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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And

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Speaker 1: this week we are going to be featuring a couple

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Speaker 1: of interviews that I recorded last week. Because last week, Robert,

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Speaker 1: you were out of quote the office. You were at

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Speaker 1: least you were off work for a bit, and uh so,

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Speaker 1: so I recorded conversations with authors of some books, one

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Speaker 1: book that's already out this year, in one book that's

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Speaker 1: coming up. So on Thursday of this week, we're going

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Speaker 1: to be airing a conversation that I had with the

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Speaker 1: author of a fascinating upcoming book about the evolutionary biology

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Speaker 1: of cancer. But today we're going to be exploring a

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: of religious ideas through ancient history. And I think I've

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Speaker 1: outed myself on this podcast before as a kind of

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Speaker 1: non religious person who loves the Bible. Like you know,

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Speaker 1: I love to read ancient religious texts and learn about

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Speaker 1: them and see how the ideas from the ancient world

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Speaker 1: have sort of filtered through to us today and and

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: the strange thing is that like The historical conclusions that

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Speaker 1: Bart's going to talk about in this episode are not

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: especially in the United States, are going to find it

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Speaker 1: very surprising. Yeah. Absolutely. And I want to stress something

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Speaker 1: here for everybody. So I I just got back, uh

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Speaker 1: to work this morning, and I plugged into like a

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Speaker 1: pre production um cut of this interview, and it's really

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Speaker 1: it's really excellent. So if you're even slightly scared away

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Speaker 1: by the idea of an interview with a secular biblical scholar, uh,

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Speaker 1: don't be because because Bart is is tremendous. He's he's funny, uh,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: centuries um. Anyway, So, he is a Distinguished Professor of

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: of remote recording in the age of COVID nineteen. So,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: the sounds of hell. Right, not audio recordings of the

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

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Speaker 1: The well to Hell was not unleashed in Bright's office.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: plan it this way. I'm also currently in the middle

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

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Speaker 1: are reading it together. And of course The Divine Comedy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: religious texts, do you find yourself encountering this kind of

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: very seriously UH contrasts between uh Dante and his early

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

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Speaker 1: I look at basically from the second century up to

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Speaker 1: maybe the fifth Christian century, so a very long time

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Speaker 1: before Dante. But the main contrast is, uh, most of

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Speaker 1: the authors of these works were not geniuses, and the

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Speaker 1: works the works are they are. They can be very

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Speaker 1: graphic in their descriptions, especially of Hell. Um uh there

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Speaker 1: they are less uh, they're less attendant to what's going

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Speaker 1: on in heaven, and so it's not like Dante, where

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Speaker 1: you get basically equal coverage between Heaven, purgatory, and Hell.

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Speaker 1: But you know, the ancient people are for some reason

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Speaker 1: more interested in the torments of Hell. And my guess

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Speaker 1: is that it's because it was easier to describe. Uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, if you're trying to describe eternal bliss and

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Speaker 1: everybody is like equally happy forever, you know what more,

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Speaker 1: what are you say? You just got to talk about

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Speaker 1: their bliss for a little while. Then there's whereas if

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Speaker 1: you want to talk about eternal torment, well, you know,

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

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Speaker 1: you can let your your creative juices flow, and so

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Speaker 1: that's what these ancient authors do. So there's nothing at

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Speaker 1: the level of a Dante in these sources, but they

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Speaker 1: are very interesting, many in many ways more interesting of

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Speaker 1: course for understanding how Christianity developed than Dante's coming after,

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Speaker 1: you know, centers and centuries of development. Well to ground

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Speaker 1: the discussion, maybe it would help to look at a

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Speaker 1: specific example. Could you talk for a second about some

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Speaker 1: of the specifics of say, the apocaly lips of Peter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um,

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Speaker 1: the the earliest one we have with these, uh, these

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

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

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Speaker 1: there was an Apocalypse of Peter, because it almost made

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: until it turned turned up in seven. When it turned

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Speaker 1: up caused a big fere uproar. I mean, because oh

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Speaker 1: my god, this is like, this is a guided tour. Peter,

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

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Speaker 1: tour of heaven help by Jesus himself. And so it's

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Speaker 1: a terrific text. I mean, it describes, as I was saying,

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Speaker 1: in in fairly brief order, uh, the heaven, which is

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: a nice summer breeze blowing through the whole time. So

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Speaker 1: it's great, it's great. But then he sees the torments

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Speaker 1: in hell, and uh, they are nasty and uh. And

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Speaker 1: the interesting thing in this case is that many of

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Speaker 1: the punishments match the crimes. And so if somebody is,

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Speaker 1: say a habitual blasphemur that they blasphemed God, well they're

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Speaker 1: they're sending Oregon is their mouth, and so they are.

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Speaker 1: These are hanged by their tongues over eternal flames. Women

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Speaker 1: who have braided their hair to make themselves more attractive

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Speaker 1: so they can seduce men are hanged by their hair

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Speaker 1: over eternal flames. Uh. The men they seduced are hanged

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Speaker 1: by their genitals over neural flames. And they cry out,

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Speaker 1: we didn't know it would come to this, and so

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Speaker 1: so it kind of goes on. And unlike Dante, which

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Speaker 1: is a very sophisticated number of political and religious points,

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Speaker 1: the point here is pretty clear. There are a bunch

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Speaker 1: of things you better or not do and yeah, if

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Speaker 1: you do, you're a big trouble. So like, just don't

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Speaker 1: do it. So basically the basically I don't say it.

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Speaker 1: And so it's it's fairly fairly elementary, both theologically and politically.

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Speaker 1: So already by this later, did you say the Apocalypse

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Speaker 1: of Peter is probably a second century work? Yeah, so

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

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

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Speaker 1: the early part of the second century. So maybe just

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: Christians would call the Old Testament. And they are not

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: The the the Old the Christian Old Testament, Uh, does

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Speaker 1: not talk anywhere about souls dying and going to people

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: then the question is, well, then where to come from,

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: most of whom believe in this, and they just assume

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

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

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Speaker 1: belief in heaven and Hell basically along the lines I

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

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

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Speaker 1: characteristic belief when they conceive of their own faith. Oh yeah, no, absolutely,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: gunning home about it and That's part of what really

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: shouldn't believe them because they think they're in the Bible.

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Speaker 1: That that is, because they're not, as you said, maybe

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Speaker 1: like in one little passage like stucked away in the Gospel. Look,

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Speaker 1: but I mean, but basically they're not there. They these

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Speaker 1: authors had a different view, and it's worth knowing what

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Speaker 1: these different views were because you simply shouldn't assume this

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Speaker 1: is the standard view and always has been among Christians. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it's um, it's remarkable how difficult these beliefs are

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Speaker 1: to shake, even if you rationally know otherwise. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I I personally, I grew up in East Tennessee surrounded

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Speaker 1: by a lot of fundamentalist Christianity, and when I think

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Speaker 1: about the way I conceive of Hell, I don't rationally

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Speaker 1: believe in in a hell anymore. But I my mind

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Speaker 1: sort of as a mansion where there's a room in

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Speaker 1: the back, and occasionally the door opens and that belief

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Speaker 1: just gets out and walks around. And I don't know

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Speaker 1: when that's going to happen. Do you find the same thing,

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Speaker 1: Does it sometimes just come out without seemingly unbidden? Not

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Speaker 1: as much now as it did. You know, when I left,

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Speaker 1: when I left the faith many years ago now twenty

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Speaker 1: five years ago or whatever, a long time ago. When

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Speaker 1: I left Christianity for a long time, one of the

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Speaker 1: things that's holding me back to begin with. Before I

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Speaker 1: left was the fear of hell. You know, I thinking,

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

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Speaker 1: really think that people are gonna be punished after death

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Speaker 1: by God. But now I'm doubting my faith. And if

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Speaker 1: I leave my faith, what if I was right in

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Speaker 1: the first place and now you know it took took

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Speaker 1: the wrong term, then I'm screwed me. It's like this

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Speaker 1: is not gonna be good. Uh. And so but then

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Speaker 1: when I did leave the faith, I just I became

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Speaker 1: convinced that God is not going to be torturing people

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Speaker 1: for trillions of years because they messed up for twenty

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Speaker 1: or they didn't believe exactly the right thing. I just

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Speaker 1: said just this implausible. And so over time what I

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Speaker 1: did is I ended up becoming more of a rationalist

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Speaker 1: and I became more of a materialist. And so you know,

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Speaker 1: I'm a complete materialist now a naturalist. I mean, I

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Speaker 1: just you know, I don't I don't think there is

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Speaker 1: some kind of other realm Uh. This is it. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And I don't think there's some of the life. This

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Speaker 1: is it. And for me, um, maybe because I'm such

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Speaker 1: a rationalist that uh, the thought that's really keep in

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Speaker 1: my head too much anymore, that yeah, actually you know

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

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Speaker 1: I'm sure a lot of people are still reeling from

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Speaker 1: the surprise of of you saying that that, in fact,

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Speaker 1: the Hebrew Bible doesn't teach heaven and hell and that

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Speaker 1: this was not the teaching of historical Jesus. That there

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: kind of dualism to to to fundamental components dualism um.

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Speaker 1: Ancient Hebrews were not dualistic, and they're thinking about the human.

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: He makes Adam out of the dirt. And so there's

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: living on after death. They there are places, um where uh,

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: that everybody goes to when they die. They die and

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

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

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Speaker 1: not what sheol means. Um. The worst shield itself is

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

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Speaker 1: sometimes mess us up. And so often when English Bible

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Speaker 1: translators will come across the worst shield, which occurs about

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Speaker 1: sixty times in the Old It's not very common, but

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Speaker 1: they'll translate it as hell. But what are you supposed

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Speaker 1: to read? He was supposed to think when you read, yeah,

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Speaker 1: you know, God saved me from Hell, or I don't

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Speaker 1: want to go to Hell. But what it's it actually

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Speaker 1: doesn't say hell. It says she all, and she all

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Speaker 1: is not hell hell. What we think it was Hell

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Speaker 1: is where your soul goes to get punished. But that's

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Speaker 1: not found in Hebrew thought. And so when I showed

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Speaker 1: my my book is that when when shield gets used

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Speaker 1: in the Hebrew Bible, it is almost always set um

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Speaker 1: as the synonym for grave or pit or the place

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Speaker 1: your body is placed um when it dies. And so

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Speaker 1: it looks like she all is simply where your remains are.

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

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Speaker 1: no place in the Bible, in the Old Testament where

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Speaker 1: there's a place that you go either for rewards or punishment.

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Speaker 1: You just die. And that's why that's why the Hebrew authors,

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Speaker 1: like in the Psalms, are so afraid of death, because

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Speaker 1: they're not gonna have life anymore. There's not gonna be anything,

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Speaker 1: They're not going to be able to enjoy anything. There'll

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Speaker 1: be no physical pleasure. Um. They won't even be able

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

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Speaker 1: remember them. He won't remember them because they won't exist,

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Speaker 1: and so they won't even think about them. And so

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Speaker 1: that's the situation with the Hebrew Bible, that people are

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Speaker 1: made up of body and soul. When they die, their

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Speaker 1: life is over and they get deposited somewhere and they

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Speaker 1: want to get to They want to have a nice burial,

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Speaker 1: because everybody does. But I mean they are gonna be

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Speaker 1: around to enjoy it, they'll be dead. Yeah, I think

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Speaker 1: that view is extremely clear in books, say like Ecclesiastes Um.

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Speaker 1: I wonder though about people might be thinking about what

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Speaker 1: about a passage like the Witch of Indoor story? Well,

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Speaker 1: maybe can you talk for a moment about that story

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Speaker 1: and how you would interpret that. Yeah, No, this is

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Speaker 1: good because it's exactly the passage people are gonna be

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Speaker 1: thinking of. And you get passages in the New Testament

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Speaker 1: people are gonna be thinking of, and so obviously I

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Speaker 1: have to talk about all these passages in my book.

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Speaker 1: And I should stress that when I talk about these passages,

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Speaker 1: I'm not coming up with some kind of creative, like

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Speaker 1: weird new interpretation of these passages. The kinds of stuff

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Speaker 1: I talked about in my book are things that biblical

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Speaker 1: scholars have known for a very long time. This is

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

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Speaker 1: to biblical scholars or good reasons, and so they don't know.

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Speaker 1: But I mean, so I'm not I'm not saying anything

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Speaker 1: unusual at all here for a biblical story. They would

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Speaker 1: just all say, yeah, well, of course, um. So the

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

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Speaker 1: Book of First Samuel Um for Samuel's one of the

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: getting in trouble and always messing up and doing things wrong,

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Speaker 1: and God's always ticked off at him, and so and so.

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Speaker 1: But Samuel dies and Saul gets himself into another mess.

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Speaker 1: The the the opposing uh, the country next door. The the

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Speaker 1: Philistines are out to attack the Israelite armies and they're

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Speaker 1: surrounded and Saul doesn't know what to do, and his

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Speaker 1: adviser is dead, and and so he decides he's going

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Speaker 1: to get a medium like a It's called the Witch

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Speaker 1: of Endor, but it's more like she performs necromancy. She

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Speaker 1: raises his soul from the dead, uh, in order to

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Speaker 1: ask what's going on. And so he commissions this woman

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Speaker 1: who's afraid to do it because he comes to her

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Speaker 1: in disguise because he himself, the king has passed a

429
00:22:33,240 --> 00:22:35,439
Speaker 1: law against doing this kind of thing. You can't do

430
00:22:35,480 --> 00:22:38,000
Speaker 1: this and so so, but she's a medium and she's

431
00:22:38,040 --> 00:22:40,159
Speaker 1: gonna do it because and he she doesn't know his

432
00:22:40,320 --> 00:22:43,800
Speaker 1: him and anyway, so it's great and it's a fantastic, fantastic,

433
00:22:44,160 --> 00:22:47,920
Speaker 1: but she can. He convinces her she uh to raise

434
00:22:48,000 --> 00:22:50,400
Speaker 1: Samuel from the dead so Saul will be instructured about

435
00:22:50,440 --> 00:22:53,800
Speaker 1: what to do about this war. Uh. And and Samuel

436
00:22:53,840 --> 00:22:55,600
Speaker 1: comes up out of the dead and he's and he's

437
00:22:55,640 --> 00:23:00,399
Speaker 1: angry because Saul's brought him back uh. And he tells Saul,

438
00:23:01,160 --> 00:23:03,520
Speaker 1: you know, you've just disobeyed God one too many times

439
00:23:03,520 --> 00:23:05,320
Speaker 1: and so yes, there is gonna be a battle tomorrow

440
00:23:05,560 --> 00:23:08,920
Speaker 1: and by the way, tomorrow you'll be down here too.

441
00:23:10,720 --> 00:23:13,280
Speaker 1: So okay, so it's not good this and it's exactly

442
00:23:13,280 --> 00:23:15,240
Speaker 1: what happens, okay, Well, is the last sounds like a

443
00:23:15,320 --> 00:23:18,600
Speaker 1: soul is alive after death, and it's down someplace and

444
00:23:18,680 --> 00:23:20,800
Speaker 1: it comes back. It can go back and forth. And

445
00:23:20,960 --> 00:23:23,600
Speaker 1: it sure sounds like that, doesn't it. Yes, it does,

446
00:23:23,840 --> 00:23:27,120
Speaker 1: It absolutely does until you start looking at it more closely.

447
00:23:27,920 --> 00:23:34,080
Speaker 1: This passage never says that Samuel was in Shiel or

448
00:23:34,119 --> 00:23:38,960
Speaker 1: in Hades, or in Hell or in Gehenna or anywhere else.

449
00:23:39,520 --> 00:23:42,920
Speaker 1: He comes up, But why would a body, Why would

450
00:23:42,920 --> 00:23:46,159
Speaker 1: somebody come up? They come up because they're buried in

451
00:23:46,160 --> 00:23:50,040
Speaker 1: the ground. He comes up as a body, not as

452
00:23:50,080 --> 00:23:53,000
Speaker 1: a spirit. The wayt. Saul recognizes him is he's wearing

453
00:23:53,000 --> 00:23:57,320
Speaker 1: Samuel's clothes and so this isn't like, this isn't a ghost,

454
00:23:57,680 --> 00:24:01,399
Speaker 1: this is this is like sam and and Samuel when

455
00:24:01,400 --> 00:24:03,280
Speaker 1: he's upset, he doesn't say something like, you know, I

456
00:24:03,280 --> 00:24:05,119
Speaker 1: guys have such a great time up there in heaven

457
00:24:05,160 --> 00:24:07,120
Speaker 1: and now you bring me back. What are you doing?

458
00:24:07,560 --> 00:24:10,040
Speaker 1: He we don't know why his angry, you know, was

459
00:24:10,080 --> 00:24:12,880
Speaker 1: he enjoying a good sleep? We don't. But he doesn't

460
00:24:12,880 --> 00:24:16,000
Speaker 1: say anything about being with anyone else. He just this

461
00:24:16,200 --> 00:24:18,640
Speaker 1: is not something you're supposed to do. You're the kid,

462
00:24:18,760 --> 00:24:20,520
Speaker 1: and you know this, and you passed this. You can't

463
00:24:20,520 --> 00:24:23,200
Speaker 1: do this. And so God's really ticked off because God

464
00:24:23,240 --> 00:24:27,120
Speaker 1: told you not to do this, and so um uh.

