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Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're

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Speaker 1: going into the vault to bring you an episode from

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Speaker 1: last year. This one originally published on July four, and

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Speaker 1: this one was called Heaven and Hell with Bart Rman.

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Speaker 1: This was an interview that I did with a with

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Speaker 1: a secular biblical historian named Bart Erman, who's a really

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Speaker 1: interesting and passionate scholar who knows a lot and is

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Speaker 1: really fun to listen to, and it's all about the

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Speaker 1: origins of the Christian concepts of heaven and Hell. I

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Speaker 1: thought this was a really really interesting discussion. I love

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Speaker 1: talking to Bart and so we hope you enjoyed this

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Speaker 1: classic episode. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production

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Speaker 1: of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: Your Mind. My name is Robert L. M and I'm

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Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And this week we are going to be

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Speaker 1: featuring a couple of interviews that I recorded last week.

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Speaker 1: Because last week, Robert, you were out of quote the office.

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Speaker 1: You were at least you were off work for a bit,

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Speaker 1: and uh so, so I recorded conversations with authors of

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Speaker 1: some books. One book that's already out this year in

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Speaker 1: one book that's coming up. So on Thursday of this week,

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Speaker 1: we're going to be airing a conversation that I had

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Speaker 1: with the author of a fascinating upcoming book about the

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Speaker 1: evolutionary biology of cancer. But today we're going to be

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Speaker 1: exploring a topic in the realm of ancient history and religion.

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Speaker 1: And if you followed us for a while, I think

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Speaker 1: you probably know this about us, that one of our

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Speaker 1: favorite kind of trails to go down is tracing the

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Speaker 1: evolution of religious ideas through ancient history. I mean, I

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Speaker 1: think I've added myself on this podcast before as a

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Speaker 1: kind of non religious person who loves the Bible. Like

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Speaker 1: you know, I love to read ancient religious texts and

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Speaker 1: learn about them and see how the ideas from the

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Speaker 1: ancient world have sort of filtered through to us today

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Speaker 1: and shape to the society's live in. And so that's

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Speaker 1: exactly the kind of thing we're going to be diving into.

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Speaker 1: In this episode, I'm talking with a secular biblical historian

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Speaker 1: named bart Erman about his most recent book, which is

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Speaker 1: called Heaven and Hell, History of the Afterlife. This book

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Speaker 1: was released in March of this year by Simon and Schuster,

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Speaker 1: and it's all about the Christian ideas of life after death,

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Speaker 1: where they come from an ancient history, what influenced their development,

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Speaker 1: and how they changed over time. Uh. So there was

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Speaker 1: a part that cited in the intro of Bart's book

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Speaker 1: where he talks about a Pew Research poll that was

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Speaker 1: conducted a few years ago. I think maybe it was

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Speaker 1: in where it found that seventy two percent of Americans

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Speaker 1: believe in a literal heaven and fifty eight percent believe

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Speaker 1: in a literal hell. And yet I think most Americans

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Speaker 1: would be deeply surprised, even shocked, to learn what historians

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Speaker 1: can show about the origins of these beliefs. And the

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Speaker 1: strange thing is that, like the historical conclusions that Bart's

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Speaker 1: going to talk about in this episode are not fringe

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Speaker 1: or unusual among secular scholars of the Bible and historians

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Speaker 1: of the ancient Near East. Uh. This is utterly mainstream

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Speaker 1: critical scholarship. And yet I think regular people are, especially

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Speaker 1: in the United States, are going to find it very surprising. Yeah. Absolutely,

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Speaker 1: And I want to stress something here for everybody. So

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Speaker 1: I I just got back uh to work this morning,

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Speaker 1: and I plugged into like a pre production um cut

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Speaker 1: of this interview, and it's really it's really excellent. So

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Speaker 1: if you're even slightly scared away by the idea of

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Speaker 1: an interview with a secular biblical scholar, uh, don't be

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Speaker 1: because because Bart is is tremendous. He's he's funny, uh,

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Speaker 1: very high energy. I think you're really going to enjoy

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Speaker 1: this chat that Joe had with Bart. Here. Yeah. Bart's

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Speaker 1: full of knowledge, good humor, passion for his subject. I

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Speaker 1: think you're really going to enjoy the episode. But before

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Speaker 1: we get to do it, I'll just give a little

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Speaker 1: bit of background on Bart. So here's this biography. Bart

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Speaker 1: d Erman is a leading authority on the New Testament

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Speaker 1: and the history of early Christianity, and the author or

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Speaker 1: editor of more than thirty books, including the New York

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Speaker 1: Times bestsellers, Misquoting Jesus, How Jesus Became God, and The

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Speaker 1: Triumph of Christianity. And that last one is really interesting.

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Speaker 1: It's about how Christianity took over the Roman Empire and

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Speaker 1: went from a really small religion to the dominant religion

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Speaker 1: of the Empire and just a matter of a few

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Speaker 1: centuries UM. Anyway, So he is a distinguished professor of

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Speaker 1: Religious Studies of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,

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Speaker 1: and he has created eight popular audio and video courses

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Speaker 1: for the Great Courses. He has been featured in Time,

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Speaker 1: The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and has appeared on NBC, CNN,

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Speaker 1: and The Daily Show with John Stewart, as well as

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Speaker 1: the History Channel, National Geographic Channel, BBC, NPR all the hits.

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Speaker 1: His most recent book, again is Heaven and Hell. Just

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Speaker 1: one more thing before we get into it, I want

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Speaker 1: to mention, obviously we are dealing with the audio constraints

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Speaker 1: of remote records, being in the age of COVID nineteen.

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Speaker 1: So for example, around the twelve minute mark in the episode,

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Speaker 1: there is briefly some background noise. It sounds like a

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Speaker 1: fan was turned on or there was some rain. It

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Speaker 1: only lasts for about a minute or so, and and

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Speaker 1: so please just put up with a little bit of

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Speaker 1: background noise, and it's very brief. I promise it's not

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Speaker 1: the sounds of hell, right, Not no audio recordings of

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Speaker 1: the underworld leaking up through some sort of mining microphone. Right.

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Speaker 1: The well to Hell was not unleashed in bights office.

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Speaker 1: Uh so, yeah, I would say, without any further Ado,

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Speaker 1: let's jump right in barter Erman. Welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: Thanks so much for joining us today. Yes, thanks for

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Speaker 1: having me so your book Heaven and Hell. Just finished

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Speaker 1: reading yesterday and I really really enjoyed it. Uh. And

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Speaker 1: I want to say that I started reading this book

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Speaker 1: at a very opportune time, because though I didn't plan

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Speaker 1: it this way, I'm also currently in the middle of

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Speaker 1: rereading The Divine Comedy. Actually my wife and I are

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Speaker 1: reading it together. And of course the Divine Comedy. Dante

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Speaker 1: is wonderful poetry, but it's also psychologically fascinating because when

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Speaker 1: you go through the theology of Dante, you get the

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Speaker 1: sense of somebody who is simultaneously ingenious and thoughtful and

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Speaker 1: in some ways very intellectually bold and open minded for

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Speaker 1: his historical context. But in other ways Dante is also

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Speaker 1: very limited and provincial and in a word, medieval, like

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Speaker 1: the way you see him taking so much pleasure in

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Speaker 1: designing horrific tortures for his enemies from these, you know,

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Speaker 1: petty thirteenth century political struggles in Italy working with ancient

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Speaker 1: religious texts. Do you find yourself encountering this kind of

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Speaker 1: irony embodied within the same author or tradition. A lot

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Speaker 1: part of my book on Having the Hell is dealing

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Speaker 1: with some of the earliest forerunners of Dante. Um. Many

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Speaker 1: people think that he was creative in coming up with

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Speaker 1: his idea of a guided tour of the Inferno and

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Speaker 1: the Paradiso and the and the Pratorian, but in fact

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Speaker 1: he was borrowing from the the motif of a guided

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Speaker 1: tour of the realms of the dead from earlier authors

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Speaker 1: and including in the Christian tradition. I think one thing

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Speaker 1: that very seriously contrasts between Dante and his early forerunners

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Speaker 1: that I look at and the about I look at

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Speaker 1: basically from the second century up to maybe the fifth

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Speaker 1: Christian century, so a very long time before Dante. But

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Speaker 1: the main contrast is, Uh, most of the authors of

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Speaker 1: these works were not geniuses. And the works the works

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Speaker 1: are they are. They can be very graphic in their descriptions,

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Speaker 1: especially of Hell um. Uh. There they are less uh

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Speaker 1: they're less attendant to what's going on in heaven. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And so it's not quite like Dante, where you get

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Speaker 1: basically equal coverage between Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell. But you know,

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Speaker 1: the ancient people are for some reason more interested in

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Speaker 1: the torments of Hell. And my guess is that it's

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Speaker 1: because it was easier to describe, you know, if you're

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Speaker 1: trying to describe eternal bliss and everybody is like equally

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Speaker 1: happy forever. You know what, more, what are you say?

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Speaker 1: You just got to talk about their bliss for a

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Speaker 1: little while. Then there's whereas if you want to talk

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Speaker 1: about the eternal torment, well, you know, you can design

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Speaker 1: all sorts of creative punishments and so you can let

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Speaker 1: your your creative juices flow, and so that's what these

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Speaker 1: ancient authors do. So there's nothing at the level of

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Speaker 1: a Dante in these sources, but they are very interesting,

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Speaker 1: many in many ways more interesting of course for understanding

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Speaker 1: how Christianity developed than Dante, who's coming after, you know,

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Speaker 1: centers and centuries of development. Well, to ground the discussion,

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Speaker 1: maybe it would help to look at a specific example.

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Speaker 1: Could you talk for a second about some of the

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Speaker 1: specifics of say, the Apocalypse of Peter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so, um,

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Speaker 1: the earliest one we have with these these guided tours

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Speaker 1: is the one you mentioned, the Apocalypse of Peter. We

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Speaker 1: we had known, they had known for centuries that there

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Speaker 1: was an apocalypse of Peter. Because it almost made it

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Speaker 1: into the New Testament. Uh. There were church fathers uh

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Speaker 1: from the fourth century the fifth century who thought the

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Speaker 1: Apocalypse of Peter is part of the Bible, but he

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Speaker 1: eventually didn't make it in and it got lost until

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Speaker 1: it turns turned up in seven. When it turned up,

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Speaker 1: it caused a big fear uproar. I mean, because oh

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Speaker 1: my god, this is like, this is a guided to

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Speaker 1: our Peter, the apostle, Peter, jesus right hand man, is

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Speaker 1: given a tour of heaven and help by Jesus himself,

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Speaker 1: and so it's a terrific text. I mean it describes,

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Speaker 1: as I was saying, in fairly brief order, uh, the heaven,

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Speaker 1: which is a great place. I mean it's uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: there are lush trees and vegetation everywhere, and it smells

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Speaker 1: good and everybody's happy, and so you know, it's good

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Speaker 1: with a you know, a nice summer breeze blowing through

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Speaker 1: the whole time. So it's great. It's great. But then

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Speaker 1: he sees the torments in hell, and uh, they're nasty

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Speaker 1: and uh. And the interesting thing in this case is

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Speaker 1: that many of the punishments matt the crimes, and so

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Speaker 1: if somebody is, say a habitual blast femur that they

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Speaker 1: blasphemed God. Well, they're they're sinning Oregon, there's their mouth,

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Speaker 1: and so they are. These are hanged by their tongues

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Speaker 1: over eternal flames. Women who have braided their hair to

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Speaker 1: make themselves more attractive so they can seduce men are

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Speaker 1: hanged by their hair over eternal flames. Uh. The men

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Speaker 1: they seduced are hanged by their genitals over neural flames.

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Speaker 1: And they cry out, we didn't know it would come

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Speaker 1: to this, and so so it kind of goes on.

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Speaker 1: And unlike Dante, which is a very sophisticated number of

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Speaker 1: political and religious points, the point here is pretty clear.

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Speaker 1: There are a bunch of things you better not do,

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Speaker 1: and you know if you do, you're a big trouble.

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Speaker 1: So like, just don't do it. So basically the basically

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Speaker 1: don't sin. And so it's it's fairly fairly elementary, both

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Speaker 1: theologically and politically. So already by this later, did you

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Speaker 1: say the Apocalypse of Peter is probably a second century work? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so church fathers know about it, uh, in the second century,

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Speaker 1: and they're good reasons for thinking that was written in

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Speaker 1: the early part of the second century, so maybe just

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Speaker 1: like twenty or thirty years after some of the books

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Speaker 1: of the New Testament. Wow, so already by this point

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Speaker 1: we have some beliefs about heaven and hell that look

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Speaker 1: very much like beliefs that people still have today about

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Speaker 1: heaven and hell. And I think maybe this should lead

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Speaker 1: us to what I would say is probably the biggest

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Speaker 1: single gut punch of the book, which is that these

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Speaker 1: standard beliefs about the afterlife that you would find among

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Speaker 1: probably most Christians today, the belief that when you die,

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Speaker 1: your soul separates from your body and either travels to Heaven,

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Speaker 1: which is a place of eternal bliss, or to Hell,

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Speaker 1: which is a place of eternal torture. These teachings, you argue,

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Speaker 1: are not found in the Hebrew Bible, which is what

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Speaker 1: Christians would call the Old Testament, and they are not

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Speaker 1: the teachings of the historical Jesus. And in fact, unless

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Speaker 1: I'm wrong, you can barely find anything like them in

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Speaker 1: the New Testament at all, Like maybe in a parable

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Speaker 1: in the Gospel of Luke. Is that about right? That

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Speaker 1: that is not just about right? That is right? Uh?

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Speaker 1: The the Old the Christian Old Testament, Uh, does not

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Speaker 1: talk anywhere about souls dying and going to people dying

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Speaker 1: and their souls going to reward in heaven or punishment

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Speaker 1: and hell. It's not there at all. And so part

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Speaker 1: of my book is explaining what you do find in

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Speaker 1: the Hebrew Bible. You get a range of different views

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Speaker 1: in the Hebrew Bible, but you don't get that view,

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Speaker 1: and I try to show how that developed into a

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Speaker 1: different view that Jesus had uh, and that Jesus himself

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Speaker 1: did not believe that your body died and your soul

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Speaker 1: went to one place or the other, and neither did

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Speaker 1: the apostle Paul for most of his life. Uh. The

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Speaker 1: book Revelation doesn't teach that. And so the question my

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Speaker 1: book is, I try. I try to show all that.

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Speaker 1: But then the questions, well, then where to come from?

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Speaker 1: Because everybody simply assumes, of course that this is you know,

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Speaker 1: they believe this because the Bible teaches it. No, actually,

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Speaker 1: the Bible doesn't teach that. So that's so it seems

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Speaker 1: like a pretty important point to me, given the fact

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Speaker 1: that there are two billion Christians in the world, most

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Speaker 1: of whom believe in this, and they just assume it's

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Speaker 1: in the Bible. But it's it's not. Yeah, it seems

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Speaker 1: so hard to believe, because I would say the belief

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Speaker 1: in heaven and hell basically along the lines I just

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Speaker 1: described as not just a very common belief. I think

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Speaker 1: too many people it is the defining or the characteristic

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Speaker 1: belief when they conceive of their own faith. Yeah. No, absolutely,

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Speaker 1: I mean, and I completely understand that. I mean when

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Speaker 1: I you know, I grew up believing in heaven and

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Speaker 1: Hell myself. I mean, I was raised in a Christian home,

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Speaker 1: and I became an evangelical Christian as a teenager, and

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Speaker 1: then I really believed in heaven and hell, especially Hell,

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Speaker 1: and uh, you know, and so I was I was

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Speaker 1: gunna know all about it. And that's part of what

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Speaker 1: really made me want to write the book, was that

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Speaker 1: I know there are a lot of people who are,

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Speaker 1: of course hopeful for heaven, and a lot of people

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Speaker 1: who are just terrified of hell, and uh, you know

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Speaker 1: a lot of people just don't know. But uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: it's worth knowing where these ideas came from, because people

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Speaker 1: shouldn't believe that because they think they're in the Bible,

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Speaker 1: that that is because they're not. As you said, maybe

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Speaker 1: like in one little passage like it sucked away in

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Speaker 1: the Gospel loop. But I mean, but but basically they're

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Speaker 1: not there. They these authors had a different view, And

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Speaker 1: it's worth knowing what these different views were because you

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Speaker 1: simply shouldn't assume this is the standard view and always

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Speaker 1: has been among Christians. Yeah, and it's um it's remarkable

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Speaker 1: how difficult these beliefs are to shake, even if you

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Speaker 1: rationally know otherwise. I mean, I I personally, I grew

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Speaker 1: up in East Tennessee, surrounded by a lot of fundamentalist Christianity,

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Speaker 1: And when I think about the way I conceive of Hell,

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Speaker 1: I don't rationally believe in in a hell anymore. But

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Speaker 1: I think of my mind sort of as a mansion

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Speaker 1: where there's a room in the back, and occasionally the

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Speaker 1: door opens and that belief just gets out and walks around.

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Speaker 1: And I don't know when that's going to happen. Do

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Speaker 1: you find the same thing. Does it sometimes just come

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Speaker 1: out without seemingly unbidden? Not as much now as it did,

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Speaker 1: you know when I left, When I left the faith

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Speaker 1: many years ago, not twenty five years ago or whatever,

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Speaker 1: a long time ago. When I left Christianity for a

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Speaker 1: long time, one of the things is holding me back

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Speaker 1: to begin with, before I left was the fear of hell.

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Speaker 1: You know, I thinking, you know, like if I like, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, I really think that people are gonna be

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Speaker 1: punished after death by God. But now I'm doubting my faith.

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Speaker 1: And if I leave my faith, what if I was

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Speaker 1: right in the first place, and now you know it

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Speaker 1: took the wrong term, but I'm screwed. I mean, it's like,

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Speaker 1: this is not going to be good. Uh. And so

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Speaker 1: but then when I did leave the faith, I just

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Speaker 1: I became convinced that God is not going to be

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Speaker 1: torturing people for trillions of years because they messed up

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Speaker 1: for twenty year. They didn't believe exactly the right thing.

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Speaker 1: I just said, just it's implausible. And so over time

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Speaker 1: what I did is I ended up becoming more of

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Speaker 1: a rationalist, and I became more of a materialist. And

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Speaker 1: so you know, I'm a complete materialist now a naturalist.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I just you know, I don't I don't

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Speaker 1: think there is some kind of other realm Uh, this

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Speaker 1: is it. Uh. And I don't think there's some of

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Speaker 1: the law. This is it. And for me, um, maybe

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Speaker 1: because I'm such a rationalist that uh, the thought that's

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Speaker 1: really keeping my head too much anymore that yeah, actually,

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Speaker 1: you know it might happen. Uh, I just don't think

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Speaker 1: it is. I'm sure a lot of people are still

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Speaker 1: reeling from the surprise of of you saying that that,

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Speaker 1: in fact, the Hebrew Bible doesn't teach heaven and hell,

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Speaker 1: and that this was not the teaching of historical Jesus.

