Within Reason - #164 The Chosen Creator: Putting Words in Jesus' Mouth?

Episode Date: August 9, 2026

Get Huel today with this exclusive offer for New Customers of 15% OFF with code alexoconnor at https://huel.com/alexoconnor (Minimum $50 purchase).For early, ad-free access to videos, and to support the channel, subscribe to my Substack: https://www.alexoconnor.com.Dallas Jenkins is an American film and television director, writer and producer. He is best known as the creator, director, co-writer and executive producer of The Chosen, the first multi-season series about the life of Jesus of Nazareth. LINKS:Watch the trailer for season six of The Chosen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nymMxV88QyY&feature=youtu.beSeason six premieres November 15th on Prime Video, with three episodes at launch and new episodes weekly through December 6th. And the story doesn't end on streaming — the season finale arrives as a feature film, exclusively in theaters, on March 12th, 2027.Follow The Chosen:https://www.thechosen.tv/en-ushttps://www.instagram.com/thechosentvseries/https://www.tiktok.com/@thechosentv?lang=enhttps://www.facebook.com/InsideTheChosenhttps://www.youtube.com/@TheChosenSeriesFollow Dallas: https://www.facebook.com/DallasJenkinsOfficialhttps://www.instagram.com/dallas.jenkins/https://www.youtube.com/@DallasJenkinsOfficial TIMESTAMPS:(00:21) What is The Chosen’s Purpose?(04:01) Is It Appropriate to Embellish the Story of Jesus?(14:05) Harmonising the Gospel Accounts(36:40) Do Actors Sometimes Theologically Disagree?(48:02) Controversial Additions to the Show(56:14) Why Didn’t Jesus Heal Little James?(01:14:47) Depicting Judas Iscariot(01:33:25) The Women of The Chosen(01:40:37) Stories Left Out of the Show(01:46:58) Watching The Chosen As an AgnosticCONNECT:My Website: https://www.alexoconnor.comTwitter: http://www.twitter.com/cosmicskepticFacebook: http://www.facebook.com/cosmicskepticInstagram: http://www.instagram.com/cosmicskepticTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cosmicskepticBusiness email: [e-mail] enquiries: [e-mail]

North America, I'm coming for you. We're doing a small tour, just six shows at some really cool venues. We're going to talk about philosophy. We're going to talk about God, about consciousness. We're going to talk about whatever you want to talk about because there will be an extensive Q&A at every show. The dates are on screen. The ticket link is in the description. Be there. Dallas Jenkins, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. I've been looking forward to this. Me too. What is the chosen's purpose? Like, what I mean by that is, It's genre. Is it entertainment? Because for me, I watch The Chosen. I think it's a really cool show. But I'm able to be like, hey, this is as if I'm watching any kind of show. But for a lot of people, it's maybe something more than that. But how do you see it? I genuinely, and I'm not just saying this to dodge a question or to try to manipulate anything, when I'm writing with my co-writers or when I'm directing, I genuinely don't think about the purpose. Now, that may sound bizarre, considering that I'm doing a show about Jesus and as a believer in Jesus and as someone who would love for others to know him and love him more and all of that, that's my purpose in life. But when I'm writing a show,

if I don't get the show right first, if the show isn't entertaining to watch and not, and doesn't follow good storytelling rules and good filmmaking rules, well, then none of my, my maybe perhaps higher mission or calling will be achieved anyway. So I just put all of that aside. I just put all of that aside and I go, I want to make a show that's really watchable, that's really interesting, that's entertaining, that can, that that's good. And it's hard enough to do that. It's really hard to make good television and movies. That's why so many of them are not good. It's why I've made plenty of movies that aren't very good. It's hard to make something good. So that's got to be my number one priority when it comes to the making of the show. Now, again, in life, I'm very pleased to hear

that people all over the world have had a profound spiritual experience from watching the show. And people have said, I've converted to Christianity after watching the show. That pleases me as a Christian. But I'm also pleased when someone says, I find it entertaining. Or I just am watching it because it's a historical drama. So we describe it as a historical drama. I think that's accurate. I think the result, how the viewer interprets it,

I used to be much more intentional and strategic in my storytelling. How will the audience respond to this? How can I make them rousing them some sort of emotional or spiritual or whatever response that I think would be great? I really, as of eight years ago, around the time I started developing this show, I kind of put all of that aside. and I'm like, you know, the name of our company is five and two studios. Five loaves, two fish. That's what I'm responsible for.

The boy who gave Jesus five loaves and two fish was not thinking, will this feed 5,000 people? I want it to feed 5,000 people. He was thinking, Jesus asked, and so I'm giving him five loaves and two fish. What happens with it after that is not up to me. I genuinely practice that, even with this show. I'm trying to make the best show that I can. I'm trying to honor God.

I'm trying to honor the character and intentions of Jesus and the Gospels. How people respond, I cannot think about or I'll get crippled. Because then I'll start avoiding certain things that might be challenging, that might confuse, that might cause people to question, or that might try to please someone like yourself, an agnostic or someone, you know, a non-believer. I'm like, well, how do I get them to believe? Well, I need to manipulate the scene this way. Or how do I please the Christian community?

Or how do I avoid criticism? It's crippling. So I just am like, how do I make a really good show that doesn't violate the character and intentions of Jesus and the Gospels? If I get past that, the rest will hopefully take care of itself. A moment ago, you used the phrase, my storytelling. But of course, it's not your story. Do you think it is appropriate? I mean, you must, since you're doing it.

But you understand what I mean in asking, do you think it's appropriate to take the story of Jesus, embellish it with things that are not in the Gospels and be forced into a position of your own choosing where you have to invent dialogue, personalities, behaviors, interactions, and put them on the lips and behaviors of some of the most important people for Christians who ever walked the face of the earth. Yeah, I mean, there's many, many people who would answer, no, they would say. And you can find many YouTube videos and sermons from people saying, should not be doing this. Obviously, I believe it's appropriate. I'm six seasons into this thing. If by this point, I didn't, it would be a problem. It would suck if you suddenly thought it wouldn't.

You know, you get to like season seven and you're like, you know what, guys, I'm not so sure about this. Yeah, there'd be a lot of people, including employees whose livelihoods would be dramatically impacted if I suddenly had a crisis of confidence in my decision that I made eight years ago. I I I the reason I believe it's appropriate is because I don't believe I'm violating the character and intentions of Jesus and the Gospels which I I it's a phrase that I use often because I think that by the by the very nature of the show and we even say before the first episode there's this disclaimer of sorts that just acknowledges and and makes it clear I'm I'm adding things to the the story that aren't there. The most common question that I get that's maybe different from yours slightly is, well, you're adding to the Bible. That's usually how the question is framed. Is it okay to add to the Bible? That's where I strongly push back and say, I'm not adding to the Bible because, as my co-writer Tyler often says as well, if you go to Barnes & Noble right now and find a Bible and open it, you're not going to see Rima, you're not going to see Atticus,

you're not going to see Jesus saying some of the things that are in the chosen. The Bible has not changed since the chosen started. So the whole adding to scripture thing I'm not worry about because we're not scripture. So is it appropriate to add things to the story? I believe that it is because I do believe that the viewer knows the difference. I also believe I'm not inventing a character flaw or a contradiction to Jesus' character or intentions and the character and intentions of the Gospels. So that's where I would have a problem if another filmmaker did a Jesus project and was trying to explore new ways of interpreting Jesus that haven't been explored before. So I'm going to portray Jesus doing something. I'm going to show him sinning. I'm going to show him

doing, it's hard to think of an example. I personally would find that inappropriate, but I also, I'm not a, you know, I tend to be fairly libertarian in my approach to things. I'm like, well, that's their choice and I don't have to watch it and people can watch it or not watch it. So I'm, I'm comfortable with it. I know some people aren't. I think the viewers are. I think that what has, what has caused it to work is that it's a, the Catholics describe it as a kind of a holy imagination. I'm a Protestant, so I don't really usually think in those terms, but I just go, yeah, I am like anyone else has when they've done a historical biopic

of a historical figure. You try not to violate their character, but you're gonna fill gaps in, and I think the viewers know the difference, and when they don't, they go to the Bible, right? And that's why I think it's appropriate, because we're not hearing from people. Now that I'm watching the Chosen,

I don't have to read the Bible anymore because I'm getting all my truth from the chosen. I think that would be more of a problem. Yeah. And interestingly, this is more line for, I suppose, the skeptic or atheist who won't care as much that you're doing this, but this is something that historians do, all the ancient historians, I mean, do all the time and just admit to doing so. Ancient biographies in particular are filled with intentional embellishments. You know, like birth narratives for basically any famous figure from antiquity, especially someone who, like, isn't known at the time of their birth, this is a story that someone later has sort of said,

this is probably the kind of thing that would have happened. And I think, you know, even in the construction of the Gospels, I think in the reconstruction of what Jesus said, there are times when they seem to slightly disagree with each other, you know, is it that you should not get divorced ever, or is it you should not get divorced except in the case of, you know, indelity, that kind of stuff, which tells me that you've got a bunch of authors who are trying as best they can to remember, remember the words that Jesus spoke, but are probably filling in details knowing that they might not be how it actually went down. But that's not with any intent to, like, deceive. They're not making stuff up. Now, Christian will want to say, but the Gospels are inspired by the Holy Spirit,

and so they were guided to truth. But I think it's kind of interesting without that perspective to say that the kind of thing that people accuse you of doing, which is filling in gaps, essentially, without trying to contradict the message of Jesus. I kind of think that's what the gospel authors were doing, you know? Yes, although I would argue that the gospel writers, even if their memories were slightly different, were 100% sincere in that this is what I would die in believing actually happened and what he actually said. I know that when I'm having Jesus walk into a room and say, how's everybody doing, which, you know, it might not be in the show, but I'm just saying something like that. I'm not claiming

that that actually happened. I don't know that that actually happened. For me, it's, is this plausible? That's our operating approach. Sure. Because I can't, I can't know if some of my embellishments or additions are factual. I'm trying to capture capital T truth, and I'm trying to capture plausibility. So I use historical context, cultural context, biblical context, artistic imagination,

human, you know, common sense, knowing that I'm a human being just like the disciples were. Jesus is obviously a very different human because he was also God. But, you know, I know how a human being would typically respond to this joke or this food, so it's plausible. I don't think the gospel authors were trying to be plausible. I think they were absolutely trying to and, I believe, achieved accuracy. So I think there's a slight difference there. So I don't think the gospel writers were ever saying. and then we think Jesus may have done this.

That's what I'm doing. Yeah, I see. There is a difference thing. Yeah, I'm interested to the extent that the gospel authors may have been doing that, and that's going to be different for an atheist and a Christian. But yeah, I mean, this, what you're doing, I don't think, it's only going to be controversial to somebody who cares particularly that you're treading on a very particular kind of subject matter.

Like, people get up in arms about this when you do like a Freddie Merck. and you get some of the details in the wrong way because they care a lot about Freddie Mercury. Caring about Jesus is on a totally different level, right? So it must have been quite early on, even just like at the beginning of the project when you started talking about doing such a thing that you were starting to get people saying, hey, this like isn't a good idea. And did that ever give you pause? Did you spend much time thinking maybe I shouldn't do this? That's the superpower that I believe that I have is that for various reasons, I just don't care. about the reaction.

There was a time when I did. My drug of choice was affirmation and legitimacy for many years. I had a career failure in 2017 that caused me to kind of cling to God even more. And then that's where I got on that five loaves and two fish planned. And so I won't rehash all that whole story, but the result of it was, if I believe genuinely that I'm doing what God wants me to do or that I actually have permission to do. And my wife and my pastor and people in my life that I truly trust are also comfortable with it.

And the three people that we brought on to kind of check our work, our scripts and our episodes to make sure that we don't fall outside of the boundaries of the character and intentions of Jesus and the Gospels. Then I genuinely don't care. I think you're probably similar. I mean, if I asked you, do you take pause on some of the things that you've said that have caused a lot of controversy, you would say, of course not. I've actually enjoyed it. You know, I don't know that I would go as far to say that I've enjoyed it, although I find it entertaining sometimes, or I find it interesting, or sometimes it causes me to think. But I've never questioned the decision because by the time I made the decision,

it was a very, very thought through and prayed through and talked about. That's the funny thing. I'll just say this quickly is sometimes people will point out something that they really didn't like in the show or something that they thought was controversial or unnecessary, or why did you do that? Don't you see that it's distracting people or offending people? Why don't you just apologize or why don't you just take it out? And I'll go, what do you think I did before I made that decision?

Like I thought through all this. Think of how much of a disrespectful jackass I would have to be to do something this important and then have a YouTube comment come and make me go, oh, shoot, maybe I shouldn't have done that. Didn't think of that. Yeah. Like that's a, I'm, I'm, I'm, far more thoughtful and considerate than to just after the fact question my decision because of criticism. Well, I want to talk about some of those decisions that you've made. And we can start by zooming out a little bit.