465
00:24:27,160 --> 00:24:30,719
Speaker 1: And so it is not his um. It is not

466
00:24:30,880 --> 00:24:33,680
Speaker 1: a soul separated from the body that comes back. Samuel

467
00:24:33,720 --> 00:24:38,159
Speaker 1: actually comes back in bodily form fully clothed as an

468
00:24:38,160 --> 00:24:42,919
Speaker 1: old man and uh. And he has there's nothing to

469
00:24:42,920 --> 00:24:45,199
Speaker 1: indicate that he's been either in a place of torment

470
00:24:45,320 --> 00:24:48,400
Speaker 1: or in a place of reward, and so he Previble

471
00:24:48,480 --> 00:24:51,080
Speaker 1: scholars don't look on this as an instance of which somebody,

472
00:24:51,119 --> 00:24:52,919
Speaker 1: you know, showing that when you die, your soul goes

473
00:24:52,920 --> 00:24:55,000
Speaker 1: to one place or another. It's the only place, by

474
00:24:55,000 --> 00:24:58,000
Speaker 1: the way, where um in the Hebrew Bible, where that

475
00:24:58,080 --> 00:25:02,920
Speaker 1: kind of necromancy uh is performed. But we do know

476
00:25:03,320 --> 00:25:05,840
Speaker 1: that some a lot of Israelite thought it could be

477
00:25:05,880 --> 00:25:07,800
Speaker 1: performed because there are all these laws against it in

478
00:25:07,840 --> 00:25:10,520
Speaker 1: the Bible. Don't don't make a bunch of laws. And

479
00:25:10,560 --> 00:25:12,920
Speaker 1: the people are doing something, and so they at least

480
00:25:12,920 --> 00:25:16,160
Speaker 1: think their seance is going on, and you know, something's happening,

481
00:25:16,200 --> 00:25:18,359
Speaker 1: but you know what it was they were thinking is

482
00:25:18,400 --> 00:25:20,480
Speaker 1: are to know? This is kind of a tangent. But

483
00:25:20,560 --> 00:25:23,960
Speaker 1: that does make me wonder about this. So it's it's

484
00:25:23,960 --> 00:25:27,240
Speaker 1: an example of this belief in the persecution of witchcraft

485
00:25:27,359 --> 00:25:32,119
Speaker 1: or necromancy. Why do you think it is that monotheistic

486
00:25:32,119 --> 00:25:36,639
Speaker 1: religions like Judaism Christianity would have been so opposed to

487
00:25:36,760 --> 00:25:41,800
Speaker 1: people independently practicing magic or consulting the dead. Uh. In fact,

488
00:25:41,880 --> 00:25:44,359
Speaker 1: I believe correct me if I'm wrong. But this is

489
00:25:44,400 --> 00:25:46,359
Speaker 1: also sort of one of the horrors of the Book

490
00:25:46,359 --> 00:25:49,400
Speaker 1: of first Enoch, right, where these evil heavenly creatures come

491
00:25:49,440 --> 00:25:53,040
Speaker 1: down and they teach human women how to do magic spells.

492
00:25:53,160 --> 00:25:56,240
Speaker 1: Is that right? Yeah, they don't mention necromacy there, but

493
00:25:56,280 --> 00:25:59,560
Speaker 1: they do they do teach humans all sorts of practical

494
00:25:59,640 --> 00:26:03,199
Speaker 1: things God doesn't like, and so that's kind of that's

495
00:26:03,280 --> 00:26:05,040
Speaker 1: kind of what's going on with this necromancy thing. When

496
00:26:05,040 --> 00:26:08,320
Speaker 1: you're raising somebody up in a seance or or however,

497
00:26:08,400 --> 00:26:12,320
Speaker 1: you're doing it through magical rights. Um, the ancient thought

498
00:26:12,560 --> 00:26:16,359
Speaker 1: was that this person, Um, it's it's not that the

499
00:26:16,440 --> 00:26:19,159
Speaker 1: person's soul is living on is the person is temporarily

500
00:26:19,160 --> 00:26:21,080
Speaker 1: come back to life again. Their soul has come back

501
00:26:21,119 --> 00:26:25,320
Speaker 1: into their body, and because they have died and they've

502
00:26:25,359 --> 00:26:28,119
Speaker 1: come back from the dead, they have these kind of powers.

503
00:26:28,800 --> 00:26:32,840
Speaker 1: And in monotheistic religion, there's only supposed to be one

504
00:26:32,920 --> 00:26:37,000
Speaker 1: superhuman power, and that's God, and so these other powers

505
00:26:37,080 --> 00:26:42,399
Speaker 1: are threatening, and people usually turned to uh necromancy and

506
00:26:42,480 --> 00:26:46,440
Speaker 1: other forms of magic precisely because the established religion wasn't

507
00:26:46,480 --> 00:26:49,160
Speaker 1: working too well for them. Uh And so they weren't

508
00:26:49,280 --> 00:26:51,280
Speaker 1: they weren't learning what they needed to learn, they weren't

509
00:26:51,320 --> 00:26:53,080
Speaker 1: getting what they needed to get. They weren't, you know,

510
00:26:53,119 --> 00:26:55,639
Speaker 1: it just wasn't and so they try an alternative means.

511
00:26:56,200 --> 00:26:59,480
Speaker 1: And in these monotheistic religions, God is a jealous God

512
00:27:00,040 --> 00:27:01,800
Speaker 1: and he doesn't like it when you go to some

513
00:27:01,840 --> 00:27:04,480
Speaker 1: other divine force. And so that that's why it's like

514
00:27:04,480 --> 00:27:07,679
Speaker 1: a form of cheating almost, well it's a form of cheating.

515
00:27:07,720 --> 00:27:10,040
Speaker 1: It's like, um, you know, you go to your you

516
00:27:10,080 --> 00:27:12,159
Speaker 1: go to your priest for advice, and then you go

517
00:27:12,240 --> 00:27:15,439
Speaker 1: home and pull out your ouiji board. I mean, look like,

518
00:27:15,480 --> 00:27:18,400
Speaker 1: just to what I said, don't pull out your weigi board? Right?

519
00:27:19,400 --> 00:27:21,760
Speaker 1: Do people to use weigi boards? Anybody don't. Even when

520
00:27:21,760 --> 00:27:24,200
Speaker 1: I was a kid, we use weigi boards. Oh yeah,

521
00:27:24,920 --> 00:27:28,320
Speaker 1: always great, okay, okay, okay. So so that's the view

522
00:27:28,520 --> 00:27:32,240
Speaker 1: of of the ancient Jews. They would have mostly believed

523
00:27:32,240 --> 00:27:34,600
Speaker 1: and of course we should acknowledge that whenever we're talking

524
00:27:34,640 --> 00:27:37,399
Speaker 1: about views and describing them to groups of people, there

525
00:27:37,440 --> 00:27:39,879
Speaker 1: was probably some diversity, but we're talking about like the

526
00:27:39,920 --> 00:27:43,200
Speaker 1: dominant views that are represented in the record, right. Well,

527
00:27:43,240 --> 00:27:45,480
Speaker 1: it's it's a very important point because in my book

528
00:27:45,480 --> 00:27:47,679
Speaker 1: I try to show there are in fact different views

529
00:27:48,080 --> 00:27:51,240
Speaker 1: in the Hebrew Bible itself. I mean, you mentioned Ecclesiastes,

530
00:27:51,640 --> 00:27:53,480
Speaker 1: and you know, the Book of Daniel has a very

531
00:27:53,480 --> 00:27:56,240
Speaker 1: different kind of view, and so there there are varieties.

532
00:27:56,480 --> 00:27:58,800
Speaker 1: The one variety you don't find in the Hebrew Bible

533
00:27:58,880 --> 00:28:00,200
Speaker 1: is that you die in your soul goes to having

534
00:28:00,200 --> 00:28:04,040
Speaker 1: our health. Right. Um, so then what about the uh

535
00:28:04,240 --> 00:28:07,200
Speaker 1: to turn away from ancient Judaism. What about the influence

536
00:28:07,200 --> 00:28:10,439
Speaker 1: of Greek philosophy and like the ideas of Socrates and Plato,

537
00:28:11,040 --> 00:28:13,399
Speaker 1: uh and and how those came through in the pagan

538
00:28:13,440 --> 00:28:17,640
Speaker 1: beliefs of the Roman Empire. Yeah, it's very important, far

539
00:28:17,720 --> 00:28:21,120
Speaker 1: more important than most people realize. In the earliest Greek

540
00:28:21,160 --> 00:28:24,359
Speaker 1: records we have, they come our earliest records come from Homer,

541
00:28:24,880 --> 00:28:28,800
Speaker 1: from the Iliot in the Odyssey, and uh they're the

542
00:28:28,840 --> 00:28:33,320
Speaker 1: earliest foreigner Dante in the Western tradition. So Gilgamash is

543
00:28:33,359 --> 00:28:36,359
Speaker 1: in the ancient areas, but in the Western tradition, the

544
00:28:36,400 --> 00:28:40,760
Speaker 1: earliest foreign Dante is a Homer Odyssey. The Odyssey book

545
00:28:40,800 --> 00:28:44,040
Speaker 1: eleven is that Dyssey is going into the underworld uh

546
00:28:44,040 --> 00:28:47,680
Speaker 1: and uh and visiting people there, including his mother and

547
00:28:47,840 --> 00:28:51,120
Speaker 1: his former colleagues in the in the Drojan War, and

548
00:28:51,120 --> 00:28:53,240
Speaker 1: and he meets all these people and and the point

549
00:28:53,240 --> 00:28:55,320
Speaker 1: of this description is to show what it's like down there,

550
00:28:55,320 --> 00:28:57,920
Speaker 1: and it's not good. It's not good for anybody, because

551
00:28:57,920 --> 00:29:00,560
Speaker 1: everybody is just down there the same they've got they're

552
00:29:00,600 --> 00:29:03,120
Speaker 1: like they're shadows. They're called shadows. They're not even people

553
00:29:03,120 --> 00:29:05,720
Speaker 1: anywhere there, but they're kind of shadows of people. And

554
00:29:05,720 --> 00:29:08,080
Speaker 1: they've got no strength and no power, no mind, they

555
00:29:08,120 --> 00:29:10,320
Speaker 1: can't think, they can't remember, it's like they can't talk.

556
00:29:10,360 --> 00:29:13,840
Speaker 1: It's like they just it's awful forever. Uh. By the

557
00:29:13,880 --> 00:29:16,000
Speaker 1: time you get to Plato about four hundred years later,

558
00:29:16,040 --> 00:29:19,120
Speaker 1: so Plato is riding at the early fourth century b c.

559
00:29:19,360 --> 00:29:24,200
Speaker 1: E Um, so you know, four years before Jesus ministry Plato.

560
00:29:24,440 --> 00:29:26,920
Speaker 1: By the time of Plato, Greeks has started thinking that

561
00:29:27,320 --> 00:29:30,320
Speaker 1: this idea that like everybody goes to Hades and it's

562
00:29:30,360 --> 00:29:33,000
Speaker 1: the same and it's boring for eternity, and there's no,

563
00:29:33,520 --> 00:29:36,600
Speaker 1: that's not right. I mean, how can I you mean

564
00:29:36,840 --> 00:29:42,360
Speaker 1: that somebody who is a valiant warrior, who is upright

565
00:29:42,520 --> 00:29:46,440
Speaker 1: and who always does the good thing and helps other people. Uh,

566
00:29:46,480 --> 00:29:49,520
Speaker 1: he dies and like that's it. He doesn't get any reward.

567
00:29:50,240 --> 00:29:53,640
Speaker 1: And there's some schmuck over here like this tyrant who

568
00:29:53,800 --> 00:29:56,760
Speaker 1: oppresses people and just cares about his own self and

569
00:29:56,880 --> 00:30:00,840
Speaker 1: getting massively rich and powerful and doesn't care who he

570
00:30:00,920 --> 00:30:03,239
Speaker 1: hurts in the process. He dies, and he's not going

571
00:30:03,320 --> 00:30:06,320
Speaker 1: to get punished. No, that can't be. How it is

572
00:30:06,760 --> 00:30:09,720
Speaker 1: as though Greeks came up with this idea that in fact,

573
00:30:09,800 --> 00:30:13,760
Speaker 1: after death there are rewards and punishments. Um. We don't

574
00:30:13,760 --> 00:30:15,560
Speaker 1: know if other people at the same time came up

575
00:30:15,600 --> 00:30:17,400
Speaker 1: with this idea, but we find it most firmly in

576
00:30:17,400 --> 00:30:20,520
Speaker 1: the Greeks, especially in Plato, who devoted a lot of

577
00:30:20,560 --> 00:30:23,360
Speaker 1: time in his dialogue and her surviving dialogues to show

578
00:30:23,880 --> 00:30:26,680
Speaker 1: that the soul and the body are two different things,

579
00:30:27,520 --> 00:30:30,640
Speaker 1: and that the mistake people make in life is catering

580
00:30:30,720 --> 00:30:34,320
Speaker 1: to their body when the important thing is their soul.

581
00:30:35,280 --> 00:30:39,880
Speaker 1: And so Plato was pushing for philosophy the love of knowledge.

582
00:30:39,880 --> 00:30:44,560
Speaker 1: That's what philosophy means, the love of wisdom, because he

583
00:30:44,600 --> 00:30:46,840
Speaker 1: thought we needed to attend to the needs of our

584
00:30:46,880 --> 00:30:51,640
Speaker 1: inner selves, especially our minds and our mental states, and

585
00:30:51,720 --> 00:30:54,920
Speaker 1: our values and our views of what's right and wrong

586
00:30:55,040 --> 00:30:57,440
Speaker 1: and our ethics and how we live, and those are

587
00:30:57,440 --> 00:30:59,800
Speaker 1: the things we should be concerned about, not like, you know,

588
00:31:00,000 --> 00:31:02,640
Speaker 1: getting drunk all the time and having parties and having

589
00:31:02,680 --> 00:31:05,880
Speaker 1: sex randomly. He's like, players say, no, that's just caging

590
00:31:05,920 --> 00:31:07,880
Speaker 1: to your body. And the problem is if you if

591
00:31:07,880 --> 00:31:11,280
Speaker 1: you're giving your body's pleasures, then you're gonna not pay

592
00:31:11,280 --> 00:31:14,320
Speaker 1: any attention to your soul. And when you die, your

593
00:31:14,320 --> 00:31:16,440
Speaker 1: soul is gonna live on, but your body's gonna die.

594
00:31:16,880 --> 00:31:18,800
Speaker 1: And so you don't even to make sure your soul

595
00:31:18,880 --> 00:31:21,040
Speaker 1: is doing well when it dies, or it's gonna be

596
00:31:21,160 --> 00:31:24,960
Speaker 1: bad news. And so Plato Plato tells these myths of

597
00:31:25,080 --> 00:31:27,920
Speaker 1: the afterlive. He calls the myths. I don't think he

598
00:31:27,920 --> 00:31:30,240
Speaker 1: means them literally, but he tells these kind of stories

599
00:31:30,240 --> 00:31:32,520
Speaker 1: of people who die and they check out what it's

600
00:31:32,560 --> 00:31:36,800
Speaker 1: like afterwards, and those who tend to their soul have

601
00:31:37,160 --> 00:31:42,080
Speaker 1: very good afterlives, and those who are just you know licentious,

602
00:31:42,560 --> 00:31:47,080
Speaker 1: ty rental bastards. They you know, they're tortured forever, and

603
00:31:47,120 --> 00:31:50,600
Speaker 1: so you get rewards and punishments, and so Plato um

604
00:31:50,640 --> 00:31:53,320
Speaker 1: Plato popularized this idea. It's not clear that he invented it,

605
00:31:54,080 --> 00:31:56,600
Speaker 1: but it's found in a number of places in his dialogues,

606
00:31:56,720 --> 00:32:01,160
Speaker 1: especially say in in Uh the Fate and in the Republic,

607
00:32:01,720 --> 00:32:05,920
Speaker 1: And it ended up becoming hugely significant understanding of things

608
00:32:05,960 --> 00:32:08,200
Speaker 1: for the history of the development of heaven and hell.

609
00:32:08,640 --> 00:32:11,280
Speaker 1: So there's a curious fact from your book that caught

610
00:32:11,280 --> 00:32:14,840
Speaker 1: my attention, which is that you mentioned several times how

611
00:32:14,880 --> 00:32:20,440
Speaker 1: for many ancient people, the worst fade imaginable was to

612
00:32:20,680 --> 00:32:24,040
Speaker 1: be denied a decent burial. Uh. And in a minute,

613
00:32:24,080 --> 00:32:25,800
Speaker 1: when we talk about the beliefs of Jesus, we can

614
00:32:25,840 --> 00:32:28,640
Speaker 1: talk about the meaning of Gehenna, this word that sometimes

615
00:32:28,680 --> 00:32:32,280
Speaker 1: translated as hell in the New Testament. But before that,

616
00:32:32,320 --> 00:32:35,400
Speaker 1: could you just help us understand this mindset of like,

617
00:32:35,600 --> 00:32:37,800
Speaker 1: what what was it like and what were the causes

618
00:32:38,040 --> 00:32:42,200
Speaker 1: of the mindset where you're obsessed with uh, not having

619
00:32:42,320 --> 00:32:46,120
Speaker 1: a you know, a profane, disrespected burial. And I know

620
00:32:46,160 --> 00:32:49,280
Speaker 1: this this shows up in lots of folk tales beyond

621
00:32:49,280 --> 00:32:51,920
Speaker 1: just the Bible, like the grateful dead folk motif, where

622
00:32:51,920 --> 00:32:55,360
Speaker 1: you know, uh, you know, a person on a journey

623
00:32:55,360 --> 00:32:58,040
Speaker 1: comes across a corpse that's being denied a decent burial,

624
00:32:58,080 --> 00:33:00,440
Speaker 1: and then pay the hero pays for the corpse to

625
00:33:00,480 --> 00:33:03,360
Speaker 1: get a decent burial, and then later that spirit comes

626
00:33:03,400 --> 00:33:05,840
Speaker 1: back to help the hero in disguise. In some way.

