Trillbilly Worker's Party - SUNDAY SERVICE 5: He Is Not Here

Episode Date: April 5, 2026

Part Five of a series we started—and thought we ended—all the way back in 2020. This time we're looking at resurrection stories, fake friends, the historical context of the Jesus movement, and much more. Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

The Philip, the Ethiopian eunuch baptized by Philip is sitting in a cart reading the Bible. It's like they had Bibles floating around. And Philip goes, do you understand what you're reading? And he goes, no. The New Testament didn't even exist yet. He was reading the fucking gay-ass old testament. He's like, man, you can just fill that stuff out. We don't need it no more.

This is Sunday school. In Sunday school, you get to say fucking gay-ass old testament in my Sunday school. Whoa. Sorry. Just got a photo of a dirty diaper. Sorry. Well, that's also what happens in Sunday school. You get a photo from the nursery because your baby's in the nursery?

Take them big old. Pick them big dumps. Bego honkers. Today we're here to talk about the resurrection, no? Yeah, let's talk about. the black disciple. The resurrection and the black disciple. Yeah.

Why is it so hard for me to hear your voice? Talk again? Yo. There you go. Yo, yo, yo. What's funny about Judas, dude, is that, oh shit. Did you know there's another disciple named Judas?

There's a lot of, here's the thing, man. A lot of John's running around. A lot of Judas's. A lot of Judas's. A lot of Judas's. A lot of Simon. as we'll talk about shortly. There was the black disciple, Simon. Yeah.

And then Simon Peter, which fucking fuck Simon Peter. What's the difference between Peter and Simon Peter? Peter was his surname. Oh, okay. Simon was his first name. His given name. But he's also known as Cephas. That's his Hellenistic name.

You got to know the difference. Paul called him Seifus. Those two were kind of beefing, I think. Was it, I guess, in the Jewish tradition at the time, consummated by their Greek name, was a bit of a put-down? Well, it depends.

Depends if you'd sent your kids to the Hellenic schools to be educated or not. Yeah. Or if you reared them in the tradition. That was the subtext of the Jesus story, which was that Judaism was Hellenizing. Yeah. And the Pharisees didn't like that.

The Sadducees did. They wanted Hellenized Judaism. Now, you can also make an argument, and several scholars have, that Paul was just Jewish. Yeah. It's called Judaism within Paul, or Paul within Judaism. That, like, if you read between the lines of the things he says, especially in Acts, he's kind of pagan. It's weird. Well, okay, so take me back to the road at Damascus, when the scales fall off his

eyes and he converts then he does yeah right but what does he convert he was beating the hell out of at a christian he's like i hate christians all day long bang bang bang bang foot up a christian's ass boom psh choke him out he was doing like diamond cutter yeah yeah yeah if you're a christian you heard stone cold music kick up you just knew paul was coming to down down down in a leather vest coming to kick that ass I've glad you asked that because there is it didn't say

I don't know that he just says that he persecuted Christians he ever kill in there or did he just kind of go beat him up I don't I don't they just said he beat him up and threw him in jail

but there is a scene where he goes to meet with the Christians and they're scared as fuck they're like what the fuck are you doing here he's like calm down no no no no we've heard about you your stone cold solitaireis

so he it's a misconception that he'd get the name Paul after he converted. He was a Roman citizen. Paul was his Roman name. Saul was his Jewish name. So it wasn't, it wasn't that the scales fell off his eyes and he's just like, hey, we're going to change one letter of your name now. Yeah. No reason. No reason. Well, in Acts, the story is that they sends Ananias to God speaks, Jesus speaks to Ananias and says, go help Paul. He pooped himself on the road to Jameskins. He's shit himself again.

He pooped himself and he needs cleaning. He needs help. But as your question, what does he convert to? Yeah. I mean, it depends on how you define early Christianity because there's some people that think that, like, it was at that point still so undifferentiated. Can you imagine?

Just put yourself in the desert during that time, okay? Mm-hmm. And just you say, you know, my whole belief system. him now is I'm going to follow this guy. Jesus or Paul? Jesus. Jesus, yeah. Well, the... Kind of a gamble.

Kind of a gamble? Yeah. Yeah. Had been around that long. Who knows? This guy might be out of his mind. Well, okay, so there had been there was John the Baptist, right? There was like precursors. John the Reveller. John the Revelator. Who wrote the

book of the seven scenes. A killer folk album in the 60s with Dave Van Runk. John the Revelyter and Dave Van Rohn. But there were several messianic figures before Jesus. And actually in Acts, two of them are named. I don't remember their names now, though. You can look them up. The Ethiopian eunuch.

The Ethiopian eunuch was not one of them. He'll have baptized that guy on the side of the road, which is kind of gross. Getting baptized in a ditch on the side of the road? Better there than never at all, you know? Well, I guess that's true. But there have been several attempts to be Messiah. People wanted to be Messiah. And honestly, dude.

A lot of responsibility. I mean, there's a lot of fanfare. I'm sure it comes with it. We might be overthinking the Jesus thing. Is it a certain? All right, dude. Here's the preamble I want to give you. I never really read the Bible when I was a Christian.

Straight up. I didn't really read the Bible. Blind faith. Yeah, here's the thing. Blind faith wasn't just the band I played in on the weekends. It's also what I practiced. That's right. Here's the reason.

Well, there's two reasons. One of which is just practical. Like, when I see numbers, my eyes glaze over. So if you tell me John 6, whatever, I'm like, what the fuck? I don't care. Then there's First John. Yeah, First John. Break down all this stuff.

And also, the thing that always caught me sort of askance was like, there'd be like nine motherfuckers named Peter, John, and Simon, like we talked about. A lot of, like. Like Jesus got like several brothers and some combination of those names. One of one was James.

There's several Marys. Yeah. And in the Mark account, the Marys changed literally three times. Except the Magdalene. There's basically nine names at that time. And four of them, everybody has, and then five of them are the wildest names you've ever heard. Habakkuk and... Ananias goes pretty crazy.

Methuselah. There's at least like four or five Ananias is in there. One of which is the rich guy in Axe who like kills him, who gives up the ghost because he doesn't give his money to the poor. And then his wife dies too. I knew an Ananias in real life. He was my high school chemistry teacher. and he ended up married one of his former students, not when they were age inappropriate,

but still a little, you have to wonder, you know. And what's that? No, go ahead. Sorry. Well, and then he gave us a test one day, and it was like he would do, like, throw in some goofy questions. Like, so if you just, like, totally bomb the organic chemistry test, you could have a chance to make up some bonus points,

and he got a chance to flex his failed stand-up comedy chops. And I remember one of them was, what do you call a smart guy from San Francisco? A homogenous? He's guys like homogenous mixtures. And it's like, I can confidently say, he couldn't do that. You couldn't do that. You couldn't do that. I don't say that often, but in that case, I think it would probably get some scrutiny over that.

A little bit. You're right. There was nine names. It's really funny to think that there was another Judas in Jesus' group because, you know, afterwards, people were like, oh, shit. People, you know, you'd meet that Judas. You'd be like, oh, are you the guy that, oh, are you the fucking bloke? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's not me. No, it's a scary. It's a scary.

Yeah. Wow. He was black in Jesus Christ Superstar. A scary. Jesus. Judas is a scary. that actor is great It seems like a

A movie's a strange movie Seems like a little Curious choice though Why couldn't Paul have been black Especially because Well I guess Paul wouldn't have been running around Wouldn't have been John Yeah Paul wasn't a disciple

He was very touchy about it too Was he? Yeah he says it in like First Corinthians or something like that He was like I was too young He says I was I missed all the good shit Yeah he missed it

He was like someone who comes in in like 1975 and wants to be a hippie still. It's like, no, that's over, darn. He's gone. Nah, man. It's like, I'm doing what I can in Asia Minor, you know, but I was working. I was working on some different stuff.

