Gold Q&A - September 2026

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Okay, Jen, I'm ready whenever you are. [00:00:04] Speaker B: I'm ready. I guess I'll just kick us off and say hello to everyone who has joined us and also hello to everyone who's watching this later on the recording. It's great to be back for another month of Q and A and I. Bart, I think you got some good questions this month. So we will kind of run this how we have run the few recent ones where for the first half Bart will answer pre submitted questions and then for the second half you can come on the microphone and ask Bart your question live. So I will kind of run that part of it when we get there, but I think that's all the prefacing we need before we get kicked off Bart. [00:00:45] Speaker A: Okay, thanks. Thank you all for coming to this. And I always enjoy this because I get questions that usually I'm interested in one way or another and sometimes about things I hadn't really thought much about. And so it allows me to, to think about some things. And so I got a good range of questions. And yeah, as Jen said, I'll go for about half an hour answering pre submitted questions and then take anything live that you have. So let me, let me get my other screen up. There we go. Okay, so question number one. This person says, I'm amazed by the bizarre claims about the historical Jesus that had been made by some credentialed scholars. Jesus survived his crucifixion. Jesus traveled to India and studied Buddhism. Jesus lived at Qumran with the Essenes. Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene. The question is, what's the most bizarre portrayal of Jesus you've run across? So you know, I, yeah, I don't want to be too snobby about this, but you know, credentialed scholars, it kind of depends what that means. But there certainly are some very fine scholars who have come up with intriguing and implausible views. And so in terms of the credential thing, I don't know of anybody who is like a serious New Testament scholar who thinks that Jesus studied Buddhism in India. Maybe he did. Maybe he did. Certainly there are some who think that he was a Qumran with the Essenes and that he was married to Mary Magdalene. I don't know. But in any event, what's the most bizarre one that I've run across? Well, I've run across a lot of bizarre ones. One of the most interesting by one of the most highly credentialed person to stick to that term was, is. Is called is by Hugh Schoenfield, who was A very, very fine scholar of ancient Judaism and Christianity who wrote the famous or rather infamous book the Passover Plot. He was, he was a scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls, among many other things. He was very bright. But his book, the Passover Plot was. It was about how some of you may know this book. It was very popular when it came, I think maybe in the late 70s. I was a college student, I think, when it came out. And it's a book that argued that Jesus planned his. Plotted his own death and that it was. It was, you know, basically so he could start. Start a religion. And the way he worked it was that he. He planned that he would be crucified, but he made a plot with Joseph of Arimathea that he would be drugged on the cross and that he would look like he died. This was a variation of a theory that goes way back in Christianity called the swoon theory, that says the reason the disciples claimed to have seen Jesus after his death is because he never really died, that he had gone. He'd gone into a coma or a faint. In this case, what he argued, what Hugh Schoenfeld argued was that Jesus planned to be drugged on the cross so that he would appear to die and then he would be rescued from the tomb by Joseph of Arimathea and convince his disciples he'd been raised from the dead. And so that was the plan. And so when, when he's given, you know, when he's on the cross and he says, I'm thirsty, and a soldier gives him a sponge filled with vinegar or sour wine or myrrh. I mean, it depends which account you read. It actually was a drugged in a drug that Jesus had plan and to ingest so that it would slow down his vital signs so that Joseph of Arimathea could wake him up a couple days later. The problem was that neither Jesus nor Joseph of Arimathea had realized that a soldier might want to check to see if he's dead. And the soldier did so by sticking a spear in his side. And they weren't planning on that. And so Jesus did survive the crucifixion, but the wound in the side ended up killing him. And so the plot came to nothing. Okay, so. Right. Certainly one of the more interesting ones and by somebody who was. Who was a verifying scholar. Okay, next question. This question starts off talking about the 12 disciples. Well, in Matthew, chapter 10, verse 2, Simon is called Peter. Simon who is called Peter, but in chapter 10, verse 4, he's Simon the Canaanite. Moreover, he's identified As a Zealot in the