Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're
Speaker 1: going into the vault to bring you an episode from
Speaker 1: last year. This one originally published on July four, and
Speaker 1: this one was called Heaven and Hell with Bart Rman.
Speaker 1: This was an interview that I did with a with
Speaker 1: a secular biblical historian named Bart Erman, who's a really
Speaker 1: interesting and passionate scholar who knows a lot and is
Speaker 1: really fun to listen to, and it's all about the
Speaker 1: origins of the Christian concepts of heaven and Hell. I
Speaker 1: thought this was a really really interesting discussion. I love
Speaker 1: talking to Bart and so we hope you enjoyed this
Speaker 1: classic episode. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production
Speaker 1: of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind. My name is Robert L. M and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And this week we are going to be
Speaker 1: featuring a couple of interviews that I recorded last week.
Speaker 1: Because last week, Robert, you were out of quote the office.
Speaker 1: You were at least you were off work for a bit,
Speaker 1: and uh so, so I recorded conversations with authors of
Speaker 1: some books. One book that's already out this year in
Speaker 1: one book that's coming up. So on Thursday of this week,
Speaker 1: we're going to be airing a conversation that I had
Speaker 1: with the author of a fascinating upcoming book about the
Speaker 1: evolutionary biology of cancer. But today we're going to be
Speaker 1: exploring a topic in the realm of ancient history and religion.
Speaker 1: And if you followed us for a while, I think
Speaker 1: you probably know this about us, that one of our
Speaker 1: favorite kind of trails to go down is tracing the
Speaker 1: evolution of religious ideas through ancient history. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think I've added myself on this podcast before as a
Speaker 1: kind of non religious person who loves the Bible. Like
Speaker 1: you know, I love to read ancient religious texts and
Speaker 1: learn about them and see how the ideas from the
Speaker 1: ancient world have sort of filtered through to us today
Speaker 1: and shape to the society's live in. And so that's
Speaker 1: exactly the kind of thing we're going to be diving into.
Speaker 1: In this episode, I'm talking with a secular biblical historian
Speaker 1: named bart Erman about his most recent book, which is
Speaker 1: called Heaven and Hell, History of the Afterlife. This book
Speaker 1: was released in March of this year by Simon and Schuster,
Speaker 1: and it's all about the Christian ideas of life after death,
Speaker 1: where they come from an ancient history, what influenced their development,
Speaker 1: and how they changed over time. Uh. So there was
Speaker 1: a part that cited in the intro of Bart's book
Speaker 1: where he talks about a Pew Research poll that was
Speaker 1: conducted a few years ago. I think maybe it was
Speaker 1: in where it found that seventy two percent of Americans
Speaker 1: believe in a literal heaven and fifty eight percent believe
Speaker 1: in a literal hell. And yet I think most Americans
Speaker 1: would be deeply surprised, even shocked, to learn what historians
Speaker 1: can show about the origins of these beliefs. And the
Speaker 1: strange thing is that, like the historical conclusions that Bart's
Speaker 1: going to talk about in this episode are not fringe
Speaker 1: or unusual among secular scholars of the Bible and historians
Speaker 1: of the ancient Near East. Uh. This is utterly mainstream
Speaker 1: critical scholarship. And yet I think regular people are, especially
Speaker 1: in the United States, are going to find it very surprising. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And I want to stress something here for everybody. So
Speaker 1: I I just got back uh to work this morning,
Speaker 1: and I plugged into like a pre production um cut
Speaker 1: of this interview, and it's really it's really excellent. So
Speaker 1: if you're even slightly scared away by the idea of
Speaker 1: an interview with a secular biblical scholar, uh, don't be
Speaker 1: because because Bart is is tremendous. He's he's funny, uh,
Speaker 1: very high energy. I think you're really going to enjoy
Speaker 1: this chat that Joe had with Bart. Here. Yeah. Bart's
Speaker 1: full of knowledge, good humor, passion for his subject. I
Speaker 1: think you're really going to enjoy the episode. But before
Speaker 1: we get to do it, I'll just give a little
Speaker 1: bit of background on Bart. So here's this biography. Bart
Speaker 1: d Erman is a leading authority on the New Testament
Speaker 1: and the history of early Christianity, and the author or
Speaker 1: editor of more than thirty books, including the New York
Speaker 1: Times bestsellers, Misquoting Jesus, How Jesus Became God, and The
Speaker 1: Triumph of Christianity. And that last one is really interesting.
Speaker 1: It's about how Christianity took over the Roman Empire and
Speaker 1: went from a really small religion to the dominant religion
Speaker 1: of the Empire and just a matter of a few
Speaker 1: centuries UM. Anyway, So he is a distinguished professor of
Speaker 1: Religious Studies of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
Speaker 1: and he has created eight popular audio and video courses
Speaker 1: for the Great Courses. He has been featured in Time,
Speaker 1: The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and has appeared on NBC, CNN,
Speaker 1: and The Daily Show with John Stewart, as well as
Speaker 1: the History Channel, National Geographic Channel, BBC, NPR all the hits.
Speaker 1: His most recent book, again is Heaven and Hell. Just
Speaker 1: one more thing before we get into it, I want
Speaker 1: to mention, obviously we are dealing with the audio constraints
Speaker 1: of remote records, being in the age of COVID nineteen.
Speaker 1: So for example, around the twelve minute mark in the episode,
Speaker 1: there is briefly some background noise. It sounds like a
Speaker 1: fan was turned on or there was some rain. It
Speaker 1: only lasts for about a minute or so, and and
Speaker 1: so please just put up with a little bit of
Speaker 1: background noise, and it's very brief. I promise it's not
Speaker 1: the sounds of hell, right, Not no audio recordings of
Speaker 1: the underworld leaking up through some sort of mining microphone. Right.
Speaker 1: The well to Hell was not unleashed in bights office.
Speaker 1: Uh so, yeah, I would say, without any further Ado,
Speaker 1: let's jump right in barter Erman. Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for joining us today. Yes, thanks for
Speaker 1: having me so your book Heaven and Hell. Just finished
Speaker 1: reading yesterday and I really really enjoyed it. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I want to say that I started reading this book
Speaker 1: at a very opportune time, because though I didn't plan
Speaker 1: it this way, I'm also currently in the middle of
Speaker 1: rereading The Divine Comedy. Actually my wife and I are
Speaker 1: reading it together. And of course the Divine Comedy. Dante
Speaker 1: is wonderful poetry, but it's also psychologically fascinating because when
Speaker 1: you go through the theology of Dante, you get the
Speaker 1: sense of somebody who is simultaneously ingenious and thoughtful and
Speaker 1: in some ways very intellectually bold and open minded for
Speaker 1: his historical context. But in other ways Dante is also
Speaker 1: very limited and provincial and in a word, medieval, like
Speaker 1: the way you see him taking so much pleasure in
Speaker 1: designing horrific tortures for his enemies from these, you know,
Speaker 1: petty thirteenth century political struggles in Italy working with ancient
Speaker 1: religious texts. Do you find yourself encountering this kind of
Speaker 1: irony embodied within the same author or tradition. A lot
Speaker 1: part of my book on Having the Hell is dealing
Speaker 1: with some of the earliest forerunners of Dante. Um. Many
Speaker 1: people think that he was creative in coming up with
Speaker 1: his idea of a guided tour of the Inferno and
Speaker 1: the Paradiso and the and the Pratorian, but in fact
Speaker 1: he was borrowing from the the motif of a guided
Speaker 1: tour of the realms of the dead from earlier authors
Speaker 1: and including in the Christian tradition. I think one thing
Speaker 1: that very seriously contrasts between Dante and his early forerunners
Speaker 1: that I look at and the about I look at
Speaker 1: basically from the second century up to maybe the fifth
Speaker 1: Christian century, so a very long time before Dante. But
Speaker 1: the main contrast is, Uh, most of the authors of
Speaker 1: these works were not geniuses. And the works the works
Speaker 1: are they are. They can be very graphic in their descriptions,
Speaker 1: especially of Hell um. Uh. There they are less uh
Speaker 1: they're less attendant to what's going on in heaven. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so it's not quite like Dante, where you get
Speaker 1: basically equal coverage between Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell. But you know,
Speaker 1: the ancient people are for some reason more interested in
Speaker 1: the torments of Hell. And my guess is that it's
Speaker 1: because it was easier to describe, you know, if you're
Speaker 1: trying to describe eternal bliss and everybody is like equally
Speaker 1: happy forever. You know what, more, what are you say?
Speaker 1: You just got to talk about their bliss for a
Speaker 1: little while. Then there's whereas if you want to talk
Speaker 1: about the eternal torment, well, you know, you can design
Speaker 1: all sorts of creative punishments and so you can let
Speaker 1: your your creative juices flow, and so that's what these
Speaker 1: ancient authors do. So there's nothing at the level of
Speaker 1: a Dante in these sources, but they are very interesting,
Speaker 1: many in many ways more interesting of course for understanding
Speaker 1: how Christianity developed than Dante, who's coming after, you know,
Speaker 1: centers and centuries of development. Well, to ground the discussion,
Speaker 1: maybe it would help to look at a specific example.
Speaker 1: Could you talk for a second about some of the
Speaker 1: specifics of say, the Apocalypse of Peter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so, um,
Speaker 1: the earliest one we have with these these guided tours
Speaker 1: is the one you mentioned, the Apocalypse of Peter. We
Speaker 1: we had known, they had known for centuries that there
Speaker 1: was an apocalypse of Peter. Because it almost made it
Speaker 1: into the New Testament. Uh. There were church fathers uh
Speaker 1: from the fourth century the fifth century who thought the
Speaker 1: Apocalypse of Peter is part of the Bible, but he
Speaker 1: eventually didn't make it in and it got lost until
Speaker 1: it turns turned up in seven. When it turned up,
Speaker 1: it caused a big fear uproar. I mean, because oh
Speaker 1: my god, this is like, this is a guided to
Speaker 1: our Peter, the apostle, Peter, jesus right hand man, is
Speaker 1: given a tour of heaven and help by Jesus himself,
Speaker 1: and so it's a terrific text. I mean it describes,
Speaker 1: as I was saying, in fairly brief order, uh, the heaven,
Speaker 1: which is a great place. I mean it's uh, you know,
Speaker 1: there are lush trees and vegetation everywhere, and it smells
Speaker 1: good and everybody's happy, and so you know, it's good
Speaker 1: with a you know, a nice summer breeze blowing through
Speaker 1: the whole time. So it's great. It's great. But then
Speaker 1: he sees the torments in hell, and uh, they're nasty
Speaker 1: and uh. And the interesting thing in this case is
Speaker 1: that many of the punishments matt the crimes, and so
Speaker 1: if somebody is, say a habitual blast femur that they
Speaker 1: blasphemed God. Well, they're they're sinning Oregon, there's their mouth,
Speaker 1: and so they are. These are hanged by their tongues
Speaker 1: over eternal flames. Women who have braided their hair to
Speaker 1: make themselves more attractive so they can seduce men are
Speaker 1: hanged by their hair over eternal flames. Uh. The men
Speaker 1: they seduced are hanged by their genitals over neural flames.
Speaker 1: And they cry out, we didn't know it would come
Speaker 1: to this, and so so it kind of goes on.
Speaker 1: And unlike Dante, which is a very sophisticated number of
Speaker 1: political and religious points, the point here is pretty clear.
Speaker 1: There are a bunch of things you better not do,
Speaker 1: and you know if you do, you're a big trouble.