I was out there. Boom, bow, bow. He was doing like, I was up there, persecute. The Batman reaction bubbles. Like, bam, blown. Boom. Pop.

Blunt. Christian knows. It's fucking. Um, so I never really read the Bible. Also, because, okay, this is the main reason. Because as a teenager, I started noticing that there's just so many discrepancies between the gospels. I was like, what?

This doesn't mean any sense. So when I asked people about it in my church, they got really fucking defensive and agro about it. And so I was like, well, okay, then these people don't want me here. So I stopped going to that church. I know what I'm not wanting. I know what I can't get a few. you simple questions answered.

That's it. It's time for me to go. Because they don't know. Christians don't know the fucking history of the Gospels. They don't know the whole fucking any of the history of the New Testament. I've never

seen a nation, America, and a faith, American Christianity, that revels so much in their traditions and yet know

nothing about them. Yeah. It's a very strange thing. But you, I mean, you summed it up. Like, you were a Christian

without, just because you were. It's a cultural thing. You want to fit in. It's where all your social, you know, contacts and

activity is. It helps you make sense of the world, that kind of stuff. And so you come to accept a bunch of stuff critically. Yeah. And not only that,

but you have to come to accept a lot of evil things as just the course of things, too. Mm-hmm. Well, that has to happen for Jesus. to come back and it's like well so you think we shouldn't put into practice anything he's talking

about we should just let bad things happen because when the bad stuff starts happening that's when he's going to come back and that's what we should all be looking for i'm genuinely kind of um perplexed as to how people could read any kind of evil thing into the jesus story like maybe i'm being too naive when i say this but like compared to the old testament this is obviously a very unoriginal point but bear with me for a second um reading the Gospels now like genuinely I was genuinely inspired

like really because it's about a group of people who were just fed the fuck up with the world and they you know what I mean they came to the realization

direct action gets the goods direct action gives the good now do you have to be roaming around the desert with the boys and eating locusts and figs sure but you gotta you know kiss a couple frogs

for you get your prints That's true. It was, I have to say, dude, because compare it to today's day and age where, like, everything is nostalgia driven, everything is shallow, everything looks back to, like, previous eras. There was nothing about the Jesus story that was historically backward looking. There was the people, and Jesus himself hinted at it. There were the people that said he's the fulfillment of the long prophesied Messiah. Yeah. But, like, he himself was pretty ambiguous on the issue, and that was kind of something that people started to flesh out later after he was dead.

But for the most part, it was a forward-looking break with the past. Yeah. You could, whatever you say about Jesus story, you can't deny that it, I mean, in the conception of the gospel writers and Paul, The resurrection was a fulfillment of the Jewish apocalyptic eschatology. And it meant that they had reached a new age of human history. We had reached the midpoint. This is kind of what Luke's poll point is. Luke is the historian of salvation.

Also a medical doctor, wasn't it? He was a medical doctor. He wrote Axe. So people consider Luke and Axe to have been written together. Weird books, though. I have to say this, dude, reading the Bible now, the New Testament, I do not fuck with the Old Testament. That shit is dumb, and why we even still have it is a fucking joke. Like, it's so beyond me.

I don't understand. It's like, I mean, I guess you could look to it for some, like, cool Psalms and Proverbs. Gay sex, as in, that's in there. There's a gay sex scene. Yeah, there's a gay sex scene. Plenty of oninism. There is a lot of. coming on the ground.

Yeah. And you needed that back then, because the ground was really dry. You needed a nut. You needed a guy that looks like that. You know that Swedish medical book that shows the masturbator? It's just drilling at the mouth. You needed guys like that. Well, you know how David fought Goliath?

Like, what do you think Goliath's nut was like? Dude, look at that load. Like a fire... You know how, like, riot police spray down people with fire hoses to control riots? That's what Goliath was doing. Was it? just fucking clear in the fields with his big loads

wouldn't wasn't to connect this I feel like I love Sunday school I do too that's great this is good

it's good stuff um Philistines yeah weren't they like Palestine is that where we get Palestine

or if they say I don't know it's like the fucking nose dude the Zionists love to fucking or is that just because Philistine is sort of shorthanded art culture for simple

and un- dignified and like the Zionists use that or something? All of this is fucking lore. The entire Old Testament is pretty much lore and then... Here's the thing about the Old Testament. Okay?

Just think about all that stuff and just think about could that really have happened? And 80% of it... Dude, think of the concept. 12 tribes came out of the seed of Abraham. That's not how fucking nations get started. That's not how seed works.

Now, I could believe 12 nations could have came out of Goliath seed. That's... They're probably 30 nations. You're talking about a 900-year-old man. A 9-year-old man was busting enough to create... He wasn't shooting just like... Dude. Just like a fucking powder house.

But seriously... No, no, no, but seriously. The Old Testament is just lore. It's like... It's fairy tales. It's grim. Yeah, it's whatever. I mean, it's...

Every culture had their own back then. Look at the Greeks, for example. When they talked about their tribes and nations, very similar stuff. Yeah. It was all the lore because it was all, it all started as oral tradition, and then they had to put it down into written form. Parchment, papyrs, and papyrus and so forth. C. The New Testament is a little more accurate, just in the sense that, like, okay, let's start from the beginning, all right?

The very first- God created the heavens and the earth. Okay, with the New Testament, you don't read them in chronological order. This is what confused the fuck out of me when I was like a teenager. So the gospels, most theologians assume Mark in priority. You ever heard that term? Mark was written first. Oh, Mark and priority. Markin.

Markin. M-A-R-K-K or M-A-R-C-A-N. M-R-A-S-A-S. They do this shit. Lukin, M-thayan, Johan. Oh, referring to who wrote it. Johanine?

Yeah. Rakin, Mark, Lukin, Luke. Yeah. And so here's the thing about the Gospels. I would have went with Lucanian. That's very Lucanian. Leacinzian is good. That's really good.

The fucking We've opened a lot of tabs here That's all right That you're going to do that with the Bible But Well okay On the note of lore though Before I get into the New Testament

We were talking about the Philistines If you read like Genesis and all that stuff Where God promises Abraham The whole nation and Zionists use this to excuse genocide. Have some very... Yeah, yeah. If you read on in the fucking same book and in Deuteronomy and all these other stupid-ass books,

it's all, it's like you can have the land, but there's a covenant. You have to take care of the land. You have to live in harmony with other people on the land. You can't kill everybody. You don't just get it. You don't just get it. And do what you want to do it. Yeah. But even then, I mean, okay, so let's say that you do accept, which I don't, I don't accept a deed from 3,500 years ago because it's completely made the fuck up.

Yeah, right. But even if you do accept it, the deed says you have to fucking live in harmony and you have to take care of the land and you can't despoil it. And, you know what I mean? If you accept that this land was deeded as a matter of actual law, then you also have to look that same person straight in the eye and say, well yeah a man can't live in the belly of a whale for three days. Exactly. Exactly. Right, right.

It's rests upon some stuff that like, this is what genuinely why I've started to wonder, like, what's going to happen to American Christianity after Zionism? I've genuinely started wondering. It might just go straight up bell worship. Like the Iranian side. They might just be like, yeah, he was kind of our guy the whole time. Because here's the thing. For American Christians, Israel is the way that they literally prove God exists.