NLT Bible, I can't remember what the NLT is. And in the King James version, he's identified as a Canaanite. So why is he the only one identified as such? So, and then it goes on to fulfills the question. The question is, why do you have these. Why is Simon called three different things in three different places? And so the first two are in Matthew chapter 10. And in this case Matthew is listing the 12 disciples of Jesus, but there are two of them named Simon. So that this is not the same person who in one place is called Peter and in the next place is called the Canaanite. He's actually called, he's called by his name. It's Simon Peter in verse 2 and Simon the Canaanite in verse 4. It's in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 6, verse 17 that Jesus is said to have been called a. Who's been called Simon the Zealot. And so the issue, part of the issue is that this looks like it may be three different persons. If it is so Simon was a common name. And as commonly happened in antiquity, if somebody had a common name, then you had to have some way of identifying that person versus another. For example, there are a lot of Marys in the New Testament. So they get identified. Is it Mary the mother of Jesus? Is it Mary Magdalene? Is Mary the mother of James? Is it? Which Mary is it Mary of Bethany? And so you have to have some identifying feature. And so in these cases you have Simon who is nicknamed Peter by Jesus, Simon who is a Canaanite, and a Simon who is a zealot. And so part of the confusion of this goes actually deeper than there possibly being three different disciples all named Simon. The deeper problem is that in the Gospels there is agreement that there were 12 disciples, but there are differences on their names, meaning that the disciple, the writers knew that there were 12, but they weren't sure who they were. I mean, everybody knew of course of Peter and Andrew and James and John and, and most of the others. But there are some names that are different between the gospels. And so, you know, you, you might get, you know, Bartholomew in a gospel and you might get Nathaniel in a different gospel, you might get Philip in one gospel, but not in another gospel. And so, and so, you know, it looks like people knew that Jesus had Simon Peter as a disciple and these other, these other Simons, or maybe not. Maybe the, maybe we, we actually don't know who all the 12 were. It does suggest, though, this is an interesting point at Least I've always thought it was. I've always thought it was interesting that the fact that they all knew there were 12 but didn't know their name suggests there really were 12 because that was widespread knowledge. But some of these people you never hear of again, you know, they weren't sure what the name. And there's, there's no, there are really no grounds for saying that. If you have a disciple and two gospels and you got like different names, like in one he's like, you know, Nathaniel and the other Bartholomew or something, that that's the same person who has two names. People didn't have two names. And so, and so the idea, you know, unless you were like, you know, the emperor, you probably had, you know, nine names. You had lots of names. If you were royalty or if you're an elite person, you might have three names. Often did. But if you're a lower class person, you had one name. And so that's why it's probably not the case that Matthew in Matthew's Gospel is actually also has a second name, Levi, as he's called in Marcho. People didn't have two names as a rule. Okay, next, if Jesus was a Nazareth homebody who never ventured as far as se, how did he come to be baptized by John in the Jordan River? Okay, I think this is, I don't know who, you know, I don't know who wrote these questions. My sense is this is written by somebody who doesn't like the idea that I don't think that Jesus ever went to Sephorus. So let me explain what the background of that is. And this person is saying, look, if you don't think he went to Sephora, why do you think he went to get baptized by John in the Jordan River? He was just a homebody who never left Nazareth. That's my guess about what's behind this question. A couple things to say about Sephorus was one of the two cities of Galilee. Galilee mainly was made up of towns and villages and very small vil. Both the city of Sephorus and the city of Tiberius were built in Jesus lifetime or at least or rebuilt in Jesus lifetime by Herod Antipas, who was the Herod who shows up in Jesus trial narrative in the Gospel of Luke. He was a historical figure and he built both the city of Sephorus and the city of Tiberius. Sephorus was only about, is only a couple of miles away from Nazareth and it was a city. And so some scholars have suggested that Jesus must have spent time in Sephora. For example, doing his carpentry work. And since it was a city, there would have been more work opportunities and it would make sense