Speaker 1: So like, just don't do it. So basically the basically
Speaker 1: don't sin. And so it's it's fairly fairly elementary, both
Speaker 1: theologically and politically. So already by this later, did you
Speaker 1: say the Apocalypse of Peter is probably a second century work? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so church fathers know about it, uh, in the second century,
Speaker 1: and they're good reasons for thinking that was written in
Speaker 1: the early part of the second century, so maybe just
Speaker 1: like twenty or thirty years after some of the books
Speaker 1: of the New Testament. Wow, so already by this point
Speaker 1: we have some beliefs about heaven and hell that look
Speaker 1: very much like beliefs that people still have today about
Speaker 1: heaven and hell. And I think maybe this should lead
Speaker 1: us to what I would say is probably the biggest
Speaker 1: single gut punch of the book, which is that these
Speaker 1: standard beliefs about the afterlife that you would find among
Speaker 1: probably most Christians today, the belief that when you die,
Speaker 1: your soul separates from your body and either travels to Heaven,
Speaker 1: which is a place of eternal bliss, or to Hell,
Speaker 1: which is a place of eternal torture. These teachings, you argue,
Speaker 1: are not found in the Hebrew Bible, which is what
Speaker 1: Christians would call the Old Testament, and they are not
Speaker 1: the teachings of the historical Jesus. And in fact, unless
Speaker 1: I'm wrong, you can barely find anything like them in
Speaker 1: the New Testament at all, Like maybe in a parable
Speaker 1: in the Gospel of Luke. Is that about right? That
Speaker 1: that is not just about right? That is right? Uh?
Speaker 1: The the Old the Christian Old Testament, Uh, does not
Speaker 1: talk anywhere about souls dying and going to people dying
Speaker 1: and their souls going to reward in heaven or punishment
Speaker 1: and hell. It's not there at all. And so part
Speaker 1: of my book is explaining what you do find in
Speaker 1: the Hebrew Bible. You get a range of different views
Speaker 1: in the Hebrew Bible, but you don't get that view,
Speaker 1: and I try to show how that developed into a
Speaker 1: different view that Jesus had uh, and that Jesus himself
Speaker 1: did not believe that your body died and your soul
Speaker 1: went to one place or the other, and neither did
Speaker 1: the apostle Paul for most of his life. Uh. The
Speaker 1: book Revelation doesn't teach that. And so the question my
Speaker 1: book is, I try. I try to show all that.
Speaker 1: But then the questions, well, then where to come from?
Speaker 1: Because everybody simply assumes, of course that this is you know,
Speaker 1: they believe this because the Bible teaches it. No, actually,
Speaker 1: the Bible doesn't teach that. So that's so it seems
Speaker 1: like a pretty important point to me, given the fact
Speaker 1: that there are two billion Christians in the world, most
Speaker 1: of whom believe in this, and they just assume it's
Speaker 1: in the Bible. But it's it's not. Yeah, it seems
Speaker 1: so hard to believe, because I would say the belief
Speaker 1: in heaven and hell basically along the lines I just
Speaker 1: described as not just a very common belief. I think
Speaker 1: too many people it is the defining or the characteristic
Speaker 1: belief when they conceive of their own faith. Yeah. No, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean, and I completely understand that. I mean when
Speaker 1: I you know, I grew up believing in heaven and
Speaker 1: Hell myself. I mean, I was raised in a Christian home,
Speaker 1: and I became an evangelical Christian as a teenager, and
Speaker 1: then I really believed in heaven and hell, especially Hell,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, and so I was I was
Speaker 1: gunna know all about it. And that's part of what
Speaker 1: really made me want to write the book, was that
Speaker 1: I know there are a lot of people who are,
Speaker 1: of course hopeful for heaven, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: who are just terrified of hell, and uh, you know
Speaker 1: a lot of people just don't know. But uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's worth knowing where these ideas came from, because people
Speaker 1: shouldn't believe that because they think they're in the Bible,
Speaker 1: that that is because they're not. As you said, maybe
Speaker 1: like in one little passage like it sucked away in
Speaker 1: the Gospel loop. But I mean, but but basically they're
Speaker 1: not there. They these authors had a different view, And
Speaker 1: it's worth knowing what these different views were because you
Speaker 1: simply shouldn't assume this is the standard view and always
Speaker 1: has been among Christians. Yeah, and it's um it's remarkable
Speaker 1: how difficult these beliefs are to shake, even if you
Speaker 1: rationally know otherwise. I mean, I I personally, I grew
Speaker 1: up in East Tennessee, surrounded by a lot of fundamentalist Christianity,
Speaker 1: And when I think about the way I conceive of Hell,
Speaker 1: I don't rationally believe in in a hell anymore. But
Speaker 1: I think of my mind sort of as a mansion
Speaker 1: where there's a room in the back, and occasionally the
Speaker 1: door opens and that belief just gets out and walks around.
Speaker 1: And I don't know when that's going to happen. Do
Speaker 1: you find the same thing. Does it sometimes just come
Speaker 1: out without seemingly unbidden? Not as much now as it did,
Speaker 1: you know when I left, When I left the faith
Speaker 1: many years ago, not twenty five years ago or whatever,
Speaker 1: a long time ago. When I left Christianity for a
Speaker 1: long time, one of the things is holding me back
Speaker 1: to begin with, before I left was the fear of hell.
Speaker 1: You know, I thinking, you know, like if I like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I really think that people are gonna be
Speaker 1: punished after death by God. But now I'm doubting my faith.
Speaker 1: And if I leave my faith, what if I was
Speaker 1: right in the first place, and now you know it
Speaker 1: took the wrong term, but I'm screwed. I mean, it's like,
Speaker 1: this is not going to be good. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: but then when I did leave the faith, I just
Speaker 1: I became convinced that God is not going to be
Speaker 1: torturing people for trillions of years because they messed up
Speaker 1: for twenty year. They didn't believe exactly the right thing.
Speaker 1: I just said, just it's implausible. And so over time
Speaker 1: what I did is I ended up becoming more of
Speaker 1: a rationalist, and I became more of a materialist. And
Speaker 1: so you know, I'm a complete materialist now a naturalist.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just you know, I don't I don't
Speaker 1: think there is some kind of other realm Uh, this
Speaker 1: is it. Uh. And I don't think there's some of
Speaker 1: the law. This is it. And for me, um, maybe
Speaker 1: because I'm such a rationalist that uh, the thought that's
Speaker 1: really keeping my head too much anymore that yeah, actually,
Speaker 1: you know it might happen. Uh, I just don't think
Speaker 1: it is. I'm sure a lot of people are still
Speaker 1: reeling from the surprise of of you saying that that,
Speaker 1: in fact, the Hebrew Bible doesn't teach heaven and hell,
Speaker 1: and that this was not the teaching of historical Jesus.
Speaker 1: That there are probably things running through their heads to say, like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, that can't be right, can it. So
Speaker 1: I think maybe we should talk specifically a bit about
Speaker 1: the the evolution of beliefs about the afterlife that we
Speaker 1: see in the ancient Near East of the ancient Greco
Speaker 1: Roman world and then in the Bible. So, uh, can
Speaker 1: we talk about beliefs about bodies, souls and what happens
Speaker 1: to them at the time of death. Uh, maybe starting
Speaker 1: among in the pre Christian ancient world, maybe among the
Speaker 1: ancient Jewish thought views that you would find in the
Speaker 1: Hebrew Bible. Yeah, yeah, this is you know, as you know,
Speaker 1: this is really what my book does. Is it traces
Speaker 1: these ideas all the way back as as early as
Speaker 1: we have records. Uh, you know, we have records going,
Speaker 1: we have written text going back to the epic of Gilgamesh,
Speaker 1: which is it turns out, is a forerunner of Dante.
Speaker 1: Gilgamesh actually has a tour to the Actual and so
Speaker 1: and in the Old and So I go through the
Speaker 1: Old Testament all the way, so that the ancient he
Speaker 1: What one reason that the Old Testament doesn't have this
Speaker 1: view that you die and your soul goes to heaven
Speaker 1: or hell while your body dies is because ancient Hebrews
Speaker 1: didn't have the idea that your soul and your body
Speaker 1: were two entities that could be distinguished from each other. Um.
Speaker 1: The idea that you've got a soul and a body
Speaker 1: that you've got made up of two parts is a
Speaker 1: kind of dualism right too. Too fundamental components in dualism. Um,
Speaker 1: ancient Hebrews were not dualistic, and they're thinking about the
Speaker 1: human The ancient Hebrews thought a human being was one thing,
Speaker 1: not two separable things. And it goes all the way
Speaker 1: back to Genesis where God creates the first human Adam.
Speaker 1: He makes Adam out of the dirt, and so there's
Speaker 1: this kind of this dirt thing on the on the ground,
Speaker 1: and it's just lying, it's inert, it's not alive. God
Speaker 1: breathes life into Adam, and so he brings life into
Speaker 1: Adam's soul. He brings it, brings a soul in the him,
Speaker 1: which is his breath. Adam now has his breath, and
Speaker 1: that makes him alive. And Adam will be alive as
Speaker 1: long as he has his breath. But when he stops breathing,
Speaker 1: he's dead. Now we ourselves, we ourselves have a kind
Speaker 1: of we have an analogous thing about breath. You know,
Speaker 1: when when you stop breathing, your breath doesn't go anywhere.
Speaker 1: It's just God. And that's how they understood the soul.
Speaker 1: It wasn't something separable from the breath or the body.
Speaker 1: When your soul, when it leaves the body, like the
Speaker 1: breath leaves, it's just gone. It doesn't go anywhere. And
Speaker 1: so Hebrews didn't have ancient Hebrews didn't have this idea
Speaker 1: that the soul would live on, because the soul is
Speaker 1: simply the thing that made you alive, and when you're
Speaker 1: not alive, it doesn't exact anymore. And so that's why
Speaker 1: in the Old Testament Um nobody talks about the soul
Speaker 1: living on after death. There are places um where uh
Speaker 1: the Hebrew Bible, offers will talk about a place. It
Speaker 1: sounds like a place, uh that sometimes it's called she'll um,
Speaker 1: and so people mistake that as being like this area
Speaker 1: that everybody goes to when they die, they die and
Speaker 1: their souls go down to shield. And uh, when I
Speaker 1: try to show in my book, is it probably that's
Speaker 1: not what she all means. Um. The word shield itself
Speaker 1: is often part of the problem is that Bible translators
Speaker 1: really sometimes mess us up. And so often when with
Speaker 1: the English Bible, translators will come across the worst shield,
Speaker 1: which occurs about sixty times in the Old Testament. It's
Speaker 1: not very common, but they'll translate it as hell. But
Speaker 1: what are you supposed to read? He was supposed to
Speaker 1: think when you read, yeah, you know, God saved me
Speaker 1: from hell, or I don't want to go to hell.
Speaker 1: But what it's it actually doesn't say hell. It says
Speaker 1: she'll and she all is not hell. Hell. We think
Speaker 1: it was hell is where your soul goes to get punished.
Speaker 1: But that's not found in Hebrew thought. And so when
Speaker 1: I showed my my book is that when when shield
Speaker 1: gets used in the Hebrew Bible, it is almost always
Speaker 1: set um as the synonym for grave or pit or
Speaker 1: the place your body is placed um when it dies.
Speaker 1: And so it looks like sheola is simply where your
Speaker 1: remains are. It's not a place um. And so uh
Speaker 1: so there's no place in the Bible, in the Old
Speaker 1: Testament where there's a place that you go either for
Speaker 1: rewards or punished when you just die. And that's why,
Speaker 1: that's why the Hebrew authors, like in the Psalms, are
Speaker 1: so afraid of death because they're not gonna have life anymore.
Speaker 1: There's not gonna be anything. They're not going to be
Speaker 1: able to enjoy anything. There'll be no physical pleasure. Um.