627
00:33:05,880 --> 00:33:09,200
Speaker 1: I think this occurs in the Book of Tobit. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.

628
00:33:09,280 --> 00:33:11,880
Speaker 1: In some ways it seems strange to the modern mentality,

629
00:33:12,080 --> 00:33:14,800
Speaker 1: but in other ways it doesn't. But let me just

630
00:33:14,840 --> 00:33:18,000
Speaker 1: state what you just said, and stated emphatically. In most

631
00:33:18,000 --> 00:33:20,840
Speaker 1: cultures we know about, least in the Western world, Uh,

632
00:33:21,040 --> 00:33:25,320
Speaker 1: not getting a decent burial was a horrible fate and

633
00:33:25,480 --> 00:33:29,320
Speaker 1: people really were afraid of it because not that not

634
00:33:29,360 --> 00:33:31,040
Speaker 1: that they're going to suffer in health or it or anything.

635
00:33:31,040 --> 00:33:33,600
Speaker 1: It's just like there's something about getting a decent burial

636
00:33:33,640 --> 00:33:36,960
Speaker 1: that closure to life. And if you don't have closure

637
00:33:37,000 --> 00:33:39,560
Speaker 1: to life, it's like your life it just didn't end

638
00:33:39,680 --> 00:33:42,320
Speaker 1: up well. Um. And you find this, you find it

639
00:33:42,360 --> 00:33:45,200
Speaker 1: in the Hebrew Bible. Uh, you certainly find it in

640
00:33:45,320 --> 00:33:49,080
Speaker 1: Greek understandings of things. You find it in Roman ideas.

641
00:33:49,120 --> 00:33:51,920
Speaker 1: I mean it's just let's all throughout and in Judaism,

642
00:33:52,000 --> 00:33:56,440
Speaker 1: and it's in Christianity. The modern analogy, I guess is

643
00:33:56,840 --> 00:33:58,720
Speaker 1: people don't think about that so much because just about

644
00:33:58,720 --> 00:34:00,920
Speaker 1: everybody gets a decent burial, though, you know, some people

645
00:34:00,920 --> 00:34:02,360
Speaker 1: don't want to die at sea and kind of be

646
00:34:02,400 --> 00:34:04,080
Speaker 1: thrown in there and me eating my fish, I mean,

647
00:34:04,080 --> 00:34:05,800
Speaker 1: because you know, you know, yeah, I don't like that,

648
00:34:06,080 --> 00:34:08,480
Speaker 1: or some people don't like the idea of of um

649
00:34:09,239 --> 00:34:11,160
Speaker 1: uh you know, of how they're going to be buried

650
00:34:11,280 --> 00:34:13,680
Speaker 1: or where they're gonna be buried, or you know they

651
00:34:13,920 --> 00:34:16,120
Speaker 1: you know, no, I don't want to be creamingd No,

652
00:34:16,520 --> 00:34:19,239
Speaker 1: that's spooky, you know. Or I don't want to bury

653
00:34:19,320 --> 00:34:21,560
Speaker 1: their worms down there. That's so we do. We do

654
00:34:21,640 --> 00:34:23,239
Speaker 1: think about that. But the other way we think about

655
00:34:23,239 --> 00:34:24,480
Speaker 1: it is we think, you know, I wonder how many

656
00:34:24,480 --> 00:34:26,520
Speaker 1: people are going to be at my funeral. You know

657
00:34:26,640 --> 00:34:28,480
Speaker 1: you're worried about it. That you're worried about it, Well,

658
00:34:28,480 --> 00:34:30,359
Speaker 1: what are you worried about. You're not gonna be there.

659
00:34:30,600 --> 00:34:33,640
Speaker 1: It's like you don't even know, like so it doesn't

660
00:34:33,640 --> 00:34:36,520
Speaker 1: make any sense, but we do. And it's like that

661
00:34:36,640 --> 00:34:39,320
Speaker 1: only to like the hundred power in the ancil in

662
00:34:39,360 --> 00:34:42,759
Speaker 1: the ancient world without a decent burial. You know, they're

663
00:34:42,760 --> 00:34:45,080
Speaker 1: afraid of it. Uh, they and and it was a

664
00:34:45,080 --> 00:34:48,640
Speaker 1: horrible way to Anguly. It's even weaponized sometimes. I believe

665
00:34:48,680 --> 00:34:51,640
Speaker 1: it was in a book of yours I read. Uh again,

666
00:34:51,719 --> 00:34:53,640
Speaker 1: correct me if I'm wrong. But you talked about how

667
00:34:53,880 --> 00:34:56,480
Speaker 1: part of the fear of crucifixion in the Roman Empire

668
00:34:56,880 --> 00:34:59,400
Speaker 1: was not just that it was painful, not just that

669
00:34:59,440 --> 00:35:02,640
Speaker 1: you would die, but specifically that it was a humiliation

670
00:35:02,800 --> 00:35:05,000
Speaker 1: of the corps, that the corpse would be left to

671
00:35:05,000 --> 00:35:07,719
Speaker 1: the scavenging animals and exposed and not be given a

672
00:35:07,760 --> 00:35:11,120
Speaker 1: decent burial. Yeah, no, it's one of the It's interesting,

673
00:35:11,160 --> 00:35:14,920
Speaker 1: you know, when you when you read ancient documents on crucifixion.

674
00:35:15,640 --> 00:35:18,960
Speaker 1: Every everybody gets their knowledge about crucifixion from what everybody

675
00:35:18,960 --> 00:35:21,440
Speaker 1: else says. I mean modern people. The way you know

676
00:35:21,480 --> 00:35:23,360
Speaker 1: what it's like to be crucified, somebody else has told you,

677
00:35:23,400 --> 00:35:25,160
Speaker 1: and somebody else told them, somebody else told them, and

678
00:35:25,200 --> 00:35:27,200
Speaker 1: nobody bothers actually to read what they say in the

679
00:35:27,239 --> 00:35:31,000
Speaker 1: ancient sources about it. It's interesting there's no actual description

680
00:35:31,040 --> 00:35:33,360
Speaker 1: of the process in the ancient source, Like there's no

681
00:35:33,400 --> 00:35:35,920
Speaker 1: description of how they actually did it, but there are

682
00:35:35,960 --> 00:35:38,400
Speaker 1: a number of references to what happens after they did it,

683
00:35:38,920 --> 00:35:44,040
Speaker 1: when sometimes meant to be dark humor and sometimes very seriously.

684
00:35:44,360 --> 00:35:47,960
Speaker 1: But you get these references to the bodies being on

685
00:35:48,000 --> 00:35:50,600
Speaker 1: the cross for days and being eaten by the scavengers,

686
00:35:50,680 --> 00:35:55,239
Speaker 1: especially the birds, and um uh, you know that's part

687
00:35:55,239 --> 00:35:57,719
Speaker 1: of the punishment. You don't get a decent burial you

688
00:35:58,040 --> 00:36:00,719
Speaker 1: you are, you're torn to shreds by the animals. And

689
00:36:00,719 --> 00:36:03,240
Speaker 1: so like this was and people would watch this happening

690
00:36:03,280 --> 00:36:05,919
Speaker 1: to somebody and so I mean in the Roman world,

691
00:36:05,960 --> 00:36:09,480
Speaker 1: crucifixion was used as a deterrent to cry. Uh. You know,

692
00:36:09,520 --> 00:36:12,960
Speaker 1: they didn't have the idea that developed in America that

693
00:36:13,200 --> 00:36:15,319
Speaker 1: capital punishment is fine so long as you do it

694
00:36:15,560 --> 00:36:20,440
Speaker 1: as privately and theoretically as painlessly as possible. Romans had

695
00:36:20,480 --> 00:36:23,640
Speaker 1: the opposite idea, you do it publicly, and you make

696
00:36:23,680 --> 00:36:27,200
Speaker 1: it as torturous as you can and as humiliating as can.

697
00:36:27,480 --> 00:36:30,120
Speaker 1: So everybody seeing this thing says, oh my god, I'm

698
00:36:30,160 --> 00:36:32,200
Speaker 1: not going to do that, because you know this is

699
00:36:32,239 --> 00:36:33,920
Speaker 1: what's going to happen. As you know, I'm not going

700
00:36:33,960 --> 00:36:36,360
Speaker 1: to steal a chariot boy and that's what they do.

701
00:36:36,719 --> 00:36:39,520
Speaker 1: And so uh so, yes, but they did leave them.

702
00:36:39,520 --> 00:36:41,399
Speaker 1: They apparently did leave them on the crosses, and that's

703
00:36:41,400 --> 00:36:43,800
Speaker 1: part of it, because they couldn't get a decent burial. Okay,

704
00:36:43,840 --> 00:36:46,319
Speaker 1: So even if we don't fully understand the causes of

705
00:36:46,360 --> 00:36:48,319
Speaker 1: this difference and belief, we should always have it in

706
00:36:48,400 --> 00:36:52,000
Speaker 1: mind that having your corpse desecrated or not getting a

707
00:36:52,000 --> 00:36:54,080
Speaker 1: decent burial, it's just like the worst thing you can

708
00:36:54,120 --> 00:36:57,920
Speaker 1: imagine in the ancient world. Yeah, that's why all these scenes,

709
00:36:58,000 --> 00:37:00,160
Speaker 1: you know, you have if somebody like in like in

710
00:37:00,200 --> 00:37:03,920
Speaker 1: a war narrative, you know, they desecrate the body of

711
00:37:04,040 --> 00:37:05,960
Speaker 1: drag it around the city or something, this is just

712
00:37:06,000 --> 00:37:09,520
Speaker 1: thought to be whore. Of course, it still it still is. Yeah,

713
00:37:09,680 --> 00:37:11,520
Speaker 1: all right, we're going to take a quick break, but

714
00:37:11,600 --> 00:37:18,759
Speaker 1: we'll be right back. And we're back. So maybe we

715
00:37:18,800 --> 00:37:20,960
Speaker 1: should talk now about the teachings of Jesus. I know

716
00:37:21,120 --> 00:37:22,920
Speaker 1: there are several there are a lot of other things

717
00:37:23,360 --> 00:37:25,200
Speaker 1: in your book that you cover about the you know,

718
00:37:25,520 --> 00:37:27,760
Speaker 1: before we get to Jesus, you talk about the evolution

719
00:37:27,760 --> 00:37:30,520
Speaker 1: of Jewish thought and some of the later Jewish writings,

720
00:37:30,880 --> 00:37:33,439
Speaker 1: like like the Book of Daniel and mccabee's and maybe

721
00:37:33,480 --> 00:37:35,800
Speaker 1: we can come back to that if you want. But Um,

722
00:37:35,800 --> 00:37:37,839
Speaker 1: I'm sure a lot of people are wondering about something

723
00:37:37,880 --> 00:37:40,759
Speaker 1: we teased earlier, which is that, Okay, if the historical

724
00:37:40,880 --> 00:37:45,040
Speaker 1: Jesus did not preach modern beliefs about heaven and hell,

725
00:37:45,760 --> 00:37:48,960
Speaker 1: what were the teachings of the historical Jesus with regards

726
00:37:48,960 --> 00:37:51,200
Speaker 1: to the afterlife? And you may also need to talk

727
00:37:51,239 --> 00:37:54,879
Speaker 1: a bit here about historical method like why why can't

728
00:37:54,920 --> 00:37:57,759
Speaker 1: we just read the gospels to know what the historical

729
00:37:57,840 --> 00:38:01,520
Speaker 1: Jesus taught. Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna have to provide

730
00:38:01,520 --> 00:38:03,719
Speaker 1: some background in the development of Jewish thought to make

731
00:38:03,760 --> 00:38:05,640
Speaker 1: sense of this. So I'm going to go back to Daniel,

732
00:38:06,400 --> 00:38:09,759
Speaker 1: because you can't understand jesus views without understanding the context

733
00:38:09,760 --> 00:38:13,000
Speaker 1: that he's that he's in. Um, most of the Hebrew

734
00:38:13,040 --> 00:38:15,239
Speaker 1: Bible thinks that, as I was saying things, when a

735
00:38:15,239 --> 00:38:17,839
Speaker 1: person dies at the end of the story, they're dead. Uh,

736
00:38:17,960 --> 00:38:20,439
Speaker 1: there's no no afterlife of any kind. You're just dead.

737
00:38:21,080 --> 00:38:23,479
Speaker 1: And I pointed out that Greek's ended up had something

738
00:38:23,520 --> 00:38:25,680
Speaker 1: similar to begin with, but then with Plato it started

739
00:38:25,760 --> 00:38:28,360
Speaker 1: you've got to have rewards and punishments, and that same

740
00:38:28,400 --> 00:38:32,399
Speaker 1: development happened within Judaism, but in a different way. It's

741
00:38:32,440 --> 00:38:35,680
Speaker 1: not clear if they were influenced by Greek thought or

742
00:38:35,800 --> 00:38:39,080
Speaker 1: or it's not clear how it happened exactly, but about

743
00:38:39,560 --> 00:38:42,400
Speaker 1: I don't know. Two U fifty years before Jesus Um,

744
00:38:42,440 --> 00:38:46,240
Speaker 1: a number of Jewish thinkers started thinking that, in fact,

745
00:38:47,200 --> 00:38:49,840
Speaker 1: death cannot be the end of the story, and it

746
00:38:49,880 --> 00:38:51,520
Speaker 1: can't be the end of the story for a very

747
00:38:51,560 --> 00:38:57,640
Speaker 1: specific Jewish reason. Ancient Jews believed that God had called them,

748
00:38:57,760 --> 00:39:01,440
Speaker 1: the Jews, to be his people. They were the chosen people.

749
00:39:02,080 --> 00:39:04,800
Speaker 1: God had given them the law. If they kept the law,

750
00:39:05,040 --> 00:39:07,520
Speaker 1: they'd keep up their end of the bargain, and God

751
00:39:07,520 --> 00:39:10,080
Speaker 1: would keep up his end of the bargain and protect

752
00:39:10,160 --> 00:39:13,120
Speaker 1: them and uh and be on their side and help

753
00:39:13,200 --> 00:39:16,080
Speaker 1: them out when they were in need. As time went on,

754
00:39:16,239 --> 00:39:19,600
Speaker 1: century after century went by and Jews were not helped,

755
00:39:20,360 --> 00:39:25,360
Speaker 1: they were constantly being wiped out constant internal problems, uh

756
00:39:25,840 --> 00:39:30,200
Speaker 1: economic problems. Problems I mean just various things of hunger

757
00:39:30,480 --> 00:39:36,880
Speaker 1: and disease and UH crop failure, but also destruction in war,

758
00:39:37,360 --> 00:39:40,600
Speaker 1: military disaster, not having possession of the land God had

759
00:39:40,640 --> 00:39:43,680
Speaker 1: promised them. And often you know, the ancient people would

760
00:39:43,680 --> 00:39:46,399
Speaker 1: say yeah, it's because we're disobeying God and God's punishing us.

761
00:39:46,440 --> 00:39:48,040
Speaker 1: That was that was the view of the prophets in

762
00:39:48,080 --> 00:39:50,399
Speaker 1: the Old Testament. Every prophet in the Old Testament says that,

763
00:39:50,640 --> 00:39:52,759
Speaker 1: you know the reason of suffers. God's punishing you, and

764
00:39:52,800 --> 00:39:55,719
Speaker 1: you just stopped doing that, and then he'll reward you. Well,

765
00:39:55,719 --> 00:39:58,160
Speaker 1: at some point Jews started saying, you know, look, we're

766
00:39:58,200 --> 00:40:01,040
Speaker 1: doing the best we can here. You know, we we

767
00:40:01,120 --> 00:40:03,359
Speaker 1: may not be like the most perfect human beings on earth,

768
00:40:03,440 --> 00:40:05,400
Speaker 1: but we're doing our best to follow God's law. We're

769
00:40:05,440 --> 00:40:08,560
Speaker 1: eating kosher, we're keeping the Sabbath, were observing the festivals,

770
00:40:08,560 --> 00:40:12,879
Speaker 1: were circumcising our babies, and these pagans over here are

771
00:40:12,920 --> 00:40:17,359
Speaker 1: complete smucks and they are ruthless and they're destroying us.

772
00:40:17,880 --> 00:40:21,040
Speaker 1: And surely there has to be an answer to that.

773
00:40:22,760 --> 00:40:25,600
Speaker 1: Uh So what ended up happening in Judaism is the

774
00:40:25,640 --> 00:40:29,600
Speaker 1: answer was that was this? The answer there rose about

775
00:40:29,600 --> 00:40:33,640
Speaker 1: two or fifty years before Jesus, was that, yes, these

776
00:40:33,640 --> 00:40:36,759
Speaker 1: things are happening now and God's people are suffering, but

777
00:40:36,840 --> 00:40:40,840
Speaker 1: it's not just because God's punishing them. There are also

778
00:40:40,920 --> 00:40:43,920
Speaker 1: forces in the world that are opposed to God and

779
00:40:44,080 --> 00:40:47,920
Speaker 1: his people. They are against us, and they have power

780
00:40:47,960 --> 00:40:51,200
Speaker 1: in this world and they are making us suffer. This

781
00:40:51,239 --> 00:40:55,960
Speaker 1: is when Jews started developing the idea that there's a devil. Uh.

