had a big influence on me, too.

My mother introduced us to the Bible a lot when we were children. My mother told us Bible stories. Which, I mean, that's sort of rare in the Greek Orthodox world. I'm not trying to be disrespectful. That's just interesting to me. I don't know how rare it is, but I think for a lot of the people, maybe of our generation, their parents were immigrants. My parents were born here, and so maybe that was a little bit different. They were already Americanized. They weren't struggling as much just to survive, so that might have had something to do with it. But my mother was very devout, and we talked about Christ all the time at home.

but it wasn't, you know, theology. We didn't have any priests in or family or anything of that nature. But you weren't indifferent to the faith. It was very serious and central to your... I think it is for all Orthodox. Almost all Orthodox. It is central. They, even if they don't go to church as often as they should,

they feel it deeply. And this is something which is experienced, but sometimes people go to Greece and they think that people aren't very pious or devout. But this, Greece has been Christian. for almost 2,000 years, and it's very deeply embedded in the culture in a way that other people can't really recognize. It's my understanding that the New Testament is actually written in Greek.

And by the way, my grandmother... He didn't write it in Croatian or German. That's right. It is God's language. But my grandmother said Jesus was Greek. She said... She did. Because she said when I go to church and the gospel is read, it's in Greek. It's in Greek, right.

That was her thinking. No, I'm serious. This is what she said. When my father told her that Jesus was Jewish, she was totally shocked. Yeah. She was totally shocked. And her name was Eugenia, too, so. Yeah.

I was shocked as well. This is not an uncommon thing in certain cultures. In the German culture, of course, my mother's German, you know, the idea that Jesus was not Jewish, that kind of went a little wrong, as you know. so it's not unimportant. But anyway, I just, so, and at what point, I don't know how many years you're married to Father Costas, but you obviously took this seriously as a young adult.

Before I met him, yes, I was, yes, as a young adult, as I said, I was exposed to serious courses on the Bible in the university. And I met a young priest who had come to his help with the parish. He also inspired me, talked to me a lot about prayer and things like this. I was very involved. I was a youth director at the church. And the more I learned, the more fascinated I became. Not only with the Bible, but with orthodoxy in such a deep faith.

There's so much rich tradition in orthodoxy. The connection to the early church is so powerful. This is what really attracted me. I was reading a lot of writings from early church fathers. But you only want the ones. You can. Legacy precious metals has a revolutionary new online platform that allows you to invest in real gold and silver online. In a few easy steps, you can open an account online, select your medals of choice, and choose to have them stored in a vault or ship to your door.

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legacy P.m. Investments.com. Legacy p.m. Investments.com. Check it out. Folks, you are listening to a special edition of the Iqman Taxes Show. We are airing my Socrates in the city conversation from February 28th of this year with Eugenia Konstantino about her book, the crucifixion of the King of Glory. This is an amazing book. And I thought an amazing conversation. So here is more of that. In the Protestant world, there's a tremendous disconnect. And it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's heartbreaking to me. It's one of the reasons I wanted to have you here and to talk about your book because it's wrong to be disconnected from the early church. The church didn't start when the Reformation started or at Asusa Street even more recently. Some people kind of act like, yeah, it leapt from John, you know, in Revelation to Asusa Street or whatever it was.

And when you look back, but that's part of what makes your book so amazing is that you bring things out that part of it is you're linking it to the early church. But the other thing that really amazes me and I want you to talk about it is that you studied Jewish writings of the first century, early first century. That, I guess you would kind of assume it's been 2,000 years. somebody would have covered that. You, I mean, I really was amazed. I can't say this enough.

You brought things out. I want to get into some of the specifics of this. And my jaw just dropped to the floor. I said, I can't believe that I've never read this before. Well, part of the, you know, you asked me why I wrote the book. I not only wanted to inform people and make these events come alive for them, but I also wanted to bring into the awareness of the moment. of ordinary people, these amazing details that are usually known by Bible scholars,

but they don't go to the rest of the populace. And the reason for this is because Bible scholars and other scholars, people who teach in universities, tend to write for other people who are experts in the field. Why? Because you want to get tenure, you want to get published. My book, even though I could not write it, the publisher didn't want a lot of footnotes. I said, I have to have footnotes. people who read this have to know where to find this information for themselves.

I wanted it to be something that was useful even for scholars. So I wouldn't just write it, you know, like without any footnotes. But the fact is, because this is a popular book, this will have no respect in the scholarly world. Right. That's the truth. So join the club of like C.S. Lewis and, you know, other. I'd be happy to be in that. Well, that's the point.