Speaker 1: They won't even be able to worship God. They say this,
Speaker 1: and God won't even room remember them. He won't remember
Speaker 1: them because they won't exist, and so they won't even
Speaker 1: think about them. And so that's the situation of the
Speaker 1: Hebrew Bible that people are made up of body and soul.
Speaker 1: When they die, their life is over and they get
Speaker 1: deposited somewhere and they want to get to They want
Speaker 1: to have a nice burial because everybody does. But I mean,
Speaker 1: there are gonna be around to enjoy it. They'll be dead, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that view is extremely clear in books say
Speaker 1: like Ecclesiastes. Um, I wonder though about people might be
Speaker 1: thinking about what about a passage like the Witch of
Speaker 1: Indoor story? Well, maybe can you talk for a moment
Speaker 1: about that story and how you would interpret that. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: this is good because it's exactly the passage people are
Speaker 1: gonna be thinking of. And you get passages in the
Speaker 1: New test and people are gonna be thinking of. And
Speaker 1: so obviously I have to talk about all these passages
Speaker 1: in my book. And I should stress that when I
Speaker 1: talk about these passages, I'm not coming up with some
Speaker 1: kind of creative, like weird new interpretations. These passages, the
Speaker 1: kinds of stuff I talked about in my book are
Speaker 1: thinks that biblical scholars have known for a very long time.
Speaker 1: This is most people, you know, they don't Most people
Speaker 1: don't talk to biblical scholars or good reasons, and so
Speaker 1: they don't know. But I mean, so I'm not I'm
Speaker 1: not saying anything unusual at all here for a biblical story.
Speaker 1: They would just all say, yeah, well, of course, Um,
Speaker 1: so the Witch of Indoor is the story in the
Speaker 1: in the Book of First Samuel. Um. For Samuel's one
Speaker 1: of the main characters is a well, Samuel's the main
Speaker 1: characters since the name Samuel is a prophet who is
Speaker 1: a the last of the great prophets, and he he
Speaker 1: is the counselor for King Saul, and King Saul is
Speaker 1: always getting in trouble and always messing up and doing
Speaker 1: things wrong, and God's always ticked off at him, and
Speaker 1: so and so. But Samuel dies and Saul gets himself
Speaker 1: into another mess. The the opposing the country next door
Speaker 1: the the Philistines are out to attack the Israelite armies
Speaker 1: and they're surrounded and Saul doesn't know what to do,
Speaker 1: and his adviser is dead, and and so he decides
Speaker 1: he's going to get a medium. Like it's called the
Speaker 1: Witch of Endor, but it's more like she performs necromancy.
Speaker 1: She raises the soul from the dead uh in order
Speaker 1: to ask what's going on. And so he commissions this
Speaker 1: woman who's afraid to do it because he comes to
Speaker 1: her in disguise because he himself, the king has passed
Speaker 1: a law against doing this kind of thing. You can't
Speaker 1: do this and so so, but she's a medium and
Speaker 1: she's gonna do it because and he she doesn't know
Speaker 1: it's him and anyway, so it's great and it's a fantastic, fantastic,
Speaker 1: but she could he convinces her she uh to raise
Speaker 1: Samuel from the dead so Saul will be instructed of
Speaker 1: all what to do about this war. Uh. And and
Speaker 1: Samuel comes up out of the dead and he's and
Speaker 1: he's angry because Saul's brought him back. Uh. And he tells, Saul,
Speaker 1: you know, you've just disobeyed God one too many times,
Speaker 1: and so yes, there is gonna be a battle tomorrow.
Speaker 1: And by the way, tomorrow you'll be down here too.
Speaker 1: So okay, so it's not good this, and it's exactly
Speaker 1: what happens. Okay. Well, the last sounds like a soul
Speaker 1: is a live after death, and it's down someplace and
Speaker 1: it comes back. It can go back and forth. And
Speaker 1: it sure sounds like that, doesn't it. Yes, it does,
Speaker 1: It absolutely does, until you start looking at it more closely.
Speaker 1: This passage never says that Samuel was in Shiol or
Speaker 1: in Hades, or in Hell or in Getna or anywhere else.
Speaker 1: He comes up. But why would a body, why would
Speaker 1: somebody come up? They come up because they're buried in
Speaker 1: the ground. He comes up as a body, not as
Speaker 1: a spirit. The way Saul recognizes him is he's wearing
Speaker 1: Samuel's clothes, and so this isn't like, this isn't a ghost,
Speaker 1: this is this is like Samuel. And and Samuel, when
Speaker 1: he's upset, he doesn't say something like, you know, I
Speaker 1: guys have such a great time up there in heaven,
Speaker 1: and now you bring me back. What are you doing?
Speaker 1: He we don't know why his angry, you know, was
Speaker 1: he enjoying a good sleep? We don't. But he doesn't
Speaker 1: say anything about being with anyone else. He just it
Speaker 1: is not something you're supposed to do. You're the king,
Speaker 1: and you know this, and you passed this law. You
Speaker 1: can't do this. And so God's really ticked off because
Speaker 1: God told you not to do this, and so um
Speaker 1: uh and so it is not his um. It is
Speaker 1: not a soul separated from the body that comes back.
Speaker 1: Samuel actually comes back in bodily form, fully clothed as
Speaker 1: an old man, and uh, and he has there's nothing
Speaker 1: to indicate that he's been either in a place of
Speaker 1: torment or in a place of reward. And so Hebrew
Speaker 1: Bible scholars don't look on this as an instance of
Speaker 1: which somebody you know, showing that when you die, your
Speaker 1: soul goes to one place or another. It's the only place,
Speaker 1: by the way where um in the Hebrew Bible, where
Speaker 1: that kind of necromancy uh is performed. But we do
Speaker 1: know that some a lot of israel life thought it
Speaker 1: could be performed because there are all these laws against
Speaker 1: it in the Bible. You don't don't make a bunch
Speaker 1: of laws and people are doing something, and so they
Speaker 1: at least think their seance is going on, and you know,
Speaker 1: something's happen, and then but you know what it was
Speaker 1: they were thinking is are to know? This is kind
Speaker 1: of a tangent, But that does make me wonder about this.
Speaker 1: So it's it's an example of this belief in the
Speaker 1: persecution of witchcraft or necromancy. Why do you think it
Speaker 1: is that monotheistic religions like Judaism Christianity would have been
Speaker 1: so opposed to people independently practicing magic or consulting the
Speaker 1: dead uh. In fact, I believe correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: But this is also sort of one of the horrors
Speaker 1: of the Book of First Enoch, right where these evil
Speaker 1: heavenly creatures come down and they teach human women how
Speaker 1: to do magic spells. Is that right? Yeah, they don't
Speaker 1: mention necromancy there, but they do. They do teach humans
Speaker 1: all sorts of practical things that God doesn't like. And
Speaker 1: so that's kind of that's kind of what's going on
Speaker 1: with this necromancy thing. When you're raising somebody up in
Speaker 1: a seance or or however, you're doing it through magical rights. Um,
Speaker 1: the ancient thought was that this person, Um, it's not
Speaker 1: that the person's soul is living on the person has
Speaker 1: temporarily come back to life again. Their soul has come
Speaker 1: back into their body. And because they have died and
Speaker 1: they've come back from the dead, they have these kind
Speaker 1: of powers. And in monotheistic religion, there's only supposed to
Speaker 1: be one superhuman power, and that's God, and so these
Speaker 1: other powers are threatening and people usually turned to uh,
Speaker 1: necromacy and other forms of magic precisely because the established
Speaker 1: religion wasn't working too well for them. Uh, And so
Speaker 1: they weren't they weren't learning what they needed to learn,
Speaker 1: they weren't getting what they needed to get. They weren't,
Speaker 1: you know, it just wasn't and so they try an
Speaker 1: alternative means and in these monotheistic religions, God is a
Speaker 1: jealous God and he doesn't like it when you go
Speaker 1: to some other divine force. And so that that's why
Speaker 1: it's like a form of cheating almost, well it's a
Speaker 1: form of cheating. It's like, um, you know, you go
Speaker 1: to your you go to your priest for advice, and
Speaker 1: then you go home and get pull out your Ouiji board.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, just to want, I said, don't pull
Speaker 1: out your weigi board? Right, people to use weigi boards? Anyboy?
Speaker 1: When I was a kid, we use boards. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: always great, okay, okay, okay. So so that's the view
Speaker 1: of of the ancient Jews. They would have mostly believed,
Speaker 1: and of course we should acknowledge that whenever we're talking
Speaker 1: about views and describing them to groups of people, there
Speaker 1: was probably some diversity. But we're talking about like the
Speaker 1: dominant views that are represented in the record, right. Well,
Speaker 1: it's it's a very important point because in my book
Speaker 1: I try to show there are in fact different views
Speaker 1: in the Hebrew Bible itself. I mean, you mentioned Ecclesiastes,
Speaker 1: and you know the Book of Daniel has a very
Speaker 1: different kind of view, and so there there are varieties.
Speaker 1: The one variety you don't find in the Hebrew Bible
Speaker 1: is that you die in your soul goos to have
Speaker 1: our health? Right? Um? So, then what about the uh
Speaker 1: to turn away from ancient Judaism. What about the influence
Speaker 1: of Greek philosophy and like the ideas of Socrates and
Speaker 1: Plato and how those came through in the pagan beliefs
Speaker 1: of the Roman Empire. Yeah, it's very important, far more
Speaker 1: important than most people realize. In the earliest Greek records
Speaker 1: we have, they come our earliest records come from Homer,
Speaker 1: from the Iliot in the Odyssey and Uh. They're the
Speaker 1: earliest foreigner Dante in the Western tradition. So Gilgamesh is
Speaker 1: in the ancient are East, but in the Western tradition,
Speaker 1: the earliest foreigner Dante is a Homer. Odyssey. The Odyssey
Speaker 1: book eleven is Odyssey is going into the underworld uh
Speaker 1: and uh and visiting people there, including his mother and
Speaker 1: his former colleagues in the in the Drojan War, and
Speaker 1: and he meets all these people and and the point
Speaker 1: of this description is to show what it's like down there.
Speaker 1: And it's not good. It's not good for anybody because
Speaker 1: everybody is just down there the same they've got they're
Speaker 1: like they're shadows. They're called shadows. They're not even people anywhere,
Speaker 1: but they're kind of shadows of people. And they've got
Speaker 1: no strength and no power, no mind, they can't think,
Speaker 1: they can't remember. It's like they can't talk. It's like
Speaker 1: they just it's awful forever. Uh. By the time you
Speaker 1: get a Plato about four years later. Years so Plato
Speaker 1: is riding at the early fourth century b c. E um, so,
Speaker 1: you know, four years before Jesus ministry Plato. By the
Speaker 1: time of Plato, Greeks has started thinking that this idea
Speaker 1: that like everybody goes to Hades and it's the same,
Speaker 1: and it's boring for eternity, and there's no that's not right.
Speaker 1: I mean, how can I you mean that somebody who
Speaker 1: is a valiant warrior, who is upright and who always
Speaker 1: does the good thing and helps other people, Uh, he
Speaker 1: dies and like that's it. He doesn't get any reward.