I mean, you talked about how the gospel authors were writing what they believed happened and would die for that truth. And yet, most biblical scholars think that there's at least a different emphasis, right? You've kind of got like an apocalyptic Jesus in Mark. You've got a very philosophical Jesus in in John. John is very clearly writing for a Gentile audience, you know, constantly sobbing himself and explaining what the Sabbath is and explaining what Passover is and rabbi, which means teacher, right? So we know that they were sort of writing for different audiences and probably writing with different intentions. Some think that Mark was writing in order to deal with the recent destruction of the temple. Some people think that Luke's gospel is particularly showing an affinity

with the poor and the down-trodden, you have to kind of construct this like meta-gospel. You have to pull the thread and you've got to make a decision. Like, do you present the philosophical Jesus? Do you present the story which is appealing to the Gentile? Do you present Jesus to an audience where you assume that they'll know a lot about the Jewish law? You'll have to do some exposition. You know, like there are moments in the chosen when Jesus is doing something like the triumphal entry. you have one of the background characters kind of quote Old Testament so the people who don't know

the, you know, you've got to make decisions like this. And so, I don't know, like, is there a, is one of the gospels like your backbone and you pull from the others when necessary? Or is it kind of just as and when you kind of pick and choose? Yeah, it's a fashioning question. I would say that the majority of the reason that I do those kinds of exposition is for clarity. It's less about, I want the viewer to hear this and be convinced or converted or whatever in the same way that the characters in the show are. Again,

that's not my job. It's not what I tend to worry about as I'm making the show. But I do want as a storyteller. That's my primary goal. You know, I want to be cautious. You can say whatever you want. For me, I can't say a meta-gospel. I'm not doing a gospel. I'm not inspired by the Holy Spirit to introduce some new revelation about Jesus that's

never been discovered before. That's for others to attempt. I want to make sure that the story is enjoyable for the viewer. And to make it enjoyable, I'm not going to change things. I'm not going to go, all right, I'm going to leave this part out because that's not as fun to watch. That's not my goal. I'm just saying, I want it to at least be clear. I want them to, if the viewer is watching the Triumphal Entry and they're confused by, why would they even do this?

What is the purpose of the palm branches? Why would they even have? Why palm? Then they're distracted. enjoying the narrative. So just like in the movie Titanic, at the beginning of the movie, you have this, you know, modern day exposition where he, you know, they're literally telling you exactly what happened and why and how it happened and all that. Now, you might think, well, that's, that's boring or that's weird or that's not entertaining. Well, in many

ways, it made the experience of watching the movie much better before you because you weren't distracted by thinking of how did the ship break and how to go down. You're just enjoying the love story and the and then and then feeling the emotional tragedy of it yada yada so it's similar in my show which is to answer your question about what what do we choose from each of the different gospels usually it's to serve the story the storytelling what's going to make it more clear what's going to make it more you know entertaining so that when the truth comes the or the facts you know the which I know, of course, is debatable, but the moments in scripture that are, that we are treating as canon, as gospel, as truth, as we're not changing this, we find that they're

illuminated and spotlit and become even more enlightening for the viewer because of some of these extra-biblical context that we give, that sometimes is for entertainment, sometimes is just for clarity. The gospel writers, for example, like when you mentioned Matthew, he's writing to a primarily the Jewish audience. He's leaving some of those things out because he's assuming they already know it. That's what we don't, we don't have that luxury. That's why we're not doing just a biblical reenactment. I'm like, the gospels biblically reenacted as a movie or as a show are actually not really conducive to that. I mean, it's been done and many people have been moved by it, and many people have been changed by, you know, the Jesus film, which is verse by verse, word for word.

I personally find it quite emotionally distant, quite odd. You know, Jesus as a main character doesn't actually make for a great main character because he doesn't really change. He doesn't really grow. You mean like in the sense of a traditional movie? A traditional protagonist, right? You know, he's... I just want to be careful there because somebody will clip you saying, you know,

Jesus isn't a great main character, is he? Thank you for protecting me. But yeah. But it's from a strictly narrative perspective from Joseph Campbell's, you know, the hero's journey. He doesn't need to learn something new that he didn't know before and that has to overcome some personal vice or struggle with advice from a sage. So that's why I think when people watch these verse-by-verse reenactments, they learn something.

It's interesting to see the gospel they love and believe in visually, but it doesn't really have a kind of an emotional connection to it. and it doesn't make for a good television show. Now, what I think some viewers are going to, of our conversation to be more critical of is my statement that, well, it doesn't make it for great television, so I need to do things to make a great television. I'm not changing again the story, and I'm still pointing people, yes, for the, for the narrative that God intended you to know, read the Gospels. Yeah. But what we're finding, which is interesting, is that this context that's given in the context of this show,

not in a bookish context, in a sermon context, seems to be causing people to understand the biblical narrative even better. We'll get back to the show in just a moment, but first, here in ancient Jerusalem, nutritionally dense food can be difficult to come by. And especially for someone like me, who finds it difficult to stay on top of my diet, that is where today's sponsor, Huell, comes to the rescue.

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But also, in a way, the show isn't even about Jesus. It's called The Chosen. Sure. In a way, it's really about the disciples. And for the longest time, the sort of image on like the YouTube channel was a picture of Simon Peter, you know, as the main guy, right? And if you're looking for the sort of traditional storytelling angle, the character arc, the failure, the learning, you're going to find that with the disciples. And so I suppose you can kind of get it, get it that way too. Sure.

Have you seen the West Wing? I have not, actually. Yeah. So do you know much about it? It's the U.S. show about the President's. Yeah. It's called the West Wing, which refers to that whole wing of the, of the White House. It's actually similar to the Chosen, or the Chosen is similar to the West Wing.

I've used it before as a model. I see. The President doesn't show up until the last few minutes of episode one. which is similar to our show. Jesus doesn't show up until the last few minutes of episode one. It's as much about the people around him as it is about the president. And so our show is an ensemble show. Jesus is one of the characters,

but he's not the main character. He's not the protagonist. And yet, of course, the show in the West Wing is ultimately about the presidency because it takes place in the White House. Everyone that you're meeting is either a supporter or work or employee of the president or an antagonist of the president. The show wouldn't exist. The story wouldn't exist.

The characters wouldn't be in the West Wing if it wasn't for the president. It's very similar to the chosen. The chosen, just to be clear, the title refers to three different things. You're right. Jesus, the Jews, and the... And the 12th.

The 12th, right. But you're right that it's... Because one of the reasons why the show, I think, does succeed on a traditional storytelling level is because some of the heroes' journey things that we do, we do through Peter, Matthew, and also guest characters. Yes.

Like, such as the woman with the issue of blood, who in the Gospels shows up for three verses, right? Like most women in the Gospels. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's another topic, yes. But even, we'll just use the blind men. You know, Jesus then did this, found a blind man, healed him. And then he was healed, and then he went on to the next thing. And we explore the arc of those characters. That for me was always the most brilliant thing about the shows.

And when it first came out, I remember first watching it. And the Gospels are so fast, so quick pace. It's so Jesus did this, then he did this, then he did this. Which is like, it sort of, I've always thought that kind of helps me believe that maybe this is historical. Because there's like no effort to make it sort of, and then this amazing thing happened, and here's the details and you won't believe. It's just sort of like, oh, yeah, Jesus did this. I'm just recording what happened. It's so sort of bizarre, but it does mean that you don't really like oftentimes sort of feel the time scale, for example.

Like Jesus is walking around for years doing this and you can read it in 20 minutes. And so spending that time with the disciples, like even just like after big events, Jesus leaves and the disciples are still left there, then just sort of like talking about it, you know? Yeah. Like, well, what now? And then they've got to go and like make dinner and then they've got to go to sleep and wake up the next day. It just reminds you that this is supposed to take place over a period of time, which I think is great. But there is a problem with this in terms of timing, which is you've got to construct a chronology. And it's not just in terms of chronology, but the Gospels diverge from each other in various ways.

Some people will say that they contradict each other, and that's a problem. Some people will say they contradict each other, and that's how we know that they're true. Some people try to reconcile them. But there are definitely sort of different approaches here. I've already mentioned, you know, slight differences in the things that Jesus says in the sermon on the mound, for example. A big one for me is when the cleansing of the temple happens. It's extraordinary scene of Jesus just like exploding in the temple and flipping over tables.

In synoptic gospels, this happens near the beginning of his ministry. And in John's gospel, it happens near the end. Synoptics, meaning me referring to the most three. Yeah, the first three that are. the first three that are sort of reliant on each other. Yeah, relying on each other, seemed to be more chronological in nature, less poetic, less emotional.

I've got that the wrong way around, haven't I? Well, it's Matthew Mark. No, I mean when the cleansing of the temple happens. Oh, yes. Well, there's, yeah, so in John's gospel, and sometimes I confuse which gospels they come from, but it happens twice. Yeah, yeah, so I got it wrong.

It's actually John's gospel that has the cleansing of the temple near the beginning and the synoptics, which have it nearer the end. And so as a creation, of a storyteller, you've got to make a decision. Some people try to reconcile this by saying, oh, well, it must have just happened twice. That's why one gospel says it happens at the beginning and one says it happens at the end, because it happened twice. But to depict the scene twice

would be quite a sort of bold move of reconciliation of the gospel stories. You make the decision to show it once, to show it at a particular time, and to rely on one telling of the story versus another, when you're faced with that kind of stuff, or the fact that, you know, does Jesus say that you can't get divorced or you can't get divorced except in cases of adultery, stuff like that, how do you begin approaching like that kind of problem? Yeah, I tend to look at the Gospels when something is, this is a great example of the cleansing, where some people would say it happened twice. I go, well, I'm sure if it happened twice. It's certainly plausible that it happened twice.

But for the purposes of my show, A, that would, yes, be very bold. B, it would be a, and I hate to say that it's just not great storytelling. Because if I did it first time, because it's the same thing with the feeding of the 5,000. There's a feeding of the 4,000. There's a feeding of the 5,000. Did he do it twice? Oh, you know, I don't know for certain. scholars debate it, believing scholars debate it, I know it certainly would make sense in my show,

because it would, A, undercut the power of the one time that we portray it. So in the cleansing of the temple, for sure, I believe that it happened closer to the crucifixion. And in our show, it's like that really makes sense as a storytelling device in that it accelerates his the resistance that took place during Passover week. Yeah. Right. So having it happen early in that week, and then arousing the,

the ire not only of the religious leaders, but some of the people and the vendors, you know, that you see in season five getting upset. Maybe they would have believed in him before, but now he just cost them their livelihoods and he told them that they're all wrong and their sinners. And they're like, right, I hate this guy. So it just makes more sense to me,

both in my show and in the biblical narrative. Did it also happen early in his minimum? it's certainly possible. And I'm sure there's, you know, I might have a pastor in my life would go, Dallas, of course it happened. I told you that it happened early in the ministry. I'd be like, sorry, but I forgot. But that's how we tend to approach with those things. It's not a contradiction of the gospels by not showing it twice. It would be more of a contradiction of the gospels, I think if we, for example, showed it three times or if we, you know, so that's the thing that I try to. That would be one way of dealing with it. So that's what I try to. Every day, Jesus

just goes in and flips the tables. So that's what's interesting for me as a believer, and what the show has done for me personally, is as a storyteller, I'm tasked with reconciling some of these things. And then it begs the question of like, oh, well, I, when I was in elementary school or when I was in college as a Bible student, I wasn't thinking of it maybe in the same way that I am now. And so I wasn't asking maybe some of the same questions.

And so it's caused me to ask certain questions of my, of my, my consultants or my own study and going, okay, oh wow, I'd never thought of it. Did it happen twice or did it not? Well, for the purposes of my show, I think we're just going to show it once. But then it also, it causes me when I'm reading the gospels because I'm a storyteller to start making certain connections that I may not have made as a theologian or as a pastor. And I go, oh, it actually makes more sense to me now. even that gospel story makes more sense to me now when I consider the cultural context or the historical context or Jesus' intention.

So just for one moment, put yourself in Jesus' shoes. He's also, maybe telling a story is a wrong way to put it, but he also has an intention. And so what would Jesus more likely have done if we know and we believe

that Jesus is intentionally affecting events to cause his death. Yep. Right? He, like, that's one of the reasons why we believe he, he raised Lazarus so close to, you know, around that time. Yes. Because it caused more resistance because it accelerated the journey towards his death. I know that he was doing that on purpose because that was part of the plan, if you believe that, which I do.

it also makes sense as a storyteller. And so I go, in many ways, telling the story of Jesus for the purposes of a show has caused me to understand him more too. Well, some people think that the author of John's gospel kind of does this on purpose, right? Is that like the synoptics have the cleansing of the temple near the end and this will be part of the reason why he ends up getting arrested. Whereas because John is the only gospel in which we get the story of Lazarus, some people are said, suggested, well, that's kind of why John, like, relegates the story of the cleansing of the temple to make room for this Lazarus story. Some really interesting debate there as to the extent to which people are willing to say that the author of John's gospel was willing to, like, move things around a bit, like the date of Jesus's death, you know, to make him the Passover lamb and that kind of stuff. But I think it's worth noting, sort of, I suppose, in your defense here, that if somebody's listening to that and going like, well, Dallas, you know, clearly, like, if it, if it supposed to have happened to If that's the only way that you can reconcile the story, you should have depicted it twice. The gospel authors didn't.