that a poor carpenter would want to go there in order to, to work is only a couple miles away. You know, I guess it's, maybe it's. I guess it's four miles away. Four miles away, Is that right? So, all right, so this per. But I don't think so. Why don't I think so? Well, Sephorus is never mentioned in the Gospels either. Jesus doesn't go to any big city in the Gospels except for Jerusalem. And at the end of his life, no evidence he ever went to Sephorus or to Tiberius. Most people who lived in very small villages, which Nazareth was the best guess of population made by archaeologists is that it had something like 400 inhabitants. It took up maybe 10 acres. Small area, small village. And most people worked a hand to mouth existence. If Jesus was a carpenter, then he would work mainly he'd be working the fields as most people did who were living in rural areas. They worked fields. But then they would have, they could have some other, other thing on the side to bring in a little, a little bit of additional revenue. People like that just didn't travel much. If Jesus did go to Sephorus, there's no record of it. The problem is people living that kind of existence usually had to work every day. And in Judaism you couldn't work on the Sabbath, which meant you couldn't walk all the way to Sephorus on the Sabbath. So when is he going to separate us? Exactly. So I don't think so. This person thinks, the person asking us thinks it's odd. I mean, look, if he, if you think he didn't go to separate, why do you think he went to see John? Well, it's well documented. Went to see John the Baptist in the Jordan River. Well then why didn't he go to Sephorus? Well, I'm not quite sure how to answer that question. I mean, when I was a, when I was in high school, I never went to Overland Park, Kansas, even though I lived in Lawrence K, which wasn't far away. But I did go to Barsville, Oklahoma because I had a baseball tournament there. So why did I do one and not the other? Because I had a reason to go to Bartlesville. It didn't turn out too well for me. I got, came home and got sick. I mean sick sick like hepatitis sick. But nonetheless, why did he go to John? Because he wanted to get baptized. Why didn't he go To Sephorus. He had no occasion to. It's my view. I didn't get that view. I didn't make up that view. I, I actually got that view from E.P. sanders, E.D. sanders, who I in my view was one of everybody's. He was one of the great scholars of the New Testament at the end of the 20th century. I was fortunate to get to know him because he taught at Duke for a while. All right, next question. In light of John, chapter 1, verses 29:36, why did all of John the Baptist followers, including John himself, choose to follow Jesus? So 129:36 in John is where John the Baptist sees Jesus and he tells some of his disciples, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And he urges his followers to go. So that's how Andrew goes to see Jesus and then he introduces Simon who becomes Peter to Jesus. And if John's encouraging them to go, why didn't he encourage everyone to go? That's a great question. Don't know. My guess is because it's not historical. I don't think John the Baptist recognized that Jesus was the son of God who's going to take away the sins of the world and didn't tell his disciples to go follow Jesus. Historically, I think it's much more likely that Jesus became a follower of John the Baptist and at some point he broke off to continue John's message out on his own to multiply the effort. And so I don't think John recognized him as the Messiah or that he encouraged his followers to later followers of John even after Jesus death. We know that there are followers of John who thought he was the one. In Acts 19, Paul and others have to convince these followers of John the Baptist that in fact Jesus is the one, not John. And so there were followers of John even beyond the time of Jesus, beyond the time of John's death. Next question. Do you think that Jesus cleansing the temple in Matthew 21 and the other gospels might be an enacted parable? Allah, Jeremiah and the ox yoke. That could imply Jesus opposition to animal sacrifice. After all, the non Roman money was primarily for the purchase of sacrificial animals. Okay, so let me just ask, I'll just answer the basic question here. Is it possible that Jesus was acting out a parable to show by, by overturning the money changers tables and by driving out those selling animals? Is it that this, that this was meant to be a parable in action? By seeing what he was doing, people would get the point of this kind of enacted lesson. The question is, could it imply Jesus opposition to animal sacrifice? I think that's a possibility. I think that Jesus may well have been opposed to animal sacrifice, not necessarily because he's opposed to animal sacrifice per se, but because he thought that it was not being conducted in the way that God sanctified