Speaker 1: And there's some smuck over here, like this tyrant who
Speaker 1: oppresses people and just cares about his own self and
Speaker 1: getting massively rich and powerful and doesn't care who he
Speaker 1: hurts in the process. He dies and he's not doesn't
Speaker 1: get punished, and no, that cappy. How it is, as
Speaker 1: Greeks came up with this idea that in fact, after
Speaker 1: death there are rewards and punishments. Um. We don't know
Speaker 1: if other people at the same time came up with
Speaker 1: this idea, but we find it most firmly in the Greeks,
Speaker 1: especially in Plato, who devoted a lot of time in
Speaker 1: his dialogue and her surviving dialogues to show that the
Speaker 1: soul and the body are two different things, and that
Speaker 1: the mistake people make in life is catering to their
Speaker 1: body when the important thing is their soul. And so
Speaker 1: Plato was pushing for philosophy the love of knowledge is
Speaker 1: what philosophy means, the love of wisdom, because he thought
Speaker 1: we needed to attend to the needs of our inner selves,
Speaker 1: especially our minds and our mental states, and our values
Speaker 1: and our views of what's right and wrong, and our
Speaker 1: ethics and how we live, and those are the things
Speaker 1: we should be concerned about, not like, you know, getting
Speaker 1: drunk all the time and having parties and having sex randomly.
Speaker 1: He's like, players say, no, that's just caged me to
Speaker 1: your body. And the problem is if you. If you're
Speaker 1: giving your body's pleasures, then you're gonna not pay any
Speaker 1: attention to your soul. And when you die, your soul
Speaker 1: is going to live on, but your body gonna die,
Speaker 1: and so you don't need to make sure your soul
Speaker 1: is doing well when it dies, or it's gonna be
Speaker 1: bad news. And so Plato Plato tells these myths of
Speaker 1: the afterlive. He calls the myths. I don't think he
Speaker 1: means I'm literally, but he tells these kind of stories
Speaker 1: of people who die and they check out what it's
Speaker 1: like afterwards, and those who tend to their soul have
Speaker 1: very good afterlives. And those who are just you know, licentious,
Speaker 1: ty rental bastards, they you know, they're tortured forever, and
Speaker 1: so you get rewards and punishments, and so Plato um
Speaker 1: Plato popularized this idea. It's not clear that he invented it,
Speaker 1: but it's found in a number of places in his dialogues,
Speaker 1: especially say in in uh the Fato and in the Republic,
Speaker 1: and it ended up becoming a hugely significant understanding of
Speaker 1: things for the history of the development of heaven and hell.
Speaker 1: So there's a curious fact from your book that caught
Speaker 1: my attention, which is that you mentioned several times how
Speaker 1: for many ancient people, the worst fate imaginable was to
Speaker 1: be denied a decent burial. Uh. And in a minute,
Speaker 1: when we talk about the beliefs of Jesus, we can
Speaker 1: talk about the meaning of Gehenna, this word that sometimes
Speaker 1: translated as hell in the New Testament. But before that,
Speaker 1: could you just help us understand this mindset of like
Speaker 1: what what was it like and what were the causes
Speaker 1: of the mindset where you're obsessed with, uh, not having
Speaker 1: a you know, a profane, disrespected burial. And I know
Speaker 1: this this shows up in lots of folk tales beyond
Speaker 1: just the Bible, like the Grateful Dead folk motif, where
Speaker 1: you know, uh, you know, a person on a journey
Speaker 1: comes across a corpse that's being denied a decent burial,
Speaker 1: and then pay the hero pays for the corpse to
Speaker 1: get a decent burial, and then later that spirit comes
Speaker 1: back to help the hero in disguise. In some way,
Speaker 1: I think this occurs in the Book of Tobit. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. In some ways it seems strange to the
Speaker 1: modern mentality, but in other ways it doesn't. But let
Speaker 1: me just state what you just said, stated emphatically. In
Speaker 1: most cultures we know about, least in the Western world, Uh,
Speaker 1: not getting a decent burial was a horrible fate and
Speaker 1: people really were afraid of it because not that not
Speaker 1: that they're going to suffer in health or it or anything.
Speaker 1: It's just like there's something about getting a decent burial
Speaker 1: that closure to life. And if you don't have closure
Speaker 1: to life, it's like your life it just didn't end
Speaker 1: up well. Um. And you find this, you find it
Speaker 1: in the Hebrew Bible. Uh, you certainly find it in
Speaker 1: Greek understandings of things. You find it in Roman ideas.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just, let's all throughout and in Judaism,
Speaker 1: and it's in Christianity. The modern analogy, I guess is
Speaker 1: people don't think about that so much because just about
Speaker 1: everybody gets a decent burial, although you know, some people
Speaker 1: don't want to diet see and kind of be thrown
Speaker 1: in there and eating by fish, I mean because you know,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, I don't like that, or some people
Speaker 1: don't like the idea of of um uh, you know,
Speaker 1: of how they're going to be buried or where they're
Speaker 1: gonna be buried or you know they you know, no,
Speaker 1: I don't want to be creaming to know that's spooky,
Speaker 1: you know, or or I don't want to bury the
Speaker 1: worms down there. That's so we do. We do think
Speaker 1: about that. But the other way we think about it
Speaker 1: is we think, you know, I wonder how many people
Speaker 1: are going to be at my funeral? You know you
Speaker 1: worry about it, that you're worried about it. Well, what
Speaker 1: are you worried about. You're not gonna be there. It's
Speaker 1: like you don't even know. Like so it doesn't make
Speaker 1: any sense, but we do. And it's like that only
Speaker 1: do like the hundred power in the angel in the
Speaker 1: angel world without a decent burial. You know, they were
Speaker 1: afraid of it, uh they and and it was a
Speaker 1: horrible way to angelf. It's even weaponized sometimes. I believe
Speaker 1: it was in a book of yours I read, uh again,
Speaker 1: correct me if I'm wrong. But you talked about how
Speaker 1: part of the fear of crucifixion in the Roman Empire
Speaker 1: was not just that it was painful, not just that
Speaker 1: you would die, but specifically that it was a humiliation
Speaker 1: of the corps, that the corpse would be left to
Speaker 1: the scavenging animals and exposed and not be given a
Speaker 1: decent burial. Yeah, no, it's one of the It's interesting,
Speaker 1: you know, when you when you read ancient documents on crucifixion.
Speaker 1: Every everybody gets their knowledge about crucifixion from what everybody
Speaker 1: else says, I mean modern people. The way you know
Speaker 1: what it's like to be crucifized, somebody else has told you,
Speaker 1: and somebody else told them, somebody else told them, and
Speaker 1: nobody bothers. Actually to read what they say in the
Speaker 1: ancient sources about it, it's interesting. There's no actual description
Speaker 1: of the process in the ancient source, like there's no
Speaker 1: description of how they actually did it, but there are
Speaker 1: a number of references to what happens after they did it,
Speaker 1: when sometimes meant to be dark humor and sometimes very seriously,
Speaker 1: but you get these references to the bodies being on
Speaker 1: the cross for days and being eaten by the scavengers,
Speaker 1: especially the birds, and um uh, you know that's part
Speaker 1: of the punishment. You don't get a decent burial, you
Speaker 1: are you're torn to shreds by the animals, and so
Speaker 1: like this was and people would watch this happening to somebody.
Speaker 1: And so I mean in the role in the world,
Speaker 1: crucifixion was used as a deterrent to crime. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: they didn't have the idea that developed in America that
Speaker 1: capital punishment is fine so long as you do it
Speaker 1: as privately and theoretically as painlessly as possible. Romans had
Speaker 1: the opposite idea, You do it publicly, and you make
Speaker 1: it as torturous as you can and as humiliating as can.
Speaker 1: So everybody's seeing this thing says, oh my god, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to do that, because you know, this is
Speaker 1: what's going to happen. As you know, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to steal a chariot boy, and that's what they do
Speaker 1: and so uh so, yes, but they did leave They
Speaker 1: apparently did leave them on the crosses. And that's part
Speaker 1: of it, because I couldn't get a decent burial. Okay,
Speaker 1: So even if we don't fully understand the causes of
Speaker 1: this difference and belief, we should always have it in
Speaker 1: mind that having your corpse desecrated or not getting a
Speaker 1: decent burial, it's just like the worst thing you can
Speaker 1: imagine in the ancient world. Yeah, that's why all these scenes,
Speaker 1: you know, you have if somebody like in like in
Speaker 1: a war narrative, you know, they desecrate the body and
Speaker 1: drag it around the city or something. This is just
Speaker 1: thought to be whore. Of course it still still is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, we're going to take a quick break, but
Speaker 1: we'll be right back. And we're back. So maybe we
Speaker 1: should talk now about the teachings of Jesus. I know
Speaker 1: there are several there are a lot of other things
Speaker 1: in your book that you cover about the you know,
Speaker 1: before we get to Jesus, you talk about the evolution
Speaker 1: of Jewish thought and some of the later Jewish writings,
Speaker 1: like like the Book of Daniel and maccabeees And maybe
Speaker 1: we can come back to that if you want. But um,
Speaker 1: I'm sure a lot of people are wondering about something
Speaker 1: we teased earlier, which is that, Okay, if the historical
Speaker 1: Jesus did not preach modern beliefs about heaven and hell,
Speaker 1: what were the teachings of the historical Jesus with regards
Speaker 1: to the afterlife? And you may also need to talk
Speaker 1: a bit here about historical method like why why can't
Speaker 1: we just read the gospels to know what the historical
Speaker 1: Jesus taught? Yeah, so I'm gonna I'm gonna have to
Speaker 1: provide some background in the development of Jewish thought to
Speaker 1: make sense of this. So I'm going to go back
Speaker 1: to Daniel, because you can't understand Jesus views without understanding
Speaker 1: the context that he's that he's in um. Most of
Speaker 1: the Hebrew Bible thinks that, as I was saying things,
Speaker 1: when a person dies at the end of the story,
Speaker 1: they're dead. Uh, there's no no afterlife of any kind.
Speaker 1: You're just dead. And I pointed out that Greek's ended
Speaker 1: up had something similar to begin with, but then with
Speaker 1: Plato it started you've got to have rewards and punishments.
Speaker 1: And that same development happened within Judaism, but in a
Speaker 1: different way. It's not clear if they were influenced by
Speaker 1: Greek thought or or it's not clear how it happened exactly.
Speaker 1: But about I don't know, two or fifty years before
Speaker 1: Jesus Um, a number of Jewish thinkers started thinking that,
Speaker 1: in fact, death cannot be the end of the story,
Speaker 1: and it can't be the end of the story for
Speaker 1: a very specific Jewish reason. Ancient Jews believed that God
Speaker 1: had called them the Jews, to be his people. They
Speaker 1: were the chosen people. God had given them the law.
Speaker 1: If they kept the law, they'd keep up their end
Speaker 1: of the bargain, and God would keep up his end
Speaker 1: of the bargain and protect them and uh and be
Speaker 1: on their side and help them out when they were
Speaker 1: in need. As time on, century after century went by
Speaker 1: and Jews were not helped, they were constantly being wiped out,
Speaker 1: constant internal problems, uh, economic problems. Problems, I mean just
Speaker 1: various things of hunger and disease and uh, crop failure,
Speaker 1: but also destruction in war, military disaster, not having possession
Speaker 1: of the land God had promised them. And often, you know,
Speaker 1: the ancient people would say, yeah, it's because we're disobeying
Speaker 1: God and God's punishing us. That was that was the
Speaker 1: view of the prophets in the Old Testament. Every prophet
Speaker 1: in the Old Testament says that, you know the reason
Speaker 1: of suffers, God's punishing you, and you just stopped doing
Speaker 1: that and then he'll reward you. Well, at some point
Speaker 1: Jews started saying, you know, look, we're doing the best
Speaker 1: we can here. Uh. You know, we we may not
Speaker 1: be like the most perfect human beings on earth, but
Speaker 1: we're doing our best to follow God's law. We're eating kosher,
Speaker 1: we're keeping the Sabbath, were observing the festivals, were circumcising
Speaker 1: our babies. At these pagans over here are complete smucks
Speaker 1: and they are ruthless us and they're destroying us. And
Speaker 1: surely there has to be an answer to that. Uh.