782
00:40:56,000 --> 00:40:59,959
Speaker 1: There's Satan, a figure who is opposed to God gets

783
00:41:00,040 --> 00:41:03,879
Speaker 1: imagined and and talked about, and Satan has henchmen, they

784
00:41:03,880 --> 00:41:07,000
Speaker 1: call them demons, and there are other forces in this

785
00:41:07,040 --> 00:41:10,719
Speaker 1: world and it's they're out to get us. So the question, well,

786
00:41:10,760 --> 00:41:13,799
Speaker 1: why why is that? Well, they have different explanations. Why, Well,

787
00:41:13,920 --> 00:41:16,400
Speaker 1: human sin and so these powers are led into the world.

788
00:41:16,560 --> 00:41:19,760
Speaker 1: Or is because angels did this, or they have different explanations.

789
00:41:19,760 --> 00:41:22,400
Speaker 1: They are a little bit fuzzy sometimes, but they But

790
00:41:22,719 --> 00:41:25,600
Speaker 1: you have these evil forces. The good news is that

791
00:41:25,800 --> 00:41:29,279
Speaker 1: God ultimately is sovereign and he ultimately is going to

792
00:41:29,320 --> 00:41:32,400
Speaker 1: reward his people. Um. God is going to intervene in

793
00:41:32,520 --> 00:41:36,839
Speaker 1: history and he will destroy these forces of evil who

794
00:41:36,840 --> 00:41:40,319
Speaker 1: are ruining people's lives, who are running the kingdoms in

795
00:41:40,400 --> 00:41:43,440
Speaker 1: charge now, and He's going to take them out of power,

796
00:41:43,560 --> 00:41:46,080
Speaker 1: and he's going to bring in his own kingdom, the

797
00:41:46,200 --> 00:41:49,640
Speaker 1: Kingdom of God that will be ruled by his representative,

798
00:41:49,719 --> 00:41:55,640
Speaker 1: the Messiah, who will establish a utopian state. Uh. And

799
00:41:55,760 --> 00:41:59,160
Speaker 1: so these Jews modern scholars called this view Jewish view

800
00:41:59,200 --> 00:42:02,960
Speaker 1: apocalyptus schism, from the word apocalypse at the end of

801
00:42:03,000 --> 00:42:06,239
Speaker 1: this a this age is bad, it's getting worse, but

802
00:42:06,280 --> 00:42:09,879
Speaker 1: the apocalypse is coming. And when the apocalypse comes, then

803
00:42:09,960 --> 00:42:12,320
Speaker 1: God will destroy these forces of evil and bringing his

804
00:42:12,400 --> 00:42:14,920
Speaker 1: good kingdom on earth. The first place you find this

805
00:42:14,960 --> 00:42:16,920
Speaker 1: in the Hebrew Bible is in the Book of Daniel.

806
00:42:17,560 --> 00:42:21,880
Speaker 1: Daniel chapters seven through twelve, especially you start finding an

807
00:42:21,880 --> 00:42:26,160
Speaker 1: apocalyptic view. H Daniel was written about two hundred years

808
00:42:26,239 --> 00:42:28,960
Speaker 1: before Jesus was active in his ministry, a hundred eighty years,

809
00:42:29,000 --> 00:42:32,640
Speaker 1: two hundred years before Jesus was active. By that time,

810
00:42:33,000 --> 00:42:36,120
Speaker 1: this has become a very popular view in Judaism is

811
00:42:36,120 --> 00:42:37,840
Speaker 1: a view that, so far as we can tell, was

812
00:42:37,880 --> 00:42:41,200
Speaker 1: held by the majority of Jews. Um it's certainly written

813
00:42:41,239 --> 00:42:43,200
Speaker 1: by the majority of Jewish authors that we have from

814
00:42:43,200 --> 00:42:46,520
Speaker 1: the period uh that God was soon intervened and bringing

815
00:42:46,560 --> 00:42:49,440
Speaker 1: this kingdom. The thing about this kingdom was that it

816
00:42:49,560 --> 00:42:52,200
Speaker 1: was not that your soul was going to die and

817
00:42:52,239 --> 00:42:56,120
Speaker 1: go to heaven. The kingdom was going to be here

818
00:42:56,160 --> 00:42:59,239
Speaker 1: on earth and it was going to be lived in

819
00:42:59,680 --> 00:43:04,160
Speaker 1: boy be Lee. People who were on God's side would

820
00:43:04,200 --> 00:43:08,200
Speaker 1: be brought into this Kingdom of God here on earth

821
00:43:08,520 --> 00:43:11,200
Speaker 1: in their bodies. But what about people who, like you,

822
00:43:11,280 --> 00:43:15,040
Speaker 1: died already. So like, you know, suppose next year God

823
00:43:15,080 --> 00:43:17,600
Speaker 1: does it and he wipes out all the wicked governments

824
00:43:17,600 --> 00:43:19,920
Speaker 1: and all the people supporting them, and he brings in

825
00:43:20,400 --> 00:43:23,319
Speaker 1: peace and unity and justice for all forever, and we

826
00:43:23,360 --> 00:43:25,560
Speaker 1: have this great Kingdom of God. Well that's nice, But

827
00:43:25,680 --> 00:43:27,480
Speaker 1: like one of my grandfather, I mean, he was a

828
00:43:27,480 --> 00:43:29,960
Speaker 1: good guy. You mean, like he lost album And you know,

829
00:43:30,040 --> 00:43:31,839
Speaker 1: my mom, really, are you kid to me? Of course

830
00:43:31,840 --> 00:43:36,319
Speaker 1: she doesn't. And so Jews simultaneously developed the idea of

831
00:43:36,360 --> 00:43:39,680
Speaker 1: the resurrection of the dead. This is a view you

832
00:43:39,719 --> 00:43:42,240
Speaker 1: don't get in the vast majority of the Hebrew Bible,

833
00:43:42,280 --> 00:43:45,160
Speaker 1: but you do get it in Daniel and you get

834
00:43:45,200 --> 00:43:48,040
Speaker 1: into the teachings of Jesus and throughout the New Testament.

835
00:43:48,320 --> 00:43:50,920
Speaker 1: The teaching of the resurrection of the dead is that

836
00:43:51,160 --> 00:43:53,279
Speaker 1: even dead people are going to be brought back to

837
00:43:53,360 --> 00:43:57,080
Speaker 1: life and they too can enter into the Kingdom. This, then,

838
00:43:57,200 --> 00:44:00,200
Speaker 1: is Jesus teaching. Jesus teaches all the time I about

839
00:44:00,200 --> 00:44:02,719
Speaker 1: the coming Kingdom of God. And he does not mean

840
00:44:03,000 --> 00:44:06,480
Speaker 1: heaven where your soul goes when you die. He means

841
00:44:06,520 --> 00:44:10,919
Speaker 1: the Kingdom that God is bringing back to Earth. God

842
00:44:10,960 --> 00:44:15,280
Speaker 1: made this planet and he made it a paradise. Literally,

843
00:44:15,719 --> 00:44:18,759
Speaker 1: God made the Garden of Eden for Adam and Eve.

844
00:44:18,960 --> 00:44:21,720
Speaker 1: They sinned, they got kicked out. We lost the Garden

845
00:44:21,719 --> 00:44:24,640
Speaker 1: of Eden. But God's going to bring it back. Just

846
00:44:24,800 --> 00:44:26,640
Speaker 1: as Adam and Eve were in their bodies when they

847
00:44:26,719 --> 00:44:29,560
Speaker 1: enjoyed it, will enjoy their bodies, not just us, but

848
00:44:29,680 --> 00:44:32,480
Speaker 1: everybody is raised from the dead. If they've been on

849
00:44:32,560 --> 00:44:35,560
Speaker 1: the right side, what if they've been in the wrong side,

850
00:44:36,080 --> 00:44:38,200
Speaker 1: They're going to be punished, and it's going to be

851
00:44:38,320 --> 00:44:45,359
Speaker 1: an eternal punishment, but it's not eternal torture. Jesus did

852
00:44:45,400 --> 00:44:48,560
Speaker 1: not believe in the eternal torture. What Jesus believes is

853
00:44:48,600 --> 00:44:51,360
Speaker 1: what other apocalypse is believed, which is that when the

854
00:44:51,480 --> 00:44:54,480
Speaker 1: Kingdom arrives and people raised from the dead, those who

855
00:44:54,480 --> 00:44:56,120
Speaker 1: are on God's side will enter the Kingdom, and that

856
00:44:56,200 --> 00:45:00,320
Speaker 1: everybody else will realize they've been left out of the Kingdom,

857
00:45:00,320 --> 00:45:03,840
Speaker 1: and they'll be horribly upset. They'll be weeping and gnashing

858
00:45:03,840 --> 00:45:08,680
Speaker 1: their teeth, and then God will annihilateate them. It'll be

859
00:45:08,760 --> 00:45:13,560
Speaker 1: complete destruction. Uh. And so the eternal punishment is not torment.

860
00:45:13,760 --> 00:45:18,880
Speaker 1: It's death. It's eternal because it will never end. God

861
00:45:18,920 --> 00:45:22,400
Speaker 1: will not reverse his decision. You will be dead forever

862
00:45:22,880 --> 00:45:25,040
Speaker 1: and only those around God's side will live in the

863
00:45:25,120 --> 00:45:28,319
Speaker 1: utopian kingdom of God. So that's that's Jesus teaching in

864
00:45:28,320 --> 00:45:31,800
Speaker 1: a nutshell. Jesus never talked about this torment. He always

865
00:45:31,840 --> 00:45:36,520
Speaker 1: talks about destruction, and so uh things that might come

866
00:45:36,520 --> 00:45:39,120
Speaker 1: to people's mind in response to that would be okay. So,

867
00:45:39,160 --> 00:45:41,879
Speaker 1: first of all, maybe you can deal with this. There's

868
00:45:41,920 --> 00:45:45,960
Speaker 1: like a passage in Luke where where Jesus tells the

869
00:45:46,000 --> 00:45:49,760
Speaker 1: parable of the of the rich man and Lazarus, and

870
00:45:49,760 --> 00:45:52,600
Speaker 1: and it looks like in this parable there is some

871
00:45:52,719 --> 00:45:57,000
Speaker 1: kind of existence right after you die, and it consists

872
00:45:57,040 --> 00:46:01,120
Speaker 1: of rewards and punishments, rewards for the for the poor man,

873
00:46:01,520 --> 00:46:04,320
Speaker 1: and punishments for the rich man. And it doesn't seem

874
00:46:04,360 --> 00:46:06,680
Speaker 1: to be like a bodily resurrection at the end of

875
00:46:06,760 --> 00:46:10,000
Speaker 1: time when God comes and conquers everything. So how would

876
00:46:10,000 --> 00:46:12,480
Speaker 1: a how would a biblical scholar deal with a passage

877
00:46:12,520 --> 00:46:14,960
Speaker 1: like that? Well, no, it's a great question, and it

878
00:46:15,080 --> 00:46:17,040
Speaker 1: is for people who know their Bible. It's the first

879
00:46:17,040 --> 00:46:18,799
Speaker 1: passage that comes to mind. Of course, well, yeah, well

880
00:46:19,239 --> 00:46:22,800
Speaker 1: lazars in the rich man. So, um, maybe I should

881
00:46:22,800 --> 00:46:28,520
Speaker 1: summarize the story, or do you think everybody you got that,

882
00:46:28,600 --> 00:46:31,520
Speaker 1: you got this filthy rich man who's having sumptuous banquets

883
00:46:31,560 --> 00:46:34,040
Speaker 1: every day and bringing fine clothes and lives in this

884
00:46:34,080 --> 00:46:37,440
Speaker 1: mansion and uh. And there's this poor guy outside his

885
00:46:37,600 --> 00:46:41,839
Speaker 1: gate named Lazarus who's like he's starving to death and

886
00:46:41,840 --> 00:46:44,319
Speaker 1: he's covered with diseases, and the dogs and coming up

887
00:46:44,320 --> 00:46:47,520
Speaker 1: to lick his wounds, and they both die. And the

888
00:46:47,640 --> 00:46:50,360
Speaker 1: rich man ends up down in the place of torment

889
00:46:50,440 --> 00:46:55,000
Speaker 1: and fire, and Lazar's ends up in Abraham's bosom, so

890
00:46:55,040 --> 00:46:57,960
Speaker 1: he's which means he's up having a banquet with the

891
00:46:58,840 --> 00:47:03,240
Speaker 1: forefathers of Israel, Abraham, the father of Israel, and the righteous.

892
00:47:03,760 --> 00:47:06,920
Speaker 1: And the rich man wants. Rich man looks up, he

893
00:47:06,960 --> 00:47:09,560
Speaker 1: sees lads or something, and he tells Abraham, look, said,

894
00:47:09,560 --> 00:47:11,399
Speaker 1: would you send him down? Just put let him put

895
00:47:11,400 --> 00:47:13,359
Speaker 1: his finger in the water and cool my tongue, because

896
00:47:13,360 --> 00:47:17,000
Speaker 1: it's I've been fired down here. And and uh, Abraham

897
00:47:17,000 --> 00:47:20,440
Speaker 1: says this, Sara can't. There's a chasm between us, a broadcasm,

898
00:47:20,440 --> 00:47:22,680
Speaker 1: and nobody can go back and forth. And so you know,

899
00:47:23,239 --> 00:47:25,560
Speaker 1: he can't come and help. And he said, well, at

900
00:47:25,640 --> 00:47:28,399
Speaker 1: least send us, send them to my brothers. At least

901
00:47:28,400 --> 00:47:30,759
Speaker 1: we're still living. I got these brothers, and like, they've

902
00:47:30,760 --> 00:47:33,480
Speaker 1: got to know about this, because if they're they're in

903
00:47:33,560 --> 00:47:36,200
Speaker 1: danger of coming here too. And Abraham says, no, I'm

904
00:47:36,239 --> 00:47:38,759
Speaker 1: not gonna send him, because he said they should just

905
00:47:38,800 --> 00:47:41,080
Speaker 1: read their bibles. If they don't believe the Law of

906
00:47:41,200 --> 00:47:43,719
Speaker 1: Moses and the prophets, they're not going to believe it

907
00:47:44,200 --> 00:47:47,680
Speaker 1: if somebody comes back from the dead. Okay, that's what

908
00:47:47,719 --> 00:47:51,440
Speaker 1: he says. So even if someone is raised from the dead,

909
00:47:51,960 --> 00:47:56,400
Speaker 1: they won't believe. So that's that all right. So um,

910
00:47:56,440 --> 00:47:59,160
Speaker 1: that well, it sure sounds like Heaven done hell, and

911
00:47:59,280 --> 00:48:02,879
Speaker 1: yes it does. So several things about it. Number one,

912
00:48:03,000 --> 00:48:07,000
Speaker 1: it's a parable. A parable is not a historical statement.

913
00:48:07,560 --> 00:48:12,880
Speaker 1: A parable is a as an imaginative story intended to

914
00:48:12,960 --> 00:48:16,360
Speaker 1: make a point. Um. That's the first one. We know

915
00:48:16,400 --> 00:48:19,560
Speaker 1: it's a parable because in Luke's Gospel it's in a stream.

916
00:48:19,640 --> 00:48:22,120
Speaker 1: It's a lot of section that's just filled with parables,

917
00:48:22,200 --> 00:48:24,880
Speaker 1: and a number of them begin with exactly the same words,

918
00:48:25,320 --> 00:48:28,279
Speaker 1: there's a certain man who and that's how this one

919
00:48:28,320 --> 00:48:31,080
Speaker 1: begins there's a certain man who uh so, so it's

920
00:48:31,120 --> 00:48:34,200
Speaker 1: a parable. It's not nondescription of historical reality. Number one,

921
00:48:34,480 --> 00:48:37,880
Speaker 1: number two. Um, there's nothing in that's parable about the

922
00:48:37,920 --> 00:48:41,160
Speaker 1: rewards for punishment being eternal. We don't know if this

923
00:48:41,200 --> 00:48:44,440
Speaker 1: is a temporary holding stage or if this is we

924
00:48:44,440 --> 00:48:46,720
Speaker 1: don't know. It doesn't it doesn't say that's number two.

925
00:48:47,040 --> 00:48:51,160
Speaker 1: Number three. Jesus almost certainly did not tell this parable.

926
00:48:52,880 --> 00:48:55,080
Speaker 1: So this is this is where we get into what

927
00:48:55,120 --> 00:48:57,680
Speaker 1: you were saying earlier about how do critical scholars go

928
00:48:57,719 --> 00:49:02,480
Speaker 1: about understanding what Jesus said and did. The reality is

929
00:49:02,560 --> 00:49:05,520
Speaker 1: we have we have four gospels in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke,

930
00:49:05,560 --> 00:49:08,920
Speaker 1: and John. We have other gospels not in the New Testament,

931
00:49:09,680 --> 00:49:12,360
Speaker 1: lots lots of them, um. But these four are the

932
00:49:12,480 --> 00:49:14,759
Speaker 1: are the main ones that people know about, and they're

933
00:49:14,760 --> 00:49:18,320
Speaker 1: the four they're probably are four earliest gospels, our oldest gospels.