Right. So if you think that it happened twice, and that's the way to reconcile the story, there's still a reason why the authors of the gospels thought it's only worth including once. At the end of John's Gospel, it says that, you know, there are many other things that Jesus did and all the books in the world couldn't contain them. And I'm sure all the episodes in the, you know, all the Netflix episodes could not contain the stories of Jesus. And so the gospel authors are quite clear that we're not showing everything that he did.

We're showing a particular select set of things in order to tell you the best kind of story. Yeah. And that's often our response when some people say, why didn't you include this? And we'll say, well, Matthew didn't. This time we're following Matthew's Gospel. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. The other challenge it presents, for example, besides the cleansing is the woman who washes Jesus' feet with her hair. I remember when we were showing that episode, it was a live stream on YouTube, and we

portray Mary the sister of Lazarus, Mary of Bethany, as the one who washes Jesus' his feet, and causes Judas to react and all that. And there were people in the comments, in that moment, going, wait a minute, why aren't you showing, why did you show Mary Bethany doing that? Why not the woman of ill repute who, and forgive me, because I'm forgetting which of the gospels these narratives come from. Because there's one narrative where she washes his feet in the home of this Pharisee. And then the other, it talks about, and again, I'm not remembering which ones, but it's John who portrays it as Lazarus's sister.

And I'm like, well, go read John. Like some of the viewers who are believers are forgetting that John's telling of the story is that it was Mary of Bethany, Lazarus's sister. It's a question for John the Evangelist. It's a question for the author of the Fourth Gospel. not a question for you. If someone's saying, why are you showing this person doing this? Yes. And so I suppose you have this, you have this freedom to make a decision as to like which depiction to go with. But it's not like you're just sort of spitting it out of thin air, right? Correct. But it might still be, it's still a decision to make though, right?

Oh, 100%. And that's where, that's where our consultants come in. And, you know, I have a New Testament scholar, a Catholic priest and a messian and Jewish rabbi. And I'll sometimes say, and I really want, you know, I don't typically make decisions unless we're all kind of on the same page or at least even if one of them, for example, the Catholic priest, Father David Guffie, who I'm not a Catholic, so more likely I'm going to disagree with him on an interpretation. But I want at least to not, I want to avoid a red flag like a, this is so controversial or so contradictory to our beliefs that it's going to cause a lot of heartburn or I can't even endorse the project. I want to know that just in case, you know, I don't want to make an unnecessary controversial decision. I'm not afraid of

controversy, I just don't want it to be unnecessary. So anyway, leaving that aside, that's where I'll come to them and go, what do you think? Do we think it happened twice? Do we think Jesus washed, or a woman washed his feet twice? Or is it just different versions of that story? And we do end up making a decision, and we are making a choice, and I am saying, yes,

this is my interpretation and my portrayal is mine and my alone. And that's why I always stand behind it and don't ask anyone else to. Because even Jonathan Rumi, who plays Jesus, might have a different interpretation and might, as he's the actor portraying the character, might go, you know, I serve your vision, Dallas,

but this vision might contradict my own. And we try to avoid the big ones, the big, huge contradictions, and there's not actually too many. But, yeah, these little decisions oftentimes have, I don't want to say consequences, but they do cause people to think. And that's where I go, that's great.

So go to the Bible and reconcile it for yourself. And that goes back to your very first question. What's the purpose? My purpose is not to write a new gospel. My purpose is not to say, this is the way it happened in every case. It's just to go. This is my interpretation.

It's backed by very, very smart, believing scholars who have, we all have very good and reasonable reasons for our choices, but by no means can I claim that my interpretation and my portrayal is or should be the definitive portrayal. Jonathan Rumi, who plays Jesus on the show, is a devout Catholic. You're a Protestant. I'm told that sometimes on movie sets, actors will sort of come up to the director and say, you know, I just, I feel like my character just wouldn't say this, you know, or like, I feel like,

I get your vision, but I feel like, you know, I know this character really well, and I feel like, I imagine that probably happens on this show. Does it ever happen on a theological basis? Does it ever happen such that you, that Jonathan is made somewhat uncomfortable or is questioning the sort of lack of Catholic spin? And how do you deal with that? And how does he deal with that?

Given that you've got the final say on this, it's your show. And presumably, if it was a big enough problem for him, like as a devout Catholic, He'd probably say, you know, I'm not going to do this. Yes. So I would consider it a spectrum. There are moments when Jonathan for sure, and I don't want to speak for him, but I'll just share a couple of general examples where he's like, I'm not sure,

but he's not uncomfortable. He's just, you know, or he'll run it past his consultants, you know, just to say, because, yes, if he was going to violate, like dramatically contradict the character of Jesus, I imagine he would have a hard time doing it and might have to say, I can't, I just can't do this. I can't. We've never gotten to that point. I will say this.

In season six, the crucifixion, we had the most of that we've ever had where he said, there are things, and it wasn't about theology. And this is what's really interesting about it. I had written, my co-writers and I had written Jesus talking on the cross in multiple ways, like somewhat casually. Like, he kind of, at one point he sees one of the characters, one of the people,

and makes kind of a lighthearted reference. And so it wasn't a theological issue, but Jonathan was extremely uncomfortable with the notion that Jesus going through that much suffering would be able to say something casual or lighthearted, right? and you'd think that's not a theological issue, but for him it was because it's like he's going through so much suffering. He's going through so much suffering for a reason, right? The suffering is actually part of the theology. Yeah. So to loosen it, to make it this casual is a violation of theology in some ways. And in fact, our David Guffey, our Catholic priest, consulted, had similar issues. It was, this is

this is not reverent enough and we believe accurate enough to capture what we believe is a very, very key part, if not the key part of his passion, of his crucifixion. Protestants, I think, are a little less obsessed, passionate, I don't know, I want to use the right word with the, obviously the suffering of Jesus is very important to us, but it's a big deal in the Catholic Church. It's a, it's kind of like part of the, part of the theology. And so Jonathan was, said, I, this is the first he actually said to me. He goes, I've never been this uncomfortable. And so then we just spent hours back and forth. Some of it, I already knew, some of it I was already planning on trimming, because I was like, look, I just wanted to see how this felt, but I,

let's, let's cut it, let's trim it down. And so we finally got to a place where you were both comfortable. And he was a little uncomfortable at times, but went with it and served the vision. There were times when I made an adjustment for his sake, that I was, I would have done it a little bit differently, but I respected his perspective. And I felt like I wasn't, by making this change, I wasn't going to violate my vision of it. So those are the kinds of things that occasionally happened. But for the most part, we were in lockstep and a lot of his, I don't think I should say this art is related to, oh, it just feels repetitive or it's, you know, I think I can say it better.

It's not like a kind of, this betrays my face. Yeah. So, and so that's happened, that, again, that happened a little bit in season six. Yeah. I wouldn't say we necessarily, I mean, we did disagree. You know, we did. And I think, I think that's where, again, it's the, even though the lines Jesus was saying weren't in themselves inherently doctrinally problematic for Jonathan.

Yeah. It was the fact that he was saying anything at all. in that moment that violated his theology and it didn't violate mine but i thought okay that's fair and that's interesting and let's let's try to find a middle ground yeah that's interesting i mean there's a moment i can't remember where uh where there's sort of reference made to the brothers of jesus for example and that's a good that's it yeah that's a you've got again you kind of have to make a decision here did jesus have biological brothers right um there's just like good biblical reason to think that he did. They referred to us his brothers. There's a different word for cousins,

you know, all that kind of stuff. And yet, if you asked Jonathan Rumi, if you asked him to act in a scene where his biological brother walked in the room, for those who aren't aware, you know, this is a big no-no for Catholics. Yes. Because Jesus, Mary is a perpetual version. She never has natural children. Of course, nobody else can be miraculously born other than Jesus. So he has to be, you know, an only child in their, in their theological. So if you asked Jonathan to film a scene where he met his biological brother as Jesus. Yeah, that's fascinating. So what I would say is this, and I don't want to speak for Jonathan, I would say that even in the Catholic Church, and this is one of the things I've actually learned

that I didn't know before doing the show, is that there's even a variety of emphases and beliefs and doctrines within the Catholic Church. I kind of thought, we Protestants are the ones who have the 150 different denominations. And the Catholic. It's all our uniform and one thing. I've learned that's not the case. Okay, good. I've learned that among the LDS faith too. I'm like, oh, there's people who disagree with each other.

Wow, that's good to know. Jonathan, I don't know exactly where he stands on some of these issues that they don't necessarily believe are sink or swim, heaven or hell, heresy or dogma. Not everything that falls in that category. So I don't know exactly how Jonathan would react to that. You'd have to ask him. But I would say that I personally believe that Jesus had half-brothers. And I do believe that I believe that when the Bible talks about his brothers, again, you can say what the Greek definition of it was. I believe that they were his, that they were offspring of Mary.

It's not important enough to me, nor was I genuine, and this is genuine. I'm genuine. I say this is genuine as though the other thing wasn't. Now I'm going to really be honest with you, Alex. Everything else has been BS. No, but I mean this, that I truly, when we were first coming up with how we were going to approach the stories, I actually said to my co-writers, I'm not really interested in the whole, the brothers of Jesus, the family of Jesus, because that's a whole season. You could do a whole show on the family life of Jesus. I don't want to hint at it or, or, or, or, or, you know, And then not, it's almost like if his brothers showed up and that for like a moment and then they went away, you'd wonder why you're showing more. So I'm like, I'm going to treat it almost as the gospels treat it, which is that we're going to bring them up. We're going to bring the names up. And then you can decide if you believe they were cousins or brothers or not. It's not relevant to the show. Yeah.

And I genuinely just didn't, it's like I'm just not all that passionate about it. And so for both theological purposes and storytelling purposes, I just thought it's not, for the purposes of this show, it's not a hallway I want to go down. But it's a, you've got me thinking how Jonathan would have reacted to something like that, because it's not a line of dialogue that's, that's, theoretically improper, but it's meeting his brothers, which then leads you into this other theological problem.

So I'm not sure. Yeah, I mean, there would have to come a point where I think, someone like Jonathan, it strikes me that he'd be definitely uncomfortable with it. But I think people just wonder, like, when there are creative differences on set, you know, this is enough to bring productions down in the best of times, let alone when you're dealing with something so sort of personal and so religious. I mean, it's like a different level. So there are so many avenues to consider here,

which is also why I think a lot of people are so impressed by the show, that given the, the, the, the, carefulness that you have to approach it with, given the four different sources that you have to try to compile into a different way, given that your cast and crew are made up of people of all kinds of different beliefs, the fact that it's worked. And you've come out with a show that is good and that people enjoy and that is telling the story, you know, is really cool, man. I think it's really, really cool. It's really a, I would say it's partly a mystery to me as to why the show has resonated so strongly with so many different Christian traditions.

Yeah. From LDS to Greek Orthodox, to Messianic Jewish, to Jewish Orthodox Jewish. I mean, the show is becoming popular in Israel, even among people who don't believe in Jesus, because they're so impressed by the Jewishness of the show and that I honor and really lean into the Jewishness of Jesus, which oftentimes hasn't been done before. there's a part of me that thinks that my Protestantism is a feature. I don't know that a someone who has a specific church affiliation who has to kind of honor his church's his or her church's affiliation or else they might be in heresy almost gives me a little bit more freedom and allows me to kind of

tell the story in this way that just for whatever reason, yes, I've seen some Catholics who've been offended by the casualness with which Jesus talks because they see Jesus more reverently and more pious. But I do think there's kind of a, my Protestant libertarianism approach has, I think, been part of the thing that has allowed it to appeal. Now, again, the critics say, well, yeah, exactly. That's why, you know, it should be more divisive. The gospel should be more divisive. They are divisive. Jesus was divisive. You're too ecumenical. You're trying to appease too many people. I'm not trying to appease too many people. It just happens to be because I do believe I'm focusing, not on the theological differences, most of which came 200 years, 300 years, 500 years, 500 years, 2,000 years later. I'm focusing on, I'm just telling the story of Jesus. And interestingly enough, the majority of Christian traditions agree on the historicity of it, the culturalness of it. So that's an interesting thought experiment as to why. You know, there was something in particular I wanted to ask you about in that you were saying that you don't add anything to the story, that you don't sort of...

To the Bible. To the Bible, right? That's what I mean to say, right? And that you wouldn't do anything that contradicts the nature of Jesus or anything like that. There are a couple of occasions watching the show where it seems to me that you've made quite a significant theological decision with regards to Jesus. That you've put word in his mouth that aren't in the gospels that are not just... I mean, I've heard you sometimes say, like, every time Jesus says hello when he walks into a room, you know, that's not in the Gospels. And that's fair enough. But, you know, and this isn't the example I have in mind, but when Jesus says, I am the law of Moses, and that's not in the Gospels, that's not just like saying hello, right? And I know a lot of people were like, sort of,

hold on, that's too significant a thing to have Jesus say without scriptural authority. That must have been a conversation that you had, because by the way, as I'm sure people, like, I can't be the only person who thinks this. It's just one of the coolest moments, like, cinematically. I loved it. Of the entire series. It is just, like, phenomenal television, right? And was there a feeling of, like, well, Jesus didn't say this, but it works so well on screen that maybe we should just do it?