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Speaker 1: That there are probably things running through their heads to say, like,

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Speaker 1: wait a minute, that can't be right, can it. So

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Speaker 1: I think maybe we should talk specifically a bit about

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Speaker 1: the the evolution of beliefs about the afterlife that we

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Speaker 1: see in the ancient Near East of the ancient Greco

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Speaker 1: Roman world and then in the Bible. So, uh, can

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Speaker 1: we talk about beliefs about bodies, souls and what happens

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Speaker 1: to them at the time of death. Uh, maybe starting

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Speaker 1: among in the pre Christian ancient world, maybe among the

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Speaker 1: ancient Jewish thought views that you would find in the

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Speaker 1: Hebrew Bible. Yeah, yeah, this is you know, as you know,

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Speaker 1: this is really what my book does. Is it traces

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Speaker 1: these ideas all the way back as as early as

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Speaker 1: we have records. Uh, you know, we have records going,

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Speaker 1: we have written text going back to the epic of Gilgamesh,

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Speaker 1: which is it turns out, is a forerunner of Dante.

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Speaker 1: Gilgamesh actually has a tour to the Actual and so

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Speaker 1: and in the Old and So I go through the

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Speaker 1: Old Testament all the way, so that the ancient he

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Speaker 1: What one reason that the Old Testament doesn't have this

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Speaker 1: view that you die and your soul goes to heaven

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Speaker 1: or hell while your body dies is because ancient Hebrews

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Speaker 1: didn't have the idea that your soul and your body

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Speaker 1: were two entities that could be distinguished from each other. Um.

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Speaker 1: The idea that you've got a soul and a body

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Speaker 1: that you've got made up of two parts is a

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Speaker 1: kind of dualism right too. Too fundamental components in dualism. Um,

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Speaker 1: ancient Hebrews were not dualistic, and they're thinking about the

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Speaker 1: human The ancient Hebrews thought a human being was one thing,

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Speaker 1: not two separable things. And it goes all the way

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Speaker 1: back to Genesis where God creates the first human Adam.

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Speaker 1: He makes Adam out of the dirt, and so there's

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Speaker 1: this kind of this dirt thing on the on the ground,

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Speaker 1: and it's just lying, it's inert, it's not alive. God

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Speaker 1: breathes life into Adam, and so he brings life into

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Speaker 1: Adam's soul. He brings it, brings a soul in the him,

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Speaker 1: which is his breath. Adam now has his breath, and

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Speaker 1: that makes him alive. And Adam will be alive as

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Speaker 1: long as he has his breath. But when he stops breathing,

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Speaker 1: he's dead. Now we ourselves, we ourselves have a kind

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Speaker 1: of we have an analogous thing about breath. You know,

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Speaker 1: when when you stop breathing, your breath doesn't go anywhere.

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Speaker 1: It's just God. And that's how they understood the soul.

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Speaker 1: It wasn't something separable from the breath or the body.

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Speaker 1: When your soul, when it leaves the body, like the

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Speaker 1: breath leaves, it's just gone. It doesn't go anywhere. And

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Speaker 1: so Hebrews didn't have ancient Hebrews didn't have this idea

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Speaker 1: that the soul would live on, because the soul is

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Speaker 1: simply the thing that made you alive, and when you're

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Speaker 1: not alive, it doesn't exact anymore. And so that's why

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Speaker 1: in the Old Testament Um nobody talks about the soul

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Speaker 1: living on after death. There are places um where uh

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Speaker 1: the Hebrew Bible, offers will talk about a place. It

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Speaker 1: sounds like a place, uh that sometimes it's called she'll um,

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Speaker 1: and so people mistake that as being like this area

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Speaker 1: that everybody goes to when they die, they die and

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Speaker 1: their souls go down to shield. And uh, when I

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Speaker 1: try to show in my book, is it probably that's

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Speaker 1: not what she all means. Um. The word shield itself

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Speaker 1: is often part of the problem is that Bible translators

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Speaker 1: really sometimes mess us up. And so often when with

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Speaker 1: the English Bible, translators will come across the worst shield,

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Speaker 1: which occurs about sixty times in the Old Testament. It's

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Speaker 1: not very common, but they'll translate it as hell. But

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Speaker 1: what are you supposed to read? He was supposed to

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Speaker 1: think when you read, yeah, you know, God saved me

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Speaker 1: from hell, or I don't want to go to hell.

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Speaker 1: But what it's it actually doesn't say hell. It says

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Speaker 1: she'll and she all is not hell. Hell. We think

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Speaker 1: it was hell is where your soul goes to get punished.

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Speaker 1: But that's not found in Hebrew thought. And so when

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Speaker 1: I showed my my book is that when when shield

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Speaker 1: gets used in the Hebrew Bible, it is almost always

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Speaker 1: set um as the synonym for grave or pit or

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Speaker 1: the place your body is placed um when it dies.

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Speaker 1: And so it looks like sheola is simply where your

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Speaker 1: remains are. It's not a place um. And so uh

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Speaker 1: so there's no place in the Bible, in the Old

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Speaker 1: Testament where there's a place that you go either for

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Speaker 1: rewards or punished when you just die. And that's why,

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Speaker 1: that's why the Hebrew authors, like in the Psalms, are

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Speaker 1: so afraid of death because they're not gonna have life anymore.

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Speaker 1: There's not gonna be anything. They're not going to be

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Speaker 1: able to enjoy anything. There'll be no physical pleasure. Um.

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Speaker 1: They won't even be able to worship God. They say this,

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Speaker 1: and God won't even room remember them. He won't remember

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Speaker 1: them because they won't exist, and so they won't even

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Speaker 1: think about them. And so that's the situation of the

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Speaker 1: Hebrew Bible that people are made up of body and soul.

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Speaker 1: When they die, their life is over and they get

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Speaker 1: deposited somewhere and they want to get to They want

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Speaker 1: to have a nice burial because everybody does. But I mean,

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Speaker 1: there are gonna be around to enjoy it. They'll be dead, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think that view is extremely clear in books say

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Speaker 1: like Ecclesiastes. Um, I wonder though about people might be

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Speaker 1: thinking about what about a passage like the Witch of

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Speaker 1: Indoor story? Well, maybe can you talk for a moment

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Speaker 1: about that story and how you would interpret that. Yeah, no,

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Speaker 1: this is good because it's exactly the passage people are

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Speaker 1: gonna be thinking of. And you get passages in the

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Speaker 1: New test and people are gonna be thinking of. And

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Speaker 1: so obviously I have to talk about all these passages

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Speaker 1: in my book. And I should stress that when I

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Speaker 1: talk about these passages, I'm not coming up with some

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Speaker 1: kind of creative, like weird new interpretations. These passages, the

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Speaker 1: kinds of stuff I talked about in my book are

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Speaker 1: thinks that biblical scholars have known for a very long time.

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Speaker 1: This is most people, you know, they don't Most people

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Speaker 1: don't talk to biblical scholars or good reasons, and so

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Speaker 1: they don't know. But I mean, so I'm not I'm

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Speaker 1: not saying anything unusual at all here for a biblical story.

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Speaker 1: They would just all say, yeah, well, of course, Um,

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Speaker 1: so the Witch of Indoor is the story in the

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Speaker 1: in the Book of First Samuel. Um. For Samuel's one

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Speaker 1: of the main characters is a well, Samuel's the main

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Speaker 1: characters since the name Samuel is a prophet who is

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Speaker 1: a the last of the great prophets, and he he

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Speaker 1: is the counselor for King Saul, and King Saul is

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Speaker 1: always getting in trouble and always messing up and doing

429
00:22:33,920 --> 00:22:36,240
Speaker 1: things wrong, and God's always ticked off at him, and

430
00:22:36,280 --> 00:22:40,480
Speaker 1: so and so. But Samuel dies and Saul gets himself

431
00:22:40,520 --> 00:22:45,440
Speaker 1: into another mess. The the opposing the country next door

432
00:22:45,560 --> 00:22:51,679
Speaker 1: the the Philistines are out to attack the Israelite armies

433
00:22:51,880 --> 00:22:53,919
Speaker 1: and they're surrounded and Saul doesn't know what to do,

434
00:22:54,000 --> 00:22:57,360
Speaker 1: and his adviser is dead, and and so he decides

435
00:22:57,400 --> 00:23:00,840
Speaker 1: he's going to get a medium. Like it's called the

436
00:23:00,840 --> 00:23:04,320
Speaker 1: Witch of Endor, but it's more like she performs necromancy.

437
00:23:04,359 --> 00:23:07,560
Speaker 1: She raises the soul from the dead uh in order

438
00:23:07,600 --> 00:23:11,439
Speaker 1: to ask what's going on. And so he commissions this

439
00:23:11,480 --> 00:23:13,960
Speaker 1: woman who's afraid to do it because he comes to

440
00:23:14,000 --> 00:23:17,240
Speaker 1: her in disguise because he himself, the king has passed

441
00:23:17,240 --> 00:23:19,400
Speaker 1: a law against doing this kind of thing. You can't

442
00:23:19,440 --> 00:23:21,960
Speaker 1: do this and so so, but she's a medium and

443
00:23:21,960 --> 00:23:24,159
Speaker 1: she's gonna do it because and he she doesn't know

444
00:23:24,200 --> 00:23:27,920
Speaker 1: it's him and anyway, so it's great and it's a fantastic, fantastic,

445
00:23:28,280 --> 00:23:32,040
Speaker 1: but she could he convinces her she uh to raise

446
00:23:32,119 --> 00:23:34,359
Speaker 1: Samuel from the dead so Saul will be instructed of

447
00:23:34,400 --> 00:23:37,399
Speaker 1: all what to do about this war. Uh. And and

448
00:23:37,440 --> 00:23:39,439
Speaker 1: Samuel comes up out of the dead and he's and

449
00:23:39,480 --> 00:23:44,560
Speaker 1: he's angry because Saul's brought him back. Uh. And he tells, Saul,

450
00:23:45,240 --> 00:23:47,600
Speaker 1: you know, you've just disobeyed God one too many times,

451
00:23:47,600 --> 00:23:49,440
Speaker 1: and so yes, there is gonna be a battle tomorrow.

452
00:23:49,680 --> 00:23:53,040
Speaker 1: And by the way, tomorrow you'll be down here too.

453
00:23:54,880 --> 00:23:57,359
Speaker 1: So okay, so it's not good this, and it's exactly

454
00:23:57,400 --> 00:23:59,680
Speaker 1: what happens. Okay. Well, the last sounds like a soul

455
00:23:59,760 --> 00:24:02,719
Speaker 1: is a live after death, and it's down someplace and

456
00:24:02,800 --> 00:24:04,920
Speaker 1: it comes back. It can go back and forth. And

457
00:24:05,080 --> 00:24:07,720
Speaker 1: it sure sounds like that, doesn't it. Yes, it does,

458
00:24:07,960 --> 00:24:11,240
Speaker 1: It absolutely does, until you start looking at it more closely.

459
00:24:12,040 --> 00:24:18,200
Speaker 1: This passage never says that Samuel was in Shiol or

460
00:24:18,240 --> 00:24:23,080
Speaker 1: in Hades, or in Hell or in Getna or anywhere else.

461
00:24:23,640 --> 00:24:27,000
Speaker 1: He comes up. But why would a body, why would

462
00:24:27,040 --> 00:24:30,280
Speaker 1: somebody come up? They come up because they're buried in

463
00:24:30,280 --> 00:24:34,159
Speaker 1: the ground. He comes up as a body, not as

464
00:24:34,200 --> 00:24:37,119
Speaker 1: a spirit. The way Saul recognizes him is he's wearing

465
00:24:37,119 --> 00:24:41,440
Speaker 1: Samuel's clothes, and so this isn't like, this isn't a ghost,

466
00:24:41,800 --> 00:24:45,520
Speaker 1: this is this is like Samuel. And and Samuel, when

467
00:24:45,520 --> 00:24:47,399
Speaker 1: he's upset, he doesn't say something like, you know, I

468
00:24:47,400 --> 00:24:49,240
Speaker 1: guys have such a great time up there in heaven,

469
00:24:49,280 --> 00:24:51,240
Speaker 1: and now you bring me back. What are you doing?

470
00:24:51,680 --> 00:24:54,159
Speaker 1: He we don't know why his angry, you know, was

471
00:24:54,200 --> 00:24:57,000
Speaker 1: he enjoying a good sleep? We don't. But he doesn't

472
00:24:57,000 --> 00:25:00,040
Speaker 1: say anything about being with anyone else. He just it

473
00:25:00,359 --> 00:25:02,719
Speaker 1: is not something you're supposed to do. You're the king,

474
00:25:02,880 --> 00:25:04,320
Speaker 1: and you know this, and you passed this law. You

475
00:25:04,359 --> 00:25:07,120
Speaker 1: can't do this. And so God's really ticked off because

476
00:25:07,119 --> 00:25:10,840
Speaker 1: God told you not to do this, and so um

477
00:25:11,000 --> 00:25:14,679
Speaker 1: uh and so it is not his um. It is

478
00:25:14,720 --> 00:25:17,240
Speaker 1: not a soul separated from the body that comes back.

479
00:25:17,359 --> 00:25:22,120
Speaker 1: Samuel actually comes back in bodily form, fully clothed as

480
00:25:22,160 --> 00:25:26,879
Speaker 1: an old man, and uh, and he has there's nothing

481
00:25:26,920 --> 00:25:28,919
Speaker 1: to indicate that he's been either in a place of

482
00:25:28,960 --> 00:25:32,160
Speaker 1: torment or in a place of reward. And so Hebrew

483
00:25:32,240 --> 00:25:34,600
Speaker 1: Bible scholars don't look on this as an instance of

484
00:25:34,600 --> 00:25:36,679
Speaker 1: which somebody you know, showing that when you die, your

485
00:25:36,680 --> 00:25:38,960
Speaker 1: soul goes to one place or another. It's the only place,

486
00:25:39,000 --> 00:25:42,000
Speaker 1: by the way where um in the Hebrew Bible, where

487
00:25:42,040 --> 00:25:46,720
Speaker 1: that kind of necromancy uh is performed. But we do

488
00:25:46,840 --> 00:25:49,639
Speaker 1: know that some a lot of israel life thought it

489
00:25:49,680 --> 00:25:51,680
Speaker 1: could be performed because there are all these laws against

490
00:25:51,760 --> 00:25:54,160
Speaker 1: it in the Bible. You don't don't make a bunch

491
00:25:54,200 --> 00:25:56,680
Speaker 1: of laws and people are doing something, and so they

492
00:25:56,720 --> 00:25:59,280
Speaker 1: at least think their seance is going on, and you know,

493
00:25:59,440 --> 00:26:01,760
Speaker 1: something's happen, and then but you know what it was

494
00:26:01,800 --> 00:26:03,879
Speaker 1: they were thinking is are to know? This is kind

495
00:26:03,880 --> 00:26:07,200
Speaker 1: of a tangent, But that does make me wonder about this.

496
00:26:07,440 --> 00:26:09,840
Speaker 1: So it's it's an example of this belief in the

497
00:26:09,880 --> 00:26:14,399
Speaker 1: persecution of witchcraft or necromancy. Why do you think it

498
00:26:14,640 --> 00:26:19,000
Speaker 1: is that monotheistic religions like Judaism Christianity would have been

499
00:26:19,119 --> 00:26:24,679
Speaker 1: so opposed to people independently practicing magic or consulting the

500
00:26:24,760 --> 00:26:27,680
Speaker 1: dead uh. In fact, I believe correct me if I'm wrong.

501
00:26:27,720 --> 00:26:29,920
Speaker 1: But this is also sort of one of the horrors

502
00:26:30,000 --> 00:26:32,320
Speaker 1: of the Book of First Enoch, right where these evil

503
00:26:32,359 --> 00:26:35,920
Speaker 1: heavenly creatures come down and they teach human women how

504
00:26:35,960 --> 00:26:38,960
Speaker 1: to do magic spells. Is that right? Yeah, they don't

505
00:26:39,000 --> 00:26:42,480
Speaker 1: mention necromancy there, but they do. They do teach humans

506
00:26:42,520 --> 00:26:46,159
Speaker 1: all sorts of practical things that God doesn't like. And

507
00:26:46,240 --> 00:26:48,000
Speaker 1: so that's kind of that's kind of what's going on

508
00:26:48,040 --> 00:26:50,840
Speaker 1: with this necromancy thing. When you're raising somebody up in

509
00:26:50,880 --> 00:26:55,360
Speaker 1: a seance or or however, you're doing it through magical rights. Um,

510
00:26:55,520 --> 00:27:00,239
Speaker 1: the ancient thought was that this person, Um, it's not

511
00:27:00,280 --> 00:27:02,680
Speaker 1: that the person's soul is living on the person has

512
00:27:02,680 --> 00:27:05,000
Speaker 1: temporarily come back to life again. Their soul has come

513
00:27:05,040 --> 00:27:09,159
Speaker 1: back into their body. And because they have died and

514
00:27:09,200 --> 00:27:11,560
Speaker 1: they've come back from the dead, they have these kind

515
00:27:11,560 --> 00:27:16,680
Speaker 1: of powers. And in monotheistic religion, there's only supposed to

516
00:27:16,680 --> 00:27:20,240
Speaker 1: be one superhuman power, and that's God, and so these

517
00:27:20,280 --> 00:27:25,159
Speaker 1: other powers are threatening and people usually turned to uh,

518
00:27:25,520 --> 00:27:29,760
Speaker 1: necromacy and other forms of magic precisely because the established

519
00:27:29,800 --> 00:27:32,800
Speaker 1: religion wasn't working too well for them. Uh, And so

520
00:27:32,840 --> 00:27:35,000
Speaker 1: they weren't they weren't learning what they needed to learn,

521
00:27:35,040 --> 00:27:37,040
Speaker 1: they weren't getting what they needed to get. They weren't,

522
00:27:37,080 --> 00:27:38,760
Speaker 1: you know, it just wasn't and so they try an

523
00:27:38,760 --> 00:27:42,800
Speaker 1: alternative means and in these monotheistic religions, God is a

524
00:27:42,880 --> 00:27:45,560
Speaker 1: jealous God and he doesn't like it when you go

525
00:27:45,600 --> 00:27:48,200
Speaker 1: to some other divine force. And so that that's why

526
00:27:48,320 --> 00:27:51,040
Speaker 1: it's like a form of cheating almost, well it's a

527
00:27:51,080 --> 00:27:53,399
Speaker 1: form of cheating. It's like, um, you know, you go

528
00:27:53,480 --> 00:27:55,919
Speaker 1: to your you go to your priest for advice, and

529
00:27:55,960 --> 00:27:57,840
Speaker 1: then you go home and get pull out your Ouiji board.

530
00:27:57,880 --> 00:28:00,680
Speaker 1: I mean, look, just to want, I said, don't pull

531
00:28:00,680 --> 00:28:05,119
Speaker 1: out your weigi board? Right, people to use weigi boards? Anyboy?