934
00:49:18,920 --> 00:49:23,080
Speaker 1: These four gospels, though, are almost certainly not simply historical

935
00:49:23,120 --> 00:49:25,920
Speaker 1: accounts of what really happened in Jesus life, what he

936
00:49:26,080 --> 00:49:28,640
Speaker 1: what he actually said and did. As if somebody was

937
00:49:28,680 --> 00:49:32,120
Speaker 1: down there with their cell phone recording it. Uh, you know,

938
00:49:32,160 --> 00:49:36,239
Speaker 1: there were no cell phones recording anything. The Gospels are

939
00:49:36,239 --> 00:49:42,200
Speaker 1: written in Greek. Jesus native language was Aramaic. Jesus didn't

940
00:49:42,200 --> 00:49:44,759
Speaker 1: know Greek, and the authors of the Gospels did not

941
00:49:44,880 --> 00:49:49,280
Speaker 1: know Aramaic. They lived outside of Israel. Jesus lived inside

942
00:49:49,280 --> 00:49:54,280
Speaker 1: of Israel. They were writing forty fifty or sixty years later.

943
00:49:55,120 --> 00:49:57,759
Speaker 1: So there's reasons for thinking all of that that I'm

944
00:49:57,760 --> 00:49:59,640
Speaker 1: not going to go into unless you unless you want

945
00:49:59,680 --> 00:50:02,319
Speaker 1: me to. I happy too. But these people are so

946
00:50:02,360 --> 00:50:04,319
Speaker 1: where do they give their stories from? These people do

947
00:50:04,400 --> 00:50:07,040
Speaker 1: not claim to be followers of Jesus. The authors the

948
00:50:07,360 --> 00:50:11,360
Speaker 1: books are all anonymous, so they're written by so they

949
00:50:11,440 --> 00:50:13,840
Speaker 1: don't claim to be written by followers of Jesus. The

950
00:50:13,840 --> 00:50:17,480
Speaker 1: followers of Jesus were lower class, illiterate. They're called illiterate

951
00:50:17,520 --> 00:50:21,480
Speaker 1: in the New Testament, illiterate Aramaic speaking peasants from some

952
00:50:21,680 --> 00:50:25,560
Speaker 1: rural place in Galilee and places like that, didn't have schools.

953
00:50:26,360 --> 00:50:30,480
Speaker 1: The disciples could not write. And so where these gospels

954
00:50:30,520 --> 00:50:33,520
Speaker 1: come from. They came from authors living fourty or fifty

955
00:50:33,600 --> 00:50:36,960
Speaker 1: years later, four or five decades later later, living somewhere else,

956
00:50:37,239 --> 00:50:42,400
Speaker 1: who have heard stories about Jesus and they're writing them down. Okay,

957
00:50:42,600 --> 00:50:45,200
Speaker 1: so stories have been in circulation for not just a

958
00:50:45,239 --> 00:50:47,960
Speaker 1: month or two or a year or two or a decade.

959
00:50:47,960 --> 00:50:51,800
Speaker 1: I mean they've been in circulation from forty to sixty years. Uh.

960
00:50:52,080 --> 00:50:54,919
Speaker 1: Sometimes this gospels completely agree with each other, but that's

961
00:50:54,960 --> 00:50:57,759
Speaker 1: because some of them used each other. Matthew Luke both

962
00:50:57,840 --> 00:51:00,480
Speaker 1: used Mark for example. Again I could this takes a

963
00:51:00,480 --> 00:51:03,440
Speaker 1: lot of time and a bit demonstrate um and so.

964
00:51:03,719 --> 00:51:05,759
Speaker 1: And the big problem is these gospels not only are

965
00:51:05,840 --> 00:51:07,879
Speaker 1: much later by people who didn't know but had heard

966
00:51:07,960 --> 00:51:10,440
Speaker 1: stories in circulation like word of mouth. And you know

967
00:51:10,480 --> 00:51:12,000
Speaker 1: what happens to the stories in the word of mouth.

968
00:51:12,400 --> 00:51:14,880
Speaker 1: Even in the ancient world, stories got changed every time

969
00:51:14,920 --> 00:51:19,640
Speaker 1: they got told. Well, uh right, so it's it's it's

970
00:51:19,640 --> 00:51:23,239
Speaker 1: not only that, but these gospels contradict each other. All

971
00:51:23,239 --> 00:51:25,200
Speaker 1: you gotta do is read two accounts in the Gospel

972
00:51:25,480 --> 00:51:28,120
Speaker 1: and just to take the same story to take you know,

973
00:51:28,160 --> 00:51:31,520
Speaker 1: take Jesus Birth and Matthew Luke. Just read them carefully

974
00:51:31,640 --> 00:51:34,160
Speaker 1: and and just see exactly what each one says and

975
00:51:34,200 --> 00:51:37,120
Speaker 1: compare them. You can't reconcile them. There are places that

976
00:51:37,160 --> 00:51:40,080
Speaker 1: cannot be reconciled. Why because people are changing the stories.

977
00:51:40,600 --> 00:51:43,880
Speaker 1: People are changing stories they're making up stories, they're putting

978
00:51:43,920 --> 00:51:46,080
Speaker 1: things on jesus lips that they're saying he did things

979
00:51:46,120 --> 00:51:48,319
Speaker 1: he didn't do. I mean, it's just that's just you

980
00:51:48,360 --> 00:51:51,120
Speaker 1: know that that's been known by scholars are well over

981
00:51:51,160 --> 00:51:53,800
Speaker 1: a century, and it's like standard stuff that gets taught

982
00:51:53,800 --> 00:51:58,880
Speaker 1: in every critical biblical scholars class. The parable of Lass

983
00:51:58,920 --> 00:52:01,120
Speaker 1: and the rich Man almost certainly was not one of

984
00:52:01,160 --> 00:52:03,680
Speaker 1: the parables Jesus told. He certain he almost certainly did

985
00:52:03,680 --> 00:52:06,680
Speaker 1: tell some parables. I think, Uh, you have to have

986
00:52:06,680 --> 00:52:08,640
Speaker 1: ways of demonstrating these things, just like you've got to

987
00:52:08,680 --> 00:52:11,640
Speaker 1: have ways of proving everything you know you've got. You've

988
00:52:11,640 --> 00:52:13,920
Speaker 1: got history has to be proved. You can't just take

989
00:52:13,960 --> 00:52:17,680
Speaker 1: somebody's word for it, as somebody says that, Uh. You know,

990
00:52:18,120 --> 00:52:20,840
Speaker 1: by inauguration there are this number of people there. You know,

991
00:52:20,840 --> 00:52:23,040
Speaker 1: you've got to check to see if that's true or not. Uh.

992
00:52:23,120 --> 00:52:25,960
Speaker 1: And so there are certain things that you checked for. Uh.

993
00:52:26,000 --> 00:52:28,560
Speaker 1: And historians have a way have checking ancient stuff, just

994
00:52:28,600 --> 00:52:31,279
Speaker 1: as we have ways of checking modern stuff. If you

995
00:52:31,400 --> 00:52:33,839
Speaker 1: check the story of Lasts Richmond, there are very good

996
00:52:33,880 --> 00:52:36,360
Speaker 1: reasons for thinking that Jesus didn't tell the story. For

997
00:52:36,480 --> 00:52:38,319
Speaker 1: one thing, of course, it has a different view of

998
00:52:38,680 --> 00:52:40,719
Speaker 1: after ihypehim the one Jesus had, but that you can't

999
00:52:40,840 --> 00:52:42,720
Speaker 1: use that because that's the question you're trying. So that's

1000
00:52:42,760 --> 00:52:45,960
Speaker 1: arguing in a circle. But there are other things about it. Um,

1001
00:52:46,000 --> 00:52:49,080
Speaker 1: it's all found only in Luke, So like there's no

1002
00:52:49,120 --> 00:52:50,799
Speaker 1: one else who tells the story that we know of.

1003
00:52:51,239 --> 00:52:54,160
Speaker 1: And so how do you know, like unless it's verified.

1004
00:52:54,760 --> 00:52:56,600
Speaker 1: Uh you know, it's not verified. You just got it

1005
00:52:56,600 --> 00:52:58,839
Speaker 1: on the loop. I'll just catch to the chase because

1006
00:52:58,880 --> 00:53:01,120
Speaker 1: this is going on too long. One reason for real

1007
00:53:01,120 --> 00:53:03,440
Speaker 1: annoing it wasn't wasn't a story of Jesus told is

1008
00:53:03,480 --> 00:53:09,080
Speaker 1: because the story presupposes that a man has already been

1009
00:53:09,200 --> 00:53:13,120
Speaker 1: raised from the dead. The end of the story is,

1010
00:53:13,560 --> 00:53:16,279
Speaker 1: if they don't believe Moses and the prophets, they won't

1011
00:53:16,320 --> 00:53:18,880
Speaker 1: believe even if a man is raised from the dead.

1012
00:53:19,640 --> 00:53:23,040
Speaker 1: That means that the reader, the Christian reader, these are

1013
00:53:23,080 --> 00:53:25,560
Speaker 1: Christian readers reading this, are going to say, yeah, that's right, boy,

1014
00:53:25,600 --> 00:53:27,600
Speaker 1: they didn't believe when a man got raised from the dead. Boy,

1015
00:53:27,600 --> 00:53:30,360
Speaker 1: you got that one right. Uh yeah, Well that's because

1016
00:53:30,400 --> 00:53:32,759
Speaker 1: the storyteller knows that Jesus been raised from the dead,

1017
00:53:32,960 --> 00:53:35,680
Speaker 1: and as Jewish listeners most of them are not accepting it,

1018
00:53:36,239 --> 00:53:39,600
Speaker 1: and so uh, it has marks of being a later composition.

1019
00:53:39,960 --> 00:53:43,920
Speaker 1: It also, by the way, does coincide with Luke's understanding

1020
00:53:43,920 --> 00:53:46,400
Speaker 1: of the afterlife. The author of Luke, his understanding the

1021
00:53:46,400 --> 00:53:49,040
Speaker 1: afterlife is different from the understanding put on that Jesus

1022
00:53:49,120 --> 00:53:51,840
Speaker 1: himself apparently had, and so they are all these reasons

1023
00:53:51,880 --> 00:53:54,840
Speaker 1: for him. It doesn't go back to the historical Jesus. Uh.

1024
00:53:54,880 --> 00:53:57,799
Speaker 1: This brings up an interesting another tangential thought I was

1025
00:53:57,800 --> 00:54:02,279
Speaker 1: wondering about. So when you consider what purpose the Gospels

1026
00:54:02,280 --> 00:54:07,640
Speaker 1: were supposed to serve as written documents, did they serve

1027
00:54:07,960 --> 00:54:11,880
Speaker 1: and originally were they intended by their authors to have

1028
00:54:12,040 --> 00:54:18,080
Speaker 1: an apologetic purpose, like as preaching documents to outsiders or

1029
00:54:18,120 --> 00:54:19,920
Speaker 1: do you think of them primarily as things that were

1030
00:54:19,920 --> 00:54:24,480
Speaker 1: written for Christians who were already convinced to be you know,

1031
00:54:24,560 --> 00:54:27,320
Speaker 1: read and to I don't know, further edify them in

1032
00:54:27,360 --> 00:54:30,400
Speaker 1: their faith. Right. Um. This is something that's been debated

1033
00:54:30,480 --> 00:54:32,560
Speaker 1: over the years, although it's not debated too much anymore.

1034
00:54:32,960 --> 00:54:35,560
Speaker 1: Just about everybody who is an expert on this stuff

1035
00:54:35,560 --> 00:54:39,279
Speaker 1: thinks these books were not used for evangelistic purposes. You know,

1036
00:54:39,360 --> 00:54:40,880
Speaker 1: this is it's not the sort of thing like you

1037
00:54:41,120 --> 00:54:43,400
Speaker 1: wouldn't hand the Gospel of Matthew to somebody say hey,

1038
00:54:43,480 --> 00:54:45,480
Speaker 1: read this so you can become a Christian. Then take

1039
00:54:45,520 --> 00:54:46,719
Speaker 1: a look and said, are you a kid? I know?

1040
00:54:46,800 --> 00:54:48,600
Speaker 1: And I gotta read this, come on, get out of here.

1041
00:54:48,920 --> 00:54:52,000
Speaker 1: And so uh so, there there are all sorts of

1042
00:54:52,080 --> 00:54:55,360
Speaker 1: hints within the books themselves that they're written by Christians

1043
00:54:55,840 --> 00:55:00,560
Speaker 1: and for Christians to promote Christian faith. Having said that,

1044
00:55:01,719 --> 00:55:05,080
Speaker 1: one of the secondary uses of these books would surely

1045
00:55:05,120 --> 00:55:08,080
Speaker 1: have been to tell Christians what to tell others when

1046
00:55:08,120 --> 00:55:11,520
Speaker 1: they were trying to convert them. Um. And so the

1047
00:55:11,640 --> 00:55:16,600
Speaker 1: books themselves would not be tools of conversion or evangelistic tools,

1048
00:55:16,600 --> 00:55:20,120
Speaker 1: but they would be informing Christians of information that they

1049
00:55:20,160 --> 00:55:23,719
Speaker 1: could give to others. And one of the reasons that

1050
00:55:23,800 --> 00:55:27,680
Speaker 1: Christians need to have some ammunition is because they were

1051
00:55:27,719 --> 00:55:31,520
Speaker 1: being opposed in the Roman world. Most people thought they

1052
00:55:31,560 --> 00:55:33,959
Speaker 1: were nuts, and Christians say, so, no, we're not nuts.

1053
00:55:34,000 --> 00:55:37,560
Speaker 1: Actually we have the truth. And um, I'm gonna I'm

1054
00:55:37,560 --> 00:55:40,080
Speaker 1: gonna explain why we have the truth. Well, you need

1055
00:55:40,280 --> 00:55:42,160
Speaker 1: you need to have some kind of things to tell

1056
00:55:42,200 --> 00:55:44,799
Speaker 1: people to show that you've got the truth of all

1057
00:55:44,800 --> 00:55:47,080
Speaker 1: the four gospels. Luke the one we were just talking

1058
00:55:47,080 --> 00:55:51,240
Speaker 1: about gives most evidence of having this function of trying

1059
00:55:51,280 --> 00:55:56,279
Speaker 1: to convince outsiders that Christianity is a good thing and

1060
00:55:56,360 --> 00:56:00,680
Speaker 1: that it's a harmless thing. It's interesting, you know, one

1061
00:56:00,719 --> 00:56:03,239
Speaker 1: of the problems that Christians had in the early Roman

1062
00:56:03,280 --> 00:56:07,600
Speaker 1: Empire was that the guy they worshiped was crucified for

1063
00:56:07,719 --> 00:56:11,040
Speaker 1: crimes against the state. He was he was a state

1064
00:56:11,120 --> 00:56:13,680
Speaker 1: criminal who was executed for it. And so like, if

1065
00:56:13,719 --> 00:56:16,080
Speaker 1: that's the guy you're following, h you know, that doesn't

1066
00:56:16,080 --> 00:56:18,120
Speaker 1: look too good in the eyes of the law. And

1067
00:56:18,200 --> 00:56:21,719
Speaker 1: so they had to explain, well, actually, yeah he was,

1068
00:56:21,840 --> 00:56:24,160
Speaker 1: but you know, Pilot didn't want to do it, and

1069
00:56:24,239 --> 00:56:26,439
Speaker 1: the Romans were actually at Jesus side. It's this damn

1070
00:56:26,520 --> 00:56:29,239
Speaker 1: Jews that made us do it. And so so they

1071
00:56:29,360 --> 00:56:33,560
Speaker 1: they're putting the fault on Jews uh and exonerating Romans

1072
00:56:34,040 --> 00:56:37,600
Speaker 1: to show that we're not a threat to Roman society. Uh.

1073
00:56:37,640 --> 00:56:39,440
Speaker 1: And Luke does that more than any of the others.

1074
00:56:39,760 --> 00:56:43,000
Speaker 1: It doesn't. Luke also repeatedly mentioned the fact that Jesus

1075
00:56:43,080 --> 00:56:46,319
Speaker 1: was innocent, Like it uses the word innocent. Yeah, so

1076
00:56:46,360 --> 00:56:50,359
Speaker 1: when he's on trial before ponscious Pilot, uh, Luke. Luke

1077
00:56:50,440 --> 00:56:55,120
Speaker 1: stresses three times, three times. Pilot actually declares that Jesus,

1078
00:56:55,160 --> 00:56:58,920
Speaker 1: he's innocent. He doesn't deserve this, and the Jews leaders

1079
00:56:58,920 --> 00:57:02,319
Speaker 1: forced him to crusifiment then at when he's being crucified. Uh,

1080
00:57:02,360 --> 00:57:04,480
Speaker 1: in Luke Scott only Luke Goffel. You know, you have

1081
00:57:04,560 --> 00:57:07,880
Speaker 1: the centurion who's crucified him. And in Mark Scoffel, the

1082
00:57:07,960 --> 00:57:10,680
Speaker 1: centurion looks up at him and he realizes that, oh

1083
00:57:10,719 --> 00:57:13,160
Speaker 1: my God, what will he say? Truly this man was

1084
00:57:13,200 --> 00:57:16,080
Speaker 1: the son of God. But in Luke's gospel, the same

1085
00:57:16,120 --> 00:57:18,360
Speaker 1: guys looks at him and then he said he says,

1086
00:57:19,240 --> 00:57:23,040
Speaker 1: this man was innocent, and so he said, well, yeah,

1087
00:57:23,040 --> 00:57:24,760
Speaker 1: if he's a son of God, he was in yeah, yeah.

1088
00:57:24,760 --> 00:57:28,080
Speaker 1: But the point is Luke is emphasizing he was innocent,

1089
00:57:28,240 --> 00:57:31,000
Speaker 1: and and so it's not you know, everybody, all the

1090
00:57:31,080 --> 00:57:33,840
Speaker 1: Romans knew it is the Jewish people didn't recognize it.

