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