532
00:28:05,720 --> 00:28:08,320
Speaker 1: When I was a kid, we use boards. Oh yeah,

533
00:28:09,040 --> 00:28:12,440
Speaker 1: always great, okay, okay, okay. So so that's the view

534
00:28:12,640 --> 00:28:16,359
Speaker 1: of of the ancient Jews. They would have mostly believed,

535
00:28:16,359 --> 00:28:18,720
Speaker 1: and of course we should acknowledge that whenever we're talking

536
00:28:18,760 --> 00:28:21,520
Speaker 1: about views and describing them to groups of people, there

537
00:28:21,560 --> 00:28:24,000
Speaker 1: was probably some diversity. But we're talking about like the

538
00:28:24,040 --> 00:28:27,320
Speaker 1: dominant views that are represented in the record, right. Well,

539
00:28:27,359 --> 00:28:29,560
Speaker 1: it's it's a very important point because in my book

540
00:28:29,600 --> 00:28:31,800
Speaker 1: I try to show there are in fact different views

541
00:28:32,160 --> 00:28:35,360
Speaker 1: in the Hebrew Bible itself. I mean, you mentioned Ecclesiastes,

542
00:28:35,760 --> 00:28:37,600
Speaker 1: and you know the Book of Daniel has a very

543
00:28:37,600 --> 00:28:40,320
Speaker 1: different kind of view, and so there there are varieties.

544
00:28:40,560 --> 00:28:42,920
Speaker 1: The one variety you don't find in the Hebrew Bible

545
00:28:43,000 --> 00:28:44,160
Speaker 1: is that you die in your soul goos to have

546
00:28:44,280 --> 00:28:48,200
Speaker 1: our health? Right? Um? So, then what about the uh

547
00:28:48,360 --> 00:28:51,320
Speaker 1: to turn away from ancient Judaism. What about the influence

548
00:28:51,320 --> 00:28:54,120
Speaker 1: of Greek philosophy and like the ideas of Socrates and

549
00:28:54,200 --> 00:28:57,920
Speaker 1: Plato and how those came through in the pagan beliefs

550
00:28:57,960 --> 00:29:01,959
Speaker 1: of the Roman Empire. Yeah, it's very important, far more

551
00:29:02,000 --> 00:29:05,680
Speaker 1: important than most people realize. In the earliest Greek records

552
00:29:05,760 --> 00:29:08,480
Speaker 1: we have, they come our earliest records come from Homer,

553
00:29:09,000 --> 00:29:12,920
Speaker 1: from the Iliot in the Odyssey and Uh. They're the

554
00:29:12,960 --> 00:29:17,440
Speaker 1: earliest foreigner Dante in the Western tradition. So Gilgamesh is

555
00:29:17,480 --> 00:29:20,080
Speaker 1: in the ancient are East, but in the Western tradition,

556
00:29:20,400 --> 00:29:24,680
Speaker 1: the earliest foreigner Dante is a Homer. Odyssey. The Odyssey

557
00:29:24,680 --> 00:29:28,120
Speaker 1: book eleven is Odyssey is going into the underworld uh

558
00:29:28,160 --> 00:29:31,800
Speaker 1: and uh and visiting people there, including his mother and

559
00:29:31,960 --> 00:29:35,240
Speaker 1: his former colleagues in the in the Drojan War, and

560
00:29:35,240 --> 00:29:37,360
Speaker 1: and he meets all these people and and the point

561
00:29:37,360 --> 00:29:39,440
Speaker 1: of this description is to show what it's like down there.

562
00:29:39,440 --> 00:29:42,040
Speaker 1: And it's not good. It's not good for anybody because

563
00:29:42,040 --> 00:29:44,680
Speaker 1: everybody is just down there the same they've got they're

564
00:29:44,680 --> 00:29:47,600
Speaker 1: like they're shadows. They're called shadows. They're not even people anywhere,

565
00:29:48,080 --> 00:29:50,240
Speaker 1: but they're kind of shadows of people. And they've got

566
00:29:50,240 --> 00:29:52,720
Speaker 1: no strength and no power, no mind, they can't think,

567
00:29:52,760 --> 00:29:54,760
Speaker 1: they can't remember. It's like they can't talk. It's like

568
00:29:54,760 --> 00:29:58,240
Speaker 1: they just it's awful forever. Uh. By the time you

569
00:29:58,280 --> 00:30:00,640
Speaker 1: get a Plato about four years later. Years so Plato

570
00:30:00,680 --> 00:30:05,080
Speaker 1: is riding at the early fourth century b c. E um, so,

571
00:30:05,200 --> 00:30:08,760
Speaker 1: you know, four years before Jesus ministry Plato. By the

572
00:30:08,800 --> 00:30:12,080
Speaker 1: time of Plato, Greeks has started thinking that this idea

573
00:30:12,200 --> 00:30:14,920
Speaker 1: that like everybody goes to Hades and it's the same,

574
00:30:15,000 --> 00:30:18,360
Speaker 1: and it's boring for eternity, and there's no that's not right.

575
00:30:18,480 --> 00:30:22,520
Speaker 1: I mean, how can I you mean that somebody who

576
00:30:22,760 --> 00:30:27,320
Speaker 1: is a valiant warrior, who is upright and who always

577
00:30:27,320 --> 00:30:30,680
Speaker 1: does the good thing and helps other people, Uh, he

578
00:30:30,840 --> 00:30:33,600
Speaker 1: dies and like that's it. He doesn't get any reward.

579
00:30:34,360 --> 00:30:37,600
Speaker 1: And there's some smuck over here, like this tyrant who

580
00:30:37,920 --> 00:30:40,880
Speaker 1: oppresses people and just cares about his own self and

581
00:30:41,000 --> 00:30:44,960
Speaker 1: getting massively rich and powerful and doesn't care who he

582
00:30:45,040 --> 00:30:47,520
Speaker 1: hurts in the process. He dies and he's not doesn't

583
00:30:47,520 --> 00:30:51,080
Speaker 1: get punished, and no, that cappy. How it is, as

584
00:30:51,400 --> 00:30:54,200
Speaker 1: Greeks came up with this idea that in fact, after

585
00:30:54,240 --> 00:30:57,920
Speaker 1: death there are rewards and punishments. Um. We don't know

586
00:30:57,960 --> 00:30:59,760
Speaker 1: if other people at the same time came up with

587
00:30:59,800 --> 00:31:01,840
Speaker 1: this idea, but we find it most firmly in the Greeks,

588
00:31:01,920 --> 00:31:05,080
Speaker 1: especially in Plato, who devoted a lot of time in

589
00:31:05,160 --> 00:31:08,280
Speaker 1: his dialogue and her surviving dialogues to show that the

590
00:31:08,360 --> 00:31:11,920
Speaker 1: soul and the body are two different things, and that

591
00:31:12,000 --> 00:31:15,240
Speaker 1: the mistake people make in life is catering to their

592
00:31:15,280 --> 00:31:19,800
Speaker 1: body when the important thing is their soul. And so

593
00:31:20,040 --> 00:31:24,120
Speaker 1: Plato was pushing for philosophy the love of knowledge is

594
00:31:24,160 --> 00:31:28,920
Speaker 1: what philosophy means, the love of wisdom, because he thought

595
00:31:29,000 --> 00:31:31,640
Speaker 1: we needed to attend to the needs of our inner selves,

596
00:31:31,760 --> 00:31:36,760
Speaker 1: especially our minds and our mental states, and our values

597
00:31:36,880 --> 00:31:39,480
Speaker 1: and our views of what's right and wrong, and our

598
00:31:39,560 --> 00:31:41,840
Speaker 1: ethics and how we live, and those are the things

599
00:31:41,840 --> 00:31:44,280
Speaker 1: we should be concerned about, not like, you know, getting

600
00:31:44,360 --> 00:31:47,640
Speaker 1: drunk all the time and having parties and having sex randomly.

601
00:31:47,680 --> 00:31:50,080
Speaker 1: He's like, players say, no, that's just caged me to

602
00:31:50,160 --> 00:31:52,120
Speaker 1: your body. And the problem is if you. If you're

603
00:31:52,120 --> 00:31:55,520
Speaker 1: giving your body's pleasures, then you're gonna not pay any

604
00:31:55,560 --> 00:31:58,640
Speaker 1: attention to your soul. And when you die, your soul

605
00:31:58,720 --> 00:32:00,560
Speaker 1: is going to live on, but your body gonna die,

606
00:32:01,000 --> 00:32:02,920
Speaker 1: and so you don't need to make sure your soul

607
00:32:03,000 --> 00:32:05,160
Speaker 1: is doing well when it dies, or it's gonna be

608
00:32:05,280 --> 00:32:09,120
Speaker 1: bad news. And so Plato Plato tells these myths of

609
00:32:09,200 --> 00:32:12,000
Speaker 1: the afterlive. He calls the myths. I don't think he

610
00:32:12,040 --> 00:32:14,360
Speaker 1: means I'm literally, but he tells these kind of stories

611
00:32:14,360 --> 00:32:16,640
Speaker 1: of people who die and they check out what it's

612
00:32:16,680 --> 00:32:20,920
Speaker 1: like afterwards, and those who tend to their soul have

613
00:32:21,280 --> 00:32:26,200
Speaker 1: very good afterlives. And those who are just you know, licentious,

614
00:32:26,680 --> 00:32:31,120
Speaker 1: ty rental bastards, they you know, they're tortured forever, and

615
00:32:31,240 --> 00:32:34,720
Speaker 1: so you get rewards and punishments, and so Plato um

616
00:32:34,760 --> 00:32:37,440
Speaker 1: Plato popularized this idea. It's not clear that he invented it,

617
00:32:38,200 --> 00:32:40,720
Speaker 1: but it's found in a number of places in his dialogues,

618
00:32:40,840 --> 00:32:45,280
Speaker 1: especially say in in uh the Fato and in the Republic,

619
00:32:45,840 --> 00:32:49,720
Speaker 1: and it ended up becoming a hugely significant understanding of

620
00:32:49,760 --> 00:32:52,320
Speaker 1: things for the history of the development of heaven and hell.

621
00:32:52,760 --> 00:32:55,400
Speaker 1: So there's a curious fact from your book that caught

622
00:32:55,400 --> 00:32:59,160
Speaker 1: my attention, which is that you mentioned several times how

623
00:32:59,000 --> 00:33:04,560
Speaker 1: for many ancient people, the worst fate imaginable was to

624
00:33:04,800 --> 00:33:08,160
Speaker 1: be denied a decent burial. Uh. And in a minute,

625
00:33:08,160 --> 00:33:09,959
Speaker 1: when we talk about the beliefs of Jesus, we can

626
00:33:09,960 --> 00:33:12,800
Speaker 1: talk about the meaning of Gehenna, this word that sometimes

627
00:33:12,800 --> 00:33:16,360
Speaker 1: translated as hell in the New Testament. But before that,

628
00:33:16,440 --> 00:33:19,520
Speaker 1: could you just help us understand this mindset of like

629
00:33:19,720 --> 00:33:21,920
Speaker 1: what what was it like and what were the causes

630
00:33:22,160 --> 00:33:26,320
Speaker 1: of the mindset where you're obsessed with, uh, not having

631
00:33:26,400 --> 00:33:30,239
Speaker 1: a you know, a profane, disrespected burial. And I know

632
00:33:30,280 --> 00:33:33,400
Speaker 1: this this shows up in lots of folk tales beyond

633
00:33:33,400 --> 00:33:36,000
Speaker 1: just the Bible, like the Grateful Dead folk motif, where

634
00:33:36,040 --> 00:33:39,479
Speaker 1: you know, uh, you know, a person on a journey

635
00:33:39,480 --> 00:33:42,160
Speaker 1: comes across a corpse that's being denied a decent burial,

636
00:33:42,200 --> 00:33:44,560
Speaker 1: and then pay the hero pays for the corpse to

637
00:33:44,560 --> 00:33:47,480
Speaker 1: get a decent burial, and then later that spirit comes

638
00:33:47,520 --> 00:33:49,959
Speaker 1: back to help the hero in disguise. In some way,

639
00:33:50,000 --> 00:33:52,480
Speaker 1: I think this occurs in the Book of Tobit. Yeah yeah,

640
00:33:52,520 --> 00:33:55,040
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. In some ways it seems strange to the

641
00:33:55,080 --> 00:33:58,680
Speaker 1: modern mentality, but in other ways it doesn't. But let

642
00:33:58,720 --> 00:34:01,680
Speaker 1: me just state what you just said, stated emphatically. In

643
00:34:01,880 --> 00:34:04,959
Speaker 1: most cultures we know about, least in the Western world, Uh,

644
00:34:05,160 --> 00:34:09,400
Speaker 1: not getting a decent burial was a horrible fate and

645
00:34:09,560 --> 00:34:13,440
Speaker 1: people really were afraid of it because not that not

646
00:34:13,480 --> 00:34:15,120
Speaker 1: that they're going to suffer in health or it or anything.

647
00:34:15,160 --> 00:34:17,680
Speaker 1: It's just like there's something about getting a decent burial

648
00:34:17,760 --> 00:34:21,080
Speaker 1: that closure to life. And if you don't have closure

649
00:34:21,120 --> 00:34:23,680
Speaker 1: to life, it's like your life it just didn't end

650
00:34:23,760 --> 00:34:26,440
Speaker 1: up well. Um. And you find this, you find it

651
00:34:26,480 --> 00:34:29,319
Speaker 1: in the Hebrew Bible. Uh, you certainly find it in

652
00:34:29,440 --> 00:34:33,200
Speaker 1: Greek understandings of things. You find it in Roman ideas.

653
00:34:33,239 --> 00:34:36,040
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just, let's all throughout and in Judaism,

654
00:34:36,120 --> 00:34:40,560
Speaker 1: and it's in Christianity. The modern analogy, I guess is

655
00:34:40,960 --> 00:34:42,799
Speaker 1: people don't think about that so much because just about

656
00:34:42,800 --> 00:34:45,000
Speaker 1: everybody gets a decent burial, although you know, some people

657
00:34:45,000 --> 00:34:46,840
Speaker 1: don't want to diet see and kind of be thrown

658
00:34:46,840 --> 00:34:48,640
Speaker 1: in there and eating by fish, I mean because you know,

659
00:34:48,719 --> 00:34:50,760
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, I don't like that, or some people

660
00:34:50,760 --> 00:34:53,920
Speaker 1: don't like the idea of of um uh, you know,

661
00:34:54,000 --> 00:34:55,879
Speaker 1: of how they're going to be buried or where they're

662
00:34:55,880 --> 00:34:58,920
Speaker 1: gonna be buried or you know they you know, no,

663
00:34:58,960 --> 00:35:01,320
Speaker 1: I don't want to be creaming to know that's spooky,

664
00:35:01,680 --> 00:35:03,440
Speaker 1: you know, or or I don't want to bury the

665
00:35:03,560 --> 00:35:05,880
Speaker 1: worms down there. That's so we do. We do think

666
00:35:05,920 --> 00:35:07,440
Speaker 1: about that. But the other way we think about it

667
00:35:07,480 --> 00:35:08,799
Speaker 1: is we think, you know, I wonder how many people

668
00:35:08,840 --> 00:35:10,759
Speaker 1: are going to be at my funeral? You know you

669
00:35:10,960 --> 00:35:12,680
Speaker 1: worry about it, that you're worried about it. Well, what

670
00:35:12,719 --> 00:35:14,879
Speaker 1: are you worried about. You're not gonna be there. It's

671
00:35:14,920 --> 00:35:17,880
Speaker 1: like you don't even know. Like so it doesn't make

672
00:35:17,880 --> 00:35:21,000
Speaker 1: any sense, but we do. And it's like that only

673
00:35:21,040 --> 00:35:23,560
Speaker 1: do like the hundred power in the angel in the

674
00:35:23,560 --> 00:35:26,880
Speaker 1: angel world without a decent burial. You know, they were

675
00:35:26,880 --> 00:35:29,200
Speaker 1: afraid of it, uh they and and it was a

676
00:35:29,200 --> 00:35:32,760
Speaker 1: horrible way to angelf. It's even weaponized sometimes. I believe

677
00:35:32,800 --> 00:35:35,799
Speaker 1: it was in a book of yours I read, uh again,

678
00:35:35,800 --> 00:35:37,719
Speaker 1: correct me if I'm wrong. But you talked about how

679
00:35:38,000 --> 00:35:40,600
Speaker 1: part of the fear of crucifixion in the Roman Empire

680
00:35:41,000 --> 00:35:43,520
Speaker 1: was not just that it was painful, not just that

681
00:35:43,560 --> 00:35:46,759
Speaker 1: you would die, but specifically that it was a humiliation

682
00:35:46,920 --> 00:35:49,080
Speaker 1: of the corps, that the corpse would be left to

683
00:35:49,120 --> 00:35:51,840
Speaker 1: the scavenging animals and exposed and not be given a

684
00:35:51,880 --> 00:35:55,240
Speaker 1: decent burial. Yeah, no, it's one of the It's interesting,

685
00:35:55,280 --> 00:35:59,040
Speaker 1: you know, when you when you read ancient documents on crucifixion.

686
00:35:59,719 --> 00:36:03,080
Speaker 1: Every everybody gets their knowledge about crucifixion from what everybody

687
00:36:03,080 --> 00:36:05,560
Speaker 1: else says, I mean modern people. The way you know

688
00:36:05,600 --> 00:36:07,480
Speaker 1: what it's like to be crucifized, somebody else has told you,

689
00:36:07,520 --> 00:36:09,279
Speaker 1: and somebody else told them, somebody else told them, and

690
00:36:09,320 --> 00:36:11,319
Speaker 1: nobody bothers. Actually to read what they say in the

691
00:36:11,360 --> 00:36:15,120
Speaker 1: ancient sources about it, it's interesting. There's no actual description

692
00:36:15,160 --> 00:36:17,480
Speaker 1: of the process in the ancient source, like there's no

693
00:36:17,520 --> 00:36:20,040
Speaker 1: description of how they actually did it, but there are

694
00:36:20,080 --> 00:36:22,520
Speaker 1: a number of references to what happens after they did it,

695
00:36:23,040 --> 00:36:28,120
Speaker 1: when sometimes meant to be dark humor and sometimes very seriously,

696
00:36:28,480 --> 00:36:32,080
Speaker 1: but you get these references to the bodies being on

697
00:36:32,080 --> 00:36:34,719
Speaker 1: the cross for days and being eaten by the scavengers,

698
00:36:34,800 --> 00:36:39,319
Speaker 1: especially the birds, and um uh, you know that's part

699
00:36:39,360 --> 00:36:41,840
Speaker 1: of the punishment. You don't get a decent burial, you

700
00:36:42,320 --> 00:36:44,920
Speaker 1: are you're torn to shreds by the animals, and so

701
00:36:45,080 --> 00:36:47,960
Speaker 1: like this was and people would watch this happening to somebody.

702
00:36:48,440 --> 00:36:50,080
Speaker 1: And so I mean in the role in the world,

703
00:36:50,080 --> 00:36:53,600
Speaker 1: crucifixion was used as a deterrent to crime. Uh you know,

704
00:36:53,880 --> 00:36:57,080
Speaker 1: they didn't have the idea that developed in America that

705
00:36:57,320 --> 00:36:59,440
Speaker 1: capital punishment is fine so long as you do it

706
00:36:59,680 --> 00:37:04,560
Speaker 1: as privately and theoretically as painlessly as possible. Romans had

707
00:37:04,600 --> 00:37:07,719
Speaker 1: the opposite idea, You do it publicly, and you make

708
00:37:07,800 --> 00:37:11,319
Speaker 1: it as torturous as you can and as humiliating as can.