questioned in the Scriptures. I think even more than that, though, this may have been an enacted parable, a parabolic act, a symbolic act in order to demonstrate the destruction of the temple that was coming soon. He was enacting an act of destruction by overturning the tables and such and driving people out, showing that they wouldn't be able to worship at the temple anymore. This is the view again. I got this one too from Ed Sanders. He wrote about this in his book Jesus and Judaism, which was one of the really important books on Jesus in the 20th century. And I think it probably was an enacted parable. Okay, next. 1 Corinthians 15, 3, 4. Say the following Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. He was buried. He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. The person asks, this can't be the Jewish biblical scriptures, and it can't be any of the four Gospels. They hadn't been written yet. So what scriptures is Paul referring to? So the questioner is saying, look, to say that Christ died according to the Scriptures means that the Scriptures predicted it. But what scriptures is he talking about exactly here? Because Scriptures do not predict that the Messiah is going to die. And he's right about that. The question is right about the Scriptures do not predict that. And he can't be quoting the Gospels here. Those can't be his Scriptures that he's talking about because they haven't been written yet. So what's he talking about? So the deal is that this phrase according to the Scriptures in Greek is found only here in Paul. Paul only says this term twice in these verses. And that phrase only occurs one other time in the entire New Testament according to the Scriptures. And it can be translated in different ways. The preposition katha does mean according to, but it can also mean something like in accordance with. And I think that's probably the better way to translate it. He's not saying that you can find Scriptures that explicitly predict the crucifixion of the Messiah, but he does think that the crucifixion of Messiah is indicated in the Scriptures. That if you interpret the texts correctly, they make hidden references to the Messiah dying and being raised from the dead on the third day. And there Are there are a couple passages that are obvious candidates. Hosea, chapter six. I think it's verse three. Maybe it's verse two, where the author talks about dying and then coming back on the third day. The book of Jonah, where Jonah the prophet is swallowed by a great fish for three days and then reappears and begins preaching and people convert. The. The idea of Jonah prefiguring Christ was very popular in early Christianity. And the Hosea thing seems to be a natural connection. And I think Paul is talking about something like that, that if you understand the scriptures correctly, you'll see that Jesus, death and resurrection were standing in line with the Scriptures. Next, can you talk speculate about the level of apocalyptic thinking in the first century ce? Was it unusually high? If so, why? Apocalyptic thinking came into existence about 200 years before Jesus. And there are good indications that it was widely held within Judaism at the time of Jesus. The Jewish groups that we know about in any depth at the time of Jesus are the Pharisees, the Essenes and the Sadducees. Those are the groups. Most people didn't belong to any of the groups later. They're a group of people that. Well, Josephus talks about another group called the Fourth Philosophy. Some people historically have called them zealots, but zealots actually don't come along until about 40 years after Jesus Day. Like people call themselves zealots or something a little later. But like the Zealots, later Zealots, these people in the Fourth Philosophy believed in the. The taking over the land through military means. The Essenes didn't believe that. The Pharisees didn't believe that, apparently. But the Essenes and Pharisees, they both were groups that held to apocalyptic views. We're reasonably sure about that. We know about the Essenes because the Dead Sea Scrolls are filled with apocalyptic views. And the Pharisees definitely believed in the resurrection of the dead, which is an apocalyptic view. The outliers were the Sadducees. The Sadducees were a group of aristocratic Jews, principally connected with the temple, connected with the priesthood, who did not believe in a future bodily resurrection of the dead. They were not apocalypticists. The other group, two groups, the Essenes and Pharisees were. And it makes a lot of sense to think that those members of the Fourth Philosophy were as well. But we don't have the good evidence for that. John the Baptist was a apocalypticist. Paul was an apocalypticist. These are, these are, you know, these are just. These are not connected with any of the groups necessarily. We have a Number of Jewish writings from the period that are apocalyptic. It looks like