Yeah. Or was there something else going on? Whether it's bad or the little James scene or Plunk. There's moments that, for example, when Rima was killed in season four, sorry, if you have to show you. Spoilers, yeah. So it's like, I was going to make this joke earlier, like, where you're telling what happens in the series and you're like, oh, spoilers as a joke. But there are actual... Oh, yes. And I probably just gave one away too much because I'm just sure there's plenty of viewers who haven't seen the show. But where the reasons he gives for not raising her. What I think some of these moments qualify under is if he would have said them, it highly like to.

would have been in the Gospels. That's the most, the thing that I tread most carefully around is, you're right. It's not just him saying hello. This is him saying something that he really likely didn't say because if he would have said it, it would have been recorded. It would have been recorded. Yeah. And that's where I think the fair-minded critics, the ones who do like the show or are

comfortable with my additions, have the have the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, most like to stand on when they do criticize or when they are uncomfortable is this isn't plausible anymore, Dallas, because if it would have happened, it would have been in the Gospels. And I think that's the fairest argument against what I do. I'll say this. I believe Jesus is God. I believe that Jesus was an author with his father of the law of Moses. So to use your example, there's a moment in season three where, you know, they're saying, because of the law of Moses, we now have to punish you. And he says, I am the law of Moses. I believe that I'm on solid theological ground because I do believe that Jesus is the fulfillment of the law of Moses. I believe that he's

the word, you know, he represents the law of Moses. I believe I'm on solid theological. ground, but you are correct that I'm making a theological statement that Jesus didn't make in the wording that I gave him. And that's dangerous. And there's like, it's not just about, well, is this true of Jesus? Is it true that he was the law? It's also, would he have said that there and then? Like, for example, if like Jesus early on in the series walked into a room and someone said, oh, hello, I'm God incarnate in the flesh, bow down and worship me. Yes. I think that would be inappropriate and you get a lot of flack. And you could say, but look, man, I think that Jesus was God in the flesh incarnate.

Like, that's who I think he was. And people would say, fair enough. But we don't know all of the reasons why Jesus said this at this point and that at that point, why he was unclear here and very clear here. And that I am the Law of Moses moment is an extremely provocative. It is very Jesus-esque. It's the kind of thing that he would say and really annoy people, right? So I agree, and I'm on your side. But then again, I'm coming at this from someone who is looking at the historical figure of Jesus.

I think half the things that he said to say in the Gospels themselves, he probably didn't say in those words. So it doesn't trouble me at all. Right. But my critics go, of course, Alex. Yeah, like, yeah, I don't care. You know, I think it's great TV, you know. You endorsing my show has mixed. Yeah, sorry.

I mean, it's very bad and very challenging. And I want to become a Christian. I don't like it because it makes me want to become a Christian. Yeah. Exactly. I think that's one of the most... But it's such an insightful question and thought, and this is why you're so good at what you do and why you're so brilliant. You are absolutely correct that it is... It raises the question of most, of my claim, that everything that I'm putting into the show is plausible.

Yeah. And I would say, again, I accept the criticism and think it's fair. I would say that I'm in my defense or in my intention is I'm also trying to capture capital T truth, which I believe comes from the entirety of Scripture. And because I believe that Jesus was both man and God and was part of creating the world, that when Paul was writing some of his letters,

some of his theology was coming from inspiration from God the Father and God the Son. We don't need to get into the whole Trinity debate. But so there are times when I acknowledge that I am, I believe, capturing the plausible character of Jesus as God in the entirety of Scripture, as opposed to just Jesus of Nazareth, the historical figure, would he have said this? Yeah. The reason I wouldn't include him saying, I'm God incarnate, blah, blah, blah,

is because I believe that he intentionally didn't say some of those things. for for various reasons that are a whole other you know podcast yeah but um i do believe i am the law of moses is the kind of thing jesus would say that doesn't impact the narrative of the story that in the gospels the scene with jesus and little james where i where i present a theology of suffering and and healing that that uh we know jesus didn't give, or at least it wasn't recorded that he gave that, that I do believe is theologically correct and represents the divine nature of Jesus. But it's, it does create a unique problem A for you as a, as a skeptic or as a, as a non-believer. And for me, as someone

who's, who continually says, everything we do in the show is plausible. Yeah. Sometimes it means theological, holistically plausible, maybe not historically and plausible. Did anybody advise you not to have that line? Like script advisors? Did Jonathan Rumi read it and go like, you know, I'm not sure? Everyone loved it. Because, I mean, as I say, it's great, it's great TV. Yeah, my, all of my consultants loved it because they did believe that it was, um, theoretically, conceptually, accurate and the kind of thing Jesus would say. I mean, gosh, my, my, my, my messian or Jewish rabbi was like, might be his favorite line. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because what he's always concerned about is the, the oftentimes Christian belief that once, you know, Jesus was kind of getting rid of the Jewish

traditions and the Torah and was kind of replacing it with his own theology. And, and so when he's like endorsing the law of Moses and that he is the, the, the, the, the, the embodiment of it, he really loved it. Yeah, it's a very Matayan kind of idea. You mentioned Little John, Little James. I keep doing that. So one of our actors once, it's in our blooper reel, actually. Shahar Isaac, who plays Simon Peter in a scene, refers him as Little John.

Because he's thinking, Little James, but there's also John, and Fire Tuck, and yet, yeah. So you're okay. Little James, yeah, I'm in good company, I suppose. Little James has a disability. He walks with a cane, with a, like a stick. Severe limp, a disfigurement in his back. And there's this scene invented for the chosen, wherein, I mean, Jesus sends his disciples out to go and heal people of their ailments.

And I find this extraordinary, because little James is like, Like, you know, what about me? Like, why haven't you healed me? And then Jesus says the classic Jesus thing where he goes, do you want to be healed? And this is what he says to people where he says, do you want to be healed? And they say, yes, and he heals them. And he says to little James, do you want to be healed? And he says, yes, of course.

And Jesus says no. And that to me is such a bold thing to put on the lips of Jesus. Because, again, even more than the sort of law of Moses thing, because not only, because some people, people debate the extent to which Jesus was healing people. Was it just the people who came up? Was it everyone around? Like, and not only that, but there then follows this, what would be called in philosophy a theodicy, which is the attempt to reconcile, you know, evil in the world and suffering with the goodness of God. Where Jesus sort of explains, he says, well, Well, like, think of the story you'll be able to tell, you know. Think of the role that your suffering will serve when you're able to sort of use it in this way. And then Jesus makes a reference to the book of Job. Yeah. Because the same thing kind of happens to Job.

And in Job, we get this sort of idea that maybe there's some reason. But even in the book of Job, God never tells Job why he suffered. He just tells him you couldn't possibly understand, right? But in Jesus saying, even just very briefly, just saying to little James, well, think of what you'll be able to do because of the suffering. You're providing a theodicy, which itself will be philosophically controversial. Yes. And then you're putting it on the lips of Jesus, even though it's something that he didn't say, I think, you know, off the top of my head of all the things that would most sort of worry me, if I were your advisor, not that I'd be in a position to be, but you were like, look, how I want to make this biblically fair and accurate, I don't want to annoy people. That probably would be the biggest red flag for me.

So why? Why even bother? Yeah. Well, it started when the actor, Jordan Walker Ross, he had auditioned on video from the neck up. Right. Did a good job. I do what's called a callback. So he comes in now, I'm meeting him in person.

And he comes walking in abnormally short because of his disability. He's had extreme limp, a disfigurement in his back and one of his legs. And I was like, oh. And I knew right then and there after he gave another really good audition, I talked about this with my wife. I'm going, if I cast him as little James, I knew everything that you're saying right now. I'm like, I have to address this unless he gets miraculously healed the actor before the first day of filming. That would have been something. That would have been something.

Or halfway through this show. I might have been like, no, no, no, just can you wait until the next season. I'll make this part of the show. So I was like, I am by definition if I cast him painting myself into a corner and I have to do something like what you just described. Everything you just said, of course, much more brilliant than I could have said it. But I had to address, I'm like, I'm going to have to face this because obviously Little James is going to ask Jesus at some point. You're healing everybody else, why not me? And in the Gospels, there is not a record of someone asking Jesus personally for healing and not receiving it.

Now, I and are my scholars and do believe that there were moments when he didn't heal people, such as he could have, you know, he had an opportunity to stop by this city. He didn't do it. There's a range of beliefs on, as you just said, on whether Jesus healed everybody. I know a pastor, a very prominent one, who believes that there were no hospitals. Hospitals were basically rendered useless during those three years of his ministry. I don't share that belief. People died, of course, all around him. Jesus attended funerals, I believe. So clearly, I don't believe he healed everybody.

But there isn't an instance in Scripture where he's asked for it and he denies it. So, yes, very dangerous, worrisome for sure. But this, again, falls under that category of the theology of suffering throughout the course of Scripture and throughout the course of humanity, I believe, is reconcilable. Not only does, you mention that God doesn't necessarily tell Job why he's, suffering, but Paul and Peter both address things like suffering after Jesus was here. So when Peter is saying things like these trials and tribulations strengthen us, and Paul is talking about the thorn in his flesh that he's asked Jesus to remove,

Paul talks about suffering, the book of James talks about suffering. These are all people who either had encountered Jesus or in the nature of Paul, who didn't encounter him in person, but was clearly, you know, had some sort of significant religious experience, spiritual experience, and claimed inspiration from God that I believe is true. I believe that I was on solid theological ground. But again, it does fall under the category of, would Jesus have said that? Well, Jesus says, but think of the story that you have, speaking to little James here, especially in this journey to come, if I don't heal you.

to know how to proclaim that you still praise God in spite of this, to know how to focus on all that matters so much more than the body, to show that you can still be patient with your suffering here on earth because you know you'll spend an eternity with no suffering. And like, this is the kind of thing that people say today to people who are suffering. Like, maybe there's a reason for it. But, like, that is a, that's a very particular view of suffering. You know, some people take the view that, you know, evil is. is a privation of good, and it's a result of sin and the fall. And some people think, like, all kinds of stuff.

Like the view, this sort of functional account of suffering, that suffering exists because it serves some higher order purpose, is a view that some people hold, but it's a view that other people think is like philosophically bunk and ridiculous. And you've put that in the mouth of God himself, right? Yeah.

Like, and that is a, that is quite, that is quite a moment. Like, you know, I understand it's a little bit weird having a character with a disability and not addressing it. But maybe that, was that ever like an option for you just to think, well, we'll just, we'll just not address it. Because the thing that's really weird for me is that he's sending him out to heal. Yes. Implying that, like, what, little James, like, doesn't have the power to heal himself or he couldn't like, you know, I like the idea of him sort of Jesus saying, no, and he's like, okay, okay, fine. And then he, like, runs over to Peter, heal me, heal me.

Yeah, exactly. Because why not? Yeah. And I kind of wonder what, it opens all these questions. Like if, I mean, if Jesus has given people the power, his disciples the power to heal, if little James went to Simon Peter and said, please heal me, Simon Peter doesn't know that Jesus has had this conversation with him. So would he like, would he try and be like, oh, I can't for some reason?

Or, you know, would, and that would imply that Jesus is somehow literally like preventing it from happening, which seems like we're on very, very delicate ground there when you're saying that... I have to admit, I have to freely admit, I didn't consider. Peter out on his two-by-two coming across little James. You know what? While I'm on the... Exactly. While I'm in...

This is clearly working. Let me heal you. That's a very... That's a fascinating... Yeah, because if the view is that, like, or just whoever James was with, if the view is that that person unknowingly would just try to heal James, and having the power to do so, should be able to do so, but God would have to sort of inter... been and stop it, you've just opened the door to putting in the mouth of Jesus the view

that if you try to heal this guy, I am going to stop that. I'm going to stop that from happening, which that is profound, right? That's a big, that's a big thing to do. It makes me wonder whether it was like worth the difficulty of addressing it at all, you know? Yeah. So that's the, I have a long answer to your question. I'm just going to have to ask for your patience with it. I hope it'll be interesting but it's so important. And this is, again, I want to compliment you on your

insight because this really does bring up cosmically significant questions. So I'll first start by saying to make it clear. Little James in the Gospels was not handicapped, almost assuredly.