No, that's the point. But that's, is that, I mean. They're not respect. in the scholarly world, the world of academia, what they want is something that people who write and publish in certain publications with certain publishers at such a high level that ordinary people can't understand them. But some of it is so fascinating.

So I wanted to gather all that information, synthesize it, express it in language that people can understand, and then present it to people who would really care about it. And look, I just want to say it again and again and again. You've done that so successfully in this book that it's almost hard for me to believe. I was raving to my wife just last night reading some things,

and I thought it's extraordinary to me how there's two things that you do. First of all, you take us through the Passion Week, from the raising of Lazarus to the crucifixion, and you do it. It's like a movie or, a TV program, there's levels of details and things that, amazingly, when you read the Gospels, you don't get that. For some reason, you don't get it. Maybe because there's for them and there's something here and there's something there and there's nobody to kind of point out, hey, did you catch

this piece or we kind of read over it and read over it? So you really do bring it to life in a way that is just absolutely astonishing to me. But your ability to ferret out things that I had never ever seen before. Let's talk, for example, about you mentioned that when Abraham sacrifices Isaac, so whatever it is, 1800, 1900 BC, whenever that was, as a Christian, I had no idea that there was much of a tradition in Judaism. I mean, talk about that. Okay, so. that event that Christians call the sacrifice of Isaac, even though he was never sacrificed, is called the binding of Isaac by Jews. And it's very important. It's important because of not simply, we always think as Christians, we think about Abraham, we admire his faith, even though he loved his son,

he was willing to sacrifice them because the Lord directed him to do that. But the important person, the more important person in the Jewish tradition is Isaac because of his way. willingness to be sacrificed. And in that way, he's a type of Christ. So in the early church, this is how they presented ideas about Christ. Christ was understood as the person whom Israel knew in the wilderness. When God communicated with his people, it's not the father, but the son who communicated with his people. This is something that's well-known, well-preserved in Orthodox Christianity, has been lost in the West. So when it says in the gospel of John, for example, that the word became flesh and tempted among us, it says he dwelt among us, it's the word tempted. It's saying that the person who was

with Israel in the wilderness, in the form of a cloud, it's a pillar of fire, the one who gave them water from the rock and gave them mana, that was the son, not the father. And that's obvious throughout the New Testament, but it's not something that's recognized by most Christians because you don't have that continuing ancient church tradition, especially in the Protestant side, but also among Catholics. Well, also there's been a, be careful what you say, there's a few Catholics here. I'm, by the way, I retired from the University of San Diego last year. I stopped teaching there, but I'm teaching at the Franciscan School of Theology, and I have a lot of Catholic students.

They're Franciscan monks and seminaries. I don't have any problem with them. Don't say public though. No, we joke, we joke. I'm sure more than half the people here, Catholic. There are so many things in this book, there's no way to do it justice in a conversation like we're going to have, but there's so many things that I thought, I couldn't believe that I had never seen this before. So when you talk about Isaac, part of what you're talking about is what you were able to discover from Jewish writings. So part of it is that you're a scholar that studied early Jewish writings, including Jewish writings, before the time of Jesus and during the time and immediately after the time of Jesus.

And so you're pulling things out and you're telling us, oh yeah, this is what they were thinking at that time, which in every case corroborates the identity of Jesus as the Messiah. That's right, because when the early church, you know, the followers of Jesus before the crucifixion, they thought he was this Messiah, of course. But after the crucifixion, all of these ideas that were already present in Judaism about who the Messiah might be came together. And this is the most fascinating thing. I didn't really finish explaining Isaac, so let me just try to draw that out quickly. So Isaac, of course, he was already a young man when Abraham was.

was going to sacrifice him. And Abraham was very elderly. Well, wait a minute. You say, of course, most of us don't have that idea. Most of us think of him as a kid. Okay. Well, let's say... But you know that that's wrong. He was older.

Yeah. Not very old. Yeah. But certainly, even as a little child, he could have run away from his father who was over 100 years old, right? So he could have, but in the Jewish tradition, it doesn't say this in Genesis.