1091
00:57:34,320 --> 00:57:37,800
Speaker 1: So you're mentioning several uh different strains of thought that

1092
00:57:37,800 --> 00:57:40,240
Speaker 1: are developing after the life of Jesus. You think the

1093
00:57:40,680 --> 00:57:43,800
Speaker 1: consensus of biblical scholars today would be that Jesus, the

1094
00:57:43,840 --> 00:57:47,080
Speaker 1: real historical Jesus, was some type of apocalyptic prophet. He

1095
00:57:47,160 --> 00:57:49,840
Speaker 1: was preaching, you know, the imminent return of God who

1096
00:57:49,840 --> 00:57:52,320
Speaker 1: would destroy the enemies of Israel and and and bring

1097
00:57:52,320 --> 00:57:55,680
Speaker 1: about this good kingdom on earth. But obviously that changed.

1098
00:57:56,000 --> 00:57:57,840
Speaker 1: You're talk in the book about a process of de

1099
00:57:58,080 --> 00:58:03,040
Speaker 1: apocalypticizing the Christian faith over the following centuries. Can you,

1100
00:58:03,640 --> 00:58:06,280
Speaker 1: in brief terms, what does that process look like, what

1101
00:58:06,280 --> 00:58:09,480
Speaker 1: what motivates it, and how does it happen. Let me

1102
00:58:09,640 --> 00:58:11,960
Speaker 1: let me preface this by saying, but that you're the

1103
00:58:11,960 --> 00:58:14,920
Speaker 1: first person who's interviewed me who could say the apocalypticize

1104
00:58:17,520 --> 00:58:21,600
Speaker 1: drives by students nuts. I talked about the de apocalypticization

1105
00:58:21,680 --> 00:58:23,600
Speaker 1: of the tradition, and they don't They don't like that.

1106
00:58:24,000 --> 00:58:28,720
Speaker 1: So uh, sod apocalypticize. So if Jesus has this apocalyptic

1107
00:58:28,800 --> 00:58:31,400
Speaker 1: view that the apocalypse is coming and that God's gonna

1108
00:58:31,440 --> 00:58:34,320
Speaker 1: wipe out things and it's going to uh, it's gonna

1109
00:58:34,400 --> 00:58:38,520
Speaker 1: make everything right. The reason one of the functions of

1110
00:58:38,560 --> 00:58:44,080
Speaker 1: that kind of religious discourse, that kind of apocalyptic language,

1111
00:58:44,640 --> 00:58:47,960
Speaker 1: was to encourage people who were in the midst of suffering,

1112
00:58:48,560 --> 00:58:52,440
Speaker 1: because you're telling him, look, yes you are suffering. God

1113
00:58:52,520 --> 00:58:55,240
Speaker 1: is on your side. Is these powers of evil that

1114
00:58:55,320 --> 00:58:58,040
Speaker 1: are lined up against us, But God's on your side.

1115
00:58:58,600 --> 00:59:01,760
Speaker 1: And the point of this is that God is soon

1116
00:59:02,240 --> 00:59:05,640
Speaker 1: going to intervene and take out these forces of evil.

1117
00:59:05,720 --> 00:59:07,720
Speaker 1: So if you just hold on for a little while,

1118
00:59:08,280 --> 00:59:12,240
Speaker 1: it'll be okay. That's why the Book of Revelation says,

1119
00:59:12,320 --> 00:59:15,560
Speaker 1: you know, he's coming soon, and it's why the apostle

1120
00:59:15,600 --> 00:59:19,000
Speaker 1: Paul says, you need to be alert because it's coming soon.

1121
00:59:19,120 --> 00:59:20,880
Speaker 1: It's gonna be like a thief in the night, and

1122
00:59:21,120 --> 00:59:23,840
Speaker 1: you know, if you're not awake, you're gonna be robbed,

1123
00:59:24,080 --> 00:59:26,240
Speaker 1: and so you need to be alert. And that's why

1124
00:59:26,320 --> 00:59:30,680
Speaker 1: Jesus himself said, truly, I tell you this generation will

1125
00:59:30,720 --> 00:59:34,280
Speaker 1: not pass away before all these things take place. Jesus

1126
00:59:34,280 --> 00:59:38,320
Speaker 1: prediction that his own disciples would see it. Uh. And

1127
00:59:38,400 --> 00:59:41,360
Speaker 1: that's the nature of this kind of apocalyptic language, and

1128
00:59:41,400 --> 00:59:44,320
Speaker 1: it still is, by the way, people today who believe

1129
00:59:44,360 --> 00:59:47,240
Speaker 1: in the Left Behind series or who think Jesus is

1130
00:59:47,280 --> 00:59:50,720
Speaker 1: coming back, they invariably think, you know, it's gonna be

1131
00:59:50,720 --> 00:59:54,000
Speaker 1: in my lifetime. You know, maybe next time, sometime next Thursday.

1132
00:59:54,000 --> 00:59:55,919
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's gonna be pretty soon. And so

1133
00:59:56,200 --> 00:59:59,920
Speaker 1: that's that's all part of part of it. In early Christianity,

1134
01:00:00,000 --> 01:00:01,680
Speaker 1: it was a very firm belief it was going to

1135
01:00:01,800 --> 01:00:04,360
Speaker 1: come back right, It's gonna happen right away. Jesus said,

1136
01:00:04,760 --> 01:00:07,240
Speaker 1: it's what Paul taught. But then the weeks went by,

1137
01:00:07,320 --> 01:00:09,000
Speaker 1: and the months went by, and the years went by,

1138
01:00:09,320 --> 01:00:12,720
Speaker 1: then the decades went by, and people are saying, uh, yeah, well,

1139
01:00:12,840 --> 01:00:14,920
Speaker 1: you know, it's supposed to happen by now, and it

1140
01:00:15,000 --> 01:00:17,720
Speaker 1: hasn't happened. And people then had to come up with

1141
01:00:17,760 --> 01:00:21,520
Speaker 1: ways of explaining it, and they're all sorts of ways

1142
01:00:21,560 --> 01:00:23,160
Speaker 1: of explaining it. Some of the books of the New

1143
01:00:23,200 --> 01:00:25,800
Speaker 1: Testament are written to try to explain it. Second Peter's

1144
01:00:25,840 --> 01:00:29,160
Speaker 1: written to explain why it hasn't happened yet. Um. Second

1145
01:00:29,160 --> 01:00:31,880
Speaker 1: Peter is the book that says that with say, let

1146
01:00:31,920 --> 01:00:33,640
Speaker 1: you know, you say it's supposed to come, didn't come.

1147
01:00:33,640 --> 01:00:36,840
Speaker 1: But look, you're you're following a human calendar. Uh. In

1148
01:00:36,920 --> 01:00:39,600
Speaker 1: God's calendar, a day is as a thousand years, and

1149
01:00:39,640 --> 01:00:42,280
Speaker 1: a thousand years is as a day. So when God

1150
01:00:42,280 --> 01:00:44,240
Speaker 1: says it's gonna happen soon, you know, if he means

1151
01:00:44,280 --> 01:00:46,200
Speaker 1: like in three days, that could be three thousand years,

1152
01:00:47,400 --> 01:00:49,160
Speaker 1: which makes you wonder why he said it's gonna be soon.

1153
01:00:49,240 --> 01:00:51,120
Speaker 1: I mean, like it's helping me much that it's gonna

1154
01:00:51,120 --> 01:00:55,480
Speaker 1: be through that. But anyway, so anyway, so part of

1155
01:00:55,520 --> 01:00:58,560
Speaker 1: what happens in the tradition is that the apocalyptic emphasis

1156
01:00:58,560 --> 01:01:03,240
Speaker 1: gets muted, and eventually it gets dissolved and eventually gets

1157
01:01:03,360 --> 01:01:10,080
Speaker 1: argued against Christianity becomes d apocalypticized, meaning that this apocalyptic

1158
01:01:10,600 --> 01:01:13,120
Speaker 1: emphasis at the end is going to come, the end

1159
01:01:13,120 --> 01:01:15,720
Speaker 1: of this world is gonna come in our lifetime, ends

1160
01:01:15,760 --> 01:01:20,680
Speaker 1: of disappearing, but something replaces it. The dual ism that

1161
01:01:20,760 --> 01:01:23,880
Speaker 1: you get an apocalypticism is a kind of a horizontal

1162
01:01:24,760 --> 01:01:26,720
Speaker 1: dualism that you can put it on like a timeline,

1163
01:01:27,080 --> 01:01:28,920
Speaker 1: just so you think, have a timeline that goes across

1164
01:01:28,920 --> 01:01:31,920
Speaker 1: the page horizontally, and you know you've got on the

1165
01:01:32,000 --> 01:01:34,720
Speaker 1: left side, you've got the time up to now, then

1166
01:01:34,760 --> 01:01:37,600
Speaker 1: there's a break, and then you got the time after now.

1167
01:01:37,640 --> 01:01:40,040
Speaker 1: So you draw this line with a horizontal line with

1168
01:01:40,080 --> 01:01:42,000
Speaker 1: the vertical line in the middle of it, and the

1169
01:01:42,120 --> 01:01:44,720
Speaker 1: vertical line is breaking this evil age that's going to

1170
01:01:44,760 --> 01:01:47,160
Speaker 1: be destroyed, and then there's gonna be the age to

1171
01:01:47,200 --> 01:01:49,800
Speaker 1: come with is good, and so utopia is going to

1172
01:01:49,880 --> 01:01:53,080
Speaker 1: come in suddenly and immediately when God destroys these forces

1173
01:01:53,120 --> 01:01:58,120
Speaker 1: of evil, brings in his kingdom, that horizontal timeline. The dualism.

1174
01:01:58,160 --> 01:02:02,240
Speaker 1: The horizontal dualism is re attained when people get rid

1175
01:02:02,280 --> 01:02:04,720
Speaker 1: of the apocalypticism. They keep the dualism, but what they

1176
01:02:04,720 --> 01:02:08,320
Speaker 1: do is they flip the horizontal line on its axis,

1177
01:02:09,280 --> 01:02:13,160
Speaker 1: so that now it's a vertical line of vertical dualism.

1178
01:02:13,160 --> 01:02:17,600
Speaker 1: It's no longer now and then ver horizontal. It is

1179
01:02:17,720 --> 01:02:22,760
Speaker 1: down here and up there, And so now it's not

1180
01:02:22,920 --> 01:02:25,320
Speaker 1: what's happening now and what's gonna happen, Then it's what

1181
01:02:25,440 --> 01:02:28,640
Speaker 1: happens here and there, and so it's it's and it's

1182
01:02:28,680 --> 01:02:31,400
Speaker 1: so it's a spatial line instead of a temporal line.

1183
01:02:32,120 --> 01:02:35,400
Speaker 1: The spacial line is uh that it's not going to

1184
01:02:35,440 --> 01:02:36,880
Speaker 1: be an act in the future is going to be

1185
01:02:36,920 --> 01:02:39,280
Speaker 1: to you when you die, You're gonna go up or down.

1186
01:02:40,080 --> 01:02:42,840
Speaker 1: And so rather than the Kingdom of God being here

1187
01:02:42,960 --> 01:02:45,840
Speaker 1: on earth, the Kingdom of God is with God up

1188
01:02:45,840 --> 01:02:49,240
Speaker 1: in heaven. And so people will go up to heaven

1189
01:02:49,280 --> 01:02:52,560
Speaker 1: to be to receive their eternal reward. It will not

1190
01:02:52,680 --> 01:02:54,640
Speaker 1: be life here on earth and to be life above

1191
01:02:54,800 --> 01:02:57,360
Speaker 1: with God in heaven. What about the people who don't

1192
01:02:57,360 --> 01:03:01,320
Speaker 1: make it, well, they go below. If the righteous are rewarded,

1193
01:03:01,400 --> 01:03:05,160
Speaker 1: what happens to them, they're punished. Uh really yeah, but

1194
01:03:05,200 --> 01:03:07,080
Speaker 1: now it's a lot of destruction anymore because God's not

1195
01:03:07,120 --> 01:03:10,760
Speaker 1: destroying the forces of evil. And so what people are

1196
01:03:10,800 --> 01:03:13,440
Speaker 1: what these de apocalyptus are doing, are they're changing the

1197
01:03:13,560 --> 01:03:17,240
Speaker 1: Jewish view into the Greek view. Let me give you

1198
01:03:17,240 --> 01:03:19,000
Speaker 1: a little bit. Sorry, I mean, this is kind of complicated.

1199
01:03:19,040 --> 01:03:21,880
Speaker 1: Let me give you just the background on this. When

1200
01:03:21,960 --> 01:03:24,960
Speaker 1: Christianity started, it was a Jewish religion. Jesus was a

1201
01:03:25,040 --> 01:03:27,200
Speaker 1: Jews followed the Jews. They tried to convert Jews. They

1202
01:03:27,200 --> 01:03:31,400
Speaker 1: didn't have much success. Paul comes along, he converts gentiles,

1203
01:03:31,480 --> 01:03:34,800
Speaker 1: non Jews. These people he converts are people who are

1204
01:03:34,800 --> 01:03:37,560
Speaker 1: trained in Greek circles. That means they were trained thinking

1205
01:03:37,600 --> 01:03:40,040
Speaker 1: like Plato, you've got a soul and you've got a body.

1206
01:03:40,760 --> 01:03:43,440
Speaker 1: They're they're not Jews, they're Greeks, the Greek Greek background.

1207
01:03:43,840 --> 01:03:46,240
Speaker 1: They believe that when you die, your soul gets rewarded

1208
01:03:46,360 --> 01:03:49,000
Speaker 1: or punished. They come into Christianity and they bring their

1209
01:03:49,000 --> 01:03:52,160
Speaker 1: beliefs with them. They don't simply adopt what Jesus taught.

1210
01:03:52,200 --> 01:03:55,720
Speaker 1: They understanding like what they already think. They already think

1211
01:03:56,280 --> 01:03:59,440
Speaker 1: body and soul two separate things. Rewards and punishments, and

1212
01:03:59,520 --> 01:04:03,200
Speaker 1: now as gets the apocalypticized, their views get confirmed in

1213
01:04:03,240 --> 01:04:05,840
Speaker 1: the new theology, which is not that there's a Kingdom

1214
01:04:05,880 --> 01:04:08,000
Speaker 1: of God coming to earth and some most people are

1215
01:04:08,040 --> 01:04:11,960
Speaker 1: gonna be destroyed, but that when you die, your soul

1216
01:04:12,640 --> 01:04:15,040
Speaker 1: that's now separable, is going to go up to heaven

1217
01:04:15,640 --> 01:04:18,920
Speaker 1: or it's going to go down to hell. The person

1218
01:04:19,080 --> 01:04:21,680
Speaker 1: God creates as eternal because God is eternal. That means

1219
01:04:21,760 --> 01:04:24,160
Speaker 1: heaven is eternal, and health is eternal, and so you

1220
01:04:24,200 --> 01:04:27,320
Speaker 1: have eternal reward and eternal punishment. And in a sense,

1221
01:04:27,720 --> 01:04:30,760
Speaker 1: it's taking the teachings of Jesus and the teachings of

1222
01:04:30,800 --> 01:04:35,880
Speaker 1: Plato and smashing them together into an amalgam that neither

1223
01:04:35,920 --> 01:04:38,800
Speaker 1: one of them would recognize. That's that's where heaven and

1224
01:04:38,880 --> 01:04:43,000
Speaker 1: hell comes from. Wow. Yeah, that's interesting. So so on

1225
01:04:43,000 --> 01:04:46,480
Speaker 1: one hand, you've got the time elapsing is causing the

1226
01:04:47,080 --> 01:04:50,880
Speaker 1: sort of decay of the potential for apocalypticism, and then

1227
01:04:51,040 --> 01:04:54,760
Speaker 1: you have the influence of the Greek thought that's prevalent

1228
01:04:54,800 --> 01:04:58,480
Speaker 1: in the gentile world. But what role does political power

1229
01:04:58,760 --> 01:05:02,440
Speaker 1: and acceptance in culture have in the in the changing

1230
01:05:02,520 --> 01:05:05,960
Speaker 1: views of the afterlife? Because we know that originally um uh.

1231
01:05:06,160 --> 01:05:08,479
Speaker 1: You certainly point out in your book that this view

1232
01:05:08,560 --> 01:05:12,320
Speaker 1: that Christianity was illegal everywhere in the Roman Empire is

1233
01:05:12,360 --> 01:05:15,520
Speaker 1: not true. That's a myth. But it was sporadically persecuted

1234
01:05:15,520 --> 01:05:18,960
Speaker 1: in the Roman Empire. So over time, we know that

1235
01:05:19,040 --> 01:05:23,000
Speaker 1: Christianity becomes more popular, becomes more prevalent, and eventually becomes

1236
01:05:23,440 --> 01:05:26,920
Speaker 1: uh accepted and even the the you know, the official

1237
01:05:26,960 --> 01:05:29,760
Speaker 1: religion of the empire. How does that change views on

1238
01:05:29,800 --> 01:05:33,080
Speaker 1: the afterlife if at all? Yeah, No, it's a significant

1239
01:05:33,120 --> 01:05:36,320
Speaker 1: question because, um, what I argue in my book is

1240
01:05:36,360 --> 01:05:43,040
Speaker 1: that precisely Christian understandings of persecution and martyrdom were some

1241
01:05:43,160 --> 01:05:46,000
Speaker 1: of those understandings are things that actually drove this new

1242
01:05:46,080 --> 01:05:49,040
Speaker 1: view of heaven and hell related to the reason I

1243
01:05:49,080 --> 01:05:52,000
Speaker 1: just just gave. So explain it. It's as you said,

1244
01:05:52,040 --> 01:05:54,240
Speaker 1: it's not that you know, millions of Christians are getting

1245
01:05:54,280 --> 01:05:58,160
Speaker 1: thrown to the lions or tens of thousands, or even thousands.