Speaker 1: So what ended up happening in Judaism is the answer
Speaker 1: was that was this? The answer there rose about two
Speaker 1: or fifty years before Jesus, was that, yes, these things
Speaker 1: are happening now and God's people are suffering, but it's
Speaker 1: not just because God's punishing them. There are also forces
Speaker 1: in the world that are opposed to God and his people.
Speaker 1: They are against us, and they have power in this
Speaker 1: world and they are making us suffer. This is when
Speaker 1: Jews started developing the idea that there's a devil. Uh
Speaker 1: there's Satan, a figure who is opposed to God gets
Speaker 1: imagined and and talked about, and Satan has henchmen, they
Speaker 1: call them demons. And there are other forces in this
Speaker 1: world and it's they're out to get us. So the question, well,
Speaker 1: why why is that? Well they have different explanations. Why. Well,
Speaker 1: human sin and so of these powers are lead into
Speaker 1: the world, or is because angels did this, or they
Speaker 1: have different explanations. They are a little bit fuzzy sometimes,
Speaker 1: but they But you have these evil forces. The good
Speaker 1: news is that God ultimately is sovereign and he ultimately
Speaker 1: is going to reward his people. Um. God is going
Speaker 1: to intervene in history and he will destroy these forces
Speaker 1: of evil who are ruining people's lives, who are running
Speaker 1: the kingdoms in charge now, and He's going to take
Speaker 1: them out of power. And He's going to bring in
Speaker 1: his own kingdom, the Kingdom of God that will be
Speaker 1: ruled by his representative, the Messiah, who will establish a
Speaker 1: utopian state. Uh. And so these Jews modern scholars called
Speaker 1: this view Jewish view apocalypticism from the word apocalypse at
Speaker 1: the end of this a this age is bad, it's
Speaker 1: getting worse, but the apocalypse is coming. And when the
Speaker 1: apocalypse comes, then God will destroy these forces of evil
Speaker 1: and bring in his good kingdom on earth. The first
Speaker 1: place you find this in the Hebrew Bible is in
Speaker 1: the Book of Daniel Daniel chapters seven through twelve, especially
Speaker 1: you start finding an apocalyptic view. H Daniel was written
Speaker 1: about two hundred years before Jesus was active in his
Speaker 1: ministry a hundred eighty years, two years before Jesus was
Speaker 1: active by that time. This has become a very popular
Speaker 1: view in Judaism is the view that, so far as
Speaker 1: we can tell, was held by the majority of Jews.
Speaker 1: Um is certainly written by the majority of Jewish authors
Speaker 1: that we have from the period uh that God assumed
Speaker 1: to intervene and bringing this kingdom. The thing about this
Speaker 1: kingdom was that it was not that your soul was
Speaker 1: going to die and go to heaven. The kingdom was
Speaker 1: going to be here on earth, and it was going
Speaker 1: to be lived in bodily. People who were on God's
Speaker 1: side would be brought into this Kingdom of God here
Speaker 1: on earth in their bodies. But what about people who,
Speaker 1: like you, died already. So, like, you know, suppose next
Speaker 1: year God does it and wipes out all the wicked
Speaker 1: governments and all the people supporting them, and he brings
Speaker 1: in peace and unity and justice for all forever and
Speaker 1: we have this great Kingdom of God. Well that's nice,
Speaker 1: But like one of my grandfather, I mean, he was
Speaker 1: a good guy. You mean, like he lost album and
Speaker 1: you know, my mom, really, are you kid to me?
Speaker 1: Of course, she doesn't, and so Jews simultaneously developed the
Speaker 1: idea of the resurrection of the dead. This is a
Speaker 1: view you don't get in the vast majority of the
Speaker 1: Hebrew Bible, but you do get it in Daniel and
Speaker 1: you get into the teachings of Jesus and throughout the
Speaker 1: New Testament. The teaching of the resurrection of the dead
Speaker 1: is that even dead people are going to be brought
Speaker 1: back to life, and they too can enter into the Kingdom. This, then,
Speaker 1: is Jesus teaching. Jesus teaches all the time about the
Speaker 1: coming Kingdom of God, and he does not mean heaven,
Speaker 1: where your soul goes when you die. He means the
Speaker 1: Kingdom that God is bringing back to Earth. God made
Speaker 1: this planet and he made it a paradise. Literally, God,
Speaker 1: I've made the garden of Eden for Adam and Eve.
Speaker 1: They sinned, they got kicked out. We lost the Garden
Speaker 1: of Eden. But God's going to bring it back. Just
Speaker 1: as Adam and Eve were in their bodies when they
Speaker 1: enjoyed it, will enjoy their bodies, not just us, but
Speaker 1: everybody is raised from the dead. If they've been on
Speaker 1: the right side, what if they've been in the wrong side,
Speaker 1: They're going to be punished, and it's going to be
Speaker 1: an eternal punishment, but it's not eternal torture. Jesus did
Speaker 1: not believe in the eternal torture. What Jesus believes is
Speaker 1: what other apocalypse is believed, which is that when the
Speaker 1: Kingdom arrives and people raise from the dead, those who
Speaker 1: are on God's side will enter the kingdom, and that
Speaker 1: everybody else will realize they've been left out of the
Speaker 1: kingdom and they'll be horribly upset. They'll be weeping and
Speaker 1: gnashing their teeth, and then God will annihilate them. It'll
Speaker 1: be complete destruction. Uh. And so the eternal punishment is
Speaker 1: not torment, it's death. It's eternal because it will never end.
Speaker 1: God will not reverse his decision. You will be dead forever,
Speaker 1: and only those around God's side will live in the
Speaker 1: utopian Kingdom of God. So that's that's Jesus teaching in
Speaker 1: a nutshell. Jesus never talked about this torment. He always
Speaker 1: talks about destruction, and so, uh, things that might come
Speaker 1: to people's mind in response to that would be okay.
Speaker 1: So first of all, maybe you can deal with this.
Speaker 1: There's like a passage in Luke where where Jesus tells
Speaker 1: the parable of the of the rich Man and Lazarus,
Speaker 1: and and it looks like in this parable there is
Speaker 1: some kind of existence right after you die, and it
Speaker 1: consists of rewards and punishments, rewards for for the for
Speaker 1: the poor man, and punishments for the rich man. And
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem to be like a bodily resurrection at
Speaker 1: the end of time when God comes and conquers everything.
Speaker 1: So how would a how would a biblical scholar deal
Speaker 1: with a passage like that? Well, no, it's a great question,
Speaker 1: and it is for people who know their Bible. It's
Speaker 1: the first pastors that comes to mind. Of course. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're Lazars in the rich Man. So um, maybe I
Speaker 1: should summarize the story or do you think everybody, I'll
Speaker 1: just you got you got this filthy rich man who's
Speaker 1: having sumptions banquets every day and bringing fine clothes and
Speaker 1: lives in this mansion and uh. And there's this poor
Speaker 1: guy outside his gate named Lazarus who's like he's starving
Speaker 1: to death and he's covered with diseases, and the dogs
Speaker 1: and coming up to lick his wounds, and they both die,
Speaker 1: and the rich man ends up down in the place
Speaker 1: of torment and fire, and Lazarus ends up in Abraham's bosom,
Speaker 1: so he's which means he's up having a banquet with
Speaker 1: the forefathers of Israel, Abraham, the father of Israel, and
Speaker 1: the righteous, and the rich man wants. Rich man looks
Speaker 1: up he sees las Or up there, and he tells Abraham, look, said,
Speaker 1: would you send him down? Just put let him put
Speaker 1: his finger in the water and cool my tongue, because
Speaker 1: it's I've been fire down here. And and uh, Abraham says, this,
Speaker 1: Sarak can't there's a chasm between us, a broadcasm, and
Speaker 1: nobody can go back and forth, and so you know,
Speaker 1: he can't come and help. And he said, well, at
Speaker 1: least send us, send them to my brothers. At least
Speaker 1: we're still living. I got these brothers, and like they've
Speaker 1: got to know about this, because if they're they're in
Speaker 1: danger of coming here too. And Abraham says, no, I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna send him, because he said they should just
Speaker 1: read their bibles. If they don't believe the Law of
Speaker 1: Moses and the prophets, they're not going to believe it.
Speaker 1: If somebody comes back from the dead, Okay, that's what
Speaker 1: he says. So even if someone is raised from the dead,
Speaker 1: they won't believe. So that's that all right? So um
Speaker 1: that well, it sure sounds like heav'n done. Hell yeah,
Speaker 1: and yes it does. So several things about it. Number one,
Speaker 1: it's a parable, a parable. It's not a historical statement.
Speaker 1: A parable is as an imaginative story intended to make
Speaker 1: a point. Um, that's her. We know it's a parable
Speaker 1: because in Luke's Gospel it's in a stream. It's a
Speaker 1: lot of section that's just filled with parables, and a
Speaker 1: number of them begin with exactly the same words. There's
Speaker 1: a certain man who, and that's how this one begins.
Speaker 1: There's a certain man who. Uh So, So it's a parable.
Speaker 1: It's not nondescription of historical reality. Number one. Number two, Um,
Speaker 1: there's nothing that's parable about the rewards for punishment being eternal.
Speaker 1: We don't know if this is a temporary holding stage
Speaker 1: or if this is we don't know. It doesn't it
Speaker 1: doesn't say that's number two. Number three, Jesus almost certainly
Speaker 1: did not tell this parable. So this is this is
Speaker 1: where we get into what you were saying earlier about
Speaker 1: how do critical scholars go about understanding what Jesus said
Speaker 1: and did. The reality is we have we have four
Speaker 1: gospels in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Speaker 1: We have other gospels not in the New Testament, lots
Speaker 1: of lots of them, um. But these four are the
Speaker 1: are the main ones that people know about, and they're
Speaker 1: the four they're probably our four earliest gospels, our oldest gospels.
Speaker 1: These four gospels, though, are almost certainly not simply historical
Speaker 1: accounts of what really happened in Jesus life, what he
Speaker 1: what he actually said and did, as if somebody was
Speaker 1: down there with their cell phone recording it. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: there were no cell phones recording anything. The gospels are
Speaker 1: written in Greek. Jesus native language was Aramaic. Jesus didn't
Speaker 1: know Greek, and the authors of the gospels did not
Speaker 1: know Aramaic. They lived outside of Israel. Jesus lived inside
Speaker 1: of Israel. They were writing forty fifty or sixty years later.
Speaker 1: So there's reasons for thinking all of that that I'm
Speaker 1: not going to go into unless you unless you want
Speaker 1: me to, I'm happy to. But these people are so
Speaker 1: where do they get their stories from? These people do
Speaker 1: not claim to be followers of Jesus. The authors the
Speaker 1: books are all anonymous, so they're written by and so
Speaker 1: they don't claim to be written by followers of Jesus.
Speaker 1: The followers of Jesus for Lord class ill literate. They're
Speaker 1: called illiterate in the New Testament, illiterate Aramaic speaking peasants
Speaker 1: from some rural place in Galilee and places like that
Speaker 1: didn't have schools. The disciples could not write. And so
Speaker 1: where these gospels come from. That they came from authors
Speaker 1: living fourty or fifty years later, four or five decades
Speaker 1: later later, living somewhere else, who have heard stories about
Speaker 1: Jesus and they're writing them down. Okay, so stories have
Speaker 1: been in circulation for not just a month or two
Speaker 1: or a year or two or a decade. I mean
Speaker 1: they've been in circplace from forty to sixty years. Uh.