The decision to do this came when I decided to cast George. To escape the conundrum and the problem that you are very articulately communicating and that I absolutely faced would have just meant

to cast someone different and to not put him in the show. So the real question is why did you cast him and then why did you then choose to portray this? Which, as you've said, if Jesus would have said

this out of his mouth, it almost assuredly would have been in the Gospels. So this is where it comes to why I even believe what I believe. So I do believe Jesus is God. I do believe that the Bible is God's inspired word. So I do believe, and I don't think that I could have had that scene if I wasn't a believer, because if I don't believe that suffering, that the theology of suffering and healing and sometimes not healing, if I didn't believe that it's reconcilable by, A, the Bible, by my own personal experience, by people such as, I don't know if you know, there's people like

Nick V, a famous Australian who has no arms and no legs. Oh, yeah, yeah. And as a very well-known evangelist. Yeah. Johnny Erickson Tata is a very famous Christian teacher and author who was paralyzed as a teenager in an accident and has never been healed. She lives in fairly consistent pain. They talk about this all the time.

They have tremendous faith. And there are many Christians who were uncomfortable with the scene because they said, no, Jesus healed everybody. And Jesus still heals today. Yeah. And if you're not healed, it's because you don't have enough faith. So I don't believe that because I look at the totality of scripture, which I believe was inspired. And I see the Apostle Paul, the Apostle Peter, sharing this thing.

theology of suffering and pain, and then, of course, the author of the book of James saying similar things. So that's how I reconcile it and believe that I'm on solid ground theologically when Jesus says it. But I don't know that I could have done it if I didn't believe that, because then to your point, it doesn't, I'm putting words in Jesus' mouth that can only be reconciled by past and future, meaning past before the gospel, before first century and afterwards. And so that is where I have to unapologetically say

that, yeah, this was a theological perspective that I have, and I'm going to stand behind it, and I'm going to put it in a show. And that's where I also say, the difference between the show and the Bible is that the show might not always be factually true, but I hope that it captures capital T truth, the totality of scripture.

So it's why, you know, when you say, if Peter did have the ability to heal and tried to heal Little James God preventing it, that brings up a whole other huge issue of, what about today? if we believe, as I do, and have even seen some people be healed of some malady, when someone isn't, and a person who has healed someone previously goes to heal this other person, is God stepping in and preventing it? Or is this part of his overall plan from the beginning of time and God lives outside the economy of time and space,

which is why a day is a thousand years. I mean, these are, you've done entire episodes just on this exact issue. And I have studied, you know, in college, entire courses on this exact issue. So I'm not going to be able to solve it right now and a YouTube comment in response to me is not going to solve it either.

But it's very fascinating that you're bringing up from one scene in the show, I think extraordinarily important and significant theological questions. So all I can do is say, I believe this. I believe it's plausible. I believe that I'm on solid theological ground. But I also acknowledge that at the end of the day, you still have to read the Bible versus my show. If you're looking for what I believe, like I, even I, as a fan of my show, say, if you're struggling, go to the Bible, go to your pastor, go to, you know, don't rely on the show as the sole source of your theology.

I'll close with this. there are thousands of people all over the world who have reached out to us or have met me in person and said that that scene illuminated for them something that they had previously not. Like I've had people say to me,

I've been suffering for 25 years. And the questions I always ask, or the answers I always get back are, well, you just need to have more faith or God just, you know, God is teaching you something, you know, all of these somewhat pat answers. And they say that scene for me unlocked or, you know, or cracked a code that I hadn't previously been able to understand. Now, in a vacuum, that's a problem. If the show is solely responsible for their

theological understanding, that's a problem. Because I don't believe that the show should be. But fortunately, I believe the show is illuminating a truth that I believe already exists in scripture that some people just maybe don't understand or haven't fully reconciled. And again, someone like yourself who might, look, I haven't seen enough of your content to know how you ask or think of the problem of evil. I've seen other episodes of yours, but the problem of evil, the problem of suffering is one of the biggest impediments to people believing. And also for those of who believe sometimes is one of the most comforting. Yeah.

I suppose it's conspicuous that Jesus doesn't directly address it for that reason in the Gospels, I mean. And it's one of those things where you think, if something is so important and so significant, and yet Jesus doesn't talk about it, it seems like maybe there was a reason why he didn't talk about it. There might have been like an intentional omission of this from the ministry for all kinds of reasons. Yeah, I think the one exception to that would be that he does address the issue of belief. And he does talk, and I'm not going to give exact scriptural references. I don't, because I can't remember the exact verse. But he will talk about things like, you have to, in order to believe, you have to see a sign.

Yeah. And so sometimes he would give signs to people for the purpose of their belief. and other times he wouldn't, you know, do a miracle because he, I would, and I always want to preface this by saying, because I'm not a pastor, I don't, I'm not, I'm not a, I'm not a, an an apologist, I, I was tread carefully, but my interpretation is that, um, that oftentimes he's not doing a miracle because he wants or expects or, or, or from the creation of the, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, uh, is intending for this person to believe for different reasons. He doesn't want to always, you know, you shouldn't always just need a miracle in order to believe. And so he's

going to reveal himself to you in different ways. Again, these are all significant issues that are addressed an entire podcast episode separately. But I would say he's, I don't think he's silent on the issue of miracles or belief or a miracle as a means to cause someone to believe. Well, I mean the problem of evil in particular. Like there's no sort of fairly I say unto you, the reason that suffering exists is because it allows us to achieve higher-order goods that are conceptually parasitic on lower-order suffering. That doesn't, that's not how Jesus operates, you know. He didn't say that, no.

Again, I would say the suffering he did experience for the purposes of, you know, when you read Isaiah and say by his wounds, we are healed. And if you believe as I do that that's referring to Jesus, then that, then Jesus is, exhibiting, if not outright, saying explicitly, he is exhibiting the scriptural truth, the theology of suffering and pain, and what the reasons could be for that. But yeah, you are correct that the gospel accounts don't have Jesus making it easy by just saying it. Like maybe I did in the show with Little James. It's not just about the words that the characters say in The Chosen that provide this difficult challenge as to how to present a person or a character. It's also,

personality, its context, its motivations for particular behaviours that aren't made explicit in the Bible. And the most interesting and obvious of these to me is the character of Judas Ascariat, who is a brilliantly developed character in your show. Again, in terms of storytelling, I mean, he's such a compelling character. And you sort of follow this thread. And it also helps to understand why people were upset about Jesus, what kind of Messiah they might have been expecting and how that was not fulfilled. And the Gospels are a little bit unclear on why Judas portrays Jesus. Yeah. Like in some of the gospels, it seems to be straight up just money. Like in Mark and Matthew, Judas just takes some money and he does it for that reason. In one,

it's specified that it's 30, you know, pieces of silver. Yeah, they mentioned that that's what happened. I don't know that they say he betrayed him because he wanted 30 pieces of silver. That was the entire reason. And by the time you get to Luke's gospel, you get this idea of Satan entering Judas, which is this sort of sends a chill down his mind a little bit, right? And the same thing in John's gospel, and you know, you depict this, the moment of sort of handing over the bit of bread to indicate that that's who it's going to be. and Jesus, in the full knowledge, Satan enters him at that moment and he says, what you're going to do, you know, go and go and do quickly kind of thing. So there's a sort of difference. But the other thing about Judas and why he's so interesting is that people always debate like, you know, is this a man who's in hell? Is this a man who's in heaven? Is this a man who is evil? Is this a troubled soul who just like the rest of us fell short and sinned? In Matthew's Gospel, Judas repents before he kills himself, right? And yet the Gospels also have Jesus say,

that it would be better for the person who betrayed the son of man, that he were never born, right? Yeah, yeah. You have to make a decision here. Is Judas this evil, malicious, demon-infested man who betrays Jesus? Or is he this sort of understandable man who went wrong? There is a fear that in modern cinema and television, we humanize villains too much. It's like the Joker thing, where it's like it's definitely true of human psychology. that people are complicated.

But for some people, something like The Joker, it seems to rationalize, like, murderous behavior. It sort of begins to dissolve this right and wrong, which some people are a little bit scared of. And in the story of Jesus, that seems really important. So just tell me how you begin approaching a character like him. So I think the simplest belief, which you can draw from the Gospels of,

Jesus knew he would do this. The Gospels say that, that he knew at the beginning of his ministry, that one would betray him. I do believe that. Satan entered into him during Passover week and had a bit of a puppet master thing. I think that that's true. I think that there was a demonic influence on Jesus. Sorry. Please don't pull that clip out.

a demonic influence on Judas and everything in between. I don't think that that Passover week, Judas went from all in on Jesus to all of a sudden Satan entered him and he went, boom, he was going this way and then he turned the other way. There are people who believe that,

and I have even, there's multiple people who comment all the time, they never, they like the show, but they hate my portrayal of Judas because they were like, he was evil. Jesus knew he was evil. John says he was greedy, he was selfish, he was greedy.

I just don't find that the totality of Scripture, the totality of the historical accounts, the totality of human common sense when you, you know, and this goes to how I interpret Scripture. The reason that I believe Scripture is true isn't because I can reconcile every single thing that I read in it. It's because as I'm forgetting his first name, his last name is Wallace,

the detective who does a lot of apologist teaching and forgive me for not remembering his first name, but he talks about how as a homicide detective, he rarely has all the pieces of the puzzle. Yeah, sure. But let's say he has 97 out of 100. Well, the conspiracy theorists or the skeptics or the people who aren't willing to accept the reasonable doubts go, they're going to focus on those three missing pieces. Yeah. I go, I don't have the pieces of, was Judas someone who believed that Jesus,

would be a conquering Messiah, and therefore his disappointment led him to want to betray him and force the issue, which is how we portray it. We portrayed Judas as, yes, there's some greed, yes, there's some selfishness, yes, there's some demonic influence, yes, there's also some God-directed predestination of, you know, Jesus is going to die, and here's how, these are some of the chess pieces that are going to be moved to make that happen, and Judas is one of them. All of that, I believe. Then I'm left with, okay, for three years, he was one of Jesus' closest 12 followers, clearly a dear friend, participated in healing, participated in, like, not only saw Jesus do it, but according to the

gospel accounts and my beliefs did it as well. it's not rational to me that he just 30 pieces of silver which is the equivalent of what a month's wages or something like that or a slave wage the cost the price of a slave maybe it's four months wages something like that that that that's the sole reason he did it he just wanted more money and this was the best way to get it so then that is my task in doing this show in going

all right how am I going to fill in these gaps so I use a combination of historical and cultural context the Jews we know believe Jesus would be a soldier king, that he would conquer the Romans, that he would overcome, that he would overcome the Messiah would be this figure. Yeah, the Messiah would be the right, thank you. And so it's plausible that some people believe Judas was what it was previously a zealot. I don't know that. Yeah, there's a theory. I think it's got to do with the name Iscariot, which we don't know what Ascariot means, but it sounds kind of like... Well, I think it means of Carriot. That's how we,

Yeah, because that's one idea is that there's just like so many people that's a place name. But some people, I think this is very dubious, but I remember Bart Ehrman telling me that there was this this group of people I think called the, I think they were called like the Sicarii. Yeah, yeah, who are, who are, they're kind of zealot or they... That's how we portrayed Simon Zee in the show. Yeah, he's a Sicari, right? Yeah, and he was a member of this, this group, this almost cult-like group that was, that believed passionately, even more so than everyone else.

Yeah, of the overthrow of Rome. The overthrow of Rome, and that the Messiah would be the, and that if he's not to this, if he's not the overthrower of Rome, then he's clearly not the Messiah. And they were just as passionate as Romans were towards false messias who would get the people aroused because they were like, the false messias are blasphemers and evil, and they were just as passionate as the Romans were.

And so were some of the religious leaders. All that to say. So some people think that Judas, there was this idea that Judas was at least from a line of people involved there because they think there might be some like etymological link between Iscariate and Sakari. So there are all kinds of theories,

but we don't know, which is the key. But we do know that, with very few exceptions, I imagine, the overwhelming majority of Jewish people at that time, believe Jesus, the Messiah, would be a conquering king. And I believe the apostles believed that all the way up until his resurrection, if not his, even his ascension, even before his ascension, they're saying, are you going to, now are you going to restore the lost kingdom? Or now are you going to overcome the oppressors, right? So they, they, probably until until the Holy Spirit, you know, came and,

and, you know, launched their ministry, they believed at any point, the Messiah was going to overcome the oppressors. So when I take that knowledge and I take the fact that Judas betrayed Jesus for so little money considering the stakes involved, and that he felt so guilty. I'm not sure. You mentioned Matthew has him as repenting before. I don't, I confess, I don't remember if that's a literal, I don't remember exactly how he portrays what Judas said before his death. So, some of the scholars who are wishing I would have corrected you or not, I just don't remember. That said, did he repent before, whatever? All we do know is he felt supremely guilty.

The moment that Jesus was sentenced to death, Judas felt guilty. And so because of that, I am able to decipher, plausibly at least, that Judas was trying to force the issue. And that's how we portray it. we portrayed Judas as trying to, like, he's making a bet. He's like, if I can fast track this, Jesus will, if I betray him and he's the Messiah, he will get through it anyway. He'll overcome this won't work. Yeah, yeah.