709
00:37:11,600 --> 00:37:14,239
Speaker 1: So everybody's seeing this thing says, oh my god, I'm

710
00:37:14,280 --> 00:37:16,319
Speaker 1: not going to do that, because you know, this is

711
00:37:16,360 --> 00:37:18,040
Speaker 1: what's going to happen. As you know, I'm not going

712
00:37:18,080 --> 00:37:20,480
Speaker 1: to steal a chariot boy, and that's what they do

713
00:37:20,840 --> 00:37:23,760
Speaker 1: and so uh so, yes, but they did leave They

714
00:37:23,760 --> 00:37:25,719
Speaker 1: apparently did leave them on the crosses. And that's part

715
00:37:25,719 --> 00:37:27,920
Speaker 1: of it, because I couldn't get a decent burial. Okay,

716
00:37:27,960 --> 00:37:30,440
Speaker 1: So even if we don't fully understand the causes of

717
00:37:30,480 --> 00:37:32,440
Speaker 1: this difference and belief, we should always have it in

718
00:37:32,520 --> 00:37:36,120
Speaker 1: mind that having your corpse desecrated or not getting a

719
00:37:36,120 --> 00:37:38,200
Speaker 1: decent burial, it's just like the worst thing you can

720
00:37:38,239 --> 00:37:42,040
Speaker 1: imagine in the ancient world. Yeah, that's why all these scenes,

721
00:37:42,120 --> 00:37:44,239
Speaker 1: you know, you have if somebody like in like in

722
00:37:44,280 --> 00:37:48,000
Speaker 1: a war narrative, you know, they desecrate the body and

723
00:37:48,160 --> 00:37:50,080
Speaker 1: drag it around the city or something. This is just

724
00:37:50,120 --> 00:37:53,640
Speaker 1: thought to be whore. Of course it still still is. Yeah,

725
00:37:53,800 --> 00:37:55,640
Speaker 1: all right, we're going to take a quick break, but

726
00:37:55,719 --> 00:38:02,880
Speaker 1: we'll be right back. And we're back. So maybe we

727
00:38:02,880 --> 00:38:05,080
Speaker 1: should talk now about the teachings of Jesus. I know

728
00:38:05,239 --> 00:38:07,040
Speaker 1: there are several there are a lot of other things

729
00:38:07,480 --> 00:38:09,319
Speaker 1: in your book that you cover about the you know,

730
00:38:09,640 --> 00:38:11,800
Speaker 1: before we get to Jesus, you talk about the evolution

731
00:38:11,880 --> 00:38:14,960
Speaker 1: of Jewish thought and some of the later Jewish writings,

732
00:38:14,960 --> 00:38:17,560
Speaker 1: like like the Book of Daniel and maccabeees And maybe

733
00:38:17,600 --> 00:38:19,920
Speaker 1: we can come back to that if you want. But um,

734
00:38:19,920 --> 00:38:21,959
Speaker 1: I'm sure a lot of people are wondering about something

735
00:38:22,000 --> 00:38:24,880
Speaker 1: we teased earlier, which is that, Okay, if the historical

736
00:38:25,000 --> 00:38:29,160
Speaker 1: Jesus did not preach modern beliefs about heaven and hell,

737
00:38:29,880 --> 00:38:33,080
Speaker 1: what were the teachings of the historical Jesus with regards

738
00:38:33,080 --> 00:38:35,319
Speaker 1: to the afterlife? And you may also need to talk

739
00:38:35,360 --> 00:38:39,000
Speaker 1: a bit here about historical method like why why can't

740
00:38:39,040 --> 00:38:41,840
Speaker 1: we just read the gospels to know what the historical

741
00:38:41,960 --> 00:38:45,239
Speaker 1: Jesus taught? Yeah, so I'm gonna I'm gonna have to

742
00:38:45,280 --> 00:38:47,680
Speaker 1: provide some background in the development of Jewish thought to

743
00:38:47,680 --> 00:38:49,160
Speaker 1: make sense of this. So I'm going to go back

744
00:38:49,160 --> 00:38:53,200
Speaker 1: to Daniel, because you can't understand Jesus views without understanding

745
00:38:53,239 --> 00:38:56,680
Speaker 1: the context that he's that he's in um. Most of

746
00:38:56,719 --> 00:38:59,040
Speaker 1: the Hebrew Bible thinks that, as I was saying things,

747
00:38:59,160 --> 00:39:00,800
Speaker 1: when a person dies at the end of the story,

748
00:39:00,840 --> 00:39:03,919
Speaker 1: they're dead. Uh, there's no no afterlife of any kind.

749
00:39:03,960 --> 00:39:06,919
Speaker 1: You're just dead. And I pointed out that Greek's ended

750
00:39:06,960 --> 00:39:08,880
Speaker 1: up had something similar to begin with, but then with

751
00:39:08,920 --> 00:39:11,480
Speaker 1: Plato it started you've got to have rewards and punishments.

752
00:39:11,560 --> 00:39:14,799
Speaker 1: And that same development happened within Judaism, but in a

753
00:39:14,800 --> 00:39:18,520
Speaker 1: different way. It's not clear if they were influenced by

754
00:39:18,560 --> 00:39:22,040
Speaker 1: Greek thought or or it's not clear how it happened exactly.

755
00:39:22,480 --> 00:39:25,239
Speaker 1: But about I don't know, two or fifty years before

756
00:39:25,360 --> 00:39:29,759
Speaker 1: Jesus Um, a number of Jewish thinkers started thinking that,

757
00:39:29,800 --> 00:39:33,560
Speaker 1: in fact, death cannot be the end of the story,

758
00:39:33,719 --> 00:39:35,239
Speaker 1: and it can't be the end of the story for

759
00:39:35,280 --> 00:39:40,280
Speaker 1: a very specific Jewish reason. Ancient Jews believed that God

760
00:39:40,520 --> 00:39:44,520
Speaker 1: had called them the Jews, to be his people. They

761
00:39:44,520 --> 00:39:47,640
Speaker 1: were the chosen people. God had given them the law.

762
00:39:47,920 --> 00:39:50,200
Speaker 1: If they kept the law, they'd keep up their end

763
00:39:50,200 --> 00:39:52,719
Speaker 1: of the bargain, and God would keep up his end

764
00:39:52,760 --> 00:39:55,960
Speaker 1: of the bargain and protect them and uh and be

765
00:39:56,080 --> 00:39:58,000
Speaker 1: on their side and help them out when they were

766
00:39:58,000 --> 00:40:02,360
Speaker 1: in need. As time on, century after century went by

767
00:40:02,440 --> 00:40:06,160
Speaker 1: and Jews were not helped, they were constantly being wiped out,

768
00:40:06,960 --> 00:40:12,920
Speaker 1: constant internal problems, uh, economic problems. Problems, I mean just

769
00:40:13,320 --> 00:40:18,520
Speaker 1: various things of hunger and disease and uh, crop failure,

770
00:40:18,920 --> 00:40:23,840
Speaker 1: but also destruction in war, military disaster, not having possession

771
00:40:23,840 --> 00:40:26,759
Speaker 1: of the land God had promised them. And often, you know,

772
00:40:26,840 --> 00:40:29,160
Speaker 1: the ancient people would say, yeah, it's because we're disobeying

773
00:40:29,200 --> 00:40:31,279
Speaker 1: God and God's punishing us. That was that was the

774
00:40:31,320 --> 00:40:33,400
Speaker 1: view of the prophets in the Old Testament. Every prophet

775
00:40:33,440 --> 00:40:35,279
Speaker 1: in the Old Testament says that, you know the reason

776
00:40:35,360 --> 00:40:37,880
Speaker 1: of suffers, God's punishing you, and you just stopped doing

777
00:40:37,920 --> 00:40:40,399
Speaker 1: that and then he'll reward you. Well, at some point

778
00:40:40,480 --> 00:40:42,879
Speaker 1: Jews started saying, you know, look, we're doing the best

779
00:40:42,920 --> 00:40:45,520
Speaker 1: we can here. Uh. You know, we we may not

780
00:40:45,640 --> 00:40:47,600
Speaker 1: be like the most perfect human beings on earth, but

781
00:40:47,640 --> 00:40:50,240
Speaker 1: we're doing our best to follow God's law. We're eating kosher,

782
00:40:50,440 --> 00:40:53,520
Speaker 1: we're keeping the Sabbath, were observing the festivals, were circumcising

783
00:40:53,520 --> 00:40:58,360
Speaker 1: our babies. At these pagans over here are complete smucks

784
00:40:58,760 --> 00:41:02,160
Speaker 1: and they are ruthless us and they're destroying us. And

785
00:41:02,400 --> 00:41:07,080
Speaker 1: surely there has to be an answer to that. Uh.

786
00:41:07,120 --> 00:41:10,240
Speaker 1: So what ended up happening in Judaism is the answer

787
00:41:10,400 --> 00:41:13,880
Speaker 1: was that was this? The answer there rose about two

788
00:41:14,440 --> 00:41:17,960
Speaker 1: or fifty years before Jesus, was that, yes, these things

789
00:41:18,000 --> 00:41:21,160
Speaker 1: are happening now and God's people are suffering, but it's

790
00:41:21,239 --> 00:41:25,480
Speaker 1: not just because God's punishing them. There are also forces

791
00:41:25,480 --> 00:41:28,720
Speaker 1: in the world that are opposed to God and his people.

792
00:41:29,480 --> 00:41:32,319
Speaker 1: They are against us, and they have power in this

793
00:41:32,360 --> 00:41:35,600
Speaker 1: world and they are making us suffer. This is when

794
00:41:35,719 --> 00:41:40,080
Speaker 1: Jews started developing the idea that there's a devil. Uh

795
00:41:40,080 --> 00:41:44,080
Speaker 1: there's Satan, a figure who is opposed to God gets

796
00:41:44,120 --> 00:41:47,960
Speaker 1: imagined and and talked about, and Satan has henchmen, they

797
00:41:48,000 --> 00:41:51,120
Speaker 1: call them demons. And there are other forces in this

798
00:41:51,160 --> 00:41:54,839
Speaker 1: world and it's they're out to get us. So the question, well,

799
00:41:54,840 --> 00:41:57,919
Speaker 1: why why is that? Well they have different explanations. Why. Well,

800
00:41:58,000 --> 00:42:00,000
Speaker 1: human sin and so of these powers are lead into

801
00:42:00,080 --> 00:42:02,960
Speaker 1: the world, or is because angels did this, or they

802
00:42:02,960 --> 00:42:05,560
Speaker 1: have different explanations. They are a little bit fuzzy sometimes,

803
00:42:05,600 --> 00:42:08,640
Speaker 1: but they But you have these evil forces. The good

804
00:42:08,680 --> 00:42:12,800
Speaker 1: news is that God ultimately is sovereign and he ultimately

805
00:42:13,000 --> 00:42:15,799
Speaker 1: is going to reward his people. Um. God is going

806
00:42:15,840 --> 00:42:19,640
Speaker 1: to intervene in history and he will destroy these forces

807
00:42:19,640 --> 00:42:23,760
Speaker 1: of evil who are ruining people's lives, who are running

808
00:42:23,760 --> 00:42:26,759
Speaker 1: the kingdoms in charge now, and He's going to take

809
00:42:26,800 --> 00:42:28,520
Speaker 1: them out of power. And He's going to bring in

810
00:42:28,640 --> 00:42:31,960
Speaker 1: his own kingdom, the Kingdom of God that will be

811
00:42:32,080 --> 00:42:37,319
Speaker 1: ruled by his representative, the Messiah, who will establish a

812
00:42:37,440 --> 00:42:42,200
Speaker 1: utopian state. Uh. And so these Jews modern scholars called

813
00:42:42,200 --> 00:42:46,680
Speaker 1: this view Jewish view apocalypticism from the word apocalypse at

814
00:42:46,719 --> 00:42:49,040
Speaker 1: the end of this a this age is bad, it's

815
00:42:49,080 --> 00:42:52,480
Speaker 1: getting worse, but the apocalypse is coming. And when the

816
00:42:52,480 --> 00:42:56,040
Speaker 1: apocalypse comes, then God will destroy these forces of evil

817
00:42:56,040 --> 00:42:58,319
Speaker 1: and bring in his good kingdom on earth. The first

818
00:42:58,320 --> 00:43:00,239
Speaker 1: place you find this in the Hebrew Bible is in

819
00:43:00,239 --> 00:43:04,759
Speaker 1: the Book of Daniel Daniel chapters seven through twelve, especially

820
00:43:05,080 --> 00:43:08,800
Speaker 1: you start finding an apocalyptic view. H Daniel was written

821
00:43:08,840 --> 00:43:11,759
Speaker 1: about two hundred years before Jesus was active in his

822
00:43:11,840 --> 00:43:14,480
Speaker 1: ministry a hundred eighty years, two years before Jesus was

823
00:43:14,520 --> 00:43:18,600
Speaker 1: active by that time. This has become a very popular

824
00:43:18,880 --> 00:43:21,200
Speaker 1: view in Judaism is the view that, so far as

825
00:43:21,239 --> 00:43:23,560
Speaker 1: we can tell, was held by the majority of Jews.

826
00:43:24,200 --> 00:43:26,720
Speaker 1: Um is certainly written by the majority of Jewish authors

827
00:43:26,760 --> 00:43:29,600
Speaker 1: that we have from the period uh that God assumed

828
00:43:29,600 --> 00:43:32,319
Speaker 1: to intervene and bringing this kingdom. The thing about this

829
00:43:32,400 --> 00:43:35,200
Speaker 1: kingdom was that it was not that your soul was

830
00:43:35,239 --> 00:43:39,239
Speaker 1: going to die and go to heaven. The kingdom was

831
00:43:39,320 --> 00:43:42,400
Speaker 1: going to be here on earth, and it was going

832
00:43:42,440 --> 00:43:47,080
Speaker 1: to be lived in bodily. People who were on God's

833
00:43:47,280 --> 00:43:51,600
Speaker 1: side would be brought into this Kingdom of God here

834
00:43:51,719 --> 00:43:55,120
Speaker 1: on earth in their bodies. But what about people who,

835
00:43:55,160 --> 00:43:58,279
Speaker 1: like you, died already. So, like, you know, suppose next

836
00:43:58,360 --> 00:44:01,160
Speaker 1: year God does it and wipes out all the wicked

837
00:44:01,200 --> 00:44:03,880
Speaker 1: governments and all the people supporting them, and he brings

838
00:44:03,920 --> 00:44:07,319
Speaker 1: in peace and unity and justice for all forever and

839
00:44:07,360 --> 00:44:09,560
Speaker 1: we have this great Kingdom of God. Well that's nice,

840
00:44:09,600 --> 00:44:11,480
Speaker 1: But like one of my grandfather, I mean, he was

841
00:44:11,520 --> 00:44:13,799
Speaker 1: a good guy. You mean, like he lost album and

842
00:44:13,840 --> 00:44:15,560
Speaker 1: you know, my mom, really, are you kid to me?

843
00:44:15,640 --> 00:44:19,840
Speaker 1: Of course, she doesn't, and so Jews simultaneously developed the

844
00:44:19,880 --> 00:44:23,360
Speaker 1: idea of the resurrection of the dead. This is a

845
00:44:23,440 --> 00:44:25,719
Speaker 1: view you don't get in the vast majority of the

846
00:44:25,760 --> 00:44:28,799
Speaker 1: Hebrew Bible, but you do get it in Daniel and

847
00:44:28,960 --> 00:44:31,520
Speaker 1: you get into the teachings of Jesus and throughout the

848
00:44:31,520 --> 00:44:34,120
Speaker 1: New Testament. The teaching of the resurrection of the dead

849
00:44:34,400 --> 00:44:37,120
Speaker 1: is that even dead people are going to be brought

850
00:44:37,120 --> 00:44:41,200
Speaker 1: back to life, and they too can enter into the Kingdom. This, then,

851
00:44:41,320 --> 00:44:44,360
Speaker 1: is Jesus teaching. Jesus teaches all the time about the

852
00:44:44,360 --> 00:44:47,480
Speaker 1: coming Kingdom of God, and he does not mean heaven,

853
00:44:47,800 --> 00:44:50,719
Speaker 1: where your soul goes when you die. He means the

854
00:44:50,840 --> 00:44:55,400
Speaker 1: Kingdom that God is bringing back to Earth. God made

855
00:44:55,480 --> 00:45:00,000
Speaker 1: this planet and he made it a paradise. Literally, God,

856
00:45:00,000 --> 00:45:02,439
Speaker 1: I've made the garden of Eden for Adam and Eve.

857
00:45:03,080 --> 00:45:05,840
Speaker 1: They sinned, they got kicked out. We lost the Garden

858
00:45:05,840 --> 00:45:08,759
Speaker 1: of Eden. But God's going to bring it back. Just

859
00:45:08,880 --> 00:45:10,759
Speaker 1: as Adam and Eve were in their bodies when they

860
00:45:10,840 --> 00:45:13,680
Speaker 1: enjoyed it, will enjoy their bodies, not just us, but

861
00:45:13,800 --> 00:45:16,600
Speaker 1: everybody is raised from the dead. If they've been on

862
00:45:16,640 --> 00:45:19,640
Speaker 1: the right side, what if they've been in the wrong side,

863
00:45:20,200 --> 00:45:22,319
Speaker 1: They're going to be punished, and it's going to be

864
00:45:22,440 --> 00:45:29,479
Speaker 1: an eternal punishment, but it's not eternal torture. Jesus did

865
00:45:29,520 --> 00:45:32,680
Speaker 1: not believe in the eternal torture. What Jesus believes is

866
00:45:32,719 --> 00:45:35,520
Speaker 1: what other apocalypse is believed, which is that when the

867
00:45:35,600 --> 00:45:38,600
Speaker 1: Kingdom arrives and people raise from the dead, those who

868
00:45:38,600 --> 00:45:40,200
Speaker 1: are on God's side will enter the kingdom, and that

869
00:45:40,320 --> 00:45:43,560
Speaker 1: everybody else will realize they've been left out of the

870
00:45:43,640 --> 00:45:47,440
Speaker 1: kingdom and they'll be horribly upset. They'll be weeping and

871
00:45:47,480 --> 00:45:52,680
Speaker 1: gnashing their teeth, and then God will annihilate them. It'll

872
00:45:52,719 --> 00:45:57,040
Speaker 1: be complete destruction. Uh. And so the eternal punishment is

873
00:45:57,080 --> 00:46:02,000
Speaker 1: not torment, it's death. It's eternal because it will never end.

874
00:46:02,719 --> 00:46:06,520
Speaker 1: God will not reverse his decision. You will be dead forever,

875
00:46:07,000 --> 00:46:09,160
Speaker 1: and only those around God's side will live in the

876
00:46:09,239 --> 00:46:12,440
Speaker 1: utopian Kingdom of God. So that's that's Jesus teaching in

877
00:46:12,440 --> 00:46:15,920
Speaker 1: a nutshell. Jesus never talked about this torment. He always

878
00:46:15,960 --> 00:46:20,640
Speaker 1: talks about destruction, and so, uh, things that might come

879
00:46:20,640 --> 00:46:23,120
Speaker 1: to people's mind in response to that would be okay.

880
00:46:23,120 --> 00:46:25,480
Speaker 1: So first of all, maybe you can deal with this.