Speaker 1: Sometimes this gospels completely agree with each other, but that's
Speaker 1: because some of them used each other. Matthew Luke both
Speaker 1: used Mark for example. Again, I could just take a
Speaker 1: lot of time to bit demonstrate um and so. And
Speaker 1: the big problem is these gospels not only are much
Speaker 1: later by people who didn't know but had heard stories
Speaker 1: in circulation like word of mouth. And you know what happens.
Speaker 1: The stories in the word of mouth, even in the
Speaker 1: age world, stories got changed every time they got hold. Well,
Speaker 1: it's uh right, so it's it's it's not only that,
Speaker 1: but these gospels contradict each other. All you gotta do
Speaker 1: is read two accounts in the Gospel and just to
Speaker 1: take the same story to take you know, take Jesus
Speaker 1: birth and Matthew Luke. Just read them carefully and and
Speaker 1: just see exactly what each one says, and compare them.
Speaker 1: You can't reconcile them. There are places that cannot be reconciled.
Speaker 1: Why because people are changing the stories. People are changing stories.
Speaker 1: They're making up stories, They're putting things on jesus lips
Speaker 1: that they're saying he did things he didn't do. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just that's just you know that that's been known
Speaker 1: by scholars are well over a century. It's like standard
Speaker 1: stuff against Todd in every critical biblical scholars class. The
Speaker 1: parable of Lasius and the rich Man almost certainly was
Speaker 1: not one of the parables Jesus told. He almost certainly
Speaker 1: did tell some parables. I think, uh, you have to
Speaker 1: have ways of demonstrating these things, just like you've got
Speaker 1: to have ways of proving everything you know you've got,
Speaker 1: you've got history has to be proved. You can't just
Speaker 1: take somebody's word for it. As somebody says that, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, my inauguration, there are this number of people there.
Speaker 1: You know, you've got to check to see if that's
Speaker 1: true or not. And so there are certain things that
Speaker 1: you checked for uh, and historian type a way of
Speaker 1: checking ancient stuff, just as we have ways of checking
Speaker 1: modern stuff. If you check the story of last's Richmond,
Speaker 1: there are very reasons for thinking that Jesus didn't tell
Speaker 1: the story. For one thing, of course, it has a
Speaker 1: different view of after liphone, the one Jesus had that
Speaker 1: you can't exact because that's the question you're trying, that's
Speaker 1: arguing in a circle. But there are other things about it. Um,
Speaker 1: it's all found only in Luke. So like there's no
Speaker 1: one else who tells the story that we know of.
Speaker 1: And so how do you know, like unless it's verified, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know it's not verified. You just got it in
Speaker 1: the loop. I'll just catch to the chase because this
Speaker 1: is going on too long. The one reason for really annoing.
Speaker 1: It wasn't. Wasn't a story of Jesus told is because
Speaker 1: the story presupposes that a man has already been raised
Speaker 1: from the dead. The end of the story is, if
Speaker 1: they don't believe Moses and the prophets, they won't believe
Speaker 1: even if a man is raised from the dead. That
Speaker 1: means that the reader, the Christian reader, these are Christian
Speaker 1: readers reading this, are going to say, yeah, that's right, boy,
Speaker 1: they didn't believe when a man got raised from the dead. Boy,
Speaker 1: you got that one right. Yeah. Well, that's because the
Speaker 1: storyteller knows that Jesus been raised from the dead, and
Speaker 1: as Jewish listeners, most of them are not accepting it,
Speaker 1: and so uh, it has marks of being a later composition.
Speaker 1: It also, by the way, does go inside with Luke's
Speaker 1: understanding of the afterlife. The author of Luke his understanding
Speaker 1: the afterlife is different from the understanding put on that
Speaker 1: Jesus himself apparently had. And so they are all these
Speaker 1: reasons for me it doesn't go back to the historical Jesus. Uh.
Speaker 1: This brings up an interesting another tangential thought I was
Speaker 1: wondering about. So, when you consider what purpose the Gospels
Speaker 1: were supposed to serve as written documents. Did they serve
Speaker 1: and originally were they intended by their authors to have
Speaker 1: an apologetic purpose like as preaching humans to outsiders or
Speaker 1: do you think of them primarily as things that were
Speaker 1: written for Christians who were already convinced to be you know,
Speaker 1: read and to I don't know, further edified them in
Speaker 1: their faith. Right? Um, this is something it has been
Speaker 1: debated over the years, although it's not debated too much anymore.
Speaker 1: Just about everybody who is an expert on this stuff
Speaker 1: thinks these books were not used for evangelistic purposes. You
Speaker 1: know this is It's not the sort of thing like
Speaker 1: you wouldn't hand the Gospel of Matthew to somebody say here,
Speaker 1: read this so you can become a Christian. They take
Speaker 1: a look, I say, are you kid even know? And
Speaker 1: I gotta read this, come on, get out of here,
Speaker 1: and so uh so, there there are all sorts of
Speaker 1: hints within the books themselves that they're written by Christians
Speaker 1: and for Christians to promote Christian faith. Having said that,
Speaker 1: one of the secondary uses of these books would surely
Speaker 1: have been to tell Christians what to tell others when
Speaker 1: they were trying to convert them. Um, And so the
Speaker 1: books themselves would not be tools of conversion or evangelistic rules,
Speaker 1: but they would be informing Christians of information that they
Speaker 1: could give to others. And one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: Christians need to have some ammunition is because they were
Speaker 1: being opposed in the Roman world. Most people thought they
Speaker 1: were nus and Christians say, so, no, we're not nuts.
Speaker 1: Actually we have the truth. And um, I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna explain why we have the truth. Well, you need
Speaker 1: you need to have some kind of things to tell
Speaker 1: people to show that you've got the truth. Of all
Speaker 1: the four gospels, Luke, the one we're just talking about
Speaker 1: gives most evidence of having this function of trying to
Speaker 1: convince outsiders that Christianity is a good thing and that
Speaker 1: it's a harmless thing. It's interesting, you know, one of
Speaker 1: the problems that Christians had in the early Roman Empire
Speaker 1: was that the guy they worshiped was crucified for crimes
Speaker 1: against the state. He was he was a state criminal
Speaker 1: who was executed for it. And so like, if that's
Speaker 1: the guy you're following, you know, that doesn't look too
Speaker 1: good in the eyes of the law, and so they
Speaker 1: had to explain, well, actually, yeah he was, but you know,
Speaker 1: Pilot didn't want to do it, and the Romans were
Speaker 1: actually at Jesus. It says, damn Jews that made us
Speaker 1: do it. And so so they they're putting the fault
Speaker 1: on Jews, uh and exonerating Romans to show that we're
Speaker 1: not a threat to Roman society. Uh. And Luke does
Speaker 1: that more than any of the others. It doesn't. Luke
Speaker 1: also repeatedly mentioned the fact that Jesus was innocent, like
Speaker 1: it uses the word innocent. Yeah. So when he's on
Speaker 1: trial before ponscious Pilot, Uh, Luke Luke stresses three times,
Speaker 1: three times. Pilot actually declares that Jesus he's innocent. He
Speaker 1: doesn't deserve this, and the Jews leaders forced him to crucifim.
Speaker 1: And then when he's being crucified, Uh, in Luke scoff
Speaker 1: only Luke scoff You know, you have the centurion who's
Speaker 1: crucified him. And in Mark Scoffel, the centurion looks up
Speaker 1: at him and he realizes that, oh my God, what
Speaker 1: were we doing? Truly this man was the son of God.
Speaker 1: But in Luke's gospel, this same guys looks at him,
Speaker 1: and then he said, he says this man was innocent,
Speaker 1: and so he said, well, yeah, if he's a son
Speaker 1: of God, he's in it. Yeah. Yeah. But the point
Speaker 1: is Luke is emphasizing he was innocent, and and so
Speaker 1: it's not you know, everybody, all the Romans knew it
Speaker 1: is the Jewish people didn't recognize it. So you're mentioning
Speaker 1: several uh different strains of thought that are developing after
Speaker 1: the life of Jesus. You think the consensus of biblical
Speaker 1: scholars today would be that Jesus, the real historical Jesus,
Speaker 1: was some type of apocalyptic prophet. He was preaching, you know,
Speaker 1: the imminent return of God who would destroy the enemies
Speaker 1: of Israel and and and bring about this good kingdom
Speaker 1: on earth. But obviously that changed. You talk in the
Speaker 1: book about a process of de apocalypticizing the Christian faith
Speaker 1: over the following centuries. Can you, in brief terms, what
Speaker 1: does that process look like, what what motivates it, and
Speaker 1: how does it happen. Let me let the prefaces by saying,
Speaker 1: but that you're the first person who's interviewed me who
Speaker 1: could say the apocalypticize drives by students, nuts talked about
Speaker 1: the de apocalypticization of the tradition, and they don't know.
Speaker 1: They don't like that, so uh so the apocalypticizes. So
Speaker 1: if Jesus has this apocalyptic view that the apocalypse is
Speaker 1: coming and that God's gonna wipe out things and it's
Speaker 1: going to uh it's gonna make everything right. The reason
Speaker 1: one of the functions of that kind of religious discourse,
Speaker 1: that kind of apocalyptic language, was to encourage people who
Speaker 1: were in the midst of suffering, because you're telling him, look, yes,
Speaker 1: you are suffering. God is on your side. Is these
Speaker 1: powers of evil that are lined up against us, but
Speaker 1: God's on your side. And the point of this is
Speaker 1: that God is soon going to intervene and take out
Speaker 1: these forces of evil. So if you just hold on
Speaker 1: for a little while, it'll be okay. That's why the
Speaker 1: Book of Revelation says, you know, he's coming soon, and
Speaker 1: it's why the apostle Paul says, you need to be
Speaker 1: alert because it's coming soon. It's gonna be like a
Speaker 1: thief in the night, and you know, if you're not awake,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be robbed, and so you need to be alert.
Speaker 1: And that's why Jesus himself said, truly, I tell you,
Speaker 1: this generation will not pass away before all these things
Speaker 1: take place. Jesus prediction that his own disciples would see it. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that's the nature of this kind of apocalyptic language,
Speaker 1: and it still is, by the way, people today who
Speaker 1: believe in the Left Behind series or who think Jesus
Speaker 1: is coming back, they invariably think, you know, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be in my lifetime. You know, maybe next time, sometime
Speaker 1: next Thursday. I don't know, it's gonna be pretty soon.
Speaker 1: And so that's that's all part of part of it.
Speaker 1: In early Christianity, there was a very firm belief it
Speaker 1: was going to come back right It's gonna happen right away,
Speaker 1: so Jesus said, it's what Paul taught. But then the
Speaker 1: weeks went by, and the months went by, and the
Speaker 1: years went by, then the decades went by, and people
Speaker 1: are saying, ah, yeah, well, you know, it's supposed to
Speaker 1: happen by now, and it hasn't happened. And people then
Speaker 1: had to come up with ways of explaining it, and
Speaker 1: they're all sorts of ways of explaining it. Some of
Speaker 1: the books of the New Testament are written to try
Speaker 1: to explain it Second Peter's right to explain why it
Speaker 1: hasn't happened yet. Um. Second Peter is the book that
Speaker 1: says that with say, like you know, you say, I
Speaker 1: supposed to kind of didn't come. But look, you're you're
Speaker 1: following a human calendar. Uh. In God's calendar, a day
Speaker 1: is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is
Speaker 1: as a day. So when God says it's gonna happen soon,
Speaker 1: you know, if he means like in three days, that
Speaker 1: could be three thousand years, which makes you wonder why
Speaker 1: he said it's gonna be soon. I mean, like helping
Speaker 1: me much, it's gonna be through. But anyway, so anyway,
Speaker 1: So part of what happens in the tradition is that
Speaker 1: the apocalyptic emphasis gets muted, and eventually it gets dissolved
Speaker 1: and eventually gets argued against. Christianity becomes d apocalypticized, meaning
Speaker 1: that this apocalyptic emphasis at the end is going to come.