But just think about this. The Jews had this story in their true. tradition, even before it was written down in Genesis, and they talked about and talked about it, and they realized Isaac could have run away, but he didn't. He could have fought his father, but he didn't. So they came to the conclusion that he accepted. He learned, of course, not until he got there, that he was going to be the sacrifice, but he was willing to be sacrificed. And that's why he's a type of Christ. In other words, he's an image of Christ from the Old Testament, something that would be fulfilled in the New Testament. But the fascinating thing is that the Jews associate Passover very much

with Isaac. And that was something that most people don't know. See, that's the big deal. When I learned that from your book, I thought, what? How is that? That's heavy. It is. That's a big deal. Because of this, for this reason, because they have a tradition that Isaac was offered for sacrifice on the 14th day of Nissan. Nissan is the month. So on that day is the day that Isaac was offered for sacrifice, and this is because they have a tradition about what day Abraham started walking to Mount Moriah

and how many days it took them to get there. That was in Genesis. So this date is the day before Passover, because Passover happens on 15 Nissan. And they came to associate Isaac and his willingness to be sacrificed as so powerful that even though Abraham did, didn't actually sacrifice them. The fact that both of them were willing to go through it, that was

almost expiatory, or it gave merit and almost forgiveness of sins to the Jewish people. And it is because of the merits of Isaac that they were let out of Egypt by Moses. We think of Moses and Passover, but for the Jews, it's very closely connected to Isaac. So Jesus also is crucified on the 14th day of Nassad. Who is the father who offered him in sacrifice? God the father. Tell me why Relief Factor is so successful at lowering or eliminating pain. I'm often asked that question just the other night.

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and you'll get huge discounts on all MyPillow betting products, including the Giza Dream Bedsheets for as low as 2998 and get all your shopping done now while quantities last. Again, use code Eric and Save Mypillow.com. We continue with the special edition of the Erictaxas show. This is my conversation with Eugenia Constantineau at Socrates in the City from a few weeks ago. This is amazing. I hope you're listening and enjoying it. One of the things that's so powerful, but was powerful for me as a Christian,

reading these Jewish sources, is how it's so obvious to us. about the meaning of Christ's life and sacrifice, but the Jews are still debating it because they don't believe in him. And it reminds me of what St. Paul said about the veil being over their eyes because they don't read the Old Testament the Jewish scriptures the way we do.

So when you think about the fact that Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son, something that we as parents cannot begin to imagine the Jews have discussed this story endlessly for 4,000 years now. So what did they say? Why is this story in the Bible? They can't understand. Why is this story?

Why did God ask this of Abraham? He knew what Abraham was going to do. He knew that Abraham would pass the test. Why is the story even in the Bible? And we know, because as Christians, we realize that this was a foreshadowed. of how God the father would give. When he asked of Abraham, he didn't demand of Abraham, didn't go through with that. But what happened later, God would give his only son for the world.

I mean, even the link of the date. Yes. When you say, you know, the 14th of the month of Nissan. That's right. That's the Jewish tradition of when Abraham offered Isaac. That's right. And the Passover. is the same date.

The fall, well, technically the 15th date. That's the day of preparation. Right. So that was the day Jesus dies. Pass over as the 15th. Right. And then you know, 1,400 years later, Jesus is sacrificed on Nissan, 14th of Nissan.

And so now we understand the meaning of the Lamb of God, don't we? Right? That's how powerful it is. But as the centuries passed and Jewish scholars and sages and rabbis and teachers thought and thought and thought and thought about this event, some of them actually came to believe that Abraham shed blood of Isaac. Some of them actually believed that Isaac was sacrificed and rose from the dead. So why would Abraham, remember that

God promised Abraham that it was through Isaac that his posterity would be blessed? Not through Ishmael, but through Isaac, right? So all of the descendants that like the stars of the sky and the sands of heaven were going to come through Isaac, how was that going to happen if he was dead? So some of the Jews sort of theorized that Abraham knew that if God gave him this son at his old age and his wife's old age, he could also make him alive again. So some of them actually had the idea of the resurrection of Isaac. Well, it's not just, I mean, you have two things happening. And I don't think you mention it really in the book, but you have two things.

When I read the book, and again, the second time read the book, on the one hand, like I'm astonished at what I'm reading, and then I'm astonished at the fact that I've never read it before, and then I have to process how is it possible that so many of us have missed these things? And one of the reasons for that is, of course, that, you know, the Jewish leaders who didn't follow Jesus, they developed a hostility toward those

who said Jesus is the Messiah. So they did a number of things like take Isaiah, I'm sorry, 53 out of the Jewish lectionary, which I want to talk about in a minute. So there's this hostility among certain Jews and they're interpreting things that's kind of anti-Christian. Right. But

as my friend Greg Denham, who I think may be watching on livestream, has pointed out to me recently. It's amazing how when Constantine became emperor that he really dramatically cut Christianity off from its Jewish roots in a very anti-Semitic way. In other words, basically gentilized the Christian faith. So you have this double divorce kind of going on where the centuries pass,

and we've completely lost touch with what everybody would have known in the first or second centuries. But I don't think it had anything to do with Constantine. It simply had to do with the fact that the very first believers were overwhelmingly Jewish. But as it moved into the Gentile world and more and more Gentiles joined the church, what they call the Greeks, right?