Yeah. The fact that we have Israel now. That's why it's like, when we say it's like a murder-suicide pact. Yeah. I mean, we're being a little hyperbolic, but not really because it's like, it's like the existence of a modern-day Israeli state validates Americans' Christianity like claims to their faith and belief system. Yeah. So they're sort of intertwined even before you introduce all the political stuff and targeted killings and so and so forth. 100%.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and so. getting back to the Old Testament, and then how this leads into the New Testament, the disciples in the Jesus movement,

which was a breakaway sect from Judaism, at this time, this is before rabbinic Judaism. You were talking about this the other day. This is like, Judaism could have taken several different paths, and it wound up taking the Pharisee path, which was what became rabbinic Judaism. Well, I noticed that because I noticed that was that fucker Litvin that runs the Habats on campus here.

He's like all the time referring to certain Jewish people's Greek Jews as like a slur. Yeah, because this was the context of, again, the Jesus movement. There was a lot of anxiety in the Judean kingdom. I guess that's what it was called under Roman occupation, that you had the Hellenizing of Jewish communities. And by that they meant they kind of were becoming a little pagan, but they kind of always had been. read the Old Testament.

You had to take sacrifices into the tabernacle. Yeah. It wasn't very different from what was going on with us, our forebears, in the north of Ireland. Exactly. Exactly. It was very fucking pagan. And this was the whole story of the Old Testament that the Jews basically broke their covenant with God because they were worshipping bail. They were worshipping idols.

And so they got cast out of the land in the exile. Well, sometimes you just throw shit at the wall and see what sticks. And sometimes you end up worshiping an ancient Samarian bull demon, you know? Could happen to anybody. It could have happened to anybody. And so they come back from exile, and then there's, you know, the Maccabees, the Roman occupation, the Hasmanian dynasty, the Judean kingdom, whatever. And so the context of Jesus is that you've got an occupation from a larger military, you know, this military imperial civilization, Roman Empire.

And then you've got this kind of multiple schisms and fractures in the Jewish identity, both politically and religiously and morally. And this is all, I think there was just a lot of anxiety in general that, like, Jews. Judaism had to reform in some way and or but if then what would wind up happening was Rome would eventually clamp down hard on the Jewish community there and destroy the temple. There is nothing in the history of Israel, in the Jewish, the Judean kingdom or whatever the fuck existed in this little tiny ship of land that said at any point in time, just Jews lived there and that just they had the... There wasn't even one type of Jew that lived there.

No, exactly. There were many different times. And so what Jesus, the Jesus movement was trying to do, if you look at it, from a very far perspective, from a 30,000 foot angle, was it was basically a political cultural movement. Honestly, it was a little more on the side of culture than it was politics. but because they were under a Roman occupation, it got conscripted into a political form. It's, it's, it is, it kind of tried to trim the fat off of Judaism in the same way that Islam would try to trim the fat off Christianity about 800 years later. That is exactly right.

You know what I mean? Like, even Islam, I think, means the correction or something like that. Yeah. Right. To the script. Yeah. And if you, I think honestly, like, so, okay, so like, let's look at the earliest proofs. we have of the Jesus movement. The first one is in First Corinthians.

One Corinthians. One Corinthians. Chapter 15, I think like first three through eight or some shit like that. Again, I don't do these numbers. I never could do this shit because I don't do the numbers. But it's in First Corinthians. This is Paul's letter to the Corinthians. And I guess I could bring it up here, dude.

I guess I have the, oh shit, I turned right to it. That was wild. It wasn't even marked. Don't let the fan blow the page there and you try to... Yeah. This is the first reference we have to the resurrection, okay? This is according to this book I'm reading, this book rocks. Reginald Fuller, the formation of the resurrection narratives.

He was a theologian at Union Theological Seminary. He's passed now. But he went through this whole thing and tried to piece it. together like how the resurrection narratives were formed. So this is the first reference we have to it and to the Jesus movement essentially. First Corinthians is not the first book of the Bible written. I think it's like Thessalonians or something. But it is one of the first because it's Paul's letter to the Corinthians.

It's funny because there's so many things that like, we don't even think about like Paul's letter to the Ephesians is Ephesus. Thessalonians, people lived in Thessalonica, Galatia. Yeah. I didn't know this shit as a young Christian. I just thought they were just naming it after shit. Same. It's crazy to read, okay, for the last 10, 15 years, really since I was in college, I've had a, you know, interest in the ancient world. And so I've spent a lot of time, especially over the last five years reading like Herodotus and like all this Robert Graves on ancient Greece and all this.

It's really crazy to read the shit now. having read all that, to read the Bible now, having read all that, especially the part in Acts where Paul goes to Athens and he's like speaking to the Greeks and he's dialoguing with the Stoics and the Epicureans and stuff. I didn't understand

that as a young Christian. I didn't know that Paul was that far into Greece, but turns out. This is the first articulation of the resurrection narrative. For I delivered unto you first of all, that which I also received how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures and that he was buried and that

he rose again the third day according to the scriptures he's talking about the old testament according to the scriptures there were fucking prophecies that a person like jesus would come right yeah i guess that's the only argument you could have for why you would include the old testament in the bible but there were gnostic groups that did not fuck with the old testament yeah they like only use the new testament um anyways he rose again the third day according to the scripture and that he was seen of Cephas, Peter, then of the 12. After that, he was seen of above 500 brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.

After that, he was seen of James, and then of all the apostles, and last of all, he was seen of me, as of one born out of due time. He was too young. That's what he was saying. A little before my time, but I did see it. So that's the first... I talk about it in here. that's the first reference we have to it okay

and then that's after that is when you start getting the gospels yeah that was that letter was written in probably the 50 or 60 AD and then the first gospel mark that's another thing I used to get tripped up on it and frankly still do what like when did Jesus live fourth century besee dude this fucking confused the shit out of me

but how do you jump from four to 60 Well, the way we date it, Jesus was born around 4 BC. Before, yeah. Okay, and died around 20. That doesn't mean before Christ. It doesn't mean before Christ. After death. Which I just found out like last week.

Jesus was burning like 4 BC. When I see BC in my mind, my mind says before Christ even came. Short hand, of course. And then he died around 29 AD. Okay. Paul was born around 6 AD. So he's about 10 years younger than Jesus. So he was too young.

He wasn't able to chop it up with the old heads. He wasn't even like, they were like, come back when you nuts drop young blood. You know? Like my nuts are dropped? I swear, I know everything you're going to know about Christianity.

I don't know everything else to know. Because you told me I couldn't come. I'm going to persecute you. I'm going to kick their ass. Anyone I said, I want to kick their ass. So, throw them in jail. The resurrection story, the fact that this letter was written in the 50s, B.C.

Or, I'm sorry, AD. It should tell you a few things. And that the gospel of Mark was not written until 70 or 80 AD. We're talking about 50 years after Christ died. Yeah. The early Christian community. So he's either old as shit or somebody's writing in the character of him. Oh, yeah.

All these are pseudo-epigrap. Yeah. What are they called pseudo-epigraphical? Yeah. All of these... So, the early Christian community operated purely on oral tradition. Yeah.

So something happened... I'm comfortable saying someone like Jesus existed, all right? And then did a lot of the things... Attributed to them. I don't know how the fuck you did them. Yeah. But he did them. Some of them. Not all of them.

I don't think he raised Lazarus from the dead. but we'll talk, that's only in John, and John is a weird fucking book, brother. I think John took some liberties with the truth. 100%. He's just like, man, I could get this narrative real shot on the arm, man. The thing is, every book has its own thematic coherence, and I didn't know this.