Speaker 1: The end of this world is gonna come in our lifetime. Uh,
Speaker 1: ends of disappearing, but something replaces it. The dual ism
Speaker 1: that you get an apocalypticism is a kind of a
Speaker 1: horizontal dualism that you can put it on like a timeline.
Speaker 1: Just so you think of a timeline that goes across
Speaker 1: the page horizontally, and you know you've got on the
Speaker 1: left side, you've got the time up there now, and
Speaker 1: then there's a break, and then you got the time
Speaker 1: after now. So you draw this line with a horizontal
Speaker 1: line of the vertical line in the middle of it.
Speaker 1: And the vertical line is breaking this evil age that's
Speaker 1: going to be destroyed, and then there's gonna be the
Speaker 1: age to come with is good, and so UTOPI is
Speaker 1: going to come in suddenly. And immediately when God destroys
Speaker 1: these forces of evil, brings in his kingdom that horizontal timeline.
Speaker 1: The dualism, the horizontal dualism is retained when people get
Speaker 1: rid of the apocalypticism, they keep the dualism. But what
Speaker 1: they do is they flip the horizontal line on its
Speaker 1: axis so that now it's a vertical line, a vertical dualism.
Speaker 1: It's no longer now and then verd horizontal It is
Speaker 1: down here and up there, and so now it's not
Speaker 1: what's happening now and what's gonna happen, Then it's what
Speaker 1: happens here and there, and so it's it's and it's
Speaker 1: so it's a spacial line instead of a temporal line.
Speaker 1: This facial line is uh that it's not going to
Speaker 1: be an act in the future is going to be
Speaker 1: to you when you die, You're gonna go up or down.
Speaker 1: And so rather than the Kingdom of God being here
Speaker 1: on earth, the Kingdom of God is with God up
Speaker 1: in heaven. And so people will go up to heaven
Speaker 1: to be to receive their eternal reward. It will not
Speaker 1: be life here on earth and to be life above
Speaker 1: with God in heaven. What about the people who don't
Speaker 1: make it, well, they go below. Well, if the righteous
Speaker 1: are rewarded, what happens to them? They're punished? Uh really Yeah,
Speaker 1: but now it's a lot of destruction anymore because God's
Speaker 1: not destroying the forces of evil. And so what people
Speaker 1: are what these de apocalyptus are doing, are they're changing
Speaker 1: the Jewish view into the Greek conview. Let me give
Speaker 1: you a little bit. Sorry, this is kind of complicated.
Speaker 1: Let me give you just the background on this. When
Speaker 1: Christianity started, it was a Jewish religion. Jesus was a
Speaker 1: Jews followed the Jews. They tried to convert Jews. They
Speaker 1: didn't have much success. Paul comes along. He converts Gentiles,
Speaker 1: non Jews. These people he converts are people who are
Speaker 1: trained in Greek circles. That means they were trained thinking
Speaker 1: like Plato, you've got a soul and you've got a body.
Speaker 1: They're they're not Jews, they're Greeks, the Greek Greek background.
Speaker 1: They believe that when you die, your soul gets rewarded,
Speaker 1: you're punished. They come into Christianity and they bring their
Speaker 1: beliefs with them. They don't simply adopt what Jesus taught.
Speaker 1: They understanding like what they already think. They already think
Speaker 1: body and soul, two separate things, rewards and punishments. And
Speaker 1: now as it gets the apocalypticized, their views get confirmed
Speaker 1: in the new theology, which is not that there's a
Speaker 1: Kingdom of God coming to earth and some most people
Speaker 1: are gonna be destroyed, but that when you die, your
Speaker 1: soul that's now separable, is going to go up to
Speaker 1: Heaven or it's going to go down to hell. The
Speaker 1: person God creates as eternal because God is eternal. That
Speaker 1: means heaven is eternal, and health is eternal, and so
Speaker 1: you have eternal reward and eternal punishment and in a sense,
Speaker 1: it's taking the teachings of Jesus and the teachings of
Speaker 1: Plato and smashing them together into an amalgam that neither
Speaker 1: one of them would recognize. That's that's where heaving and
Speaker 1: hell comes from. Wow. Yeah, that's interesting. So so on
Speaker 1: one hand, you've got the time elapsing is causing the
Speaker 1: sort of decay of the potential for apocalypticism, and then
Speaker 1: you have the influence of the Greek thought that's prevalent
Speaker 1: in the Gentile world. But what role does political power
Speaker 1: and acceptance in culture have in the in the changing
Speaker 1: views of the afterlife? Because we know that originally um uh.
Speaker 1: You certainly point out in your book that this view
Speaker 1: that Christianity was illegal everywhere in the Roman Empire is
Speaker 1: not true. That's a myth, but it was sporadically persecuted
Speaker 1: in the An Empire. So over time we know that
Speaker 1: Christianity becomes more popular, becomes more prevalent, and eventually becomes
Speaker 1: uh accepted and even the the you know, the official
Speaker 1: religion of the empire. How does that change views on
Speaker 1: the afterlife if at all? Yeah, No, it's a significant
Speaker 1: question because um what I argue in my book is
Speaker 1: that precisely Christian understandings of persecution and martyrdom were some
Speaker 1: of those understandings are things that actually drove this new
Speaker 1: view of heaven and hell related to the reason I
Speaker 1: just just gave. So I'll explain. It's as you said,
Speaker 1: It's not that you know, millions of Christians are getting
Speaker 1: thrown to the lions or tens of thousands or even thousands.
Speaker 1: I mean, but people heard about it, just just like today.
Speaker 1: You know, I've got all these students. I live in
Speaker 1: the South, I live in North Carolina, and these students
Speaker 1: are basically raised in Christian household who believe that they're
Speaker 1: persecuted as Christians. And you kind of look our house there, really,
Speaker 1: but Christianity has always had this kind of person Houston thing,
Speaker 1: and it goes all the way back um and so
Speaker 1: most of early Christians were not persecuted, certainly not martyred,
Speaker 1: but they heard about persecutions and martyrdoms. And when people
Speaker 1: were martyred, when it did happen on occasion, you know,
Speaker 1: someone had to wonder, you mean, this person is going
Speaker 1: to die, and like that's it until like I mean,
Speaker 1: when is the incoming It's gonna be another sixty years.
Speaker 1: That's not right that this person died, He's got a
Speaker 1: way around for sixty years. And so so that that
Speaker 1: helped facilitate the idea that at the moment of death,
Speaker 1: a martyr will be in the presence of God. Uh,
Speaker 1: the martyr. First it was the martyrs. The martyrs were
Speaker 1: thought to be immediately to the presence of God until
Speaker 1: the resurrection. But as time went on and there wasn't
Speaker 1: any like future resurrection happening, then they started thinking, well,
Speaker 1: everybody goes, and so the the opposition by Rome helped
Speaker 1: facilitate this idea that it's at death, uh, that it's
Speaker 1: going to happen, not in some distant future moment. So
Speaker 1: the Roman persecutions went on very sporadically, not uniformly, until
Speaker 1: the early fourth century when they became more consistent. There
Speaker 1: were some imperial decreased paths that were made more plausible
Speaker 1: persecution in a lot more places. Um. But then Constantine
Speaker 1: converted to Christianity and he brought an end to the
Speaker 1: persecution in the year three thirteen. And so what happened
Speaker 1: to the views of the afterlife? Basically what happened is
Speaker 1: the views got cemented, uh, they weren't invented at that point,
Speaker 1: they were cemented at that point. Uh, they became uh
Speaker 1: stronger tools of conversion because now even the emperor believed
Speaker 1: in them, and they were used to convert people, and
Speaker 1: they became the dominant view of Western civilization because now
Speaker 1: Rome was the dominant empire, and now Roman by the
Speaker 1: end of the fourth century into the fifth century was
Speaker 1: becoming almost predominantly Christian, and Christianity that takes over the
Speaker 1: Roman world. It ends up becoming the religion of the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages in the West and becomes the it you
Speaker 1: know of the Renaspance and the Reformation and modernity. And
Speaker 1: that's why everybody lives in heaven and hell, because everybody's
Speaker 1: always believes in heaven and hell unless you go to
Speaker 1: the earliest times. All right, it's time to take a
Speaker 1: quick break. We'll be right back with more than thank Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. One of the interesting little tidbits from your
Speaker 1: book that that stuck with me was when you're talking
Speaker 1: about the the political power and acceptance of Christianity over time.
Speaker 1: You talk about a later document called The Apocalypse of
Speaker 1: Paul that also includes a guided tour of heaven and
Speaker 1: Hell with the city of Christ and then the people
Speaker 1: outside it enduring eternal torment. And it struck me that
Speaker 1: in this document the worst tortures are saved not for
Speaker 1: like the violent murderers or the torturers of Christian martyrs,
Speaker 1: or even they're not even for nonbelievers. The worst tortures
Speaker 1: are saved for Christian theologians who held a different view
Speaker 1: than the author on what would seem to us to
Speaker 1: be a relatively minor thing, like a minor to asbut
Speaker 1: about the interpretation of Christ's incarnation. What's going on here
Speaker 1: with this, this harsh punishment of minute differences in theology.
Speaker 1: And do you see other examples in the history of
Speaker 1: religion like this that develop along these lines. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: very interesting. This, this Apocalypse of Paul, is a very
Speaker 1: interesting book. So we're not sure exactly when it was written,
Speaker 1: but it is certainly after the conversion of Constantine, probably
Speaker 1: at the end of the fourth century at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the fifth century. The form of this book that
Speaker 1: we now have, it's important for both what came after
Speaker 1: it and what came before it. The Apoxes of Paul
Speaker 1: was known to Dante. This was one of Dante's influences.
Speaker 1: The earliest influence he had Um, and so some of
Speaker 1: his ideas, uh come from that. And you'll notice that
Speaker 1: when Christians get punished in Dante as well. Um. The
Speaker 1: predecessor of the Apocalypse of Paul was the Apocalypse of
Speaker 1: Peter that I talked about. And in the early one
Speaker 1: of these we have the Apocalypse of Peter. As I
Speaker 1: was saying, people get tortured for blasphemy God, or you know,
Speaker 1: committing adultery or but it's always moral sins when you
Speaker 1: get to the Apocalypse of Paul. Uh. So now we're
Speaker 1: in a different period in in the apocalyp Peter, which
Speaker 1: is you know, like forty years after the New Testament
Speaker 1: was written, it's um, you know, it's it's warning Christians
Speaker 1: not to sin um. But the Apocalypse of Paul is
Speaker 1: really focused on Christians ut sinning. In the point is
Speaker 1: not just don't like commit moral sins. So it's not
Speaker 1: just about stealing and uh, you know, you know, committing
Speaker 1: infanticide or striking your parents or whatever. It's not about
Speaker 1: just stuff you do wrong. It's also about what happens
Speaker 1: in the church. The people who are punished the worst
Speaker 1: are the church leaders. In hell, uh forever and um.
Speaker 1: You know, so some of these are moral sins. Um.