881
00:46:25,760 --> 00:46:29,960
Speaker 1: There's like a passage in Luke where where Jesus tells

882
00:46:30,000 --> 00:46:33,400
Speaker 1: the parable of the of the rich Man and Lazarus,

883
00:46:33,480 --> 00:46:36,279
Speaker 1: and and it looks like in this parable there is

884
00:46:36,440 --> 00:46:40,439
Speaker 1: some kind of existence right after you die, and it

885
00:46:40,480 --> 00:46:44,560
Speaker 1: consists of rewards and punishments, rewards for for the for

886
00:46:44,600 --> 00:46:47,560
Speaker 1: the poor man, and punishments for the rich man. And

887
00:46:47,600 --> 00:46:50,440
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem to be like a bodily resurrection at

888
00:46:50,440 --> 00:46:53,040
Speaker 1: the end of time when God comes and conquers everything.

889
00:46:53,080 --> 00:46:55,839
Speaker 1: So how would a how would a biblical scholar deal

890
00:46:55,920 --> 00:46:58,800
Speaker 1: with a passage like that? Well, no, it's a great question,

891
00:46:58,840 --> 00:47:00,839
Speaker 1: and it is for people who know their Bible. It's

892
00:47:00,880 --> 00:47:02,799
Speaker 1: the first pastors that comes to mind. Of course. Well, yeah,

893
00:47:02,800 --> 00:47:06,640
Speaker 1: we're Lazars in the rich Man. So um, maybe I

894
00:47:06,640 --> 00:47:10,080
Speaker 1: should summarize the story or do you think everybody, I'll

895
00:47:10,120 --> 00:47:14,400
Speaker 1: just you got you got this filthy rich man who's

896
00:47:14,520 --> 00:47:17,680
Speaker 1: having sumptions banquets every day and bringing fine clothes and

897
00:47:17,719 --> 00:47:20,799
Speaker 1: lives in this mansion and uh. And there's this poor

898
00:47:20,800 --> 00:47:25,240
Speaker 1: guy outside his gate named Lazarus who's like he's starving

899
00:47:25,239 --> 00:47:27,920
Speaker 1: to death and he's covered with diseases, and the dogs

900
00:47:27,960 --> 00:47:30,520
Speaker 1: and coming up to lick his wounds, and they both die,

901
00:47:31,280 --> 00:47:33,959
Speaker 1: and the rich man ends up down in the place

902
00:47:34,000 --> 00:47:38,840
Speaker 1: of torment and fire, and Lazarus ends up in Abraham's bosom,

903
00:47:39,000 --> 00:47:42,000
Speaker 1: so he's which means he's up having a banquet with

904
00:47:42,040 --> 00:47:45,959
Speaker 1: the forefathers of Israel, Abraham, the father of Israel, and

905
00:47:46,719 --> 00:47:50,799
Speaker 1: the righteous, and the rich man wants. Rich man looks

906
00:47:50,840 --> 00:47:53,640
Speaker 1: up he sees las Or up there, and he tells Abraham, look, said,

907
00:47:53,680 --> 00:47:55,520
Speaker 1: would you send him down? Just put let him put

908
00:47:55,520 --> 00:47:57,479
Speaker 1: his finger in the water and cool my tongue, because

909
00:47:57,480 --> 00:48:01,400
Speaker 1: it's I've been fire down here. And and uh, Abraham says, this,

910
00:48:01,520 --> 00:48:04,600
Speaker 1: Sarak can't there's a chasm between us, a broadcasm, and

911
00:48:04,640 --> 00:48:06,799
Speaker 1: nobody can go back and forth, and so you know,

912
00:48:07,360 --> 00:48:09,680
Speaker 1: he can't come and help. And he said, well, at

913
00:48:09,760 --> 00:48:12,520
Speaker 1: least send us, send them to my brothers. At least

914
00:48:12,520 --> 00:48:14,879
Speaker 1: we're still living. I got these brothers, and like they've

915
00:48:14,880 --> 00:48:17,600
Speaker 1: got to know about this, because if they're they're in

916
00:48:17,680 --> 00:48:20,319
Speaker 1: danger of coming here too. And Abraham says, no, I'm

917
00:48:20,360 --> 00:48:22,880
Speaker 1: not gonna send him, because he said they should just

918
00:48:22,920 --> 00:48:25,200
Speaker 1: read their bibles. If they don't believe the Law of

919
00:48:25,320 --> 00:48:28,000
Speaker 1: Moses and the prophets, they're not going to believe it.

920
00:48:28,320 --> 00:48:31,799
Speaker 1: If somebody comes back from the dead, Okay, that's what

921
00:48:31,800 --> 00:48:35,560
Speaker 1: he says. So even if someone is raised from the dead,

922
00:48:36,080 --> 00:48:40,520
Speaker 1: they won't believe. So that's that all right? So um

923
00:48:40,560 --> 00:48:43,200
Speaker 1: that well, it sure sounds like heav'n done. Hell yeah,

924
00:48:43,200 --> 00:48:47,000
Speaker 1: and yes it does. So several things about it. Number one,

925
00:48:47,120 --> 00:48:51,120
Speaker 1: it's a parable, a parable. It's not a historical statement.

926
00:48:51,680 --> 00:48:57,239
Speaker 1: A parable is as an imaginative story intended to make

927
00:48:57,280 --> 00:49:01,120
Speaker 1: a point. Um, that's her. We know it's a parable

928
00:49:01,200 --> 00:49:04,000
Speaker 1: because in Luke's Gospel it's in a stream. It's a

929
00:49:04,040 --> 00:49:06,480
Speaker 1: lot of section that's just filled with parables, and a

930
00:49:06,600 --> 00:49:09,720
Speaker 1: number of them begin with exactly the same words. There's

931
00:49:09,719 --> 00:49:12,680
Speaker 1: a certain man who, and that's how this one begins.

932
00:49:12,719 --> 00:49:15,680
Speaker 1: There's a certain man who. Uh So, So it's a parable.

933
00:49:15,680 --> 00:49:19,960
Speaker 1: It's not nondescription of historical reality. Number one. Number two, Um,

934
00:49:20,320 --> 00:49:23,720
Speaker 1: there's nothing that's parable about the rewards for punishment being eternal.

935
00:49:24,560 --> 00:49:26,760
Speaker 1: We don't know if this is a temporary holding stage

936
00:49:27,280 --> 00:49:29,480
Speaker 1: or if this is we don't know. It doesn't it

937
00:49:29,480 --> 00:49:33,760
Speaker 1: doesn't say that's number two. Number three, Jesus almost certainly

938
00:49:33,840 --> 00:49:38,239
Speaker 1: did not tell this parable. So this is this is

939
00:49:38,239 --> 00:49:40,360
Speaker 1: where we get into what you were saying earlier about

940
00:49:40,360 --> 00:49:44,680
Speaker 1: how do critical scholars go about understanding what Jesus said

941
00:49:44,680 --> 00:49:47,520
Speaker 1: and did. The reality is we have we have four

942
00:49:47,560 --> 00:49:50,120
Speaker 1: gospels in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

943
00:49:50,680 --> 00:49:54,040
Speaker 1: We have other gospels not in the New Testament, lots

944
00:49:54,040 --> 00:49:56,480
Speaker 1: of lots of them, um. But these four are the

945
00:49:56,600 --> 00:49:58,879
Speaker 1: are the main ones that people know about, and they're

946
00:49:58,880 --> 00:50:02,440
Speaker 1: the four they're probably our four earliest gospels, our oldest gospels.

947
00:50:03,040 --> 00:50:07,200
Speaker 1: These four gospels, though, are almost certainly not simply historical

948
00:50:07,239 --> 00:50:10,040
Speaker 1: accounts of what really happened in Jesus life, what he

949
00:50:10,200 --> 00:50:12,719
Speaker 1: what he actually said and did, as if somebody was

950
00:50:12,800 --> 00:50:16,239
Speaker 1: down there with their cell phone recording it. Uh, you know,

951
00:50:16,280 --> 00:50:20,359
Speaker 1: there were no cell phones recording anything. The gospels are

952
00:50:20,360 --> 00:50:26,320
Speaker 1: written in Greek. Jesus native language was Aramaic. Jesus didn't

953
00:50:26,320 --> 00:50:28,840
Speaker 1: know Greek, and the authors of the gospels did not

954
00:50:29,000 --> 00:50:33,400
Speaker 1: know Aramaic. They lived outside of Israel. Jesus lived inside

955
00:50:33,400 --> 00:50:38,400
Speaker 1: of Israel. They were writing forty fifty or sixty years later.

956
00:50:39,239 --> 00:50:41,879
Speaker 1: So there's reasons for thinking all of that that I'm

957
00:50:41,880 --> 00:50:43,759
Speaker 1: not going to go into unless you unless you want

958
00:50:43,800 --> 00:50:46,440
Speaker 1: me to, I'm happy to. But these people are so

959
00:50:46,480 --> 00:50:48,400
Speaker 1: where do they get their stories from? These people do

960
00:50:48,480 --> 00:50:51,160
Speaker 1: not claim to be followers of Jesus. The authors the

961
00:50:51,480 --> 00:50:54,880
Speaker 1: books are all anonymous, so they're written by and so

962
00:50:55,400 --> 00:50:57,400
Speaker 1: they don't claim to be written by followers of Jesus.

963
00:50:57,880 --> 00:51:00,839
Speaker 1: The followers of Jesus for Lord class ill literate. They're

964
00:51:00,840 --> 00:51:05,280
Speaker 1: called illiterate in the New Testament, illiterate Aramaic speaking peasants

965
00:51:05,320 --> 00:51:08,440
Speaker 1: from some rural place in Galilee and places like that

966
00:51:08,560 --> 00:51:13,279
Speaker 1: didn't have schools. The disciples could not write. And so

967
00:51:13,680 --> 00:51:16,600
Speaker 1: where these gospels come from. That they came from authors

968
00:51:16,640 --> 00:51:19,240
Speaker 1: living fourty or fifty years later, four or five decades

969
00:51:19,280 --> 00:51:23,160
Speaker 1: later later, living somewhere else, who have heard stories about

970
00:51:23,239 --> 00:51:27,360
Speaker 1: Jesus and they're writing them down. Okay, so stories have

971
00:51:27,440 --> 00:51:30,040
Speaker 1: been in circulation for not just a month or two

972
00:51:30,480 --> 00:51:32,279
Speaker 1: or a year or two or a decade. I mean

973
00:51:32,400 --> 00:51:35,879
Speaker 1: they've been in circplace from forty to sixty years. Uh.

974
00:51:36,200 --> 00:51:39,000
Speaker 1: Sometimes this gospels completely agree with each other, but that's

975
00:51:39,040 --> 00:51:41,839
Speaker 1: because some of them used each other. Matthew Luke both

976
00:51:41,960 --> 00:51:44,560
Speaker 1: used Mark for example. Again, I could just take a

977
00:51:44,560 --> 00:51:47,920
Speaker 1: lot of time to bit demonstrate um and so. And

978
00:51:47,960 --> 00:51:50,120
Speaker 1: the big problem is these gospels not only are much

979
00:51:50,200 --> 00:51:52,440
Speaker 1: later by people who didn't know but had heard stories

980
00:51:52,440 --> 00:51:54,960
Speaker 1: in circulation like word of mouth. And you know what happens.

981
00:51:55,040 --> 00:51:56,960
Speaker 1: The stories in the word of mouth, even in the

982
00:51:57,000 --> 00:52:01,359
Speaker 1: age world, stories got changed every time they got hold. Well,

983
00:52:00,840 --> 00:52:04,399
Speaker 1: it's uh right, so it's it's it's not only that,

984
00:52:04,440 --> 00:52:07,759
Speaker 1: but these gospels contradict each other. All you gotta do

985
00:52:07,800 --> 00:52:10,359
Speaker 1: is read two accounts in the Gospel and just to

986
00:52:10,400 --> 00:52:13,000
Speaker 1: take the same story to take you know, take Jesus

987
00:52:13,040 --> 00:52:16,200
Speaker 1: birth and Matthew Luke. Just read them carefully and and

988
00:52:16,280 --> 00:52:18,919
Speaker 1: just see exactly what each one says, and compare them.

989
00:52:19,200 --> 00:52:22,239
Speaker 1: You can't reconcile them. There are places that cannot be reconciled.

990
00:52:22,320 --> 00:52:26,400
Speaker 1: Why because people are changing the stories. People are changing stories.

991
00:52:26,520 --> 00:52:29,000
Speaker 1: They're making up stories, They're putting things on jesus lips

992
00:52:29,000 --> 00:52:31,040
Speaker 1: that they're saying he did things he didn't do. I mean,

993
00:52:31,040 --> 00:52:33,960
Speaker 1: it's just that's just you know that that's been known

994
00:52:34,000 --> 00:52:37,000
Speaker 1: by scholars are well over a century. It's like standard

995
00:52:37,000 --> 00:52:41,400
Speaker 1: stuff against Todd in every critical biblical scholars class. The

996
00:52:41,840 --> 00:52:44,640
Speaker 1: parable of Lasius and the rich Man almost certainly was

997
00:52:44,719 --> 00:52:47,640
Speaker 1: not one of the parables Jesus told. He almost certainly

998
00:52:47,640 --> 00:52:50,640
Speaker 1: did tell some parables. I think, uh, you have to

999
00:52:50,640 --> 00:52:52,640
Speaker 1: have ways of demonstrating these things, just like you've got

1000
00:52:52,719 --> 00:52:55,080
Speaker 1: to have ways of proving everything you know you've got,

1001
00:52:55,560 --> 00:52:57,840
Speaker 1: you've got history has to be proved. You can't just

1002
00:52:57,880 --> 00:53:01,440
Speaker 1: take somebody's word for it. As somebody says that, uh,

1003
00:53:01,520 --> 00:53:04,480
Speaker 1: you know, my inauguration, there are this number of people there.

1004
00:53:04,760 --> 00:53:06,239
Speaker 1: You know, you've got to check to see if that's

1005
00:53:06,239 --> 00:53:08,560
Speaker 1: true or not. And so there are certain things that

1006
00:53:08,640 --> 00:53:11,239
Speaker 1: you checked for uh, and historian type a way of

1007
00:53:11,320 --> 00:53:14,080
Speaker 1: checking ancient stuff, just as we have ways of checking

1008
00:53:14,080 --> 00:53:17,400
Speaker 1: modern stuff. If you check the story of last's Richmond,

1009
00:53:17,400 --> 00:53:19,680
Speaker 1: there are very reasons for thinking that Jesus didn't tell

1010
00:53:19,680 --> 00:53:21,799
Speaker 1: the story. For one thing, of course, it has a

1011
00:53:21,800 --> 00:53:24,520
Speaker 1: different view of after liphone, the one Jesus had that

1012
00:53:24,560 --> 00:53:26,840
Speaker 1: you can't exact because that's the question you're trying, that's

1013
00:53:26,880 --> 00:53:30,080
Speaker 1: arguing in a circle. But there are other things about it. Um,

1014
00:53:30,120 --> 00:53:33,200
Speaker 1: it's all found only in Luke. So like there's no

1015
00:53:33,239 --> 00:53:34,920
Speaker 1: one else who tells the story that we know of.

1016
00:53:35,360 --> 00:53:39,080
Speaker 1: And so how do you know, like unless it's verified, Uh,

1017
00:53:39,120 --> 00:53:40,759
Speaker 1: you know it's not verified. You just got it in

1018
00:53:40,840 --> 00:53:43,040
Speaker 1: the loop. I'll just catch to the chase because this

1019
00:53:43,080 --> 00:53:45,560
Speaker 1: is going on too long. The one reason for really annoing.

1020
00:53:45,560 --> 00:53:47,880
Speaker 1: It wasn't. Wasn't a story of Jesus told is because

1021
00:53:47,920 --> 00:53:53,760
Speaker 1: the story presupposes that a man has already been raised

1022
00:53:53,840 --> 00:53:57,879
Speaker 1: from the dead. The end of the story is, if

1023
00:53:57,920 --> 00:54:00,760
Speaker 1: they don't believe Moses and the prophets, they won't believe

1024
00:54:00,960 --> 00:54:03,960
Speaker 1: even if a man is raised from the dead. That

1025
00:54:04,000 --> 00:54:07,520
Speaker 1: means that the reader, the Christian reader, these are Christian

1026
00:54:07,520 --> 00:54:09,680
Speaker 1: readers reading this, are going to say, yeah, that's right, boy,

1027
00:54:09,719 --> 00:54:11,719
Speaker 1: they didn't believe when a man got raised from the dead. Boy,

1028
00:54:11,719 --> 00:54:14,560
Speaker 1: you got that one right. Yeah. Well, that's because the

1029
00:54:14,600 --> 00:54:17,160
Speaker 1: storyteller knows that Jesus been raised from the dead, and

1030
00:54:17,200 --> 00:54:19,799
Speaker 1: as Jewish listeners, most of them are not accepting it,

1031
00:54:20,360 --> 00:54:23,719
Speaker 1: and so uh, it has marks of being a later composition.

1032
00:54:24,040 --> 00:54:27,360
Speaker 1: It also, by the way, does go inside with Luke's

1033
00:54:27,440 --> 00:54:30,440
Speaker 1: understanding of the afterlife. The author of Luke his understanding

1034
00:54:30,440 --> 00:54:32,680
Speaker 1: the afterlife is different from the understanding put on that

1035
00:54:32,840 --> 00:54:35,640
Speaker 1: Jesus himself apparently had. And so they are all these

1036
00:54:35,680 --> 00:54:38,920
Speaker 1: reasons for me it doesn't go back to the historical Jesus. Uh.

1037
00:54:39,000 --> 00:54:41,920
Speaker 1: This brings up an interesting another tangential thought I was

1038
00:54:41,920 --> 00:54:46,360
Speaker 1: wondering about. So, when you consider what purpose the Gospels

1039
00:54:46,400 --> 00:54:51,760
Speaker 1: were supposed to serve as written documents. Did they serve

1040
00:54:52,080 --> 00:54:56,000
Speaker 1: and originally were they intended by their authors to have

1041
00:54:56,160 --> 00:55:02,200
Speaker 1: an apologetic purpose like as preaching humans to outsiders or

1042
00:55:02,239 --> 00:55:04,040
Speaker 1: do you think of them primarily as things that were

1043
00:55:04,040 --> 00:55:08,600
Speaker 1: written for Christians who were already convinced to be you know,

1044
00:55:08,680 --> 00:55:11,440
Speaker 1: read and to I don't know, further edified them in

1045
00:55:11,480 --> 00:55:14,160
Speaker 1: their faith. Right? Um, this is something it has been

1046
00:55:14,160 --> 00:55:16,680
Speaker 1: debated over the years, although it's not debated too much anymore.