The Greeks joined the church because more and more Jews rejected you, the ones who were going to accept it, it was a very difficult thing to accept that the Messiah died by crucifixion. This is still the number one reason why most Jews don't believe Jesus can be the Messiah because they believe he was cursed by God. And remember, Paul struggles with this.

Why didn't more Jews accept Jesus? He struggles that in Romans 9, 10, and 11. He struggles with this. So the church, slowly over the ages, became more and more Greek, more and more former pagans joined rather than former Jews. And so I think just these things were forgotten,

and then Judaism sort of cut us out. They excommunicated the followers of Jesus, and the church sort of lost to, in some degree, touch with its Jewish roots. But I will tell you that those roots are very closely preserved in many ways in the Orthodox Church. A lot of things that we do in Holy Week

are reflected, reflect that, like Messiah's son of Joseph, the idea of Joseph, the connection with Lazarus, and even all of the scripture readings of Holy Week in the Orthodox Church actually preserve many of these associations, but the Orthodox don't necessarily understand the Jewish implications of those, but it's there.

He said, I'd like to keep from getting the blues. He grinned as he raised his little head, he popped his shoe shine ragging, and he said, get rhythm. when you get the blues, come on get rhythm. We continue with a special edition of the Airmen Texas show. This is my conversation with Eugenia Constantinou at Socrates in the city from a few weeks ago.

This is amazing. I hope you're listening and enjoying it. One of the things that you do in the book, and honestly, we can't do it justice. I'm just so amazed at what you've accomplished here. But one of the things that you do, that I found particularly extraordinary is because you're a lawyer and you've studied law and you've studied first century Roman law and first century Jewish priestly law.

Because you've dug into this stuff, you're able and you do in the book lay out exactly the process of how Jesus came to be. crucified and I have never really it's like it's like watching a thriller I've never seen it presented this way because you realize it can't happen it can't happen there's no way it can happen it can happen they try this that won't work they try that they won't work they try and there's this you you're just watching the plot and you you lay it out I don't know what to talk about that but it is amazing to me how when you follow the narrative thread because

we think, oh, that's just what happened. Right, right. But you actually take us through the legal minutiae, the ramifications of each step and how it was possible for these leaders. We're talking about the chief priests who despise Jesus to bring this about. So first let's talk about the chief priests. You paint a picture, and again, brilliantly, of the tremendous corruption of the temple system and the chief priests.

It was known at the time. Jews wrote about it. You, again, ferret out that information. Talk about the temple and how it had become deeply corrupt. Yes. The temple in Second Temple Judaism had become very, very corrupt.

Now, this is the second temple that was built after they returned from the Babylonian exile, maybe around 5'10 or 5'10. 20 BC. And very shortly thereafter, it seems that the high priesthood was corrupted. People were acquiring the high priesthood through bribery. Even before the Haslonian kingdom, this is what was happening. So it became highly, and after once, when there was no longer Jewish kings, it became also especially politicized. The Romans knew by the first century, when the Romans were involved

from the year 63. They knew that to control the Jewish people... 63 BC. 63 BC, the Romans took over Julia. And they put... Shortly thereafter, they put Herod the Great in charge. And he chose the high priest himself. And this is something...

But he was following a pattern that had happened even before him during the previous Jewish kingdom that only lasted about 100 years. So if you're going to choose somebody to be the high priest, we like to think they would choose someone who's very pious or very holy, but that's not how it works in real life, right?

They chose people by bribery. So the priest, high priesthood, was controlled by a very small group of people who actually weren't from the high priestly family. It was supposed to be hereditary. And not only that, when they were chosen as high priest, they weren't anointed, as we know from the Bible. The high priests were supposed to be anointed. They weren't anointed.

they were given their vestments. So there was much corruption. Because the temple was the only Jewish temple in the entire world, that's where all the Jews went to sacrifice animals. It was the only place on earth

where animal sacrifice could be offered. It became the center, really the religious center, the heart of Judaism, a Mecca for pilgrims, and of course for money, for the sale of sacrificial animals, for the purchase of wood, and incense and all kinds of things that were necessary for the sacrificial system.

So it attracted a lot of corruption. And by the time of the first century, and even before then, it was controlled by a very small group of families. And the chief priests were the ones who became, the chief priest and the high priest became extraordinarily wealthy because of their connections. So it's kind of like this group of very, very powerful, corrupt elites, not as powerful as big pharma and big tech are today, of course. No, but it's kind of, you know, we joke,

but it's so fascinating the pattern of when you have that kind of power consolidated. I mean, you talk about, and another thing, when you talk about the temple, oh my goodness, just the picture of when you really get an understanding of what the temple was, and the wealth and the business. And it is overwhelming. Yes, it is. It's overwhelming. And there was an elite group of people.