Speaker 1: So that if you are a uh you know, if
Speaker 1: you're a bishop of a church, the leader of a church,
Speaker 1: and you um, and you perform in your duties of
Speaker 1: office and then you go home and sneak out and
Speaker 1: go and commit adultery, Oh boy, you are gonna have
Speaker 1: a bad You're gonna be worse than It's gonna be
Speaker 1: worse for you than the run of mill adulterer. So
Speaker 1: and so and so the bishops are being punished, and
Speaker 1: the deacons are being punished, and you know, these people
Speaker 1: are like because they're they're supposed to be setting examples
Speaker 1: and they're standing the wrong, so they're worse. But the
Speaker 1: very worst punishment is the one that you mentioned. It's
Speaker 1: called it's three times worse than any other punishment. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it comes to Christians who think that when they
Speaker 1: think the Christ is not a full flesh and blood
Speaker 1: human being, but he's only God. In other words, they
Speaker 1: believed Christ is so much God that he wasn't completely
Speaker 1: human like the rest of us. Now, you can't say
Speaker 1: that you'll be tortured forever worse than anybody. You know,
Speaker 1: you'll be so uh yeah, And so this is being
Speaker 1: written in a context where most people are Christian. Probably
Speaker 1: in the environment this person is in, he's not worried
Speaker 1: about Pagans. In the earlier practice of the Apostles of Peter,
Speaker 1: idolaters are punished and persecutors and Christians are punished. Not
Speaker 1: in the Aposts of Paul several hundred years later, because
Speaker 1: you don't have those people anymore. And as this moral sins,
Speaker 1: it sins in the church that really bother him more
Speaker 1: than anything, especially bad ecology. I wonder if that's just
Speaker 1: an availability heuristic issue, Like if this is somebody who's
Speaker 1: writing Christian literature in the name of Paul, they're probably
Speaker 1: thinking a lot about their enemies with theological minor theological disputes.
Speaker 1: It's just what's on their mind. It's it's what's on
Speaker 1: their mind, and it's who are the who are the
Speaker 1: big enemies of Christianity, and and you know they're the
Speaker 1: ones who get it the worst. So in the second century,
Speaker 1: the Aposta Ceter wrote the worst Enemies, where the persecutors, uh,
Speaker 1: those who committed idolatry, worst vitals and those who you know,
Speaker 1: committed sins of violations of God's law. Those are enemies.
Speaker 1: By the time you get to Paul, the enemies are
Speaker 1: in the church. Because the churches are split, you get
Speaker 1: bad theologians, you've got people bleeding crazy things, you've got
Speaker 1: you know, and you've got immorality in the church. And
Speaker 1: so those are the ones being punished. Okay, Bart, I've
Speaker 1: got one more question. So in the Divine Comedy, people
Speaker 1: who Dante runs into in purgatory, I noticed are constantly
Speaker 1: begging Dante to go back and tell their relatives, especially
Speaker 1: female relatives, that they should be praying for them more.
Speaker 1: Where does this idea come from that the prayers of
Speaker 1: the living, especially the prayers of women, were useful and
Speaker 1: important to those in the afterlife and could affect their
Speaker 1: fate there It does proceed the official Catholic doctrine of
Speaker 1: purgatory right now, it comes after Okay, so the okay,
Speaker 1: so yeah, let me get a little bit background on
Speaker 1: because the I deal with this in my book. I
Speaker 1: have a section on purgatory uh in my book, as
Speaker 1: well as a section by Away on the idea that
Speaker 1: everybody gets saved, which is also interesting. But with purgatory
Speaker 1: um this is an important top for a lot of Catholics,
Speaker 1: because the Catholic Church continues to teach perigratory. And I'm surprised.
Speaker 1: I've talked with the number of Catholics after my book
Speaker 1: who didn't realize really what purgatory is. It didn't realize
Speaker 1: they'd have to suffer in there. I thought it was
Speaker 1: just like a holding pen. And I'm sorry I should ready,
Speaker 1: it's not fun, you know, it's not fun. So um,
Speaker 1: So purgatory for for those of you who are are
Speaker 1: not Catholic, or those of you Catholic who are paying attention. Uh,
Speaker 1: Purgatory is the doctrine that eventually developed. It says that
Speaker 1: there's not just heaven and hell. Um. The reason for
Speaker 1: purgatory developing is again, it's kind of the same as
Speaker 1: you of justice. I mean, it's not really fair that
Speaker 1: everybody dies and gets the same thing, and so rewards
Speaker 1: and punishments seem only fair. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: you know, not everybody is just irving. Is a saint,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm going to go to heaven. But it's
Speaker 1: not fair for them to be tortured forever. And so
Speaker 1: there's so they come up with this middle place, uh,
Speaker 1: which is for it is it's specifically for people who
Speaker 1: are going to end up in heaven, but they have
Speaker 1: to pay for their sins first. There there their sins.
Speaker 1: They are not holy enough to go directly. They need
Speaker 1: to be purged of their sins. And that's why it's purgatory,
Speaker 1: because they're being purged of their sins, and purging is painful,
Speaker 1: and so they have to go through a certain number
Speaker 1: of punishments. But uh, they can get out faster if
Speaker 1: living people interceiege for them. Um. So what's that all about?
Speaker 1: Where's it come from? So what I do in my
Speaker 1: book is I don't talk at length about the later
Speaker 1: doctor of purgatory except to say or do or Dante's
Speaker 1: Purgatorial except to say that the official Catholic doctrine was
Speaker 1: not implemented until the thirteenth century. Um and so. Uh So,
Speaker 1: you know Christianity around for since the first century, So
Speaker 1: it's twelve twelve centuries before purgatory becomes a standard doctor
Speaker 1: in the Catholic Church. The term purgatory was invented in
Speaker 1: the twelfth century. Uh and so there are people who
Speaker 1: claim that purgatory wasn't invent until the twelve or thirteenth century.
Speaker 1: And so in one kind of technical sense, I guess
Speaker 1: that's right. But what I try to do in my
Speaker 1: book is showed that there were earlier forerunners of this
Speaker 1: very idea that some people who die are punished temporarily
Speaker 1: before allowed being allowed to enter their heavenly reward. And
Speaker 1: what I do is I look at the earliest examples
Speaker 1: of that, which are in texts that people, the general
Speaker 1: run of the mill person wouldn't know. If they don't
Speaker 1: know Dante, they don't know that probably the you know,
Speaker 1: the Martyrdom of Perpetua or or the Acts of thecla
Speaker 1: or But there are these there are these books, uh
Speaker 1: that that talk about um a saint and she's it's
Speaker 1: usually a woman, a living woman who has a special
Speaker 1: relationship with God. She's very holy. Who um who praise
Speaker 1: for either a relative or somebody that they're requested to
Speaker 1: pray for, who's being who's having a bad afterlife, and
Speaker 1: God hears their prayers, here's here's the person's prayers, and
Speaker 1: the person then is released from their punishment and is rewarded. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so there are several stories like this. They're fascinating
Speaker 1: stories in their own terms that we won't get into
Speaker 1: but they're they're really interesting stories. They start out in
Speaker 1: the second century uh, and go up into the third
Speaker 1: century and then and then onward. And so this idea
Speaker 1: that it's possible to kind of get out early, get
Speaker 1: out of punishment early, is an idea that's floating around.
Speaker 1: And so some people did have this idea that there's
Speaker 1: this other place somehow that we're and so people have
Speaker 1: various ideas and um you find them in Saint Augustine,
Speaker 1: for example, uh, plays with this idea a little bit. Uh.
Speaker 1: He's not quite sure about it, but he affirms it
Speaker 1: didn't seems to affirm it in some places, and so
Speaker 1: so it becomes a standard idea, but then only later
Speaker 1: in the thirteenth century doesn't become a doctrine. And there
Speaker 1: are very interesting books if you if you've got people
Speaker 1: among you, your leader readers who are really interested in, um,
Speaker 1: this kind of scholet of views of things. There's a
Speaker 1: guy named Jacques Lakoff who wrote this whole book called
Speaker 1: The Birth of Purgatory to explains why in the twelfth
Speaker 1: and thirteenth century this became all became something uh. And
Speaker 1: it became and it wasn't just before religious reasons is
Speaker 1: because of the socio political context within which it developed.
Speaker 1: It's just called the Birth of Purgatin where they can
Speaker 1: look that up and find it. All. Right, Bart, I
Speaker 1: think we're running towards the end of our our time here,
Speaker 1: but I just want to thank you so much for
Speaker 1: joining us today again. I genuinely really loved the book,
Speaker 1: as I've enjoyed all your books before Heaven and Hell.
Speaker 1: I think if you enjoyed our conversation today, listeners, you
Speaker 1: should definitely check out the book, but you should also
Speaker 1: look up Bart's blog. Bart, do you want to talk
Speaker 1: about that for a moment? I do nothing. I like
Speaker 1: talking about more. Uh So, I have a blog, Um.
Speaker 1: I've had it for over eight years. UM started it
Speaker 1: in two thousand twelve. On this blog, I post um.
Speaker 1: I post five times a week. Most of my posts
Speaker 1: were between twelve hundred and four hundred words. And the
Speaker 1: post deal with everything having to do with all the
Speaker 1: stuff we're talking about now, and about anything about the
Speaker 1: New Testament, the historical Jesus, the writings of Paul, book
Speaker 1: a Revelation. It talked about martyrs in person, He talks
Speaker 1: about women in early Christianity, talks about Jews in relationship
Speaker 1: to Christians. But I also about early Judaism and the
Speaker 1: Hebrew Bible and Roman religion and like the massisive thing.
Speaker 1: I've been doing this, you know, every week, five five posts. Um.
Speaker 1: There's a membership membership fee to join the blog. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the reason there's a membership fee is because I
Speaker 1: use the blog to raise money for charity. UM. The
Speaker 1: membership fees low, it's about you know, it's about fifty
Speaker 1: cents a week. I mean it's like right now we're
Speaker 1: gonna be we're instituting a new blog. Soon, we're launching
Speaker 1: a new blog. But but right now, a year membership
Speaker 1: is twenty four dollars. And for that you get all
Speaker 1: of these hundreds and hundreds of pos plus archives going
Speaker 1: back eight years. UM. So I don't keep any of
Speaker 1: the money myself, and not a penny goes to operating expenses. UM.
Speaker 1: And so all of the money goes directly into charities.
Speaker 1: We have raised about nine or fifty thousand dollars over
Speaker 1: the years, and that amount is going up. It looks
Speaker 1: like this year we're hoping we're gonna hit two hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars just for this year. UH, from people joining
Speaker 1: the blow and so we also have there's an option
Speaker 1: of like if you just want a one month membership
Speaker 1: for less or try it for three months, you can
Speaker 1: do that. But just go to the Barberman blog and
Speaker 1: check it out and uh and you'll see all the
Speaker 1: money the charities all go to. Actually, they all go
Speaker 1: to things dealing right now with the crisis of mainly
Speaker 1: charities dealing with hunger and homelessness, both UH locally and
Speaker 1: UH internationally. So I support five five charities and all
Speaker 1: the money goes out to them. Bart, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: It's been a real pleasure. Yeah, it's been great. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much. All Right, So that does it. But
Speaker 1: thanks again to Bart for for sharing his expertise with us.
Speaker 1: I really had fun talking to him. Uh. And at
Speaker 1: the end there, I just want to remind you yet again,
Speaker 1: Bart mentioned his blog. If you're interested in this sort
Speaker 1: of subject matter, his blog is a great place to
Speaker 1: go deep. Plus, as Bart mentioned, every penny of the
Speaker 1: subscription money goes to great causes, so you can check
Speaker 1: that out at ermine blog dot org. And Ermine is
Speaker 1: spelled e h r m a n, so that's e
Speaker 1: h r m a n blog dot org. And again.
Speaker 1: The book is Heaven and Hell History of the Afterlife
Speaker 1: by Bart Ermine. In the meantime, if you like to
Speaker 1: check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: you can find us wherever you get your podcasts and
Speaker 1: wherever that happens to be. Just make sure that you rate, review,
Speaker 1: and subscribe. That really helps the show out huge things.
Speaker 1: As always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to blow
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