1047
00:55:17,080 --> 00:55:19,640
Speaker 1: Just about everybody who is an expert on this stuff

1048
00:55:19,680 --> 00:55:23,279
Speaker 1: thinks these books were not used for evangelistic purposes. You

1049
00:55:23,320 --> 00:55:24,920
Speaker 1: know this is It's not the sort of thing like

1050
00:55:24,960 --> 00:55:27,480
Speaker 1: you wouldn't hand the Gospel of Matthew to somebody say here,

1051
00:55:27,560 --> 00:55:29,600
Speaker 1: read this so you can become a Christian. They take

1052
00:55:29,640 --> 00:55:31,000
Speaker 1: a look, I say, are you kid even know? And

1053
00:55:31,040 --> 00:55:32,719
Speaker 1: I gotta read this, come on, get out of here,

1054
00:55:33,040 --> 00:55:36,080
Speaker 1: and so uh so, there there are all sorts of

1055
00:55:36,160 --> 00:55:39,480
Speaker 1: hints within the books themselves that they're written by Christians

1056
00:55:39,920 --> 00:55:44,680
Speaker 1: and for Christians to promote Christian faith. Having said that,

1057
00:55:45,840 --> 00:55:49,200
Speaker 1: one of the secondary uses of these books would surely

1058
00:55:49,239 --> 00:55:52,239
Speaker 1: have been to tell Christians what to tell others when

1059
00:55:52,239 --> 00:55:55,719
Speaker 1: they were trying to convert them. Um, And so the

1060
00:55:55,760 --> 00:56:00,320
Speaker 1: books themselves would not be tools of conversion or evangelistic rules,

1061
00:56:00,719 --> 00:56:04,239
Speaker 1: but they would be informing Christians of information that they

1062
00:56:04,280 --> 00:56:07,839
Speaker 1: could give to others. And one of the reasons that

1063
00:56:07,920 --> 00:56:11,799
Speaker 1: Christians need to have some ammunition is because they were

1064
00:56:11,840 --> 00:56:15,640
Speaker 1: being opposed in the Roman world. Most people thought they

1065
00:56:15,640 --> 00:56:18,080
Speaker 1: were nus and Christians say, so, no, we're not nuts.

1066
00:56:18,120 --> 00:56:21,680
Speaker 1: Actually we have the truth. And um, I'm gonna I'm

1067
00:56:21,680 --> 00:56:24,200
Speaker 1: gonna explain why we have the truth. Well, you need

1068
00:56:24,400 --> 00:56:26,279
Speaker 1: you need to have some kind of things to tell

1069
00:56:26,320 --> 00:56:28,919
Speaker 1: people to show that you've got the truth. Of all

1070
00:56:28,920 --> 00:56:31,480
Speaker 1: the four gospels, Luke, the one we're just talking about

1071
00:56:31,840 --> 00:56:35,520
Speaker 1: gives most evidence of having this function of trying to

1072
00:56:35,560 --> 00:56:40,560
Speaker 1: convince outsiders that Christianity is a good thing and that

1073
00:56:40,640 --> 00:56:44,920
Speaker 1: it's a harmless thing. It's interesting, you know, one of

1074
00:56:44,960 --> 00:56:47,800
Speaker 1: the problems that Christians had in the early Roman Empire

1075
00:56:48,120 --> 00:56:52,280
Speaker 1: was that the guy they worshiped was crucified for crimes

1076
00:56:52,320 --> 00:56:55,640
Speaker 1: against the state. He was he was a state criminal

1077
00:56:55,680 --> 00:56:58,000
Speaker 1: who was executed for it. And so like, if that's

1078
00:56:58,000 --> 00:57:00,560
Speaker 1: the guy you're following, you know, that doesn't look too

1079
00:57:00,560 --> 00:57:03,000
Speaker 1: good in the eyes of the law, and so they

1080
00:57:03,040 --> 00:57:06,319
Speaker 1: had to explain, well, actually, yeah he was, but you know,

1081
00:57:06,360 --> 00:57:09,040
Speaker 1: Pilot didn't want to do it, and the Romans were

1082
00:57:09,040 --> 00:57:11,360
Speaker 1: actually at Jesus. It says, damn Jews that made us

1083
00:57:11,400 --> 00:57:14,560
Speaker 1: do it. And so so they they're putting the fault

1084
00:57:14,640 --> 00:57:19,320
Speaker 1: on Jews, uh and exonerating Romans to show that we're

1085
00:57:19,320 --> 00:57:22,400
Speaker 1: not a threat to Roman society. Uh. And Luke does

1086
00:57:22,440 --> 00:57:24,520
Speaker 1: that more than any of the others. It doesn't. Luke

1087
00:57:24,560 --> 00:57:28,040
Speaker 1: also repeatedly mentioned the fact that Jesus was innocent, like

1088
00:57:28,120 --> 00:57:30,920
Speaker 1: it uses the word innocent. Yeah. So when he's on

1089
00:57:30,960 --> 00:57:36,560
Speaker 1: trial before ponscious Pilot, Uh, Luke Luke stresses three times,

1090
00:57:36,560 --> 00:57:40,400
Speaker 1: three times. Pilot actually declares that Jesus he's innocent. He

1091
00:57:40,480 --> 00:57:44,080
Speaker 1: doesn't deserve this, and the Jews leaders forced him to crucifim.

1092
00:57:44,080 --> 00:57:47,200
Speaker 1: And then when he's being crucified, Uh, in Luke scoff

1093
00:57:47,400 --> 00:57:49,560
Speaker 1: only Luke scoff You know, you have the centurion who's

1094
00:57:49,600 --> 00:57:52,960
Speaker 1: crucified him. And in Mark Scoffel, the centurion looks up

1095
00:57:53,000 --> 00:57:55,240
Speaker 1: at him and he realizes that, oh my God, what

1096
00:57:55,280 --> 00:57:58,040
Speaker 1: were we doing? Truly this man was the son of God.

1097
00:57:58,720 --> 00:58:01,360
Speaker 1: But in Luke's gospel, this same guys looks at him,

1098
00:58:01,400 --> 00:58:04,400
Speaker 1: and then he said, he says this man was innocent,

1099
00:58:05,320 --> 00:58:07,560
Speaker 1: and so he said, well, yeah, if he's a son

1100
00:58:07,560 --> 00:58:09,800
Speaker 1: of God, he's in it. Yeah. Yeah. But the point

1101
00:58:09,880 --> 00:58:13,280
Speaker 1: is Luke is emphasizing he was innocent, and and so

1102
00:58:13,360 --> 00:58:16,360
Speaker 1: it's not you know, everybody, all the Romans knew it

1103
00:58:16,040 --> 00:58:19,200
Speaker 1: is the Jewish people didn't recognize it. So you're mentioning

1104
00:58:19,240 --> 00:58:22,960
Speaker 1: several uh different strains of thought that are developing after

1105
00:58:23,080 --> 00:58:26,160
Speaker 1: the life of Jesus. You think the consensus of biblical

1106
00:58:26,200 --> 00:58:29,240
Speaker 1: scholars today would be that Jesus, the real historical Jesus,

1107
00:58:29,280 --> 00:58:32,320
Speaker 1: was some type of apocalyptic prophet. He was preaching, you know,

1108
00:58:32,360 --> 00:58:35,000
Speaker 1: the imminent return of God who would destroy the enemies

1109
00:58:35,040 --> 00:58:37,320
Speaker 1: of Israel and and and bring about this good kingdom

1110
00:58:37,360 --> 00:58:40,720
Speaker 1: on earth. But obviously that changed. You talk in the

1111
00:58:40,760 --> 00:58:45,320
Speaker 1: book about a process of de apocalypticizing the Christian faith

1112
00:58:45,400 --> 00:58:48,800
Speaker 1: over the following centuries. Can you, in brief terms, what

1113
00:58:48,920 --> 00:58:51,480
Speaker 1: does that process look like, what what motivates it, and

1114
00:58:51,520 --> 00:58:55,160
Speaker 1: how does it happen. Let me let the prefaces by saying,

1115
00:58:55,200 --> 00:58:57,520
Speaker 1: but that you're the first person who's interviewed me who

1116
00:58:57,520 --> 00:59:04,400
Speaker 1: could say the apocalypticize drives by students, nuts talked about

1117
00:59:04,400 --> 00:59:07,080
Speaker 1: the de apocalypticization of the tradition, and they don't know.

1118
00:59:07,200 --> 00:59:11,240
Speaker 1: They don't like that, so uh so the apocalypticizes. So

1119
00:59:11,320 --> 00:59:14,000
Speaker 1: if Jesus has this apocalyptic view that the apocalypse is

1120
00:59:14,000 --> 00:59:17,040
Speaker 1: coming and that God's gonna wipe out things and it's

1121
00:59:17,040 --> 00:59:20,440
Speaker 1: going to uh it's gonna make everything right. The reason

1122
00:59:21,320 --> 00:59:25,720
Speaker 1: one of the functions of that kind of religious discourse,

1123
00:59:25,960 --> 00:59:30,320
Speaker 1: that kind of apocalyptic language, was to encourage people who

1124
00:59:30,360 --> 00:59:34,880
Speaker 1: were in the midst of suffering, because you're telling him, look, yes,

1125
00:59:34,960 --> 00:59:37,960
Speaker 1: you are suffering. God is on your side. Is these

1126
00:59:38,200 --> 00:59:41,120
Speaker 1: powers of evil that are lined up against us, but

1127
00:59:41,200 --> 00:59:43,960
Speaker 1: God's on your side. And the point of this is

1128
00:59:44,160 --> 00:59:48,840
Speaker 1: that God is soon going to intervene and take out

1129
00:59:48,880 --> 00:59:50,920
Speaker 1: these forces of evil. So if you just hold on

1130
00:59:51,000 --> 00:59:55,160
Speaker 1: for a little while, it'll be okay. That's why the

1131
00:59:55,160 --> 00:59:58,720
Speaker 1: Book of Revelation says, you know, he's coming soon, and

1132
00:59:58,800 --> 01:00:01,240
Speaker 1: it's why the apostle Paul says, you need to be

1133
01:00:01,280 --> 01:00:03,920
Speaker 1: alert because it's coming soon. It's gonna be like a

1134
01:00:03,960 --> 01:00:06,200
Speaker 1: thief in the night, and you know, if you're not awake,

1135
01:00:06,640 --> 01:00:09,720
Speaker 1: you're gonna be robbed, and so you need to be alert.

1136
01:00:09,920 --> 01:00:13,160
Speaker 1: And that's why Jesus himself said, truly, I tell you,

1137
01:00:13,440 --> 01:00:16,560
Speaker 1: this generation will not pass away before all these things

1138
01:00:16,560 --> 01:00:22,200
Speaker 1: take place. Jesus prediction that his own disciples would see it. Uh.

1139
01:00:22,280 --> 01:00:25,240
Speaker 1: And that's the nature of this kind of apocalyptic language,

1140
01:00:25,360 --> 01:00:28,160
Speaker 1: and it still is, by the way, people today who

1141
01:00:28,160 --> 01:00:31,240
Speaker 1: believe in the Left Behind series or who think Jesus

1142
01:00:31,280 --> 01:00:34,760
Speaker 1: is coming back, they invariably think, you know, it's gonna

1143
01:00:34,760 --> 01:00:37,440
Speaker 1: be in my lifetime. You know, maybe next time, sometime

1144
01:00:37,520 --> 01:00:39,439
Speaker 1: next Thursday. I don't know, it's gonna be pretty soon.

1145
01:00:39,680 --> 01:00:42,080
Speaker 1: And so that's that's all part of part of it.

1146
01:00:42,640 --> 01:00:45,480
Speaker 1: In early Christianity, there was a very firm belief it

1147
01:00:45,560 --> 01:00:47,560
Speaker 1: was going to come back right It's gonna happen right away,

1148
01:00:47,640 --> 01:00:50,680
Speaker 1: so Jesus said, it's what Paul taught. But then the

1149
01:00:50,680 --> 01:00:52,400
Speaker 1: weeks went by, and the months went by, and the

1150
01:00:52,480 --> 01:00:55,479
Speaker 1: years went by, then the decades went by, and people

1151
01:00:55,480 --> 01:00:57,720
Speaker 1: are saying, ah, yeah, well, you know, it's supposed to

1152
01:00:57,800 --> 01:01:01,000
Speaker 1: happen by now, and it hasn't happened. And people then

1153
01:01:01,080 --> 01:01:04,560
Speaker 1: had to come up with ways of explaining it, and

1154
01:01:04,600 --> 01:01:06,640
Speaker 1: they're all sorts of ways of explaining it. Some of

1155
01:01:06,640 --> 01:01:08,439
Speaker 1: the books of the New Testament are written to try

1156
01:01:08,480 --> 01:01:10,880
Speaker 1: to explain it Second Peter's right to explain why it

1157
01:01:10,880 --> 01:01:14,120
Speaker 1: hasn't happened yet. Um. Second Peter is the book that

1158
01:01:14,200 --> 01:01:16,720
Speaker 1: says that with say, like you know, you say, I

1159
01:01:16,800 --> 01:01:18,560
Speaker 1: supposed to kind of didn't come. But look, you're you're

1160
01:01:18,560 --> 01:01:22,240
Speaker 1: following a human calendar. Uh. In God's calendar, a day

1161
01:01:22,400 --> 01:01:24,720
Speaker 1: is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is

1162
01:01:24,760 --> 01:01:27,600
Speaker 1: as a day. So when God says it's gonna happen soon,

1163
01:01:27,720 --> 01:01:29,120
Speaker 1: you know, if he means like in three days, that

1164
01:01:29,200 --> 01:01:32,360
Speaker 1: could be three thousand years, which makes you wonder why

1165
01:01:32,400 --> 01:01:34,400
Speaker 1: he said it's gonna be soon. I mean, like helping

1166
01:01:34,400 --> 01:01:37,880
Speaker 1: me much, it's gonna be through. But anyway, so anyway,

1167
01:01:37,960 --> 01:01:41,240
Speaker 1: So part of what happens in the tradition is that

1168
01:01:41,320 --> 01:01:46,160
Speaker 1: the apocalyptic emphasis gets muted, and eventually it gets dissolved

1169
01:01:46,560 --> 01:01:52,600
Speaker 1: and eventually gets argued against. Christianity becomes d apocalypticized, meaning

1170
01:01:53,120 --> 01:01:56,680
Speaker 1: that this apocalyptic emphasis at the end is going to come.

1171
01:01:56,960 --> 01:01:59,560
Speaker 1: The end of this world is gonna come in our lifetime. Uh,

1172
01:01:59,680 --> 01:02:04,720
Speaker 1: ends of disappearing, but something replaces it. The dual ism

1173
01:02:04,720 --> 01:02:07,040
Speaker 1: that you get an apocalypticism is a kind of a

1174
01:02:07,120 --> 01:02:10,840
Speaker 1: horizontal dualism that you can put it on like a timeline.

1175
01:02:11,200 --> 01:02:13,040
Speaker 1: Just so you think of a timeline that goes across

1176
01:02:13,040 --> 01:02:16,040
Speaker 1: the page horizontally, and you know you've got on the

1177
01:02:16,120 --> 01:02:18,640
Speaker 1: left side, you've got the time up there now, and

1178
01:02:18,680 --> 01:02:21,200
Speaker 1: then there's a break, and then you got the time

1179
01:02:21,240 --> 01:02:23,920
Speaker 1: after now. So you draw this line with a horizontal

1180
01:02:23,920 --> 01:02:25,560
Speaker 1: line of the vertical line in the middle of it.

1181
01:02:25,880 --> 01:02:28,600
Speaker 1: And the vertical line is breaking this evil age that's

1182
01:02:28,600 --> 01:02:30,920
Speaker 1: going to be destroyed, and then there's gonna be the

1183
01:02:30,960 --> 01:02:33,720
Speaker 1: age to come with is good, and so UTOPI is

1184
01:02:33,760 --> 01:02:36,680
Speaker 1: going to come in suddenly. And immediately when God destroys

1185
01:02:36,720 --> 01:02:40,840
Speaker 1: these forces of evil, brings in his kingdom that horizontal timeline.

1186
01:02:41,600 --> 01:02:46,160
Speaker 1: The dualism, the horizontal dualism is retained when people get

1187
01:02:46,240 --> 01:02:48,640
Speaker 1: rid of the apocalypticism, they keep the dualism. But what

1188
01:02:48,680 --> 01:02:51,640
Speaker 1: they do is they flip the horizontal line on its

1189
01:02:51,760 --> 01:02:57,240
Speaker 1: axis so that now it's a vertical line, a vertical dualism.

1190
01:02:57,280 --> 01:03:01,720
Speaker 1: It's no longer now and then verd horizontal It is

1191
01:03:01,840 --> 01:03:06,880
Speaker 1: down here and up there, and so now it's not

1192
01:03:07,040 --> 01:03:09,440
Speaker 1: what's happening now and what's gonna happen, Then it's what

1193
01:03:09,520 --> 01:03:12,760
Speaker 1: happens here and there, and so it's it's and it's

1194
01:03:12,800 --> 01:03:15,520
Speaker 1: so it's a spacial line instead of a temporal line.

1195
01:03:16,240 --> 01:03:19,520
Speaker 1: This facial line is uh that it's not going to

1196
01:03:19,560 --> 01:03:21,000
Speaker 1: be an act in the future is going to be

1197
01:03:21,040 --> 01:03:23,400
Speaker 1: to you when you die, You're gonna go up or down.

1198
01:03:24,200 --> 01:03:26,960
Speaker 1: And so rather than the Kingdom of God being here

1199
01:03:27,080 --> 01:03:29,960
Speaker 1: on earth, the Kingdom of God is with God up

1200
01:03:29,960 --> 01:03:33,360
Speaker 1: in heaven. And so people will go up to heaven

1201
01:03:33,400 --> 01:03:36,760
Speaker 1: to be to receive their eternal reward. It will not

1202
01:03:36,800 --> 01:03:38,760
Speaker 1: be life here on earth and to be life above

1203
01:03:38,920 --> 01:03:41,479
Speaker 1: with God in heaven. What about the people who don't

1204
01:03:41,480 --> 01:03:44,880
Speaker 1: make it, well, they go below. Well, if the righteous

1205
01:03:44,880 --> 01:03:49,160
Speaker 1: are rewarded, what happens to them? They're punished? Uh really Yeah,

1206
01:03:49,200 --> 01:03:51,080
Speaker 1: but now it's a lot of destruction anymore because God's

1207
01:03:51,080 --> 01:03:54,400
Speaker 1: not destroying the forces of evil. And so what people

1208
01:03:54,400 --> 01:03:57,480
Speaker 1: are what these de apocalyptus are doing, are they're changing

1209
01:03:57,480 --> 01:04:01,280
Speaker 1: the Jewish view into the Greek conview. Let me give

1210
01:04:01,320 --> 01:04:03,120
Speaker 1: you a little bit. Sorry, this is kind of complicated.

1211
01:04:03,160 --> 01:04:05,960
Speaker 1: Let me give you just the background on this. When

1212
01:04:06,080 --> 01:04:09,080
Speaker 1: Christianity started, it was a Jewish religion. Jesus was a

1213
01:04:09,160 --> 01:04:11,320
Speaker 1: Jews followed the Jews. They tried to convert Jews. They

1214
01:04:11,320 --> 01:04:15,520
Speaker 1: didn't have much success. Paul comes along. He converts Gentiles,

1215
01:04:15,600 --> 01:04:18,920
Speaker 1: non Jews. These people he converts are people who are

1216
01:04:18,920 --> 01:04:21,680
Speaker 1: trained in Greek circles. That means they were trained thinking

1217
01:04:21,720 --> 01:04:24,160
Speaker 1: like Plato, you've got a soul and you've got a body.

1218
01:04:24,880 --> 01:04:27,560
Speaker 1: They're they're not Jews, they're Greeks, the Greek Greek background.

1219
01:04:27,960 --> 01:04:30,360
Speaker 1: They believe that when you die, your soul gets rewarded,

1220
01:04:30,360 --> 01:04:33,120
Speaker 1: you're punished. They come into Christianity and they bring their

1221
01:04:33,120 --> 01:04:36,280
Speaker 1: beliefs with them. They don't simply adopt what Jesus taught.