And that way will all be, I'm taking one for the team. I'm making this decision to prove that he's the Messiah. If he's not and he fails and he gets arrested and killed, then I'm doing everyone a favor as well, because I'm proving that he's another false Messiah. So I don't think I deny the fact that Judas makes very bad decisions, that Judas is motivated by things such as selfishness and greed has something to do with it, that there's demonic influence, all of that. I don't dismiss that. I just think that the notion that he just was purely bad and just decided to do this, and that, that, Satan just entered him and that was it. I just don't find plausible, even if I believed it was good storytelling. I don't believe. And it also just wouldn't be good storytelling. And it wouldn't be good storytelling.

It would be like, you know, I don't know, like Princess Leia is just sort of, you know, before Darth Sidious. And he's just like, I tell you, well, I'll give me some money and you just give me Luke. And she's like, yeah, sure, why not? You know, it just doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense from a storytelling perspective. And I don't believe it makes sense from a human, from a, what was the word you just used, psychological perspective. So that, you're, you're, this is an example of, of a lot of what I do,

which is sometimes I go, I don't have historical facts available. I don't have cultural facts available. A lot of times I do, which makes some of the portrayals very, very plausible. But sometimes it is human understanding, psychological understanding. I'm a student of the brain.

I'm a student of psychology, of philosophy, of human reason, of human logic, of behavior. I've studied a lot of psychosis and, you know, sociopaths and whatnot, and I've studied that a lot. And so that allows me, I think, some wisdom in going, Judas, our portrayal of Judas, I think, is not only good storytelling, but actually plausibly, plausibly historically accurate. There's a moment when Jesus is talking with Judas while they're staying at that house. They're in this sort of beautiful courtyard garden.

and Jesus says to Judas, you have a choice to make. Yeah. You know, where is your heart? Like, I want your heart. Yeah. I've had it before. And I can't remember exactly what Judas says in response, but whatever it is, he says, Jesus then says, then I'll pray for you.

Right. And some people took this to be an indication that Jesus is kind of wanting Judas to not betray him. Yeah. and that he is praying that Judas will not betray him, even though not only does Jesus know that he's going to betray him, but also knows that this is integral to the mission, to his father's plan. So if that's the case, why would Jesus be having this conversation? Why would he say you've got a choice to make when the choice is essentially already set in stone?

And why would he say that he'd pray for him if not only would he not want to change his father's plan? but also that plan has already said in place. So the choice to make is that that idea is, again, it gets into free will versus the destination and all of that. There's a whole other discussion, but it does speak to. There are moments when Jesus talks about choices in the Gospels. There's moments throughout the Bible of, you know, choose who, choose now who you will serve. A servant cannot, a slave cannot serve two masters.

So there's, I believe that there's plenty of examples of the notion of making a choice that I think it's plausible that Jesus could tell someone to make a choice. The, I'll pray for you. And does that mean that Jesus could have been rooting for Judas to change his mind or not go through with it? That's a much bigger, I think, theological problem that I believe is raised. But here's what I believe reconciles it. in the Garden of Gassimony, Jesus is asking his father to take this cup from me,

is there another way? And then he says, but not your will, but... You and I both had multiple clips that if they were pulled from this conversation. We'll make a super cut. Yeah, exactly. Could say, see, I knew Dallas is a demonic Jesus saying, my will,

mine. He says not my will but yours. Yes. Which by definition means that Jesus, at least at times, had a will, that was different from his fathers. That is not sin. The sin would be, the imperfection would be, to say, I disagree with you,

I wish there's another way, and therefore I am going to choose that other way. So he says, not my will but yours, and then willingly gives himself up to the authorities. So that is what I drew from to justify Jesus saying, A, make a choice, because Jesus was in the garden at least, seemingly making a choice to serve his father's will. And then I'll pray for you. Again, some were saying, pray for you could have meant multiple things.

He could have been, I mean, he prays for people all the time. Even, it could have been praying for Judas's, you know, there's any number of things he could have been praying for. That's up for the viewer to decide. But let's say, worst case scenario, according to the critics, that did. that Jesus is praying for Judas to change his mind. Even that, I think, is theologically debatable, not heresy, that Jesus could have been. I'm saying he did. Sort of wanted that.

I'm not even saying in the scene that that's what the prayer was going to be. But it's, I don't believe it's heresy that Jesus could have prayed for things to go differently than they did. Yeah. I mean, clearly, I mean, it would seem more heretical that there is just this, this man who was just condemned to do this thing that he, that he has to do to fulfill God's plan, that God like designs, and yet is irredeemably evil, and God doesn't even, like, want him to be saved. The Christian message is that God wants everyone to be saved. And that has to include Judas, even if he has the foreknowledge that Judas will betray him,

you know? So, yeah, it's complicated. How does your Judas actor feel about his character? What's his relationship like to Judas? Yeah, and I always try to let him speak for himself, but he said this to me privately, and he said this publicly. I mean, it's very cool in many ways. Luke Dimien, who plays Judas brilliantly.

Yeah. When we cast him, it was my wife who was really feeling God's voice and impression on her heart that this was the guy. He was auditioning for other roles. And she just said, I think he could, he's Judas. I think this is our Judas. And I eventually agreed. And when we cast him, he's like, I have been obsessed with or intrigued by Jewish. since I was a kid. He grew up a Coptic Egyptian.

Yeah. And his, I think his uncle, or his, I think it's an uncle who's like a significant figure in the Coptic Egyptian church. And he always had this, I don't buy the Judas narrative that he was just this bad guy. He's always been, he's, he's always considered him the underdog. He's always considered him misjudged. So for Luke, he actually, I've probably had the most amount of debates. challenging conversations with Luke to your question earlier about the actor saying, my character wouldn't say this, with him than probably any other actor and character in the show because Luke is so passionately defensive

of Judas and is willing to acknowledge him as the villain, as willing to acknowledge him as someone who made a horrible decision, is willing to say, yes, he's the antagonist, he's the villain, he makes the fatal flaw. So he's not defensive of that, but he, he,

he loves Judas deeply. Yeah. Takes it very seriously. And has ultimately been supportive of our portrayal and has outright said to me, I trust you and I serve the vision. But it was not easy because he cares so deeply for Judas in an extraordinary way. And it was the whole, the role meets the actor perfectly was absolutely true in this case. There's another. There's something kind of hanging over this.

Like, if we're talking about characters for whom you need to invent dialogue and backstories and context, there's one sort of group of characters, I think, that this applies perhaps more to than any other. And we've referenced them briefly earlier. And that's the women. Yeah. There is a conspicuous absence of women in the Gospels, like now. narratively, I mean. Yeah. And there's this really sort of extraordinary thing where I was thinking about this. Or absence of much backstory agency. Yeah, like what they're doing. You see them frequently,

but it's very brief usually. They're mentioned and then moved on. So like Mark's Gospel, for example, you know, doesn't mention these women until right at the crucifixion, right? It's like he just, he just says, oh, and at the foot of the cross was, you know, Mary and these women who were also funding Jesus's ministry. Yeah. So this hugely important role. These women were literally bankrolling Jesus' operation, and they just didn't get a mention. And I thought, as a TV show creator, you've got to think in ways that other people aren't thinking,

which is that you might not notice that reading Mark's Gospel. You're not thinking about the women. You know characters like Mary Magdalene from culture, and you sort of forget that they haven't been in there. Don't find it weird. But as a TV show host, you know, if Jesus is talking to Simon Peter, a TV show creator, if Jesus is talking to Simon Peter, you've got to be thinking. but what's what's Andrew doing like while they're having that conversation

where's everyone's at who's in the room where are the women where you know and so I can sort of see you trying to find out what to do with the women and reading through Mark's Gospel and just being like you know but you've made this decision to to take these women and invent some some female characters and put them front and center

in the narrative is it is it because of woke Dallas is it because you know modern media you know they're trying to sort of send a message down, you know, surely the reason why you're choosing to invent female characters and give them such a central role that they don't have in the Gospels. To make up for the chauvinistic or... Yeah, history of cinema. It's got to be a woke thing, right?

Or yeah, or even in the Gospels, just, you know, which was a very patriarchal time, of course, and so I'm kind of maybe correcting the errors of the Gospels or the gospel writers. So, first of all, no, I have no agenda with it. because of the following. I actually don't believe that the Gospels disclude women. Maybe there's not as much time spent on them, but they are mentioned in some of the most important moments in the entire Gospels. Now, the purpose of the Gospels, for the most part, I believe, is to give Jesus' greatest hits to show that he was the Messiah. And so they do show women being healed. They do show women interact. They mentioned that Jesus was, his ministry was financed by the women,

but because the women weren't one of the 12 followers, the narrative is going to be far more male dominant. But they do get key mentions that are massive. So I don't believe I'm actually inventing a more significant role of the women. When Mary Magdalene is the first one Jesus appears to after his resurrection, and he gives her instructions to go talk to the apostles and when she's mentioned as someone who had been healed by him of demons, when they are mentioned as funding his ministry. When the first person he announces himself publicly as the Messiah to as a woman at the well, and there's a whole fascinating series of verses of their exchange and the honor he gives her

and the agency and beauty of her experience that he entrusts to her, the knowledge of her heart and backstory that he has because he's God, the care that he shows her, that isn't shown by others, the trust that he gives her and knowing that she's going to go spread the word when previously he had been telling people, don't tell anybody. With her, he gives her the freedom. She goes and tells everybody. Those I believe are absolutely empowering, Jesus, empowering women, honoring women significantly. So I don't believe that my, the time that I, while I would acknowledge,

the time I give the women in my show is more time than the Gospels give. I believe that's true of all my, all of the characters. But I don't believe it's a contradiction to how Jesus saw women. Yeah. And so it's not a correction of anything. It's a spotlight on and

enhancement of time spent on what I believe Jesus, how about how I believe Jesus. treated and thought of women. Well, we know that, um, given that Mark just tells us that there were these women who had been following Jesus and just hadn't mentioned them, we know that there was stuff going on that wasn't explicitly sort of recorded in the Gospels, right? There's a, I've had on my show this, this wonderful scholar called Helen Bond at Edinburgh, who wrote a book called Women Remembered about the, it's brilliant.

And it's, it's about the sort of, the position of women in the women of women in the in the Gospels and why the Gospels are so quiet on them. There are some sort of very odd mysteries, like the fact that, as you say, in the Gospels, it's the women who discovered the empty tomb, and it's some of the most important first moments of Jesus' resurrection. And yet, in 1st Corinthians 15, when Paul earlier, like one of our earliest source of the New Testament, is listing off all of the people that Jesus has appeared to, and he's talking about, you know, how he appeared to C-First, and he appeared to the 12, and last of all, he appeared to me,

He appeared to 500 people at one time, as above 500 people at one time. And he just doesn't mention the appearance to Mary, which is like really strange. And some people have thought maybe that was a sexism thing. Maybe that's because in the Gospels, it was unavoidable because it was known that the women discovered the tomb. But when Paul is preaching, he's like, oh, let's not mention that it was women who discovered the tomb. And there's multiple theories. And I would say one of the most likely to me, at least, and again, I would defer to, to my, to Rabbi Jason

Solbel, our Messinaic Jewish rabbi consultant on this, but to me the most likely is that women weren't, a woman's testimony was not actually considered valid in most cases. And so the gospel writers were like, you know, who cares about that? We're going to,

we are going to use them as source material, but perhaps Paul's audience or perhaps you know, Paul was recognizing that mentioning them might not make much of a difference in the point that he's trying to make. Now, when he says he appeared to 500, I can only assume that he's including women in that. But there's multiple reasons why he might not have. But yeah, I think the fact that

the gospels mention it, the fact that it's mentioned it clearly and decisively, and that she was, that the women were at the cross and that the men, other than John weren't, I think, is unknown. You know, it hadn't crossed my mind before. I mean, the 500 thing is really interesting because Paul mentions it once. We don't hear about it ever again. We don't know who these people were. We don't know why they were gathered. We don't. know anything about them. Some people have suggested that maybe when Jesus appeared to the 12 disciples, it wasn't just the 12 that loads of people ended up showing up, and it was the same appearance. Some people have suggested it was a kind of vision, and it's just struck me. You know,

don't tell me, you wouldn't tell me even if you knew the answer to this. But of course, your show follows the story of the Gospels. It's not going to be super sensitive to the narrative events of what happens afterwards. But Paul, writing the schema, it sort of makes me wonder if there's any temptation to depict the 500, because the obvious stuff that you, the post-resurrection appearances, you know, you've got to choose. Are you going to depict them all? You know, in Matthew's gospel, Jesus appears to them in Galilee, in Luke, it's moved to Jerusalem for some reason. And again, you've got this thing of, do you depict it twice? Do you just choose one and run with it? And then you've got this sort of weird reference from Paul, which, given how little we know about it, it's like,

maybe we should do that, maybe we shouldn't. It must be a hell of a position to be in. We do, interesting choice of words. Like what I talked about earlier with the theology of healing, where I draw from some post-gospels sources, I think the same can be true historically. I would say my show, yes, is covering the gospels, but I absolutely would draw from, when Paul says there were 500 that he appeared to,

I would consider that perhaps not part of the four, Gospels, but certainly gospel story, right? Yeah. Right. So, but one of the things that we don't do in the show that I think is one of probably the most significant historical omissions in our show is that Jesus undoubtedly had 72 followers who were who were with him probably most of the time the 12 were the leaders they were the core they were the apostles versus just the followers and disciples but he clearly had many more disciples meaning followers who he taught regularly that we don't include because it's a TV show I can't I can't I have a hard enough time keeping track of the 12 that we've got and giving them enough lines of dialogue and all that.