I was taught to read the Bible. You were probably taught the same way. You read it as the inspired word of God. That, and also the way you, just as a literary source, you read it like these little anecdotes that are separated from a, everything else, verses and like little scenes and anecdotes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not in its full sort of like, what is this document trying,

and what is the context in which this document was written to somebody or, or about something? You have to take them all as contained books, read them all, like the entire book of Mark, the entire book of Matthew. So the early Christian community just was operating on oral traditions, and there were the supposed there's the Q source which is a very mysterious thing

people it's hypothesized we don't have any proof of it or not but like there were things going around at this time that had Jesus's sayings on them because the reason I mentioned this in our episode with Jasper Nathaniel the reason we're even still talking about Jesus to this day is because say whatever you want about he never left any written word

but the man had a very bizarre way of talking that no one up until that point did He was like big, he smalls or some shit Yeah, he was like, he was like, look, if I'm going to be the most famous guy that ever lived, I'm going to separate myself from the pack. And sometimes that means being a little different. Look at the historical Jesus and also the biblical Jesus.

There was nothing in his makeup that said he was, like it's really wild when you think about it. It's like they took the concept of a Greek demigone. but they stripped him of any of the attributes of a Greek demigod like Hercules. He was not a military leader. He stuck up for the poor and the meek and the vulnerable. It's not a, you know, the Bible says that he had no form nor comeliness that man would desire him, which means he's just kind of an average.

Average guy. Yeah. Right. I think what made him stand out from everyone was he had these really bizarre way of talking. That was like very pithy and very catchy, though. Like it was, it just cut to the heart of the matter. Yeah, we're a word smith. He was a word smith.

So, um, look, when you look at the, so Paul is writing that in 50s, AD, and he, what he's saying is that I received,

the word for it is carigma, carigma. I don't know how you pronounce it. It's a Greek word. K-E-R-Y-G-M-A. And that was just the, it was like an oath.

It was like their, um, like Omerta. Yeah, it was their own worded. They cut their, their palm and set it on Exactly.

They, that was there, um, in the early Christian church, you were initiated into it with that. Why, why are we as humans? Why are we so addicted to ritual and ceremony? And like just weird semi- occult practices, you know what I mean? Like even like we're still fascinated by the great mysteries of writings from a long time ago and rituals and, you know, I think that's the difference between, you know, I think that's the difference between. it was a meme going around I guess a week or two ago when there's somebody showing this

I don't know if it's a Catholic church or an Orthodox church but they had these robes and the smoke and then the you know the image of Christ being crucified and all that kind of stuff and somebody was like man all the Protestants would would turn away from that and be whatever if they just saw this and then it's like now the hallmark of the Protestant is a rebuke

of ritual and ceremony in Hawaii well yeah because the Protestant if you really want to pair it down to its most basic level. Protestantism was an attempt to recapture the literal spirit of the Bible. Like read... Protest. You're Pentecostal.

The word Pentecost comes from Acts. It comes from Axe. And what do they do in Acts? They speak in tongues. They lay hands. You know, they try to recapture... My church basically said, we're starting with the book of Acts. Yeah, because the Catholic Church, by the time Martin Luther came around,

was doing so much crazy shit that was not in the Bible. Purgatory is not in the fucking Bible. You know, the cult worship of the Virgin Mary. Yeah. The maintenance that she was a virgin her entire life is easily dispelled by just reading several of the Gospels. Like, clearly, Jesus had brothers and sisters. So, like, you know what I'm saying? There's a lot of stuff in Catholic doctrine that, like, they had strayed very far from the text.

So, like, Protestants were trying to recapture. And also introduced the Apocrypha and stuff like that. You know, Catholics have that, you know. Right. Well, okay. So the Gospels, dude, here you go. I'll say it in terms that our audience can understand. I'll say in terms, you fucking idiots, can understand.

So in the order of the Gospels, it's Matthew Mark, Lou John. But the way they're written is Mark was written first using probably the Q source, but we don't know that for sure. And there's other sources, too. They say, like, maybe there's an L source, an M source or something. Yeah. And... Now that Q-Source stuff got us in trouble

around 2016. A little bit, yeah. You know, so... It brought it back. Matthew and Luke took from Mark and also from the Q-Source. This is all hypothesis, by the way, too.

I need to say that if you want to get into theology and into any of this interpretation of the Bible, you can just... You can riff forever. You can make it up. Yeah.

There's a lot of intertextual evidence to show that this is what was used and how they assembled the narratives. But a lot of it is speculation, dude, because we don't know who wrote Mark, we don't know who wrote Luke, we don't know who wrote Matthew, and we don't know who wrote John. All we know is that those are the names on them. But you've got like the lost gospel, the gospel of Peter, which claims they've been written by Peter, but it definitely wasn't. Yeah. Or the gospel of Thomas. Yeah. That's not written by Thomas.

Or, um, what is it that like, is it, gosh, what book is attributed to Paul, but it's like kind of, you could kind of uniformly see like Paul's writings, but there's like one or two that are attributed to him that are, that are like, this doesn't, I think it might be. Is it Hebrews? Hebrews. It's one of those towards the end of the,

yeah. Or Romans, maybe one of them, too. I think it's Romans. Yeah, one of the two. But I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah. Because Paul had a very specifically writing style and like... And a speaking style.

Paul was an organizer. I really hate to say it, but he really was. Yeah. He was a very like easygoing guy. I do like in Hebrews where he gets just right down to the issue of homosexuality right off the bat. He's like, what's going on here with this gay stuff? He's like, before we go away, further we got to dress this gay shit.

There was a gospel of Hebrews, too. That origin uses. It was early... I was it Romans that he starts off with talking about the gay shit. I might say Hebrews. I'm not reading through the New Testament right now, and I'm only at close to the very end of Acts. Yeah.

Ax is a weird book. He's like, I got some of y'all out here laying with men when you yourself are a man. And some of you women are out here laying with women like you're a man. What is going on? What the fuck is going on? It's like a Sinbad comedy bit. But it kind of is.

And like a lot of people are not open to hearing this. But like coming out of, it's not that homosexuality did homosexuality did not exist. Right. Like in the ancient world or anything like they like people tend to think like gay just popped up 1980 and whatever. But he's almost like ribbing them about their gay stuff because like at the time. Like in it, I don't know, maybe this is the wrong interpretation, but it feels like coming out of the Babylonian exile and having to rebuild the tribe, that homosexuality was sort of banned on the grounds of like,

no, we need more babies because we got to build the nation back up. It's not because it wasn't practiced. It is astonishing to me, the extent to which we apply modern concepts to the Bible. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Homosexuality was like, the reason the Christians, the early Christians were so against it, It wasn't so much that they viewed it as immoral in the way it's viewed today.

It was because the Christian movement was countercultural. Literally. Like everything dominant, hegemonic culture was, they did the opposite. In prayer, Jews, Jewish women were bareheaded and men had to cover their heads. The Christian said the opposite. Women have to cover their heads. Jewish men can be bareheaded. It wasn't really because of misogyny.

Because if you look at early Christianity, early Christianity was way more. less misogynist than any other religion at the time. In fact, in the resurrection narratives, Jesus appears in all of them to women first. And this was very revolutionary because women were not allowed to testify in any legal proceedings or as witnesses or anything. Which is another thing people talk about. I think it's maybe in Paul's letter to the Ephesians when he's like talking about women should keep irreverent silence and all that kind of stuff. And a lot of people in church said, don't see? Women should keep a reverend science, but he's talking about that very specific church.