apocalypticism was pretty widespread at the time and it didn't really die out within Judaism until after the second uprising. The first uprising was in the year 66 to 70 when the Romans came in and eventually destroyed Jerusalem and the temple. Sixty years later there was another event, 132 to 135, another uprising against the Romans. This time the Romans completely destroyed Jerusalem and disallowed Jews from entering into it. And Judaism took a radical turn away from apocalyptic views which were on the way anyway somewhat. But it was clear the end was not coming soon. God was not soon intervening for his people. And this is when Rabbinic Judaism focusing on the Torah and the study of the Torah rather than the Temple and rather than the expectation of the end, the focus on the Torah becomes central to the Jewish faith at that point, starting especially at that point. So I think, yes, I think it was relatively high this view at the time. Okay, right. This person points out that he, like me, went from being a fundamentalist Christian to becoming a liberal Christian and eventually an agnostic. And this person wants to know what I myself, what I think about my former, about my former fundamentalism, especially what my, my understand what I understood correctly about the concept of faith at the time, what I now think I got fundamentally wrong about faith at the time. Okay, good question. I haven't really thought about it in those terms before. I think when I became a conservative evangelical Christian who committed his life to Christ, I think I was right in thinking that there is more to this world and more to this life than the material existence we live in. And that there are other things that are more important than material stuff, material pleasure, just the material world. There are other things. I don't believe in a non material world anymore, but I do think, think that life's meaning is far broader than most people seem to think who live only for their material existence. I think that's a huge mistake. So I think I was right about that. What do I think I misunderstood? Well, my understanding of faith when I was a fundamentalist was that people had to agree with me in my doctrines and my beliefs or they were going to go to hell, man. I think that's completely wrong. It's not hard to recognize how arrogant it is. I didn't mean to be arrogant at the time. I just thought, you know, I had accepted a gift and other people should accept it too. That was my thinking. But really is arrogance. Okay, this person asks your work repeatedly warns us against Turning the historical Jesus into a modern person. If Jesus suddenly appeared in 2026, so Jesus like comes back now and shows up as a human. He says what this person says. Which do you think he would find stranger? Modern Christianity, modern secular morality, or our assumption that those are even the categories through which he, Christ, should be understood? And he or she, she goes on to say, how much of what we call Christian values would affect 1st century apocalyptic Jew actually recognized as his own? These are great questions. Well, what would Jesus find especially confusing today? Would he find, for example, would he find that secular morality was strange? Well, certainly, as it's practiced by most people. I don't know if you find it strange, you might find it predictable that people are, you know, that people have the strange moral views they have. I think though, that's kind of connected to his view of Christianity. I think Jesus would find modern Christianity completely baffling. There were completely. Of course there are lots of immoral people in his day and immorality isn't that different now from how it was then. I mean, you know, it's different in degree in many ways, but it's basically, you got the same possibilities. But modern Christianity, whoops. I don't think Jesus would recognize. Jesus would not recognize Christianity from the year 100. I don't think he'd recognize the Christianity of Paul. Modern Christianity, wow. And the fragmentation. Yeah, I think that'd be the big thing. Would he consider what we call Christian values? Would he consider them, Would he recognize them as his own values? Well, it depends what you mean by Christian values. I think Christian values are things like loving your neighbors yourself and providing help for those who are in need and being kind to strangers and giving of yourself for the sake of others. I think those are Christian values. He wouldn't find those strange. He would recognize those. He probably would find many Christian values strange though. For example, in the prosperity gospel, you know, the idea that Jesus wants you to become wealthy and that if you, if you just give, if you just give the church a hundred dollars, Jesus will give you a thousand dollars in return. You would think, wow, that's strange. First of all that they value it. And second of all they think