1222
01:04:36,320 --> 01:04:39,840
Speaker 1: They understanding like what they already think. They already think

1223
01:04:40,400 --> 01:04:43,560
Speaker 1: body and soul, two separate things, rewards and punishments. And

1224
01:04:43,640 --> 01:04:47,160
Speaker 1: now as it gets the apocalypticized, their views get confirmed

1225
01:04:47,240 --> 01:04:49,640
Speaker 1: in the new theology, which is not that there's a

1226
01:04:49,720 --> 01:04:52,040
Speaker 1: Kingdom of God coming to earth and some most people

1227
01:04:52,040 --> 01:04:55,680
Speaker 1: are gonna be destroyed, but that when you die, your

1228
01:04:55,720 --> 01:04:58,800
Speaker 1: soul that's now separable, is going to go up to

1229
01:04:58,840 --> 01:05:02,640
Speaker 1: Heaven or it's going to go down to hell. The

1230
01:05:02,680 --> 01:05:05,480
Speaker 1: person God creates as eternal because God is eternal. That

1231
01:05:05,520 --> 01:05:08,160
Speaker 1: means heaven is eternal, and health is eternal, and so

1232
01:05:08,200 --> 01:05:11,400
Speaker 1: you have eternal reward and eternal punishment and in a sense,

1233
01:05:11,840 --> 01:05:14,880
Speaker 1: it's taking the teachings of Jesus and the teachings of

1234
01:05:14,920 --> 01:05:20,000
Speaker 1: Plato and smashing them together into an amalgam that neither

1235
01:05:20,040 --> 01:05:22,920
Speaker 1: one of them would recognize. That's that's where heaving and

1236
01:05:23,000 --> 01:05:27,120
Speaker 1: hell comes from. Wow. Yeah, that's interesting. So so on

1237
01:05:27,120 --> 01:05:30,600
Speaker 1: one hand, you've got the time elapsing is causing the

1238
01:05:31,200 --> 01:05:35,000
Speaker 1: sort of decay of the potential for apocalypticism, and then

1239
01:05:35,160 --> 01:05:38,880
Speaker 1: you have the influence of the Greek thought that's prevalent

1240
01:05:38,920 --> 01:05:42,600
Speaker 1: in the Gentile world. But what role does political power

1241
01:05:42,840 --> 01:05:46,560
Speaker 1: and acceptance in culture have in the in the changing

1242
01:05:46,640 --> 01:05:50,080
Speaker 1: views of the afterlife? Because we know that originally um uh.

1243
01:05:50,280 --> 01:05:52,600
Speaker 1: You certainly point out in your book that this view

1244
01:05:52,680 --> 01:05:56,440
Speaker 1: that Christianity was illegal everywhere in the Roman Empire is

1245
01:05:56,480 --> 01:05:59,600
Speaker 1: not true. That's a myth, but it was sporadically persecuted

1246
01:05:59,640 --> 01:06:03,080
Speaker 1: in the An Empire. So over time we know that

1247
01:06:03,160 --> 01:06:07,120
Speaker 1: Christianity becomes more popular, becomes more prevalent, and eventually becomes

1248
01:06:07,560 --> 01:06:11,040
Speaker 1: uh accepted and even the the you know, the official

1249
01:06:11,080 --> 01:06:13,840
Speaker 1: religion of the empire. How does that change views on

1250
01:06:13,920 --> 01:06:17,160
Speaker 1: the afterlife if at all? Yeah, No, it's a significant

1251
01:06:17,240 --> 01:06:20,440
Speaker 1: question because um what I argue in my book is

1252
01:06:20,480 --> 01:06:27,160
Speaker 1: that precisely Christian understandings of persecution and martyrdom were some

1253
01:06:27,280 --> 01:06:30,120
Speaker 1: of those understandings are things that actually drove this new

1254
01:06:30,200 --> 01:06:33,160
Speaker 1: view of heaven and hell related to the reason I

1255
01:06:33,200 --> 01:06:36,080
Speaker 1: just just gave. So I'll explain. It's as you said,

1256
01:06:36,120 --> 01:06:38,360
Speaker 1: It's not that you know, millions of Christians are getting

1257
01:06:38,400 --> 01:06:42,280
Speaker 1: thrown to the lions or tens of thousands or even thousands.

1258
01:06:42,320 --> 01:06:46,160
Speaker 1: I mean, but people heard about it, just just like today.

1259
01:06:46,200 --> 01:06:48,720
Speaker 1: You know, I've got all these students. I live in

1260
01:06:48,760 --> 01:06:50,680
Speaker 1: the South, I live in North Carolina, and these students

1261
01:06:50,680 --> 01:06:53,800
Speaker 1: are basically raised in Christian household who believe that they're

1262
01:06:53,800 --> 01:06:57,040
Speaker 1: persecuted as Christians. And you kind of look our house there, really,

1263
01:06:58,280 --> 01:07:00,440
Speaker 1: but Christianity has always had this kind of person Houston thing,

1264
01:07:00,480 --> 01:07:03,240
Speaker 1: and it goes all the way back um and so

1265
01:07:03,360 --> 01:07:06,440
Speaker 1: most of early Christians were not persecuted, certainly not martyred,

1266
01:07:06,440 --> 01:07:10,840
Speaker 1: but they heard about persecutions and martyrdoms. And when people

1267
01:07:10,920 --> 01:07:14,040
Speaker 1: were martyred, when it did happen on occasion, you know,

1268
01:07:14,320 --> 01:07:16,160
Speaker 1: someone had to wonder, you mean, this person is going

1269
01:07:16,200 --> 01:07:18,760
Speaker 1: to die, and like that's it until like I mean,

1270
01:07:18,760 --> 01:07:21,200
Speaker 1: when is the incoming It's gonna be another sixty years.

1271
01:07:21,200 --> 01:07:22,880
Speaker 1: That's not right that this person died, He's got a

1272
01:07:22,920 --> 01:07:26,040
Speaker 1: way around for sixty years. And so so that that

1273
01:07:26,200 --> 01:07:29,120
Speaker 1: helped facilitate the idea that at the moment of death,

1274
01:07:29,800 --> 01:07:33,200
Speaker 1: a martyr will be in the presence of God. Uh,

1275
01:07:33,240 --> 01:07:35,960
Speaker 1: the martyr. First it was the martyrs. The martyrs were

1276
01:07:35,960 --> 01:07:38,280
Speaker 1: thought to be immediately to the presence of God until

1277
01:07:38,320 --> 01:07:41,800
Speaker 1: the resurrection. But as time went on and there wasn't

1278
01:07:41,840 --> 01:07:44,680
Speaker 1: any like future resurrection happening, then they started thinking, well,

1279
01:07:44,720 --> 01:07:48,320
Speaker 1: everybody goes, and so the the opposition by Rome helped

1280
01:07:48,480 --> 01:07:52,520
Speaker 1: facilitate this idea that it's at death, uh, that it's

1281
01:07:52,520 --> 01:07:56,320
Speaker 1: going to happen, not in some distant future moment. So

1282
01:07:56,360 --> 01:08:02,400
Speaker 1: the Roman persecutions went on very sporadically, not uniformly, until

1283
01:08:02,760 --> 01:08:05,640
Speaker 1: the early fourth century when they became more consistent. There

1284
01:08:05,680 --> 01:08:10,960
Speaker 1: were some imperial decreased paths that were made more plausible

1285
01:08:10,960 --> 01:08:14,200
Speaker 1: persecution in a lot more places. Um. But then Constantine

1286
01:08:14,200 --> 01:08:16,920
Speaker 1: converted to Christianity and he brought an end to the

1287
01:08:16,920 --> 01:08:20,439
Speaker 1: persecution in the year three thirteen. And so what happened

1288
01:08:20,439 --> 01:08:23,720
Speaker 1: to the views of the afterlife? Basically what happened is

1289
01:08:23,760 --> 01:08:27,559
Speaker 1: the views got cemented, uh, they weren't invented at that point,

1290
01:08:27,560 --> 01:08:32,320
Speaker 1: they were cemented at that point. Uh, they became uh

1291
01:08:32,479 --> 01:08:36,360
Speaker 1: stronger tools of conversion because now even the emperor believed

1292
01:08:36,360 --> 01:08:39,479
Speaker 1: in them, and they were used to convert people, and

1293
01:08:39,520 --> 01:08:44,439
Speaker 1: they became the dominant view of Western civilization because now

1294
01:08:45,080 --> 01:08:48,360
Speaker 1: Rome was the dominant empire, and now Roman by the

1295
01:08:48,439 --> 01:08:50,760
Speaker 1: end of the fourth century into the fifth century was

1296
01:08:50,800 --> 01:08:55,320
Speaker 1: becoming almost predominantly Christian, and Christianity that takes over the

1297
01:08:55,439 --> 01:08:57,519
Speaker 1: Roman world. It ends up becoming the religion of the

1298
01:08:57,560 --> 01:09:00,200
Speaker 1: Middle Ages in the West and becomes the it you

1299
01:09:00,200 --> 01:09:03,360
Speaker 1: know of the Renaspance and the Reformation and modernity. And

1300
01:09:03,400 --> 01:09:05,400
Speaker 1: that's why everybody lives in heaven and hell, because everybody's

1301
01:09:05,400 --> 01:09:07,600
Speaker 1: always believes in heaven and hell unless you go to

1302
01:09:07,640 --> 01:09:10,240
Speaker 1: the earliest times. All right, it's time to take a

1303
01:09:10,320 --> 01:09:16,160
Speaker 1: quick break. We'll be right back with more than thank Alright,

1304
01:09:16,160 --> 01:09:19,280
Speaker 1: we're back. One of the interesting little tidbits from your

1305
01:09:19,280 --> 01:09:22,120
Speaker 1: book that that stuck with me was when you're talking

1306
01:09:22,160 --> 01:09:27,160
Speaker 1: about the the political power and acceptance of Christianity over time.

1307
01:09:27,520 --> 01:09:30,200
Speaker 1: You talk about a later document called The Apocalypse of

1308
01:09:30,280 --> 01:09:33,160
Speaker 1: Paul that also includes a guided tour of heaven and

1309
01:09:33,240 --> 01:09:35,200
Speaker 1: Hell with the city of Christ and then the people

1310
01:09:35,240 --> 01:09:38,680
Speaker 1: outside it enduring eternal torment. And it struck me that

1311
01:09:39,240 --> 01:09:42,519
Speaker 1: in this document the worst tortures are saved not for

1312
01:09:42,600 --> 01:09:46,719
Speaker 1: like the violent murderers or the torturers of Christian martyrs,

1313
01:09:46,840 --> 01:09:50,560
Speaker 1: or even they're not even for nonbelievers. The worst tortures

1314
01:09:50,600 --> 01:09:55,000
Speaker 1: are saved for Christian theologians who held a different view

1315
01:09:55,080 --> 01:09:57,280
Speaker 1: than the author on what would seem to us to

1316
01:09:57,360 --> 01:10:00,280
Speaker 1: be a relatively minor thing, like a minor to asbut

1317
01:10:00,360 --> 01:10:04,479
Speaker 1: about the interpretation of Christ's incarnation. What's going on here

1318
01:10:04,479 --> 01:10:09,240
Speaker 1: with this, this harsh punishment of minute differences in theology.

1319
01:10:09,640 --> 01:10:12,360
Speaker 1: And do you see other examples in the history of

1320
01:10:12,360 --> 01:10:15,559
Speaker 1: religion like this that develop along these lines. Yeah, it's

1321
01:10:15,640 --> 01:10:18,920
Speaker 1: very interesting. This, this Apocalypse of Paul, is a very

1322
01:10:18,960 --> 01:10:22,719
Speaker 1: interesting book. So we're not sure exactly when it was written,

1323
01:10:22,720 --> 01:10:26,400
Speaker 1: but it is certainly after the conversion of Constantine, probably

1324
01:10:26,439 --> 01:10:27,960
Speaker 1: at the end of the fourth century at the beginning

1325
01:10:28,000 --> 01:10:31,120
Speaker 1: of the fifth century. The form of this book that

1326
01:10:31,160 --> 01:10:35,679
Speaker 1: we now have, it's important for both what came after

1327
01:10:35,720 --> 01:10:38,240
Speaker 1: it and what came before it. The Apoxes of Paul

1328
01:10:38,400 --> 01:10:42,440
Speaker 1: was known to Dante. This was one of Dante's influences.

1329
01:10:42,479 --> 01:10:47,200
Speaker 1: The earliest influence he had Um, and so some of

1330
01:10:47,240 --> 01:10:49,720
Speaker 1: his ideas, uh come from that. And you'll notice that

1331
01:10:49,720 --> 01:10:53,880
Speaker 1: when Christians get punished in Dante as well. Um. The

1332
01:10:53,920 --> 01:10:56,479
Speaker 1: predecessor of the Apocalypse of Paul was the Apocalypse of

1333
01:10:56,479 --> 01:11:00,559
Speaker 1: Peter that I talked about. And in the early one

1334
01:11:00,600 --> 01:11:02,920
Speaker 1: of these we have the Apocalypse of Peter. As I

1335
01:11:02,960 --> 01:11:06,519
Speaker 1: was saying, people get tortured for blasphemy God, or you know,

1336
01:11:06,520 --> 01:11:11,280
Speaker 1: committing adultery or but it's always moral sins when you

1337
01:11:11,280 --> 01:11:14,479
Speaker 1: get to the Apocalypse of Paul. Uh. So now we're

1338
01:11:14,479 --> 01:11:17,760
Speaker 1: in a different period in in the apocalyp Peter, which

1339
01:11:17,800 --> 01:11:20,160
Speaker 1: is you know, like forty years after the New Testament

1340
01:11:20,160 --> 01:11:24,040
Speaker 1: was written, it's um, you know, it's it's warning Christians

1341
01:11:24,040 --> 01:11:28,479
Speaker 1: not to sin um. But the Apocalypse of Paul is

1342
01:11:28,520 --> 01:11:31,080
Speaker 1: really focused on Christians ut sinning. In the point is

1343
01:11:31,080 --> 01:11:33,640
Speaker 1: not just don't like commit moral sins. So it's not

1344
01:11:33,720 --> 01:11:39,280
Speaker 1: just about stealing and uh, you know, you know, committing

1345
01:11:39,320 --> 01:11:43,200
Speaker 1: infanticide or striking your parents or whatever. It's not about

1346
01:11:43,280 --> 01:11:47,280
Speaker 1: just stuff you do wrong. It's also about what happens

1347
01:11:47,280 --> 01:11:49,799
Speaker 1: in the church. The people who are punished the worst

1348
01:11:49,960 --> 01:11:55,400
Speaker 1: are the church leaders. In hell, uh forever and um.

1349
01:11:55,439 --> 01:11:58,200
Speaker 1: You know, so some of these are moral sins. Um.

1350
01:11:58,560 --> 01:12:01,559
Speaker 1: So that if you are a uh you know, if

1351
01:12:01,560 --> 01:12:04,160
Speaker 1: you're a bishop of a church, the leader of a church,

1352
01:12:04,720 --> 01:12:07,960
Speaker 1: and you um, and you perform in your duties of

1353
01:12:07,960 --> 01:12:10,479
Speaker 1: office and then you go home and sneak out and

1354
01:12:10,520 --> 01:12:15,200
Speaker 1: go and commit adultery, Oh boy, you are gonna have

1355
01:12:15,200 --> 01:12:17,040
Speaker 1: a bad You're gonna be worse than It's gonna be

1356
01:12:17,080 --> 01:12:19,639
Speaker 1: worse for you than the run of mill adulterer. So

1357
01:12:20,400 --> 01:12:22,800
Speaker 1: and so and so the bishops are being punished, and

1358
01:12:22,840 --> 01:12:26,000
Speaker 1: the deacons are being punished, and you know, these people

1359
01:12:26,000 --> 01:12:28,559
Speaker 1: are like because they're they're supposed to be setting examples

1360
01:12:28,560 --> 01:12:31,120
Speaker 1: and they're standing the wrong, so they're worse. But the

1361
01:12:31,280 --> 01:12:33,400
Speaker 1: very worst punishment is the one that you mentioned. It's

1362
01:12:33,439 --> 01:12:37,120
Speaker 1: called it's three times worse than any other punishment. Uh.

1363
01:12:37,200 --> 01:12:42,720
Speaker 1: And it comes to Christians who think that when they

1364
01:12:42,840 --> 01:12:45,880
Speaker 1: think the Christ is not a full flesh and blood

1365
01:12:45,920 --> 01:12:48,960
Speaker 1: human being, but he's only God. In other words, they

1366
01:12:49,280 --> 01:12:52,720
Speaker 1: believed Christ is so much God that he wasn't completely

1367
01:12:52,840 --> 01:12:55,360
Speaker 1: human like the rest of us. Now, you can't say

1368
01:12:55,400 --> 01:12:58,400
Speaker 1: that you'll be tortured forever worse than anybody. You know,

1369
01:12:58,439 --> 01:13:04,120
Speaker 1: you'll be so uh yeah, And so this is being

1370
01:13:04,120 --> 01:13:07,959
Speaker 1: written in a context where most people are Christian. Probably

1371
01:13:08,000 --> 01:13:10,280
Speaker 1: in the environment this person is in, he's not worried

1372
01:13:10,320 --> 01:13:14,559
Speaker 1: about Pagans. In the earlier practice of the Apostles of Peter,

1373
01:13:15,040 --> 01:13:18,400
Speaker 1: idolaters are punished and persecutors and Christians are punished. Not

1374
01:13:18,520 --> 01:13:20,880
Speaker 1: in the Aposts of Paul several hundred years later, because

1375
01:13:20,880 --> 01:13:24,000
Speaker 1: you don't have those people anymore. And as this moral sins,

1376
01:13:24,040 --> 01:13:26,240
Speaker 1: it sins in the church that really bother him more

1377
01:13:26,240 --> 01:13:30,120
Speaker 1: than anything, especially bad ecology. I wonder if that's just

1378
01:13:30,240 --> 01:13:33,840
Speaker 1: an availability heuristic issue, Like if this is somebody who's

1379
01:13:33,880 --> 01:13:36,679
Speaker 1: writing Christian literature in the name of Paul, they're probably

1380
01:13:36,720 --> 01:13:41,360
Speaker 1: thinking a lot about their enemies with theological minor theological disputes.

1381
01:13:41,400 --> 01:13:44,280
Speaker 1: It's just what's on their mind. It's it's what's on

1382
01:13:44,320 --> 01:13:46,680
Speaker 1: their mind, and it's who are the who are the

1383
01:13:46,720 --> 01:13:50,800
Speaker 1: big enemies of Christianity, and and you know they're the

1384
01:13:50,800 --> 01:13:54,200
Speaker 1: ones who get it the worst. So in the second century,

1385
01:13:54,200 --> 01:13:58,439
Speaker 1: the Aposta Ceter wrote the worst Enemies, where the persecutors, uh,

1386
01:13:58,880 --> 01:14:03,479
Speaker 1: those who committed idolatry, worst vitals and those who you know,

1387
01:14:03,680 --> 01:14:06,960
Speaker 1: committed sins of violations of God's law. Those are enemies.