It's a countercultural thing. It's not to say that we should say that that's good or that at least you should try to put it in practice or anything. It's just to say that these were all movements that were developed in a specific time and cultural and political context that you can't really apply to today. There is one part of it that I think you can apply to today, which is that, like I said earlier, these were people that were fed the fuck up with the world. dude. Look at the world they lived in. Nothing was changing. Everything just kept getting worse. And they knew that, you know, a lot of suits have tried to be like, have tried to retro.

What do they call that when TV writers go back and write, like, stories that, like, try to fit the later? Oh, when they try to plug the plot holes. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, yeah, I can't think what it's called. Retcon. Redcon, yeah. Like, people think that Jesus predicted the demolition of the first temple or the second temple. Maybe he did, but those gospels were all written after the second temple was destroyed, so we don't know.

Yeah. But regardless, we can say it was probably an anxiety that was circulating at that time. Anyways, I've gone a little out of left field. What's that the fucking thing? You're out. to stop. I'm out in left field. I'm out to lunch. Point is, if you read, I don't know,

what I take away from these stories is like you at least had some people that were looking to the fucking future. That's it. They were trying to break with the past and were trying to actually be historically progressive in a sense. Does that make sense? They were trying to move history along.

It had been stuck. It was stuck. It was exhausted. And also, think about this, dude. It's probably not a coincidence that this kind of stuff starts to arise because this is kind of also really frustrated me how we don't really see Christianity and Judaism at this time too as things in dialogue with paganism that like which they absolutely were 100%. The concept of a god was not our 21st century concept of a benevolent white guy in the sky. this was a very honestly in some ways it was way more weird and mystical than paganism they were kind of saying like god you can't understand this is something that is so complex you can only look at his feet even if you were to see exactly and that like the whole the entire problem of jesus was that like what does it say about humanity there is one way to read the jesus story that like we can become gods right jesus kind of seems to imply jesus asks the question are ye not God's question mark and Paul says something similar in another

point too I think that it's like the point being is that like was Jesus a man who became a God was he a God who existed through all time and then was born into the body of this human how much of a man and how much of a God are we talking about here

and we're talking about like the Greeks are obviously heavily figured into this and they had already established the idea of gods and the exactly the demigod the demigods people that were like you know born of God and flesh and all that kind of stuff. But what's interesting is, in the modern time,

we take the view that a God is supposed to be an infallible thing to be worshipped, and that's true. But in the biblical sense, yeah, some of that's true. I mean, God's a spirit. He must be worshipping spirit and truth and all that kind of stuff. So there's obviously an element of paying reverence to a higher being than yourself, like in that sense. But a God in terms of what Jesus is talking about is somebody who can control.

or sort of total environment. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Are you not gods? It's not like you should be worshipped because of whatever. It's that you kind of have the power to make. I guess it's kind of an empowering statement in a way. It is. It is.

And part of it, depending on how you want to view the resurrection, is like there is the kind of, there is the kind of very obvious read of it that's like what makes a god, of God is you can defeat death. And again, this is kind of what you get into with Paul, who is saying that, like, we can all become gods, essentially, because Paul is trying to understand the nature of the resurrection, and he's like, did God resurrect, did Jesus resurrect into an earthly body, or did he, he starts to flirt with Platonism a little bit?

Or did he, when he resurrected, his spirit go up and he reached his heavenly body, his platonic form, right? that is the human form some crude mirror of a more perfect form in the third heaven or whatever like this is you know what I'm saying these are Greek thoughts that like we don't even talk about anymore because it's well it still vexes us too it's like well if our physical corporeal form is dead and not alive anymore then how do the torments of hell affect my spiritual body or will I be reformed with the body and being punished yeah and what really frustrates me is when people just write this stuff off is just like, oh, people, you know, people believing in their... What really frustrates me is, like, the religiosity thing, you know what I'm saying? Like the Bill, Marr and all this.

Who, like, deride this stuff and, like, make fun of it even all the way going back to these times. And it's like, what I take away from the Jesus story and all these stories is that it is a blueprint for how to get through a very bad time. You know what I'm saying? Which is what all religion is, what all faith is. It's just like... What's your source?

a hope when things when you're bottomed out. Right. And that to me is the thing of like is if Jesus is a God, that's what a God is. It's like you're right. You have control and mastery over your, not only your environment, but your ability to not be completely drowned and subsumed

by the hopelessness of it all and how bad it is. And to someone at this time, these were not just like idle thoughts or like very casually discussed. or like they were just like quirky ideas someone had and there were actual enlightened people out there.

No, you actually had to like look at the fact that we all die and there is mortality and like we, why are we here? Like is there a purpose for it? And if not, then is there some higher purpose that we ascend into that this is all in dialogue with, that all this gets missed when it's discussed today either by atheists or Christians. They all just want to view it as like this,

I don't know, like it's some kind of quirky game or something. I don't know. Like, I don't know. Christians and atheists both do this. You know what I'm saying? Like, they kind of degrade and devalue the whole thing because they don't have, they don't want to learn the historical context of it.

They don't want to learn, like, what ideas are behind some of the stuff. Anyways, I've ventured Farfield. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. There's no, yeah, they don't want to seriously interrogate any of that sort of thing. No. So getting to the Gospels and the resurrection itself, all right? Mark was written first, so people think. And then there comes Luke and Matthew a little later on,

and then we get one of the weirdest fucking books ever written, John. If I had to do this in terms that people might understand, Matthew to me is kind of like the cool Steven Soderberg Very lean very sleek Almost thriller type But it's also kind of charming and cool Right

Mark is the like A24 Early A24 Robert Eager Weird Through a glass darkly Like what the fuck am I reading is kind of strange because it ends abruptly, not in this book, the original

Mark, they fucking changed it in all the subsequent Bibles. KJV. In the medieval times, they changed it. The original Mark ends abruptly at Mark 16.8. It just stops. It's fucking strange. And then what is it doing? The others. They say that...

They hummed some bars at them. In March, in the original Mark manuscript, he... So in none of the Gospels is Jesus' resurrection narrative. which is very strange. Yeah.

I mean, there's several different ways to look at that. It's a, you could say it's a meta-historical event that occurs outside time. You can't narrate. How, like, from the time when the gospels were written to the time of the crucifixion or the accepted time of the crucifixion, what's the timeline? Like, 10, 15 years after the scriptures are written, like, after the crucifixion? Mark is about 50 years out. About 50.

So it's like there's a pretty decent amount of time that's elapsed. At the earliest, maybe 30. Okay. But that's very unlikely. So this is up for debate. But it is like decades have passed. Decades. For sure.

Since the actual events. 100% were supposed to take them plus. And that's why I think Mark is very interesting. It's also a very strange text. Like I said, it's Jesus appears to the three women, the Magdalene, Mary Magdalene, Mary Mother of God and this woman named Salome who I think is James' mom

maybe they're all going to the grave to annoy Jesus because they don't think he was buried properly and they're talking to themselves like who's going to roll the stone away? Like none of us are strong enough to do that and they get there though they see the stone is rolled away and there's

a boy sitting inside dressed in white and he's clearly an angel and he says and this They're like, wait a second. They pinch his little cheeks. They fluff his wings. Wait a second.

I think it's an angel. I think he's an angel. Yeah. And the boy says, and this is also in Matthew, pretty sure. Christians love to fucking quote this, but they don't get the first half of the quote. The second half, they always love to say on Easter Sunday. He is risen. Yeah.