that that's right. Another thing, sometimes people identify Christian values as what more commonly goes under the term family values. And that's an interesting subject. Would Jesus recognize family values? Jesus told his disciples that they were to abandon their homes and their families and their jobs in order to follow him. That meant leaving their spouses, leaving their children, leaving their aged, aged parents to fend for themselves when they themselves were the only bread earner in the house. That, that's hard to imagine a family value today where of course the nuclear family is like part of the family value. So I, I'm not. It just depends what we mean by family values. Jesus would certainly recognize the activities of, of many people who are acting his name as being absolutely what he had in mind. And others. I don't think so. Okay, I just have time for one more question before I'll take yours. Is it historically plausible that Judas Iscariot would have thrown his betrayal money into the naos? N A O s as Matthew 27, verse 5 claims? All right, bit of background. In Matthew's Gospel, Judas betrays Jesus for 30 pieces of silver to fulfill Scripture. When he sees how Jesus is mistreated after his arrest, he repents of what he did and he goes back to try and give the money back to the priests. They won't take it because it is blood money. It has been used to betray blood for execution. They refuse to take it, so he throws it into the naos. This word is often translated temple. He throws it down. He throws it down into the temple. Matthew 27:5. It's only in Matthew this person is asking if it's plausible. And the reason the person is asking that is because this person knows that the word naos generally or often refers not just to like the entire temple compound. Most commonly in the Greek language, naos refers to the inner sanctuary within a temple compound, the central sanctuary. The naos is where the statue of an idol was kept in pagan religions. And the naos was the sanctuary within the temple compound in Jerusalem. The temple compound itself, the walls around it was, were big enough to fit in 25American football fields. It was a big space. But it is usually called the holy place, the hieros, not the naos. The naos is often used to refer to the inner sanctuary that only the priests could go into. So is it likely or even possible that Judas could throw the money into that small building, the sanctuary at the center of the temple? No. If that's what Matthew means, it is implausible. He may have meant it for symbolic reasons, but it's implausible. But the word naos does get used for the entire temple compound in the New Testament on, on several occasions. And so Matthew may have just met that he met, that he met with them and he threw it down through the money. He, Judas met with them, threw the money down, where he met them somewhere else in, in the compound. So, but it Is a striking thing, and it. So it's implausible, I think, if he means the sanctuary. Okay, I have taken up my half hour. I will turn it over to you all for questions. Jen, how are we doing this? [00:33:01] Speaker B: So let's use the raise hand function, which you can find in your lower zoom navigation bar under React. You just click that little react button and you should get an expanded menu with the raise hand feature. If you can't find it, just ping me in the chat and let me know your question or let me know you want to come on, and we can do it that way. So if anyone has any questions, feel free to go ahead and raise your hand. Dwayne says me. Me, Dwayne, we'll let you go first. [00:33:35] Speaker C: Yeah. Good afternoon, everyone. I just wanted to say, big fan of Forge. Top three books of all time. My question is very simple. You were on a interview and Danny Jones about, like, eight months ago, and you were asked the question Christos. The word Christos in Greek, do you think it appears outside of the biblical accounts? And surprisingly, it does. And it does in a wide variety of ways. I was just wondering if you ever went back and, like, did some research on it and did you find out anything? And what kind of implications would that suggest? Thank you. [00:34:07] Speaker A: Well, Dwayne, don't go off yet, because I, you know, I don't. I don't have a clear recollection of that interview other than it got very strange. And so that part I remember. So this is about crystals, [00:34:24] Speaker C: the Greek word Christos that we use to translate Christ. [00:34:28] Speaker A: Oh, Christos. [00:34:30] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:34:30] Speaker A: No, no, he was just completely wrong about that. Yeah. He said that it was a drug. Right. [00:34:37] Speaker C: Oh, well, the question was, does it exist outside of biblical texts in, like, the 4th or 5th century BCE? And it does. This is all before the biblical accounts. [00:34:45] Speaker B: Okay. [00:34:46] Speaker C: The way it's