So do the Gospels, some suggest that they sort of having a different name, different list of names for the different disciples, maybe the gospel authors themselves struggle to keep track. It depends on your view on that. But, you know, there are things that you do exclude. You don't show, I mean, two things that we spoke about yesterday that jump out, the temptation in the desert by Satan, a huge moment at the beginning of Matthew and Luke,

really important sort of message and lots of theological sort of weight there, not in the chosen. The Transfiguration, one of the most sort of theologically charged moments of the synoptic gospels. And you can imagine visually Jesus on this mountain with Elijah and Moses and it's this, I mean, people talk about how, you know, like Elijah and Moses are the only Old Testament prophets to go up a mountain to commune with God. and there's Jesus talking with, who is it, but Elijah and Moses, and you don't depict it. Yeah. Why not? There are some things where I've just said, I either, A, don't know how to and haven't been able to make sense of it within the context of the show.

That doesn't mean I'm saying it didn't happen. I'm just saying, you know, you're going to get more out of it from the Gospels than you are from the show, and even from me illuminating it in the show. I will say that some of the things that I don't haven't shown yet are because I haven't shown them yet. Some things I've said publicly that the transfiguration is not going to be in this, in the chosen. But I also said at ChosenCon a couple of years ago, a gathering. of all our, not all, a small portion, but thousands of fans that I would do it in my Moses show. That when I do plan on doing a show, a three-season show about the story of Moses, and that I thought, that feels to me more narratively, I don't know if compelling is the right word, but it's a really wonderful conclusion to the Moses arc if he wasn't allowed to see the promised land. Yeah.

But ultimately he actually did. because he was there on this mount in Jerusalem with Christ. But within the context of the current show, the Chosen, I just am like, I don't know how to do it. Jesus glowing and on all this, I'm always a little bit more nervous with the supernatural stuff. We start to introduce more of that in season six and seven. It's very scary to me.

The walking on water scene, as I mentioned you off before we were talking today, I was like, I didn't want to do that. I said I wouldn't do it. I ended up changing my mind, but because the supernatural stuff, it's like you don't want people watching it the whole time thinking about how we did it. We just want them to get lost in the story. But I don't deny the theological significance of the transfiguration or of the temptation in the wilderness, but I do believe we can capture some of that theological significance in other parts of the show.

And also, I would just definitively say the show is not meant to be a definitive theological treatise on Jesus. Sometimes there's scenes where I go, you know what, go to church, study the Bible, that's where you need to engage with this story. The show is not the best place for it. It's exciting that there will be other shows, sequels, you know, that the story doesn't end with the end of the Gospels. I mean, it's so tempting. There's so much more to tell. I mean, there's obvious choices. There's the acts of the apostles, which happens right at the end. Which I do want to do. It continues. That'd be great. Jesus's trip to America, of course. Oh, goodness, say. Oh, gosh, I've had enough issues with my LDS friends. Stick to the agnostic atheist. Yeah.

Don't get to venture into the Mormon thing. I want to ask you, though. Yeah. And I've wanted to ask you this since you reached out to talk to me, which I appreciate, is I watched a clip of you with Jordan Peterson where you are trying to get him to just answer a fairly simple question. I love Jordan Peterson. I actually, I know him. I've been on his show.

But even I sometimes go, answer the question. It's not as challenging as your brilliant mind is making it, where you're saying, do you believe this happened, right? Do you believe this actually happened? You know, because Jordan tends to speak in terms of, well, it happened. I'm not going to speak for him. He says it much better. He says, if you ask him if the Exodus story happened, he says, it's still happening.

And it's like, okay, man, you know what I mean, though, don't you? And here's another direct quote from Jordan. Peterson, this is verbatin, there are a few questions embedded in that question. What do you mean do? What do you mean you? What do you mean believe? And what do you mean God? And it's like, look, fair enough, I'm a big stickler for defining our terms and making sure that we all understand each other, but it does get to a point of extreme tedium, which is why when I spoke to him, I went in with a mission to get a clear answer on at least the question of Jesus' resurrection. Yes. I think that one of the things that I would, I don't know his motives, but it seems he's, what I know of him, he's so resistant to being trapped into a label or into a box that he's not going to fall. He's not going to go on your terms of the question. So there's some of that. But because you are so eager to get a direct answer, I'm willing to ask you one, which is, I think some people would be surprised that you've watched The Chosen.

I mean, I didn't know that you'd even heard of the show or had watched it and you told me that you had and that you've, I think you're at least almost caught up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember watching the first season during COVID lockdown and then I saw all kinds of clips on YouTube and I'm just, I'm like a Jesus nut. So I thought it was awesome. And in particular, season five has just been just been awesome. I think it's been really, really cool to see. I love the show. Thank you. But I'm curious, and I know that even a lot of chosen viewers are curious, what curious, when someone like yourself, who, I don't know all of the range of belief, what you believe of God, but is at the very least skeptical or questioning, or, like, as you said, I'm not sure or I don't believe that half of the things that Jesus is attributed to necessarily happened. When you watch the show and you see the portrayal of these events as though they, happened because that is my, of course, operating philosophy. I happen to believe that these things all happened, at least the gospel, the things that I include from the gospels. But there's things in the show that probably didn't happen. And you mentioned when you were talking to Jordan, you said, you were trying to get him to answer. And you said, in Forrest Gump, we know

that Forrest Gump is a fictional character, but he meets JFK. We know that that meeting didn't take place because there's no such thing as Forrest Gump. But we do know JFK was the president. Yeah. Right. So in the show, when you're watching the show, you believe Jesus was the, lived in Nazareth. You know, like you believe in the historical Jesus. Yes, absolutely. But when you see, and when you see him encounter Rima or Atticus or some of these invented characters by me and my co-writers, or my father would correct me, my co-writers and me, we are saying, I'm outright saying in my, in my co-writers. conversation with you and publicly. I don't believe Atticus actually existed. He's a, he's a storytelling device. When you're watching scenes that I know didn't exist and you know it didn't

exist, but then there's scenes that I believe did exist. How do you as a, how do you see them? Do you, because we've seen people all over the world who come to belief because of the show and it then makes them read the Bible and, and make, you know, but for you who as far as I know, have not converted to Christianity, when you see scenes like that and you read moments and the Gospels and stuff like that. How do you take it? Why do you watch it? Why have you watched all five seasons?

Why do you like it? I think it's great television. I think it's extremely moving. I'm sure people tell you that all the time. It's just such a moving story in the way it's depicted is incredibly moving. I think the same thing that I think when I read the Gospels in many ways, which is, I mean, you said that lots of people watch the show

and come to Christ. I would imagine that probably in a lot of those cases, at least, It's people who haven't encountered the gospel story before, not like really heard the whole thing, like with all the details. Some of that is, most of it is they'd heard it, but it didn't quite, they didn't quite make sense of it. Yeah, right. They'd heard it from a sermon, and they've had personal experiences that kind of impeded their vision. Of course, you know, those of us who believe the Holy Spirit can, it works through certain things to give them that truth and that vision and the Enlightenment. Yeah. But yeah, so continues.

Well, I sort of, I feel as though as someone who is so interested in the New Testament, I spent so much time with the material that for me it's really cool to see it depicted, but I'm not sure how much it would do to like, it's not going to strike me as sort of like, wow, look at this character that I'm encountering, that I've not encountered before. This is so strange and magical and cool, because I have encountered this character in the gospel stories. But there is something about bringing it to life, which, especially not having to worry about the sort of potential theological heresies and stuff and just being like, this is really cool. I think it's like the, it's probably the 20th greatest piece of Jesus media ever produced, I think. after the 27 books of the New Testament minus Revelation and the six disputed Pauline

Epistles, I think it's probably about there. I'm not entirely sure. I mean, there are some paintings that probably give it around for its money. The Christ before the high priest in the National Gallery in London is this incredible thing. Something about the facial expression of Jesus in that painting is it just, it's almost like you take something as brilliant as the chosen and you just collapse it into that one sort of five centimetre. square, something in there, you know. But in terms of, like a bit of art, a piece of art, I think it's just wonderful, man. I think it's really, really cool. And I think what you've created, I mean, we're sat on the set right now. We haven't even addressed the fact that we're in the

Sanhedron. We're in the Sanhedron, sort of, I don't know what you got. There was a word for it, the name for the broom. I've forgotten it, but like the, the sort of meeting place. And it is incredible. As someone who is interested in the story and fascinated by the New Testament to see it brought to life in this way, I think. feel like I'm in Disneyland right now. It's like it's absolutely incredible. And it humanizes Jesus in a way that's really important. It's very difficult for me to imagine Jesus having conversations with people. It's kind of in the same way that when I imagine George Washington, I imagine like a painting, an oil painting. I cannot imagine the Declaration of Independence being signed as like an event

in a room. It's literally a painting in my head. And I sort of had a similar view of Jesus. He's this sort of old cracked kind of 11th century, you know, gold-plated. Yeah, yeah. Different, emotionally distant, pious figure of leadership, but not a first-century Jewish man. And I think the chosen sort of breaks that open, and I think it's brilliant for doing so. But, you know, I'm also aware that I'm watching a TV show. I'm a Jesus nut. Basically, every single scene that I'm watching. I'm finding it very difficult not to be like, oh, interesting. Oh, okay. So, so when Jesus is sat with John and, and they, he sort of says that I love you and I'm like, ah, so John is the beloved disciple, that's interesting. That's kind of where

my brain is going, right? So I feel like, maybe to my fault, that would prevent me from having any serious, like, emotional connection, like, all the way through because I'm sort of jumping out of those moments. But there are some moments where I'm deeply emotionally invested. I'm curious, are you ever, I mean, you don't strike me as an overly emotional person. But are there times when you're, when you feel your heart moved? The woman at the well is, I'm sure, I'm sure, I don't know if that's something you get a lot in terms of how, how moving it all is. But that scene, something about that scene is just, is just so, is so beautiful. And I don't think it has to be to do with the fact, that, you know, you think this has really happened and that Jesus is really there in the

salvation of people. But I think something about just seeing a woman at the end of her desperation be given this lifeline is just beautiful. And so do you really believe that that happened or would you say, because you do believe in the historical Jesus? Oh, sure. So how many of the stories, I'll rephrase you. Yeah, well. Are there stories where you, do you ever face a story and you go, that one, I really do believe that? Yes, absolutely. So when it comes to, so stuff like that, I have no idea if Jesus revealed his messireship to a woman at a well, or if that's just a narrative device by, you know, the evangelist who writes the fourth gospel. My general sort of approach to this is that there are certain criteria I can use to judge how historical a story is. If it doesn't fulfill these criteria, it doesn't mean it didn't happen.

It just means I'm less confident. And those criteria are, firstly, is it multiply attested? Sure. So is it in multiple gospels, particularly if it spans both John's God's, gospel and the synoptics. And particularly if the synoptic gospels tell two different stories that seem to be drawing on two

different traditions, or if they're telling like the same story, like if Matthew and Luke tell something that isn't in Mark, like they're drawing on a tradition that's unique to them, you can like pull out all of these different sources of the gospels. There's the sources for Matthew and Luke.

There's Mark. There's Mark's sources for John. There's potentially, you know, this Q document. And if it appears in multiple of those, especially in different varying forms, I'm pretty sure it happened. Another thing would be things that the authors would be unlikely to make up. So, for example, Jesus is baptism by John. Seems like a ridiculous thing to invent, if you're trying to tell this story of Jesus is the son of God. It seems like a potentially uncomfortable historical fact that John's gospel seems to distance us from by insisting that John is not the Messiah.

He really wants us to know that John the Baptist is not the Messiah, implying that there were people who thought he was the Messiah. I've done episodes on this. So I think the baptism probably happened. Some scholars point to when Jesus says to his 12 disciples, you will be sat on the 12 thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel. A lot of scholars think he must have said this because if an author was making this up, he wouldn't have written 12 because Judas was there. So if somebody was making this up after the fact, they wouldn't have made up this story. So Jesus, probably said that. So all of these kinds of clues. So when I'm watching a depiction of something which I'm almost certain was historical, that's when I'm like, it feels more like I'm, I can really place myself in the zone. I can really be like, wow, this must have been what it was like to see Jesus. Even just seeing him preach, you know, maybe he wasn't saying those words or had that message, but just the ruckus, the people following him around, the upsetting of the Jewish and ultimately Roman authorities. Yeah, the crucifixion, I'm sure will be the same just to just to see that. This is an event that happened, it'll be amazing to watch. But the particular conversations, I find it very easy

to be moved by them. I find it very easy to enjoy and imagining what it might have been like in that world, but it suddenly feels less like I'm watching a biopic of John Adams and more like I could be watching Star Wars or something. Although it's more interesting than Star Wars. Which is what's interesting is that I actually don't want viewers. to watch the stuff that's not from the Gospels as though they were gospel. Yeah. Right. So I'm happy.