1388
01:14:07,040 --> 01:14:08,439
Speaker 1: By the time you get to Paul, the enemies are

1389
01:14:08,439 --> 01:14:10,920
Speaker 1: in the church. Because the churches are split, you get

1390
01:14:10,920 --> 01:14:14,160
Speaker 1: bad theologians, you've got people bleeding crazy things, you've got

1391
01:14:14,320 --> 01:14:16,640
Speaker 1: you know, and you've got immorality in the church. And

1392
01:14:16,680 --> 01:14:19,040
Speaker 1: so those are the ones being punished. Okay, Bart, I've

1393
01:14:19,040 --> 01:14:22,800
Speaker 1: got one more question. So in the Divine Comedy, people

1394
01:14:22,840 --> 01:14:27,040
Speaker 1: who Dante runs into in purgatory, I noticed are constantly

1395
01:14:27,200 --> 01:14:31,519
Speaker 1: begging Dante to go back and tell their relatives, especially

1396
01:14:31,560 --> 01:14:34,960
Speaker 1: female relatives, that they should be praying for them more.

1397
01:14:35,280 --> 01:14:37,800
Speaker 1: Where does this idea come from that the prayers of

1398
01:14:37,840 --> 01:14:41,479
Speaker 1: the living, especially the prayers of women, were useful and

1399
01:14:41,520 --> 01:14:44,760
Speaker 1: important to those in the afterlife and could affect their

1400
01:14:44,800 --> 01:14:48,000
Speaker 1: fate there It does proceed the official Catholic doctrine of

1401
01:14:48,000 --> 01:14:51,920
Speaker 1: purgatory right now, it comes after Okay, so the okay,

1402
01:14:51,960 --> 01:14:53,560
Speaker 1: so yeah, let me get a little bit background on

1403
01:14:53,760 --> 01:14:56,960
Speaker 1: because the I deal with this in my book. I

1404
01:14:56,960 --> 01:14:59,200
Speaker 1: have a section on purgatory uh in my book, as

1405
01:14:59,240 --> 01:15:00,800
Speaker 1: well as a section by Away on the idea that

1406
01:15:00,880 --> 01:15:06,000
Speaker 1: everybody gets saved, which is also interesting. But with purgatory

1407
01:15:06,280 --> 01:15:09,240
Speaker 1: um this is an important top for a lot of Catholics,

1408
01:15:09,280 --> 01:15:13,280
Speaker 1: because the Catholic Church continues to teach perigratory. And I'm surprised.

1409
01:15:13,560 --> 01:15:15,679
Speaker 1: I've talked with the number of Catholics after my book

1410
01:15:15,680 --> 01:15:19,040
Speaker 1: who didn't realize really what purgatory is. It didn't realize

1411
01:15:19,040 --> 01:15:20,880
Speaker 1: they'd have to suffer in there. I thought it was

1412
01:15:20,960 --> 01:15:24,640
Speaker 1: just like a holding pen. And I'm sorry I should ready,

1413
01:15:26,640 --> 01:15:30,639
Speaker 1: it's not fun, you know, it's not fun. So um,

1414
01:15:30,680 --> 01:15:33,080
Speaker 1: So purgatory for for those of you who are are

1415
01:15:33,120 --> 01:15:37,280
Speaker 1: not Catholic, or those of you Catholic who are paying attention. Uh,

1416
01:15:37,439 --> 01:15:40,680
Speaker 1: Purgatory is the doctrine that eventually developed. It says that

1417
01:15:40,760 --> 01:15:43,800
Speaker 1: there's not just heaven and hell. Um. The reason for

1418
01:15:44,040 --> 01:15:47,240
Speaker 1: purgatory developing is again, it's kind of the same as

1419
01:15:47,240 --> 01:15:49,960
Speaker 1: you of justice. I mean, it's not really fair that

1420
01:15:50,240 --> 01:15:53,400
Speaker 1: everybody dies and gets the same thing, and so rewards

1421
01:15:53,400 --> 01:15:57,160
Speaker 1: and punishments seem only fair. But on the other hand,

1422
01:15:57,840 --> 01:16:01,160
Speaker 1: you know, not everybody is just irving. Is a saint,

1423
01:16:01,240 --> 01:16:02,800
Speaker 1: you know, I'm going to go to heaven. But it's

1424
01:16:02,840 --> 01:16:05,200
Speaker 1: not fair for them to be tortured forever. And so

1425
01:16:05,240 --> 01:16:08,360
Speaker 1: there's so they come up with this middle place, uh,

1426
01:16:08,400 --> 01:16:11,680
Speaker 1: which is for it is it's specifically for people who

1427
01:16:11,720 --> 01:16:14,400
Speaker 1: are going to end up in heaven, but they have

1428
01:16:14,520 --> 01:16:17,880
Speaker 1: to pay for their sins first. There there their sins.

1429
01:16:18,479 --> 01:16:21,120
Speaker 1: They are not holy enough to go directly. They need

1430
01:16:21,160 --> 01:16:24,800
Speaker 1: to be purged of their sins. And that's why it's purgatory,

1431
01:16:24,880 --> 01:16:28,919
Speaker 1: because they're being purged of their sins, and purging is painful,

1432
01:16:29,760 --> 01:16:32,160
Speaker 1: and so they have to go through a certain number

1433
01:16:32,200 --> 01:16:37,719
Speaker 1: of punishments. But uh, they can get out faster if

1434
01:16:38,040 --> 01:16:42,400
Speaker 1: living people interceiege for them. Um. So what's that all about?

1435
01:16:42,439 --> 01:16:44,479
Speaker 1: Where's it come from? So what I do in my

1436
01:16:44,520 --> 01:16:47,639
Speaker 1: book is I don't talk at length about the later

1437
01:16:47,720 --> 01:16:51,160
Speaker 1: doctor of purgatory except to say or do or Dante's

1438
01:16:51,160 --> 01:16:56,080
Speaker 1: Purgatorial except to say that the official Catholic doctrine was

1439
01:16:56,120 --> 01:17:02,000
Speaker 1: not implemented until the thirteenth century. Um and so. Uh So,

1440
01:17:02,600 --> 01:17:06,360
Speaker 1: you know Christianity around for since the first century, So

1441
01:17:06,439 --> 01:17:11,040
Speaker 1: it's twelve twelve centuries before purgatory becomes a standard doctor

1442
01:17:11,120 --> 01:17:14,000
Speaker 1: in the Catholic Church. The term purgatory was invented in

1443
01:17:14,040 --> 01:17:18,559
Speaker 1: the twelfth century. Uh and so there are people who

1444
01:17:18,600 --> 01:17:22,320
Speaker 1: claim that purgatory wasn't invent until the twelve or thirteenth century.

1445
01:17:22,960 --> 01:17:25,160
Speaker 1: And so in one kind of technical sense, I guess

1446
01:17:25,240 --> 01:17:27,320
Speaker 1: that's right. But what I try to do in my

1447
01:17:27,360 --> 01:17:30,120
Speaker 1: book is showed that there were earlier forerunners of this

1448
01:17:30,240 --> 01:17:35,000
Speaker 1: very idea that some people who die are punished temporarily

1449
01:17:35,120 --> 01:17:41,000
Speaker 1: before allowed being allowed to enter their heavenly reward. And

1450
01:17:41,520 --> 01:17:45,080
Speaker 1: what I do is I look at the earliest examples

1451
01:17:45,160 --> 01:17:48,000
Speaker 1: of that, which are in texts that people, the general

1452
01:17:48,080 --> 01:17:51,479
Speaker 1: run of the mill person wouldn't know. If they don't

1453
01:17:51,479 --> 01:17:53,800
Speaker 1: know Dante, they don't know that probably the you know,

1454
01:17:53,960 --> 01:17:57,679
Speaker 1: the Martyrdom of Perpetua or or the Acts of thecla

1455
01:17:57,840 --> 01:18:00,439
Speaker 1: or But there are these there are these books, uh

1456
01:18:00,520 --> 01:18:06,240
Speaker 1: that that talk about um a saint and she's it's

1457
01:18:06,320 --> 01:18:10,280
Speaker 1: usually a woman, a living woman who has a special

1458
01:18:10,320 --> 01:18:15,400
Speaker 1: relationship with God. She's very holy. Who um who praise

1459
01:18:15,800 --> 01:18:18,960
Speaker 1: for either a relative or somebody that they're requested to

1460
01:18:19,000 --> 01:18:23,519
Speaker 1: pray for, who's being who's having a bad afterlife, and

1461
01:18:23,600 --> 01:18:27,519
Speaker 1: God hears their prayers, here's here's the person's prayers, and

1462
01:18:27,600 --> 01:18:34,160
Speaker 1: the person then is released from their punishment and is rewarded. Uh.

1463
01:18:34,200 --> 01:18:36,080
Speaker 1: And so there are several stories like this. They're fascinating

1464
01:18:36,120 --> 01:18:37,920
Speaker 1: stories in their own terms that we won't get into

1465
01:18:37,960 --> 01:18:39,920
Speaker 1: but they're they're really interesting stories. They start out in

1466
01:18:39,960 --> 01:18:43,360
Speaker 1: the second century uh, and go up into the third

1467
01:18:43,360 --> 01:18:46,000
Speaker 1: century and then and then onward. And so this idea

1468
01:18:46,080 --> 01:18:49,000
Speaker 1: that it's possible to kind of get out early, get

1469
01:18:49,000 --> 01:18:53,280
Speaker 1: out of punishment early, is an idea that's floating around.

1470
01:18:53,840 --> 01:18:56,320
Speaker 1: And so some people did have this idea that there's

1471
01:18:56,320 --> 01:18:59,840
Speaker 1: this other place somehow that we're and so people have

1472
01:19:00,120 --> 01:19:03,840
Speaker 1: various ideas and um you find them in Saint Augustine,

1473
01:19:03,840 --> 01:19:07,760
Speaker 1: for example, uh, plays with this idea a little bit. Uh.

1474
01:19:07,760 --> 01:19:09,680
Speaker 1: He's not quite sure about it, but he affirms it

1475
01:19:09,720 --> 01:19:11,880
Speaker 1: didn't seems to affirm it in some places, and so

1476
01:19:11,880 --> 01:19:14,320
Speaker 1: so it becomes a standard idea, but then only later

1477
01:19:14,600 --> 01:19:17,760
Speaker 1: in the thirteenth century doesn't become a doctrine. And there

1478
01:19:17,800 --> 01:19:19,920
Speaker 1: are very interesting books if you if you've got people

1479
01:19:20,080 --> 01:19:24,080
Speaker 1: among you, your leader readers who are really interested in, um,

1480
01:19:24,560 --> 01:19:26,160
Speaker 1: this kind of scholet of views of things. There's a

1481
01:19:26,160 --> 01:19:28,559
Speaker 1: guy named Jacques Lakoff who wrote this whole book called

1482
01:19:28,560 --> 01:19:31,040
Speaker 1: The Birth of Purgatory to explains why in the twelfth

1483
01:19:31,040 --> 01:19:35,000
Speaker 1: and thirteenth century this became all became something uh. And

1484
01:19:35,040 --> 01:19:37,439
Speaker 1: it became and it wasn't just before religious reasons is

1485
01:19:37,479 --> 01:19:40,839
Speaker 1: because of the socio political context within which it developed.

1486
01:19:41,880 --> 01:19:43,439
Speaker 1: It's just called the Birth of Purgatin where they can

1487
01:19:43,479 --> 01:19:46,400
Speaker 1: look that up and find it. All. Right, Bart, I

1488
01:19:46,400 --> 01:19:49,360
Speaker 1: think we're running towards the end of our our time here,

1489
01:19:49,400 --> 01:19:50,760
Speaker 1: but I just want to thank you so much for

1490
01:19:50,840 --> 01:19:53,639
Speaker 1: joining us today again. I genuinely really loved the book,

1491
01:19:53,680 --> 01:19:56,160
Speaker 1: as I've enjoyed all your books before Heaven and Hell.

1492
01:19:56,920 --> 01:20:00,479
Speaker 1: I think if you enjoyed our conversation today, listeners, you

1493
01:20:00,479 --> 01:20:02,679
Speaker 1: should definitely check out the book, but you should also

1494
01:20:02,800 --> 01:20:05,160
Speaker 1: look up Bart's blog. Bart, do you want to talk

1495
01:20:05,200 --> 01:20:07,800
Speaker 1: about that for a moment? I do nothing. I like

1496
01:20:08,040 --> 01:20:12,800
Speaker 1: talking about more. Uh So, I have a blog, Um.

1497
01:20:12,840 --> 01:20:17,760
Speaker 1: I've had it for over eight years. UM started it

1498
01:20:17,920 --> 01:20:22,120
Speaker 1: in two thousand twelve. On this blog, I post um.

1499
01:20:22,120 --> 01:20:24,719
Speaker 1: I post five times a week. Most of my posts

1500
01:20:24,720 --> 01:20:27,559
Speaker 1: were between twelve hundred and four hundred words. And the

1501
01:20:27,600 --> 01:20:30,640
Speaker 1: post deal with everything having to do with all the

1502
01:20:30,640 --> 01:20:34,000
Speaker 1: stuff we're talking about now, and about anything about the

1503
01:20:34,000 --> 01:20:36,679
Speaker 1: New Testament, the historical Jesus, the writings of Paul, book

1504
01:20:36,680 --> 01:20:39,320
Speaker 1: a Revelation. It talked about martyrs in person, He talks

1505
01:20:39,320 --> 01:20:43,120
Speaker 1: about women in early Christianity, talks about Jews in relationship

1506
01:20:43,200 --> 01:20:46,120
Speaker 1: to Christians. But I also about early Judaism and the

1507
01:20:46,120 --> 01:20:49,519
Speaker 1: Hebrew Bible and Roman religion and like the massisive thing.

1508
01:20:49,760 --> 01:20:54,560
Speaker 1: I've been doing this, you know, every week, five five posts. Um.

1509
01:20:54,600 --> 01:20:59,559
Speaker 1: There's a membership membership fee to join the blog. Uh.

1510
01:20:59,600 --> 01:21:02,080
Speaker 1: And the reason there's a membership fee is because I

1511
01:21:02,200 --> 01:21:07,120
Speaker 1: use the blog to raise money for charity. UM. The

1512
01:21:07,160 --> 01:21:09,439
Speaker 1: membership fees low, it's about you know, it's about fifty

1513
01:21:09,439 --> 01:21:12,720
Speaker 1: cents a week. I mean it's like right now we're

1514
01:21:12,760 --> 01:21:15,439
Speaker 1: gonna be we're instituting a new blog. Soon, we're launching

1515
01:21:15,439 --> 01:21:18,439
Speaker 1: a new blog. But but right now, a year membership

1516
01:21:18,479 --> 01:21:23,280
Speaker 1: is twenty four dollars. And for that you get all

1517
01:21:23,320 --> 01:21:26,439
Speaker 1: of these hundreds and hundreds of pos plus archives going

1518
01:21:26,439 --> 01:21:29,920
Speaker 1: back eight years. UM. So I don't keep any of

1519
01:21:29,960 --> 01:21:34,760
Speaker 1: the money myself, and not a penny goes to operating expenses. UM.

1520
01:21:34,880 --> 01:21:37,240
Speaker 1: And so all of the money goes directly into charities.

1521
01:21:38,000 --> 01:21:42,439
Speaker 1: We have raised about nine or fifty thousand dollars over

1522
01:21:42,479 --> 01:21:44,880
Speaker 1: the years, and that amount is going up. It looks

1523
01:21:44,880 --> 01:21:46,880
Speaker 1: like this year we're hoping we're gonna hit two hundred

1524
01:21:46,920 --> 01:21:50,400
Speaker 1: thousand dollars just for this year. UH, from people joining

1525
01:21:50,439 --> 01:21:53,280
Speaker 1: the blow and so we also have there's an option

1526
01:21:53,280 --> 01:21:55,160
Speaker 1: of like if you just want a one month membership

1527
01:21:55,200 --> 01:21:56,680
Speaker 1: for less or try it for three months, you can

1528
01:21:56,720 --> 01:21:59,160
Speaker 1: do that. But just go to the Barberman blog and

1529
01:21:59,439 --> 01:22:02,120
Speaker 1: check it out and uh and you'll see all the

1530
01:22:02,120 --> 01:22:05,160
Speaker 1: money the charities all go to. Actually, they all go

1531
01:22:05,200 --> 01:22:07,879
Speaker 1: to things dealing right now with the crisis of mainly

1532
01:22:08,080 --> 01:22:13,080
Speaker 1: charities dealing with hunger and homelessness, both UH locally and

1533
01:22:13,320 --> 01:22:16,640
Speaker 1: UH internationally. So I support five five charities and all

1534
01:22:16,680 --> 01:22:18,920
Speaker 1: the money goes out to them. Bart, thank you so much.

1535
01:22:18,920 --> 01:22:20,920
Speaker 1: It's been a real pleasure. Yeah, it's been great. Thank

1536
01:22:20,960 --> 01:22:26,240
Speaker 1: you so much. All Right, So that does it. But

1537
01:22:26,320 --> 01:22:29,280
Speaker 1: thanks again to Bart for for sharing his expertise with us.

1538
01:22:29,320 --> 01:22:31,680
Speaker 1: I really had fun talking to him. Uh. And at

1539
01:22:31,680 --> 01:22:33,360
Speaker 1: the end there, I just want to remind you yet again,

1540
01:22:33,400 --> 01:22:36,120
Speaker 1: Bart mentioned his blog. If you're interested in this sort

1541
01:22:36,120 --> 01:22:38,720
Speaker 1: of subject matter, his blog is a great place to

1542
01:22:38,760 --> 01:22:41,320
Speaker 1: go deep. Plus, as Bart mentioned, every penny of the

1543
01:22:41,360 --> 01:22:44,639
Speaker 1: subscription money goes to great causes, so you can check

1544
01:22:44,680 --> 01:22:47,920
Speaker 1: that out at ermine blog dot org. And Ermine is

1545
01:22:47,920 --> 01:22:51,479
Speaker 1: spelled e h r m a n, so that's e

1546
01:22:51,720 --> 01:22:55,320
Speaker 1: h r m a n blog dot org. And again.

1547
01:22:55,520 --> 01:22:58,920
Speaker 1: The book is Heaven and Hell History of the Afterlife

1548
01:22:58,960 --> 01:23:01,560
Speaker 1: by Bart Ermine. In the meantime, if you like to

1549
01:23:01,640 --> 01:23:03,679
Speaker 1: check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,

1550
01:23:04,240 --> 01:23:06,800
Speaker 1: you can find us wherever you get your podcasts and

1551
01:23:06,800 --> 01:23:09,799
Speaker 1: wherever that happens to be. Just make sure that you rate, review,

1552
01:23:09,840 --> 01:23:12,760
Speaker 1: and subscribe. That really helps the show out huge things.

1553
01:23:12,800 --> 01:23:15,920
Speaker 1: As always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.

1554
01:23:16,200 --> 01:23:17,640
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us

1555
01:23:17,680 --> 01:23:20,280
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1556
01:23:20,280 --> 01:23:22,599
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

1557
01:23:22,680 --> 01:23:25,479
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to blow

1558
01:23:25,520 --> 01:23:35,519
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is

1559
01:23:35,560 --> 01:23:38,240
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my

1560
01:23:38,280 --> 01:23:41,240
Speaker 1: heart Radio, this is the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

1561
01:23:41,320 --> 01:23:51,800
Speaker 1: or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.