1246
01:05:58,240 --> 01:06:02,040
Speaker 1: I mean, but we heard about it just just like today.

1247
01:06:02,080 --> 01:06:04,600
Speaker 1: You know, I've got all these students. I live in

1248
01:06:04,640 --> 01:06:06,560
Speaker 1: the South, I live in North Carolina, and these students

1249
01:06:06,600 --> 01:06:09,680
Speaker 1: are basically raised in Christian household who believes that they're

1250
01:06:09,720 --> 01:06:12,439
Speaker 1: persecuted as Christians and you kind of look our eyes.

1251
01:06:12,480 --> 01:06:15,640
Speaker 1: They really but Christianity has always had this kind of

1252
01:06:15,640 --> 01:06:18,720
Speaker 1: persecution thing, and it goes all the way back um.

1253
01:06:18,800 --> 01:06:21,720
Speaker 1: And so most of early Christians were not persecuted, certainly

1254
01:06:21,720 --> 01:06:25,560
Speaker 1: not martyred, but they heard about persecutions and martyrdoms. And

1255
01:06:26,200 --> 01:06:29,280
Speaker 1: when people were martyrred, when it did happen on occasion,

1256
01:06:29,720 --> 01:06:31,840
Speaker 1: you know, someone had to wonder, you mean, this person

1257
01:06:31,880 --> 01:06:34,320
Speaker 1: is going to die, and like that's it until like

1258
01:06:34,400 --> 01:06:36,400
Speaker 1: I mean, when is the incoming. It's gonna be another

1259
01:06:36,440 --> 01:06:38,560
Speaker 1: sixty years. That's not right that this person died. He's

1260
01:06:38,600 --> 01:06:41,320
Speaker 1: got a way around for sixty years. And so so

1261
01:06:41,400 --> 01:06:44,520
Speaker 1: that that helped facilitate the idea that at the moment

1262
01:06:44,560 --> 01:06:49,080
Speaker 1: of death, a martyr will be in the presence of God. Uh,

1263
01:06:49,120 --> 01:06:51,840
Speaker 1: the marty. First it was the martyrs. The martyrs are

1264
01:06:51,840 --> 01:06:54,160
Speaker 1: thought to be immediately to the presence of God until

1265
01:06:54,200 --> 01:06:57,680
Speaker 1: the resurrection. But as time went on and there wasn't

1266
01:06:57,760 --> 01:07:01,240
Speaker 1: any like future resurrection happening, then started thinking, well, everybody goes.

1267
01:07:01,480 --> 01:07:05,280
Speaker 1: And so the the opposition by Rome helped facilitate this

1268
01:07:05,360 --> 01:07:09,000
Speaker 1: idea that it's at death, uh, that it's going to happen,

1269
01:07:09,120 --> 01:07:13,400
Speaker 1: not in some distant future moment. So the Roman persecutions

1270
01:07:13,440 --> 01:07:19,360
Speaker 1: went on very sporadically, not uniformly, until the early fourth

1271
01:07:19,360 --> 01:07:22,480
Speaker 1: century when they became more consistent. There were some imperial

1272
01:07:23,360 --> 01:07:27,560
Speaker 1: decreased paths that were made more plausible persecution in a

1273
01:07:27,560 --> 01:07:31,720
Speaker 1: lot more places. Um. But then Constantine converted to Christianity

1274
01:07:31,840 --> 01:07:33,520
Speaker 1: and he brought an end to the persecution in the

1275
01:07:33,600 --> 01:07:36,720
Speaker 1: year three thirteen, and so what happened to the views

1276
01:07:36,720 --> 01:07:41,920
Speaker 1: of the afterlife? Basically what happened is the views got cemented. Uh.

1277
01:07:42,000 --> 01:07:44,480
Speaker 1: They weren't invented at that point, they were cemented at

1278
01:07:44,640 --> 01:07:50,320
Speaker 1: that point. Uh. They became uh stronger tools of conversion

1279
01:07:50,360 --> 01:07:53,400
Speaker 1: because now even the emperor believed in them, and they

1280
01:07:53,400 --> 01:07:57,000
Speaker 1: were used to convert people. And they became the dominant

1281
01:07:57,080 --> 01:08:01,720
Speaker 1: view of Western civilization because is now Rome was the

1282
01:08:01,760 --> 01:08:04,640
Speaker 1: dominant empire, and now Roman by the end of the

1283
01:08:04,680 --> 01:08:08,360
Speaker 1: fourth century into the fifth century was becoming almost predominantly

1284
01:08:08,480 --> 01:08:11,960
Speaker 1: Christian and Christianity and takes over the Roman world. It

1285
01:08:12,040 --> 01:08:14,200
Speaker 1: ends up becoming the religion of the Middle Ages in

1286
01:08:14,200 --> 01:08:17,120
Speaker 1: the West and becomes the religion of the Renaissance and

1287
01:08:17,160 --> 01:08:20,320
Speaker 1: the Reformation and modernity. And that's why everybody believes in

1288
01:08:20,320 --> 01:08:22,240
Speaker 1: heaven and hell, Because everybodys always believes in heaven and

1289
01:08:22,280 --> 01:08:25,400
Speaker 1: hell unless you go to the earliest times. All Right,

1290
01:08:25,439 --> 01:08:27,240
Speaker 1: it's time to take a quick break. We'll be right

1291
01:08:27,240 --> 01:08:33,240
Speaker 1: back with more. Thank you. Alright, we're back. One of

1292
01:08:33,280 --> 01:08:36,120
Speaker 1: the interesting little tidbits from your book that that stuck

1293
01:08:36,120 --> 01:08:40,360
Speaker 1: with me was when you're talking about the the political

1294
01:08:40,360 --> 01:08:43,960
Speaker 1: power and acceptance of Christianity over time, you talk about

1295
01:08:43,960 --> 01:08:47,080
Speaker 1: a later document called the Apocalypse of Paul that also

1296
01:08:47,120 --> 01:08:49,559
Speaker 1: includes a guided tour of heaven and Hell with the

1297
01:08:49,600 --> 01:08:52,599
Speaker 1: City of Christ and then the people outside it enduring

1298
01:08:52,680 --> 01:08:56,040
Speaker 1: eternal torment. And it struck me that in this document

1299
01:08:56,120 --> 01:08:59,240
Speaker 1: the worst tortures are saved, not for like the violent

1300
01:08:59,320 --> 01:09:03,439
Speaker 1: murderers or the torturers of Christian martyrs, or even they're

1301
01:09:03,439 --> 01:09:07,280
Speaker 1: not even for nonbelievers. The worst tortures are saved for

1302
01:09:07,479 --> 01:09:11,719
Speaker 1: Christian theologians who held a different view than the author

1303
01:09:11,880 --> 01:09:14,120
Speaker 1: on what would seem to us to be a relatively

1304
01:09:14,400 --> 01:09:17,840
Speaker 1: minor thing, like a minor dispute about the interpretation of

1305
01:09:17,920 --> 01:09:21,960
Speaker 1: Christ's incarnation. What's going on here with this this harsh

1306
01:09:22,040 --> 01:09:26,360
Speaker 1: punishment of minute differences in theology, And do you see

1307
01:09:26,400 --> 01:09:29,080
Speaker 1: other examples in in the history of religion like this

1308
01:09:29,200 --> 01:09:32,320
Speaker 1: that develop along these lines. Yeah, it's very interesting. This,

1309
01:09:32,600 --> 01:09:36,760
Speaker 1: this Apocalypse of Paul, is a very interesting book. So

1310
01:09:36,960 --> 01:09:38,840
Speaker 1: we're not sure exactly when it was written, but is

1311
01:09:38,920 --> 01:09:42,640
Speaker 1: certainly after the Conversion of Constantine, probably at the end

1312
01:09:42,640 --> 01:09:44,840
Speaker 1: of the fourth century, at the beginning of the fifth century.

1313
01:09:45,479 --> 01:09:48,960
Speaker 1: The form of this book that we now have, it's

1314
01:09:49,000 --> 01:09:52,200
Speaker 1: important for both what came after it and what came

1315
01:09:52,240 --> 01:09:55,320
Speaker 1: before it. The Apoxes of Paul was known to Dante.

1316
01:09:56,000 --> 01:10:00,639
Speaker 1: This was one of Dante's influences, the earliest influence he had, um,

1317
01:10:01,720 --> 01:10:04,880
Speaker 1: and so some of his ideas, uh come from that.

1318
01:10:04,960 --> 01:10:09,560
Speaker 1: And you'll notice that Christians get punished in Dante as well. Um.

1319
01:10:09,600 --> 01:10:12,280
Speaker 1: The predecessor of the Apocalypse of Paul was the Apocalypse

1320
01:10:12,280 --> 01:10:16,040
Speaker 1: of Peter that I talked about, And in the earliest

1321
01:10:16,240 --> 01:10:18,720
Speaker 1: one of these, we have the Apocalypse of Peter. As

1322
01:10:18,720 --> 01:10:22,000
Speaker 1: I was saying, people get tortured for blasphemy God, or

1323
01:10:22,240 --> 01:10:26,040
Speaker 1: you know, committing adultery or but it's always moral sins

1324
01:10:26,880 --> 01:10:29,960
Speaker 1: when you get to the Apocalypse of Paul. Uh. So

1325
01:10:30,000 --> 01:10:33,360
Speaker 1: now we're in a different period in in the apocalyp Peter,

1326
01:10:33,439 --> 01:10:35,599
Speaker 1: which is you know, like forty years after the New

1327
01:10:35,600 --> 01:10:39,360
Speaker 1: Testament was written, it's um, you know, it's it's warning

1328
01:10:39,439 --> 01:10:43,519
Speaker 1: Christians not to sin um. But the Apocalypse of Paul

1329
01:10:44,280 --> 01:10:46,800
Speaker 1: is really focused on Christians ut sinning in The point

1330
01:10:46,880 --> 01:10:49,519
Speaker 1: is not just don't like commit moral sins. It's not

1331
01:10:49,600 --> 01:10:55,160
Speaker 1: just about stealing and uh you know, you know, committing

1332
01:10:55,240 --> 01:10:59,120
Speaker 1: infanticide or striking your parents or whatever. It's not about

1333
01:10:59,200 --> 01:11:03,160
Speaker 1: just stuff you do wrong. It's also about what happens

1334
01:11:03,160 --> 01:11:05,719
Speaker 1: in the church. The people who are punished the worst

1335
01:11:05,840 --> 01:11:11,200
Speaker 1: are the church leaders in hell uh forever and um

1336
01:11:11,360 --> 01:11:14,360
Speaker 1: you know, so some of these are moral sins. Um.

1337
01:11:14,439 --> 01:11:17,599
Speaker 1: So that if you are a you know, if you're

1338
01:11:17,600 --> 01:11:20,040
Speaker 1: a bishop of a church, the leader of a church,

1339
01:11:20,600 --> 01:11:24,200
Speaker 1: and you um, and you perform in your duties of office,

1340
01:11:24,200 --> 01:11:26,519
Speaker 1: and then you go home and sneak out and go

1341
01:11:26,560 --> 01:11:31,200
Speaker 1: and commit adultery, Oh boy, you are gonna have a

1342
01:11:31,240 --> 01:11:33,160
Speaker 1: bad You're gonna be worse than it's gonna be worse

1343
01:11:33,160 --> 01:11:36,360
Speaker 1: for you than the run of mill adulterer. So and

1344
01:11:36,439 --> 01:11:38,800
Speaker 1: so and so the bishops are being punished and the

1345
01:11:38,880 --> 01:11:41,880
Speaker 1: deacons are being punished, and I you know, these people

1346
01:11:41,920 --> 01:11:44,439
Speaker 1: are like because they're they're supposed to be setting examples,

1347
01:11:44,439 --> 01:11:47,040
Speaker 1: and they're standing the wrong, so they're worse. But the

1348
01:11:47,160 --> 01:11:49,320
Speaker 1: very worst punishment is the one that you mentioned. It's

1349
01:11:49,320 --> 01:11:53,000
Speaker 1: called it's three times worse than any other punishment. Uh.

1350
01:11:53,080 --> 01:11:57,760
Speaker 1: And it comes to um Christians who think that when

1351
01:11:57,840 --> 01:12:01,439
Speaker 1: they think that Christ is not a full flesh and

1352
01:12:01,479 --> 01:12:04,479
Speaker 1: blood human being, but he's only God. In other words,

1353
01:12:04,479 --> 01:12:08,000
Speaker 1: they believed Christ was so much God that he wasn't

1354
01:12:08,040 --> 01:12:11,040
Speaker 1: completely human like the rest of us. Now, you can't

1355
01:12:11,040 --> 01:12:14,280
Speaker 1: say that you'll be tortured forever worse than anybody, you know,

1356
01:12:14,320 --> 01:12:20,000
Speaker 1: you'll be so uh yeah. And so this is being

1357
01:12:20,000 --> 01:12:23,839
Speaker 1: written in a context where most people are Christian, probably

1358
01:12:23,880 --> 01:12:26,200
Speaker 1: in the environment this person is in. He's not worried

1359
01:12:26,200 --> 01:12:30,200
Speaker 1: about Pagans. In the earlier practice of the Apopus of

1360
01:12:30,240 --> 01:12:34,080
Speaker 1: Peter idolaters are punished and persecutors and Christians are punished.

1361
01:12:34,200 --> 01:12:36,519
Speaker 1: Not in the Apops of Paul several hundred years later,

1362
01:12:36,520 --> 01:12:38,720
Speaker 1: because you don't have those people anymore. And it's this

1363
01:12:38,840 --> 01:12:41,439
Speaker 1: how moral sins, it sins in the church that really

1364
01:12:41,479 --> 01:12:45,519
Speaker 1: bother him more than anything, especially bad theology. I wonder

1365
01:12:45,560 --> 01:12:48,960
Speaker 1: if that's just an availability heuristic issue, like if this

1366
01:12:49,040 --> 01:12:52,000
Speaker 1: is somebody who's writing Christian literature in the name of Paul.

1367
01:12:52,040 --> 01:12:55,640
Speaker 1: They're probably thinking a lot about their enemies with theological

1368
01:12:55,840 --> 01:12:59,519
Speaker 1: minor theological disputes. It's just what's on their mind. It's

1369
01:12:59,640 --> 01:13:02,320
Speaker 1: it's on their mind, and it's who are the who

1370
01:13:02,320 --> 01:13:06,320
Speaker 1: are the big enemies of Christianity, and and you know

1371
01:13:06,400 --> 01:13:09,280
Speaker 1: they're the ones who get it the worst. So in

1372
01:13:09,320 --> 01:13:12,120
Speaker 1: the second century and the Apostle Cepeter wrote the worst

1373
01:13:12,200 --> 01:13:17,120
Speaker 1: Enemies where the persecutors uh those who were committed idolatry,

1374
01:13:17,320 --> 01:13:20,640
Speaker 1: worst vitals, and those who you know, committed sins of

1375
01:13:20,760 --> 01:13:23,280
Speaker 1: violations of God's law, those are enemies. By the time

1376
01:13:23,280 --> 01:13:24,760
Speaker 1: you get to Paul, the enemies are in the church,

1377
01:13:24,880 --> 01:13:27,840
Speaker 1: because the churches are split. You get bad theologians, you

1378
01:13:27,920 --> 01:13:30,559
Speaker 1: get people bleeding crazy things. You've got you know, and

1379
01:13:30,600 --> 01:13:33,080
Speaker 1: you've got immorality in the church. And so those are

1380
01:13:33,080 --> 01:13:35,759
Speaker 1: the ones being punished. Okay, Bart, I've got one more question.

1381
01:13:35,800 --> 01:13:40,000
Speaker 1: So in the Divine Comedy, people who Dante runs into

1382
01:13:40,040 --> 01:13:44,880
Speaker 1: in purgatory, I noticed are constantly begging Dante to go

1383
01:13:45,000 --> 01:13:49,080
Speaker 1: back and tell their relatives, especially female relatives, that they

1384
01:13:49,120 --> 01:13:52,200
Speaker 1: should be praying for them more. Where does this idea

1385
01:13:52,240 --> 01:13:54,800
Speaker 1: come from that the prayers of the living, especially the

1386
01:13:54,840 --> 01:13:58,720
Speaker 1: prayers of women, were useful and important to those in

1387
01:13:58,800 --> 01:14:01,880
Speaker 1: the afterlife and could affect their fate there. It does

1388
01:14:01,960 --> 01:14:05,400
Speaker 1: proceed the official Catholic doctrine of purgatory, right, no, it

1389
01:14:05,400 --> 01:14:08,439
Speaker 1: comes after Okay, so the okay, so yeah, let me

1390
01:14:08,439 --> 01:14:11,920
Speaker 1: get a little bit background on because the U I

1391
01:14:11,960 --> 01:14:13,240
Speaker 1: deal with this in my book. I have a section

1392
01:14:13,280 --> 01:14:15,400
Speaker 1: on purgatory, uh in my book, as well as a

1393
01:14:15,439 --> 01:14:17,960
Speaker 1: section by the way on the idea that everybody gets saved,

1394
01:14:18,360 --> 01:14:23,280
Speaker 1: which is you know, also interesting. But but with purgatory. Um.