Very small group of people. Who were obviously very politically savvy, working with the Romans to ensure that nobody would mess up what they had going. That's right. But the Jews weren't unique in that. That's how the Romans managed their whole empire. Right. They enlisted the aristocracy in every city and every location to work with them so that they would keep the masses under control.

So the ordinary people were very heavily taxed. They were suffering a lot. Meanwhile, a very small elite group of people in power in Jerusalem were living very nice lives, very wealthy, extravagant lives. And there's a story about one wife of a high priest. she didn't want to, you were supposed to walk barefoot in the temple, she didn't want to walk barefoot to the temple. So they carpeted the whole way from her house to the temple. So she, you know, this kind of extravagance, these are the chief priests. Meanwhile, ordinary people were suffering and going hungry, and the ordinary people knew it. So when the Jews finally revolted

against the Romans, they also revolted against their own religious leaders and murdered many of the wealthy and including one of the high priests, but that didn't happen until after the time of Christ. You're talking about 70. Yeah, 66 to 73 of the Jewish War. But even in the years leading up to that, but yes, there was tremendous corruption, and they wanted to preserve their power because that was where they got their money and their influence from. And Jesus comes along and cleanses the temple. He's making a statement, and he calls them all robbers. You've made my father's house into a den of robbers, they, and he was powerful.

They knew he had a following. We sometimes think about Jesus as having, oh, just 12 disciples. Are you kidding? He had thousands of followers, and they knew that he had the potential to bring them down. And they were going to make sure that didn't happen, no matter what it took.

More of my conversation with Eugenia Constitino. The book is The Crucifixion of the King of Glory. Highly recommended, this is my Socrates in the City conversation. continuing. What you do so wonderfully is you do bring this to life and you made me understand many things that I had never really understood. I've just glossed over the top of them, but exactly how this went down. I mean, you say one thing in here about, I mean, I don't want to leap ahead to the crucifixion, but just the idea that on Palm Sunday, we've all heard sermons where people say,

oh, on Palm Sunday, everybody greeted him with Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna, and a few days later they're saying crucify him. And you make clear that basically, I mean, that's a nice theological idea, we're all guilty, yes. But the reality was that the simple people celebrating him on Palm Sunday were mostly not the tiny clot that was the mob calling for his crucifixion. I'd never known that before, but you'd never known that before. you make it really clear how that kind of went down.

I've heard sermons like that too, and I find it reprehensible, because first of all, it paints the Jewish people as kind of nonsensical. First, they love him on Sunday, and then on Friday they're calling for his death. For what reason? It doesn't make any sense.

But I also explained how the calls for Jesus to be crucified were orchestrated by the chief priest. The people who were determined to get rid of him, they're the main actors in the death of Jesus. And even though he is opposed by a number of Jewish leaders, most of the Jews at the time regarded him at least as a prophet, if not as the Messiah. How could you not?

When they saw all the things that he was doing, and they knew that he loved them, he cared about them. And many of the religious leaders were so corrupt, and they really only cared about themselves in their position. They didn't have very much love. Many of the people didn't have too much love for thee. Jewish leaders didn't have too much love or concern for the average person.

So the ordinary people knew Jesus, and they didn't just turn there, for no reason, suddenly reject him. But that's been a popular trope over the centuries. Well, that's what's so fascinating to me. It's led to a lot of anti-Semitism, I'm sorry to say. Unfair. So walk us through, because what fascinated me is that when you describe about, and some people will know this, but the chief priest have determined, I mean, the level of, again, it's like a movie,

tremendous cleverness, genius to try to figure out how do we trap him, and it was not easy. And so they were very, very dedicated to figuring out we can't do it here or here because all the people love him. We've got to do it. We've got to do it this way, this way. And then to bring him to bring him to pilot. Yes.

And then basically... They had to twist pilots. It's open and... Well, that can... You get there. But I'm saying you start with the fact that basically pilot is, you know, what do you want for me? It's like Joe Pesci and Goodfellas. You know, he's like, hey, what do you want for me?

Why are you bothering me with this? What do you want for me? You know, I do... he's basically saying like, this is your thing. This has nothing to do with me. I am the Roman, was he the procurator or no. He was just a governor. Procurators came later.

Correct. Thank you. I read that in your book. But he basically says emphatically, go away. In other words, you want me to do something. I have zero authority to do anything about this. This is an internal issue. Thank you very much. Good night.

Right. Exactly right. So they, you see, the Jews had a lot of authority. They had authority over all the Jews in the world.