Oh, but I'm not just talking about the stuff that's not from the Gospas. I mean the stuff that's not like multiply attested. I see. So you're saying even the things that are in the Gospels that aren't multiple. You're like, this could be. That I'm like a bit dubious of. It's not that it didn't happen. It's that it's you're much more.

Yeah. Wouldn't be surprised if it did. Wouldn't be surprised if it didn't. I think so, yeah. I mean, there are certain things which I think probably didn't happen. or unlikely to have happened. Like there are moments in John's Gospel where Jesus makes these profound

Christological claims in front of all of his disciples that would be really strange for the others not to record like when Jesus says before Abraham was, these are the famous examples and there's a lot to be said on this, believe me. Or when he says I and the father are won,

these high Christological claims apparently. It'd be really weird if he said these in the full hearing of his disciples and those guys thought, you know, you know, you know when he claimed to be God, that's not that important,

and let's not include that in our narrative. So some people are a little bit sort of, but then some people think that maybe there's a reason they didn't include it. So we just kind of don't know. Yeah, or as much as reason they didn't include it or reason they focused on other things and, you know, it's not like they had a,

let's not include this. It's just more of a, the purpose of my book is not to, you know, I can only focus on so many things. And then John perhaps going, well, there's, he's responding to some certain questions. and certain doubts. No, he did say this too, and he did say that too. Yeah. Because, yeah, going back to the metaphor of the 97 puzzle pieces, for me, where I feel comfortable

not only believing some of these things from the gospel, all of these things from the Gospas, but then portraying them is because I go, well, because there are so many things that I can, that I'm so confident that are true, that I'm going to then, by definition, believe that, okay, because I believe that these gospel accounts are accurate and then, because I, you know, now we're getting into creation and evolution, all this stuff, but there's so many things that I believe that I would die for, that the things that I am not sure of to me feel like maybe the three pieces of the puzzle that I don't have assurance of, but that must be true because the 97 other puzzle pieces are connected. And this would, these three pieces would, would, would

complete the puzzle as opposed to looking at it from a because these three puzzle pieces are missing then therefore the whole puzzle is to be dismissed right yeah i think i think that's that's fine and that's fair enough um to me honestly that the of course the most difficult things to to really wrap your head around are the most supernatural elements right i love seeing just the sort of humanity of jesus i love watching you just walk around having conversations um just just seeing the and stuff. But to me, you'll have to ask me again in a year or two, because the way that you end up depicting the resurrection, the way that that is shown on camera. Which is multiply attested. Yeah. So on these things that are multiply attested. Yes. It depends. It depends which,

which appearance. You know, if it's in, if you show an appearance to the 11 in in Galilee, then it's attested by Matthew. I mean, Mark doesn't attest to any, you know, but Mark does have Jesus say, have the angel say that he will be in Galilee. So I suppose the Galilean appearance is more plausible than the Jerusalem appearance. You know, that will be running through my mind.

Right. But to me, it's right now, when I picture that, literally, I'm trying to picture the appearance of Jesus to the 11 disciples, and I'm imagining a painting, again, just like the George Warrie. Washington thing. And I have no doubt, then a couple of years after the chosen, I might be able to picture it as like a real event in the world. That's got to be a big weight on how you're going to

present that. But I have no idea how that will affect my view of the plausibility of the resurrection. What about the other miracles in the show that were multiply attested? Do you believe that miracles, that Jesus did miracles? I think I've seen some of the your conversations about this before. So I'm an agnostic and broadly speaking, that kind of means that I don't believe it. Not to say I believe they didn't happen, but I just, I don't believe it. I don't think there's good evidence for it exactly. Because if you did, then the obvious question is.

Then you're basically a Christian. Yeah, then you believe that God. Exactly. Right. And so it's, yeah, there is a tipping point. But the thing that's mysterious is that scholars think that there are certain things about Jesus which are undisputed. It's not undisputed that Jesus was healing people, of course.

but it is undisputed that he was known as a healer. Sure. Like, it is absolutely clear that one of the, one of the most sort of historically certain facts about Jesus was that people knew him as a healer. So he was doing something that gave people that impression. Maybe he was some kind of trickster. Maybe he was some kind of fraud. Maybe he was like a sort of, I don't know, he was sort of stretching people's arms and doing like sports therapy and it all. got a bit out of hand on me. Which happens to the...

There are fraudsters and tricksters who do miracles that people believe are healings. And I, as a believer in Jesus, and a believer in healings, don't believe and think are false. And to be clear, that's not my thing. I don't think there's a guy who's trying to fool people here. But yeah, you're quite right. I think it's possible that he was healing people in some kind of way. Like I say, like doing like sports therapy and someone's like, wow, you really fixed my elbow and given a few hundred years and that turns into like my arm grew back, you know? That's all possible. I don't. But what I do know is that he was doing something because of the reputation that he had.

And the fact that he had such a strong reputation as an exorcist is extremely strange. You know, that in the synoptic gospels, Jesus is one of the things he does most commonly is exercise demons. And given that we don't really typically believe in demonic possession a lot in the modern world anyway, that makes it even more difficult to explain. But the fact is he had a reputation for it. So those facts are really interesting. although John's gospel sort of doesn't have the exorcisms anymore. And it's another sort of weird fact. And to me, that's what's so interesting.

I'm like, why were these authors writing these stories? What were their intentions? Why does John not include this sort of well-known sort of reputational fact about Jesus that he was an exorcist? Maybe, you know, he's betraying. There are all kinds of theories on that. I'm not sure. But as to whether I believe that they happened, the answer is no. But I am far more fascinated than I think,

most of my sort of atheist friends and colleagues by the fact that there is this man with this reputation, we sort of take for granted that the Gospels exist. We're like, oh, like, yeah, well, maybe the gospel authors made this up, or maybe the gospel authors had this. And I'm sort of like, why do these texts exist at all? You know, why on earth does the Gospel of Mark get written? Like, maybe it's to deal with the destruction of the temple. Yeah, sure, I can get that. But then, but where does all this stuff about it? I'm just so fast. Yeah, and for me as a storyteller, as a thinker, as a, I've always been fascinated by lawyers and homicide detectives who are trying to make sense of things. I've always been

fascinated by that. I've never been someone who just automatically accepts it because someone I trust set it or because I experience something personally, so therefore, I mean, everyone's different. And some people have those experiences. And that's, for me, I always go, what's the most plausible or what's the least plausible? I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I think the conspiracy theory is about JFK are ludicrous. I believe that the conspiracy theory is about Charlie Kirk are ludicrous. I tend to believe in the most simple explanation. And so for me, the notion that the Gospels were written, like the least plausible is it's a church construction in order to control people and make money. and which is what some people believe is that the Gospels were written post

you know like later or they were harmonized later they were messed with to have this to present this narrative so that they could control people and I find that nonsensical because of so many things that are in the Gospels that are difficult to reconcile

I would have done a much better job than they did if they were doing it like making it up yeah for the purpose of making it up to try to control people or whatever and so like you said, I love that you at least acknowledge that something happened that even if he was a trickster, he was so immensely amazing at it. Yeah, he was a bloody good one. I mean, just that it's no one could, it's so good. Because people who didn't believe became believers, people who came to him for healing. And then there's no records of them, like there's no records.

of, which I guess skeptics would point out, well, why would there be? But of the contradictions to those accounts. But you would think that if he was that impactful, that there would be plenty of people who go, we need to, we need to correct the record here. But then the thing is, I know how stories grow. You know, sometimes, it's like, you know, I've got an undergraduate degree in philosophy and theology. And sometimes I meet people and they're convinced that I've got like a PhD. and I'm like, no, just because I can see how that, how that sort of happened, because, oh, I've heard about that guy, I think he's got a degree, oh, and he does this thing, and he speaks with, yeah, he's, and it sort of develops, right? And also, like, the Gospels are written, you know, at best decades after Jesus's death. And there might have still been people kicking around, but this idea that there would have been all of these people who could have, like, firstly, the gospel didn't have that much time to spread, there wasn't, like, wide literacy, people probably weren't really reading them. And so the idea that you sort of got the, the, sort of the, the, sort of the, the, sort of the, the, the, sort of the, the, the, the, sort of the, the, the, the, sort of the, the. early Christian who was healed by Jesus, who gets his hands on a copy of Mark's gospel, reads it through, and goes, hold on, that's not what happened. It sort of fills me with Paul. So I am, I want to caveat this because Christians like to edit videos of me to make it look like I'm, you know, converting or converted. I want to caveat it by saying, I am fascinated by the story. I think it's, it's an astonishing fact that we need to explain why this text exists and why this reputation exists. But I'm also convinced that, especially when it comes to ancient history, embellishments happen, developments happen. People make things up not with the intention of deceiving,

but with the intention of telling a more full story. People misremember things. People don't get the words right, you know. And I do think that kind of thing happens all the time. Yes, it does. And particularly Jewish non-believers, you know, like Ben Shapiro or people who are religious Jews but don't believe in Jesus, will often just say there were many other, messias also who claimed to be Messiah. And the religious leaders squelched them and got rid of them. And there were many other tricksters and hucksters and frauds. And the religious leaders got rid of them.

We just don't know about it. And I go, well, that's true. And most would just say Jesus was just another one of those. And he was put down for good reasons because he was deceiving the people. And that's actually how a character like Shmuel in our show or some of the other Pharisees or sadducees that we portray, justify their behaviors, we're doing a service to the people. This is a good thing. I just always go, so why did Jesus succeed or all these other false ones didn't? Because there were many of them, and they had some of the same, the access to the same tricks

and some of the same, they could have done it as well, and why did he succeed so significantly? And the answer being, well, he was the David Blaine of magicians. He was just better than everybody. That's possible. You know, it's like, you know, it's hard for me to accept. something's got to be, something's got to be popular. Like some people have said, like, you know, why is it that there were lots of e-commerce sites, you know, at the beginning of the internet? Why is it that Amazon and eBay just became the popular ones? I don't know.

They just did it better, but someone had to, right? Like something had to be, and some people see Jesus fulfills that role. And I think, you know, fair enough. But I think if that is all you've got, if that's all you've got in the face of this sort of extraordinary, I mean, one of the most well-documented people from antiquity, like by a long shot. Yeah, you can't use, it doesn't come close. If you believe the whole art, you know, if you believe in Jesus, or you don't believe in Jesus,

but you believe in other historical figures that have significantly less attesting. Yeah, then you've got at least some questions to answer. And yeah, there are questions about, well, are the claims made by those lesser sources more believable? Is it like there are more sources but less believable story and they kind of balance that? There's lots to be said about that. But at the very least, it's a long conversation and it takes longer than just this sort of like, oh, yeah, no, that's just a bunch of.

of nonsense. It might be nonsense. Yeah. It might be a bunch of nonsense, but it's not just a bunch of nonsense. You know what I mean? And I would say, I, you know, I would die for, you know, like when I talk about those 97 puzzle pieces. You know, I would die for those 97 puzzle pieces. There's other pieces of how old is the earth and was this book of the Bible, a metaphor versus a historical document? some of those things I would not die for. You know, I would die for the truth of Jesus as God because of not only my analysis of history and the Bible, but also my own personal encounters with God.

But it is what I think makes you unique and your show unique is that you're not all or nothing. You're not, I'm doing this show to prove atheism as the way and to disprove Christianity. It's a, we're on a spectrum of probabilities here. And I'm leaning, I don't believe this as true, but I wouldn't rule it out. And what that means for me is obviously between you and God or you and whoever, whoever, whatever, or not, but you know, that's the, that's the atrum of question. So I just was, I'm not, I wasn't doing this to try to get into some sort of debate, but just to go.

No, I know. Someone who's watched the show, all five seasons of the show and is intrigued about it. I was just curious how, how you respond differently. I cannot wait to see the rest of it. I say, to me, the most, I mean, the most important part of the Christian story for most Christians, I think, is the resurrection. That's what we're waiting for. So we're about to film and we'll be filmed. I don't remember when this is going to air, but when it does, we'll either have already filmed it or we're... Yeah, you're about to...

Some of those questions for sure. We'll have to have another conversation. I was going to say, once we've seen that, let's talk again. I'm sure, like, like, maybe even the majority of the interesting creative choices you will have to make in the entire show will happen probably from. the crucifixion onwards. So there'll be so much to talk about. Maybe we can address it again then. Absolutely. For now, Dallas Jenkins, thank you so much for having us on your incredible set. I really appreciate your time and we're going to spend some more of it shortly by having a little walk around and showing me some more of the set. It's going to be fun. Thank you for bringing me on. I'm on your show, but on our show's set. Yeah, this happens sometimes. And the set is incredible. I've had a little look around already, but we're going to go and do a sort of walk and talk.

We're going to bring a camera. We're going to look around the set. We're going to going to show the people at home more of what you're doing here at The Chosen, and it's going to be great. But for this conversation, at least, thanks for your time. It's so fun. Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you.