But the first half of the quote is, he is not here. He is not here. Where is he? Yeah. We don't know. It's never narrow. The resurrection scene is never narrated. We always go from crucifixion to empty tomb.

Empty tomb. We skip over the existential part Saturday. We don't know. Which is God is dead and it's not even clear if there's going to be an Easter at all. And it's not even clear what would even transpire if there was an Easter, right? That's another thing that there is not. But that to me, to me, if we want to take a little. religious turn to it.

The Saturday thing is what connects back to what Jesus was saying on the cross. These are not declarations of faith. He's saying, my God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? That's not... That's in Matthew. And that's why Matthew, the crucifixion scene in Matthew is great.

Because he says, my God, my God, why is thou forsaken me? The crucifixion scene in Mark is pretty good. I've already said Matthew Soderberg, right? Yeah. Mark is like some weird indie a 24 ship Luke in my opinion

Mel Gibson Luke to me Like to me is more You know when like Movies in the late 2010 Started to become a little self-aware And we're trying to be like Russo brothers

Like everything was like overly intellectual And like too I like Luke But it's just not really for me I don't know why It's just not really Yeah

To me that like It's a bourgeois text It's a bourgeois text It's a bourgeois attributed to an upper middle class doctrine. Well, Luke has one of the most insufferable fucking passages, which is the whole trying to establish that Jesus is a descendant of David. Yeah.

You know, so-and-so beget so-and-so, so-and-so, so-and-so. Some of these guys love doing genealogy. They loved it. Yeah. But Matthew tries to do the same, but it tries to establish the genealogy through Mary. Which is, again, like, why does it matter if he's... Okay, so is he the descendant of David? Is he the descendant of...

You know what I mean? Like, it's weird. But Luke is fine. But John. John, dude, I'm serious. Like, I read John the other day. And I, afterwards, like, literally, I had not even noticed how much, like,

tension I was holding. It is so fucking incredible. It is one of the best books ever written. It starts with one of the best lines of all time. In the beginning, was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. That's insane. I don't know.

Which, you know, you could look at like, that's the matrix. It's manifestation. That's the matrix. The fucking code behind the universe is the logos. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But what is so astonishing about John and John is weird because each of their own, Each gospel has their own, like, theme and theology. Like, Mark has the messianic secret, right?

And it makes sense because he's trying to be like, if you notice in Mark, Jesus is always telling people, don't tell anybody I'm the Christ. Don't tell anybody I'm the Messiah. And there is speculation going back to Judas here that what Judas told the Romans, or the Sanhedron Council, was that Jesus was calling himself.

self a Messiah. Yeah. I was looking something up real quick. Like the other thing in Mark that speaks to, like the met, well, you're talking about it contains the messianic secret, but it also gestures toward what you're talking about is this sort of a revolutionary for the time philosophy when Jesus says the traditions of men in chapter 7, verse 7 and 13, the traditions of men have made that word of God connected back to John.

uh well you're sorry is that can you hear me yeah yeah you're good wait sir sorry okay you're good now sorry okay the traditions of men have made the word of God of none effect

uh huh basically saying what is this what we've done all this and this has gotten us to this point right you know what right right right right begging alms in the streets right woman with issue of blood all like every this is we live in a society that's broken down and miserable because we're living under this Roman occupation.

Right. We got to try something. We got to try something. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. It's like you can tell that they're at a point where like the center cannot hold anymore. The contradictions of the society they live in are so stressful. Like they're so overt.

You know what I'm saying? That like something has to be broken through. And, you know, like I said, each one has the. their own sort of like theme and theology. For example, like, there's also a whole discourse on who each of these gospels is written for. Because I think some people think Matthew was written more for a Gentile audience, whereas Mark was written more for a Jewish audience or something.

You know, this, I don't even, I can't pay to, you know, know about all this stuff in the finer detail. But, like, John, what is so crazy about John, dude, is that John opens with a scene that all the other three gospels close with right before the crucifixion. And that's the scene when Jesus loses his temper at the temple and then loses his shit. And he's like throwing stuff. Yeah. And it is off to the fucking races from there.

Y'all are fucking snakes and liars. Yeah. It's, dude, it is wild. John has, so in my opinion, John has the best Last Supper scene and it has the best crucifixion scene. And what makes John a fucking weird text, like something,

like a Gene Wolfe story, genuinely, is the beloved disciple. The disciple whom Jesus loved. We never, we don't know who this is. The entire story is written, it keeps from referencing the disciple whom Jesus loved. You're like, who is

the disciple who Jesus loved? And the last supper, he lays his head on Jesus' chest. And he says, like, Why must you leave us? Like he's... Is this the one that's depicted in the famous... Yes. The Last Supper?

The painting? The painting, yeah. Yeah. I'm sure it's like in light... Like, there's the one that's got the head on the chest. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's...

And he mentions him several times more. In the crucifixion scene, which, again, this is the best fucking crucifixion scene in my opinion. Because Jesus... His mother's standing and watching... as well as the disciple whom Jesus loved. Not named. We don't know who that is.

And he says, Mother, behold thy son as he's on the cross. And then he looks at the disciple whom Jesus loved, and he says, behold thy mother, or something like that. He's like talking to Mary.

And, dude, how fucking, like, chilling that is. But behold thy son. like I'm on the cross. Jesus, yeah. And then so he comes back and all the appearances, all the resurrection scenes or the appearances, you can't call on the resurrection scenes because none of them, but there is no resurrection scene. There's only the appearances. And as Paul noted in his first Corinthians thing, there was like, he appeared first to Seifus Peter and the 12.

And then to 500 people, who the fuck are these 500 people? This never mentioned in any of the Gospels. very strange and then he appeared to James and the apostles and then he appeared to me Paul who are the 500

nothing else says about it good as mine dog this is one of this thing I hate the great mysteries of history like like Romain le prophetess and the Haitian

slave revolt it's just some mercenary trans warlord shows up with 10,000 soldiers to take on the French and then they disappear from the record as I gotta know more about that though

you know dude Okay, so same with the disciple whom Jesus loved. Yeah. Drives me fucking crazy. There's all kinds of theories. When Jesus comes back in John, he appears to Peter and he gives Peter the Great Commission, he gives him the church.

What if it was Judas? Dude. It could have been. There's a little twist, right? Well, okay, so here's the thing. I don't think it is because in the Last Supper scene, the beloved disciple has his head on Jesus's chest. and some people have read homoeroticism into this and I think you might could read it that way.

Yeah. But this is John, so this is written well after, probably almost 100 years after Jesus by this point. I don't, maybe I'm wrong about that, but it's well after Jesus. So I think that's some artistic liberty for sure. Yeah. John's whole theology is that Jesus is God.

Yeah. Which is, that's the whole point of doubting Thomas. Yeah. Doubting Thomas sticks his hands in the wound. And he says, my Lord, my God. No other gospel says that Jesus is God. Yeah. And that's a Johnine thing.