1395
01:14:23,320 --> 01:14:25,160
Speaker 1: This is an important topic for a lot of Catholics

1396
01:14:25,160 --> 01:14:29,200
Speaker 1: because the Catholic Church continues to teach perigatory. And I'm surprised.

1397
01:14:29,439 --> 01:14:31,240
Speaker 1: I've talked with the number of Catholics after I wrote

1398
01:14:31,280 --> 01:14:33,880
Speaker 1: my book who didn't realize really what purgatory is. It

1399
01:14:34,360 --> 01:14:36,680
Speaker 1: didn't realize they'd have to suffer in there. I thought

1400
01:14:36,680 --> 01:14:39,160
Speaker 1: it was just like a holding pen. And I'm sorry

1401
01:14:39,320 --> 01:14:44,519
Speaker 1: I should ready it's not fun, you know, it's not fun.

1402
01:14:44,600 --> 01:14:48,559
Speaker 1: So um, So purgatory for for those of you who

1403
01:14:48,560 --> 01:14:50,439
Speaker 1: are are not Catholic, or those of you Catholic who

1404
01:14:50,479 --> 01:14:55,120
Speaker 1: aren't paying attention, uh, purgatory is is the doctrine that

1405
01:14:55,200 --> 01:14:58,960
Speaker 1: eventually developed. It says that there's not just heaven and hell. Um.

1406
01:14:59,000 --> 01:15:02,640
Speaker 1: The reason for purgatory developing is again, it's kind of

1407
01:15:02,640 --> 01:15:04,160
Speaker 1: the same as you of justice. I mean, it's not

1408
01:15:04,200 --> 01:15:07,840
Speaker 1: really fair that everybody dies and gets the same thing,

1409
01:15:08,040 --> 01:15:12,360
Speaker 1: and so rewards and punishments seem only fair. But on

1410
01:15:12,400 --> 01:15:16,519
Speaker 1: the other hand, you know, not everybody is deserving as

1411
01:15:16,560 --> 01:15:18,240
Speaker 1: a saint. You know, I'm going to go to heaven,

1412
01:15:18,479 --> 01:15:20,679
Speaker 1: but it's not fair for them to be tortured forever.

1413
01:15:20,800 --> 01:15:24,240
Speaker 1: And so there's so they come up with this middle place, uh,

1414
01:15:24,280 --> 01:15:27,559
Speaker 1: which is for it is it's specifically for people who

1415
01:15:27,600 --> 01:15:30,280
Speaker 1: are going to end up in heaven, but they have

1416
01:15:30,400 --> 01:15:33,759
Speaker 1: to pay for their sins first. There there their sins.

1417
01:15:34,040 --> 01:15:37,000
Speaker 1: They are not holy enough to go directly. They need

1418
01:15:37,040 --> 01:15:40,680
Speaker 1: to be purged of their sins. And that's why it's purgatory,

1419
01:15:40,760 --> 01:15:44,799
Speaker 1: because they're being purged of their sins and purging is painful,

1420
01:15:45,640 --> 01:15:48,080
Speaker 1: and so they have to go through a certain number

1421
01:15:48,080 --> 01:15:53,599
Speaker 1: of punishments. But uh, they can get out faster if

1422
01:15:53,920 --> 01:15:58,280
Speaker 1: living people intercede for them. Um, So what's that all about?

1423
01:15:58,320 --> 01:16:00,679
Speaker 1: Where's it come from? So? What do in my book

1424
01:16:00,760 --> 01:16:03,920
Speaker 1: is I don't talk at length about the later doctor

1425
01:16:03,960 --> 01:16:07,600
Speaker 1: in purgatory, except to say or do or Dante's Purgatorio,

1426
01:16:07,960 --> 01:16:12,080
Speaker 1: except to say that the official Catholic doctrine was not

1427
01:16:12,200 --> 01:16:17,880
Speaker 1: implemented until the thirteenth century. Um and so, uh So,

1428
01:16:18,479 --> 01:16:22,240
Speaker 1: you know Christianity around for since the first century, So

1429
01:16:22,320 --> 01:16:26,960
Speaker 1: it's twelve twelve centuries before purgatory becomes a standard doctor

1430
01:16:27,000 --> 01:16:29,880
Speaker 1: in the Catholic Church. The term purgatory was invented in

1431
01:16:29,920 --> 01:16:34,439
Speaker 1: the twelfth century. Uh And so there are people who

1432
01:16:34,479 --> 01:16:38,640
Speaker 1: claim that purgatory wasn't invented until the twelfth or thirteenth century.

1433
01:16:38,840 --> 01:16:41,120
Speaker 1: And so, in one kind of technical sense, I guess

1434
01:16:41,120 --> 01:16:43,200
Speaker 1: that's right. But what I try to do in my

1435
01:16:43,240 --> 01:16:46,000
Speaker 1: book is show that there were earlier forerunners of this

1436
01:16:46,120 --> 01:16:50,880
Speaker 1: very idea that some people who die are punished temporarily

1437
01:16:51,000 --> 01:16:56,840
Speaker 1: before allowed being allowed to enter their heavenly reward. And

1438
01:16:57,400 --> 01:17:01,000
Speaker 1: what I do is I look at the earliest examples

1439
01:17:01,040 --> 01:17:03,880
Speaker 1: of that, which are in texts that people, the general

1440
01:17:04,000 --> 01:17:07,360
Speaker 1: run of the mill person wouldn't know. If they don't

1441
01:17:07,360 --> 01:17:09,680
Speaker 1: know Dante, they don't know that probably the you know,

1442
01:17:09,840 --> 01:17:13,559
Speaker 1: the Martyrdom of Perpetua, or or the Acts of thecla

1443
01:17:13,760 --> 01:17:16,960
Speaker 1: or but there are these there are these books that

1444
01:17:16,960 --> 01:17:22,639
Speaker 1: that talk about um a saint and she's it's usually

1445
01:17:22,680 --> 01:17:26,800
Speaker 1: a woman, a living woman who has a special relationship

1446
01:17:26,840 --> 01:17:32,040
Speaker 1: with God. She's very holy. Who um who praise for

1447
01:17:32,120 --> 01:17:35,400
Speaker 1: either a relative or somebody that they're requested to pray for,

1448
01:17:35,760 --> 01:17:40,040
Speaker 1: who's being who's having a bad afterlife, and God hears

1449
01:17:40,080 --> 01:17:43,880
Speaker 1: their prayers, here's here's the person's prayers, and the person

1450
01:17:43,920 --> 01:17:50,040
Speaker 1: then is released from their punishment and is rewarded. Uh.

1451
01:17:50,080 --> 01:17:52,000
Speaker 1: And so there are several stories like this. They're fascinating

1452
01:17:52,000 --> 01:17:53,800
Speaker 1: stories in their own terms that we won't get into,

1453
01:17:53,840 --> 01:17:55,800
Speaker 1: but they're they're really interesting stories. They start out in

1454
01:17:55,840 --> 01:17:59,240
Speaker 1: the second century uh and go up into the third

1455
01:17:59,240 --> 01:18:01,880
Speaker 1: century and then and and onward. And so this idea

1456
01:18:01,960 --> 01:18:04,880
Speaker 1: that it's possible to kind of get out early, get

1457
01:18:04,880 --> 01:18:09,160
Speaker 1: out of punishment early, is an idea that's floating around.

1458
01:18:09,760 --> 01:18:12,200
Speaker 1: And so some people did have this idea that there's

1459
01:18:12,240 --> 01:18:15,720
Speaker 1: this other place somehow that where and so people have

1460
01:18:15,840 --> 01:18:19,720
Speaker 1: these various ideas, and um, you find them in Saint Augustine,

1461
01:18:19,720 --> 01:18:23,639
Speaker 1: for example, UH plays with this idea a little bit. Uh.

1462
01:18:23,640 --> 01:18:25,560
Speaker 1: He's not quite sure about it, but he affirms it

1463
01:18:25,600 --> 01:18:27,759
Speaker 1: didn't seems to affirm it in some places and so

1464
01:18:27,760 --> 01:18:30,240
Speaker 1: so it becomes a standard idea, but then only later

1465
01:18:30,479 --> 01:18:33,640
Speaker 1: in the thirteenth century doesn't become a doctrine. And there

1466
01:18:33,680 --> 01:18:35,800
Speaker 1: are very interesting books if you if you've got people

1467
01:18:35,960 --> 01:18:39,320
Speaker 1: among you your leader readers who are really interested in

1468
01:18:39,800 --> 01:18:42,040
Speaker 1: um kind of scholet of views of things. There's a

1469
01:18:42,040 --> 01:18:44,240
Speaker 1: guy named Jacques Lakoff who wrote to this whole book

1470
01:18:44,280 --> 01:18:46,600
Speaker 1: called The Birth of Purgatory that explains why in the

1471
01:18:46,600 --> 01:18:50,800
Speaker 1: twelfth or thirteenth century this became all became something. Uh,

1472
01:18:50,840 --> 01:18:53,200
Speaker 1: and it became and it wasn't just be for religious reasons,

1473
01:18:53,280 --> 01:18:56,719
Speaker 1: is because of the socio political context within which it developed.

1474
01:18:57,760 --> 01:18:59,360
Speaker 1: It's just called the Birth of Purgatin where they can

1475
01:18:59,400 --> 01:19:02,639
Speaker 1: look that up. And all right, Bart, I think we're

1476
01:19:02,680 --> 01:19:05,360
Speaker 1: running towards the end of our our time here, but

1477
01:19:05,400 --> 01:19:07,000
Speaker 1: I just want to thank you so much for joining

1478
01:19:07,040 --> 01:19:09,720
Speaker 1: us today again. I genuinely really loved the book, as

1479
01:19:09,760 --> 01:19:12,920
Speaker 1: I've enjoyed all your books before Heaven and Hell. I

1480
01:19:12,960 --> 01:19:16,639
Speaker 1: think if you enjoyed our conversation today, listeners, you should

1481
01:19:16,640 --> 01:19:18,920
Speaker 1: definitely check out the book, but you should also look

1482
01:19:19,000 --> 01:19:21,320
Speaker 1: up Bart's blog. Bart, do you want to talk about

1483
01:19:21,320 --> 01:19:24,200
Speaker 1: that for a moment, I do nothing. I like talking

1484
01:19:24,280 --> 01:19:28,960
Speaker 1: about more. Uh. So I have a blog, Um, I've

1485
01:19:28,960 --> 01:19:33,880
Speaker 1: had it for over eight years. UM started it in

1486
01:19:34,160 --> 01:19:38,120
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve. On this blog, I post, UM, I

1487
01:19:38,160 --> 01:19:40,680
Speaker 1: post five times a week. Most of my posts were

1488
01:19:40,680 --> 01:19:43,759
Speaker 1: between twelve hundred and four hundred words. And the post

1489
01:19:43,840 --> 01:19:46,800
Speaker 1: deal with everything having to do with all the stuff

1490
01:19:46,880 --> 01:19:50,439
Speaker 1: we're talking about now, and about anything about the New Testament,

1491
01:19:50,479 --> 01:19:53,120
Speaker 1: the historical Jesus, the writings of Paul, Book of Revelation.

1492
01:19:53,320 --> 01:19:55,719
Speaker 1: It talked about martyrdoms in person, he talks about women

1493
01:19:55,720 --> 01:19:59,760
Speaker 1: in early Christianity, talks about Jews in relationship to Christians.

1494
01:20:00,080 --> 01:20:02,000
Speaker 1: But and I also talk about early Judaism and the

1495
01:20:02,000 --> 01:20:05,400
Speaker 1: Hebrew Bible and Roman religion and like the massive the thing.

1496
01:20:05,640 --> 01:20:10,480
Speaker 1: I've been doing this, you know, every week, five five posts. UM.

1497
01:20:10,520 --> 01:20:15,479
Speaker 1: There's a membership membership fee to join the blog. Uh.

1498
01:20:15,520 --> 01:20:17,960
Speaker 1: And the reason there's a membership fee is because I

1499
01:20:18,080 --> 01:20:23,000
Speaker 1: use the blog to raise money for charity. UM. The

1500
01:20:23,040 --> 01:20:25,320
Speaker 1: membership fees low. It's about you know, it's about fifty

1501
01:20:25,320 --> 01:20:28,639
Speaker 1: cents a week. I mean it's like right now we're

1502
01:20:28,640 --> 01:20:31,320
Speaker 1: gonna be we're instituting a new blog soon. We're launching

1503
01:20:31,320 --> 01:20:34,320
Speaker 1: a new blog. But but right now, a year membership

1504
01:20:34,360 --> 01:20:39,160
Speaker 1: is twenty four cents, and for that you get all

1505
01:20:39,200 --> 01:20:42,320
Speaker 1: of these hundreds and hundreds of pos plus archives going

1506
01:20:42,360 --> 01:20:45,840
Speaker 1: back eight years. UM. So I don't keep any of

1507
01:20:45,840 --> 01:20:50,320
Speaker 1: the money myself, and not a penny goes to operating expenses, UM,

1508
01:20:50,760 --> 01:20:53,160
Speaker 1: and so all of the money goes directly into charities.

1509
01:20:53,880 --> 01:20:58,320
Speaker 1: We have raised UH about nine fifty thou dollars over

1510
01:20:58,360 --> 01:21:00,760
Speaker 1: the years, and that amount is going up. It looks

1511
01:21:00,800 --> 01:21:02,760
Speaker 1: like this year we're hoping we're gonna hit two undred

1512
01:21:02,800 --> 01:21:06,280
Speaker 1: thousand dollars just for this year, UH from people joining

1513
01:21:06,320 --> 01:21:09,240
Speaker 1: the ball and so we also there's an option of

1514
01:21:09,280 --> 01:21:11,120
Speaker 1: like if you just want a one month membership for

1515
01:21:11,200 --> 01:21:12,880
Speaker 1: less or try it for three months, you can do that.

1516
01:21:13,040 --> 01:21:15,080
Speaker 1: But just go to the bar room my blog and

1517
01:21:15,360 --> 01:21:18,000
Speaker 1: check it out and UH, and you'll see all the

1518
01:21:18,040 --> 01:21:21,040
Speaker 1: money the charities all go to, actually, they all go

1519
01:21:21,080 --> 01:21:24,400
Speaker 1: to things dealing right now with the crisis, mainly charities

1520
01:21:24,439 --> 01:21:30,160
Speaker 1: dealing with hunger and homelessness, both UH locally and UH internationally.

1521
01:21:30,240 --> 01:21:32,880
Speaker 1: So I support five five charities and all the money

1522
01:21:32,920 --> 01:21:34,960
Speaker 1: goes out to them. Bart thank you so much. It's

1523
01:21:34,960 --> 01:21:36,920
Speaker 1: been a real pleasure. Yeah, it's been great. Thank you

1524
01:21:36,960 --> 01:21:42,439
Speaker 1: so much. All right, so that does it. But thanks

1525
01:21:42,479 --> 01:21:45,200
Speaker 1: again to Bart for for sharing his expertise with us.

1526
01:21:45,200 --> 01:21:47,640
Speaker 1: I really had fun talking to him, and at the

1527
01:21:47,680 --> 01:21:49,240
Speaker 1: end there I just want to remind you yet again,

1528
01:21:49,280 --> 01:21:52,000
Speaker 1: Bart mentioned his blog. If you're interested in this sort

1529
01:21:52,000 --> 01:21:54,600
Speaker 1: of subject matter, his blog is a great place to

1530
01:21:54,640 --> 01:21:57,200
Speaker 1: go deep. Plus, as Bart mentioned, every penny of the

1531
01:21:57,240 --> 01:22:00,559
Speaker 1: subscription money goes to great causes, so you can check

1532
01:22:00,600 --> 01:22:03,800
Speaker 1: that out at ermine blog dot org. And Ermine is

1533
01:22:03,840 --> 01:22:07,360
Speaker 1: spelled e h r m a n, so that's e

1534
01:22:07,640 --> 01:22:11,200
Speaker 1: h r m a n blog dot org. And again,

1535
01:22:11,400 --> 01:22:14,840
Speaker 1: the book is Heaven and Hell History of the Afterlife

1536
01:22:14,840 --> 01:22:17,400
Speaker 1: by Bart Ermine. In the meantime, if you would like

1537
01:22:17,400 --> 01:22:19,559
Speaker 1: to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind,

1538
01:22:20,120 --> 01:22:22,680
Speaker 1: you can find us wherever you get your podcasts and

1539
01:22:22,720 --> 01:22:25,719
Speaker 1: wherever that happens to be. Just make sure that you rate, review,

1540
01:22:25,760 --> 01:22:28,679
Speaker 1: and subscribe. That really helps the show out huge things.

1541
01:22:28,680 --> 01:22:31,799
Speaker 1: As always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.

1542
01:22:32,080 --> 01:22:33,559
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us

1543
01:22:33,600 --> 01:22:36,160
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1544
01:22:36,160 --> 01:22:38,479
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

1545
01:22:38,560 --> 01:22:41,360
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at Stuff to Blow

1546
01:22:41,400 --> 01:22:51,400
Speaker 1: Your Mind dot com Stuff to Blow Your Mind is

1547
01:22:51,439 --> 01:22:54,120
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for My

1548
01:22:54,160 --> 01:22:57,240
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or

1549
01:22:57,240 --> 01:23:06,120
Speaker 1: wherever you're listening to your favorite shows a lot. I

1550
01:23:06,200 --> 01:23:11,480
Speaker 1: think the mat four foot