Johanine. Anyways, when Jesus comes back, he appears to Peter and he gives them the charge, go forth into the nations. And Peter looks at the disciple whom Jesus loved. And he's like, what about him? Like, why don't you? And, man, I love this line. Jesus says, what is he to you? if I say that he should live until the end of time

he should stay forever that's none of your business that's none of your concern and I mean that's a really like wild thing is that why are you trying to worry about another man's meal yeah go out there and get your own go earn so

then the get out your feelings ain't no money there you get to the end of John and then you get the big reveal dude the whole fucking gospel is written by the disciple whom Jesus loved. And it's like throws you. You're like, what? Like this whole thing was written from a first person point of view, but you

didn't know it. You know what I'm saying? It's like a Gene Wolf story. It's like, wait. The whole thing was, it's a is this an unreliable narrator? Like, you know what I mean? It's weird. Is this a lover? Right. There's all kinds of theories about, is it James? Is it John

the Evangelist? John, the Revelator. You know what I mean? Like, there's all these different. Simon Niger. Simon Niger. could have been anyway anyways the point is is that all of these resurrection

stories different how many Christians before you go how many Christians you think could name all 12 disciples dude I fucking can't doesn't it change

I think it's like there's not a consensus but like you know we know Peter James and John is Andrew one of them

Luke I don't think Luke was I don't think Matthew was For some reason, I do think Luke and Matthew, but wait, weren't they with Jesus on the boat when he, like, is asleep and then the storm comes? That's a great scene. Because one of them was a fisherman. I love that.

Who was a fisherman? They were all fishermen. Well, of men, but like. Oh, men. It's kind of, well, listen, it's funny that you think about it. It's like, Luke was a doctor, but he still had to, like, fish on the weekends and make men's meat. It's like, the medical profession hadn't yet risen to it. Well, I think that if Luke was written by Luke the position,

I don't think there's any way it could have been a disciple because it was written in like 90 AD. Yeah, that Luke the disciple was... It was like 162 or something. Anyways, the... I think they were all Fisher. I love that scene. Yeah.

Because they're like... Like the storm is coming, and they're all like, Jesus, is this like... Ain't you worried about this? Like, do you not care about the fact that we're all about to die? I sleep him. Yeah. And then he calms a storm and they say,

who is this that the winds obey? The winds and waves obey. That's a great line. Anyways. He is risen. But like I said, he is not here. That's a weird statement. And I think that if you're really honest with yourself,

like to me, every year Easter coming around, going, he is risen, that's like, to me it's like you're the Patriots, you're a Patriots fan, and like every year you win the Super Bowl, something. You know what I'm saying? It's just like, what is the point? You're a Duke fan, right? It's just like, he is.

You're just celebrating the win. Yeah, exactly. He has risen. Like, you just say this every year. Like, to me, the first half of the verse, he is not here. Like, that's the point. That should be on all the fucking church signs. Yeah, he is not here.

He is not here. Yeah. And I think that if you, you know, I don't know, if you're honest with yourself, it's like, there's a story here, but I don't know if it's the one that Christians have really promoted. Really promoted and rallied around at this point. Because, but I mean, part of it makes sense because part of what makes Christianity unique is the resurrection, right? Like, it's not, that's not in any other. like major religion right he's like the whole point

Islam doesn't believe in the rest they believe Jesus is going to come back they do yeah but they don't believe that that he was resurrected so I mean that just says something to me it's just like

that's kind of interesting I think Islam believes in sort of a Christian as to a scatological vision of the you know future but maybe got some of the details about that stuff wrong and you could see how it could be left up to interpretation.

Well, that's, you know, the isn't thing, it's interesting because, like, Muhammad, if you compare that to Jesus, like, Muhammad was a military leader. Yeah. I just, I cannot, I just cannot stop coming back to this. Netanyahu comparing, Netanyahu

being, like, in a battle between Jesus and Genghis Khan, Genghis Khan wins. It's like, yeah, that's the whole point. But, but you ain't Genghis, brother. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I hate to break us to you. I just, I don't know, it's just the, the, um,

point being is that like Jesus is not a military leader he's not a political leader at least not in the sense that we would conceive of that today now he himself was kind of weird about the whole thing when Pontius Pilate asked him if he was king of the Jews and he kept saying that's your words

he's like I ain't saying I'm not yeah right right but the point is hey it's been suggested I don't know about that It's like when Whenever Halle-Salis went to Jamaica and greeted the people in Kingston had an audience

with the Rostas and they were like basically, you know, because the basis of that religion Salasi is Christ reincolina, you know. And Salasi didn't really do anything to curb that, you know? That, it's like, who's to say? You know?

I guess the thing is, is I'm not a Christian because I don't believe people can come back from the dead. Now, there is a way to read this, maybe, that Jesus was an alien or some shit. I think, I think in Islam the concept, not that they don't think Jesus is an alien,

but they think that God brought him up. They don't think he died ever. They think he was more like Enoch or Elijah. He was raptured, but without the crucifixion. Right, right. Well, that's the thing. I don't know. You do have to believe in the resurrection

to basically be a Christian, right? because it well do you though I mean the early Christians didn't even believe Jesus was God or anything so that's yeah there were a lot of people that there were a lot of groups that did not believe a lot of Gnostics did not believe in the resurrection the scenes I don't know what they believe

the scenes were Jewish uh they were a Jewish sect but I'm trying to think of like the Ebionites Ebianites Ebionites they would they thought that Jesus was a holy figure, but they were adoptionist Christians. They thought that Jesus was not a God, that his baptism by John the Baptist was God choosing him to be the Messiah. You think Simon Nizier ever kind of got like regretted going out there a bunch of crackers? Well, I guess they wouldn't have been crackers. They would have been like, you know, Arab guys,

essentially. I don't know. Where in the Bible does it even hint at that? He's just like, My wife followed you honkies out here. Well, so final thoughts. I don't believe that he's risen. I think the disciples probably stole his body. We ended up burning him probably. He's with us. But you have to account for the other miracles,

but even them sheds were probably just, lore and oral traditions. He probably did heal some people because maybe he had a rudimentary understanding of some medicine or like I said it's possible he was like he was an alien and he had some crazy technology that none of us could understand.

Here's what I believe. I believe what literally happened with the resurrection story bears little importance doesn't really matter in terms of if that really happened or not. I think the spirit of it and the way it uplifts people and the way it changes people

transforms people and gives people a source of hope. Yeah. It's the more important thing than if Christ actually was literally resurrected or even died or whatever. Yeah. You know, but the whole point is that like God became like us. God became like us. It's like Greek myths.

It's just like Greek myths. It's like you don't really need those to literally believe that those things happen. Yeah. To accept the spirit of it in our own selves and like to live the essence of that stuff. I don't, I think we get hung up on what happened, what literally happened, and you can contort yourself into a stupid position by being like, well, yeah, you know, it's certainly possible. That's what, that's what evangelicals do with like the Creation Museum of shit. They're sitting here trying to prove this patently, like, not of our world stuff happened.

I know. And it's like, that's not the fucking point. Yeah. And that's, I mean, that goes back to the Jewish tradition. You know, it's like stories and allegories and, like, these things that help us relate to our own condition. that's what's important and it does not matter if Jesus even really lived

you know yeah now I think you're right I think it's the import of the story is that look there was a big debate in early Christian in our early Judaism too does God make mistakes

well and you can make a I don't even think you can make an argument I think he himself God said he repented that he made man I think that's the thing God can and and I don't I don't know.

For those of you, if you've even made it this far, and you're like, I can't believe these guys are like, are they entering their spiritual era, the Christian, motherfucker has one. Bitch I might be. Yeah. But the thing is, dude, is when you have a kid, you do kind of start to see, like,

it's just an endless cycle. That, like, being born is really the same thing as dying in a way. That, like, you just recapitulate the same, things over and over throughout history so that like you see the faces of your grandparents in your child's face and it's weird dude and so then you're like how far back does that go yeah did something else create us like I'm not I'm agnostic like I believe I guess in I'm open to it I'm open to especially now I believe any damn thing but I guess what I'm presented with enough yeah what I'm saying though is it like it's it's the kind of turtles all the way down thing where it's like it's like

It seems like all models are repeated at the macro level and the micro level. And so if that's true, sometimes it does make you wonder, maybe we came from somewhere else. You know what I mean? Maybe the Ark was a generation ship from another planet that had all the animals on it and the human beings. Can't rule that out of it. Can't rule it out. And that might even be like what kind of, what Larry Norman was gesturing at when he said he's an unidentified flight. What is this?

Mm-hmm. Unidentified, flying. Oh, dude, look it up. Oh, that's that song. That sounds fucking rolls. A binger. Um, but I think you had a good point,

which is that if the creation of humanity was a mistake, what's it called? UFO. UFO? Does he think we came from another planet? It kind of sounds like loud and wing, right? He's an unidentified flying object and you will drop your hands and stare. Larry Norman rules.

That rocks. Yeah. He does see. He sounds like Loud and Wainwright a little bit. Yeah. Beautiful voice. Anyways, the point being is that if God didn't make a mistake, he needed to, like, come down to, uh, monitoring the situation. I got a, I, man, I've made such a mess of shit.

Uh-huh. Yeah. which harkens back to the Greek gods who are flawed and all the way human beings are you know yeah I think the the reason that the resurrection is important for so many people is that the it seems to like I said

you could imply that we could all become gods we could all defeat death we can all become resurrected but also means that it's not too late to start over on correct course that's what I'm saying yeah that's what I'm saying it's kind of inspiring in that way It's like you can choose to break with the past. And I think that's kind of what I take away from it.

Like if you want to read it sort of allegorically, because, yeah, I guess I can never accept that a person literally resurrected. But you can, using a few clues such as like you're a human and you know what it's like to experience something extremely traumatic. Like it was very traumatic for the disciples. that this happened to the leader of their movement. Imagine walking around the desert all that time, spend all that time together. Never not.

And then just like they just kind of snatch him up one day. And like, what the? And then what happened to a lot of them? Honestly, it gets made fun of a lot, but the story told by Jesus Christ Superstar does kind of have a realistic appraisal of Judas Ascariat, which is that like

the movement was starting to outgrow and outstrip its original tenets like that it started to become so large and ambitious that it started to become like nothing just to kind of like free for all and more of his blob and so Judas Iscarat in this attempt

to rein it back in or reform it betrayed Jesus not knowing that they would kill him and make an example out of them but like that's If you look at it that way, even if you don't take that specific view, you could look at it from the sense that, like, legalistically, it was very bizarre that the Sanhedron Council killed Jesus. And if you read between the line,

this is the whole point of Pontius pilot washing his hands and saying he doesn't want to... Pilate. Yeah. Saying, like, he doesn't want to kill Jesus. It's that, like, Jesus literally hadn't done anything wrong. But it's kind of, if I was thinking about this, like, with the Trump invasion of Iran, how Trump has tried to pull.

the Pontchus pilot move a few times here. Yeah. Where it's like, we didn't want this. Yeah. They, you know, it's like, but you have all the power to stop this right now. To stop it, right. Like one phone call and like you can make, you can just pull out. We can end this like whatever.

We could try to figure out some sort of truth and reconciliation. But keep it moving, restore the global markets, whatever. But he won't do that. Because he can't. Yeah. Because at this point, has taken on a momentum of its own and it sucked him in and I genuinely think something probably similar applies to that situation with Pontius Pilate, Jesus, all this.

We're still talking about these guys. We're still talking about this just no-name Roman general. Yeah, exactly. Like they were on a collision course that they could not steer out of and that like there had to be some sort of social movement that ruptured, that called into, in my opinion, and that kind of like exploded the contradictions of society at that time. It's not, and I may have said this earlier, but it's probably no coincidence that you get the Jesus movement at the exact historical moment that the Roman emperors start demanding that they themselves be considered gods. Before that, just don't over-complicate it.

If you just make it extremely simple, it's probably no coincidence that the Roman Republic reforms and transforms, definitely didn't reform, it transformed into the empire. At the exact moment Jesus appears, I mean, it's pretty obvious that, like, there were just some changes in political economy that necessitated a kind of, like, countercultural movement. And if you read all the gospels, that's all they're trying to do. It's, it is like Epicureanism and Stoicism. It's just trying to tell you how to live your life. You know what I'm saying? It's not really any big blueprint for the end of the world or the apocalypse or how to do any of this. It's just basically an alternative to stoicism or Epicureanism.

Yeah, yeah. You can also just view it as sort of an allegory, allegorical sort of forecasting of the collapse of the Roman Empire or something too. Yeah. I mean, like, in that way, we can view the eschatological dimension of this as maybe our own version of American collapse. Well, look, if you want to look at it dialectically, it's also really fucking funny that the Roman Empire eventually adopted Christianity as its state religion. Yeah, yeah. In a last-ditch, desperate measure to. save itself

and in the West that kind of is what doomed it and it's what preserved it in the East. Weirdly enough. It's all sort of dialectical. It's very bizarre. Anyways, Sunday school is now over. I have to

go home and tend to my child. Tend to your child. Cleaner do-do ass up. Cleaner do-do ass up. Yeah, the donuts. That would be funny if you're just waiting for you to clean our ass. Even over talking about the Bible while.

I've been sitting here with my do-do ass. We didn't talk about fake friends, but is Judas a fake friend or did he do us all favor? Well, listen, sometimes God bless the broken road that cleans us, you know. I think that you got to go through some hardship before you, you know. He did spill his guts out because he tripped on a stone. Yeah. If you want to look at it. And his blood ran all through the field.

A lot of blood. Even though we know that the human body only contains about eight pines or something like that. Yeah. Eight pints. Give or take. Hardly enough to cover a field, although I'm certain it wasn't a pretty son. Or do you buy that he hung himself? I don't know.

But I don't know if I mentioned this, but going back to the Jesus Christ Superstar thing, they cast the black man. And the actor's fucking amazing. He's really fucking good. But casting a black man is Judas does get a little awkward when he hangs himself from a tree. That's a little, that's a choice. It does look, it does look, definitely. Optics are not great.

Also, dude, fuck that movie. That movie, while I had some cool shit, they filmed it in Israel and in the 60s and 70s or some shit. And it's got, it's like a fucking suckoff fest for the IDF. There's like IDF tanks in it, IDF planes. It's so fucking dumb. But back then, people were like, after the Six Day War or whatever, everybody was like, this is the, this is unbelievable. This is, ultimately, ultimately, we all love a David versus Goliath story.

You know, I think that's really the thesis of it all. We like the idea that the few can conquer the many or the powerful, you know, Yeah. With the right set of tools. Right. The right set of mindset, etc. I agree. We do like that shit.

Anyway. Well, treat your fake friends nice this week, this Easter weekend. That's true. Don't give them a reason to write you out. And even Jesus said that. That is true. Love thy enemy as your neighbor.

That is the funniest thing about J.D. Vance and all these fucking morons. Is that, like, literally J.D., literally Jesus is, commandment. He said the most important commandment, of course, was to love thy father, blah, blah, blah. But the second most important was to love the neighbor.

Yeah. Be friends. Just be friends. It's how you know you've been transformed to death unto life. Yeah. Not because you believe

some kooky event happened or not because you said the right combination of words, but because your heart's been transformed. That is a great message to go out on Thomas. Believing Thomas. Believing Thomas.

Believing. honest. Mm-hmm. All right. Well, thanks so much for listening everybody,

and we hope you enjoy Sunday school. We'll see you at Trillillie Baptist Church next time we do this. We'll talk about

the denomination off the All right. Okay. All right. Adios.