used. Yeah, so. So his point was, like, the way it's used was not, like, in a messianic sense. So I was just questioning whether you went back and, you know. [00:34:57] Speaker A: Well, I mean, so. So it comes the word Christos. I can't remember if I said this on the. In the show. Comes from the. Comes from verb creole, which means to anoint. This is all being spelled C H, R. So creo in English would be C H, R, I O. And in Greek, hero, omicron, omega. And it just means to anoint, to pour oil on a person. The issue that Danny was raising, if I remember correctly, is that he wanted to argue that it. It has to do with Jesus Jesus being known to have taken psychedelic drugs. Is that, am I remembering that right, Dwayne? [00:35:39] Speaker C: I think it was just the fact that it existed prior to the biblical accounts and how it was used there was there, it's Phaedra. It was in Euripides. And the passage is saying something like, is this drug a Christos or Christone? I'm not sure. [00:35:55] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, no, that's right, that's right. We had to look it up on the show because, you know, I, as I told him I'd been reading Euripides for, for several months, writing an article on Euripides. And so I was very interested in Euripides. I didn't know that he had used the term. And yes, he did use the term. He did not use it to refer to a psychedelic drug. So, yeah, so I, I, I have looked, look into that. And it, even on the show, though, it's quite clear just the sample that he used wasn't about a psychedelic drug. So. Okay, thanks. Oh, yeah, yeah. [00:36:35] Speaker B: If anyone wants to see Bart's interesting interview with Danny, I put the link in the chat so you can take a listen. It's a long one, if I remember correctly. It's like two hours long. [00:36:45] Speaker A: So it seemed like it took all day long, but I never, I've never watched it. I don't know. I just have this recollection of doing it. It was really interesting. [00:36:53] Speaker B: They can all watch it and let us know how it is. But yeah, it was a good one. Eugene, let's go to you. [00:37:02] Speaker A: Hello, everyone. Good to be with you. Professor Ehrman, would you please consider engaging professor Dennis McDonald over his justification for and practice of mimesis criticism on the Gospels and Acts. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. And I think you submitted that as a question. Thank you. And I wasn't able to get to it. So the, Are you referring specifically to the Homeric stuff, Eugene? Primarily, yes. Yeah, so, so mime system is the term for imitation. And Dennis McDonald is a very fine scholar who is, I don't know, maybe 10 or 15 years older than me and is a, he's a New Testament scholar who became convinced that the, that the Gospels especially, I believe he started off with Mark is a kind of imitative writing of Homer's Odyssey. And what he did is he found numerous parallels between Mark and the Odyssey that would be most explicable if Mark was intentionally trying to write a Christian form of the Odyssey with Jesus as the hero figure. Eugene, am I getting that right so far? But yes. Okay, so I He's written several books arguing this for several. He. So he's. He's carried this out. Dennis has carried this out in a. In a number of books dealing with various narrative, especially narratives of the New Testament. I have not found his arguments convincing, and I don't. I don't think that they've gotten a lot of traction with. Within the field of scholarship, and largely because the kinds of things he talks about as being imitations of what you get in the Odyssey tend to be very commonplace tropes and themes. For example, if you have, like, a horrifying incident where somebody is at sea and a huge storm comes up, and the issue is how you react to it, you know, and you get that. And you get that in the Odyssey and you get it in Mark, you know, doesn't that show that probably, you know, Mark's getting it from the Odyssey or the journey, a journey to meet your fate, you know, or, you know, you've got these themes, and you can find them in both places. So isn't that evidence of some kind of direct impact? My view of that is that these are tropes, that they probably didn't start with Homer. We don't have Greek literature prior to Homer to establish that for a fact. But the Homeric material itself is almost certainly traditional, based on oral traditions that have been in circulation and possibly written traditions before. And they had a huge, huge impact on Greek literature afterward when. When elite children. Boys. Elite boys would go to school to learn how to read and write once they learned how to make the Alphabet and how to recognize words and how to be able to put words together, put letters together into words and all that. When they started reading, they'd start them reading on the classics and they would read Homer. And so it became very much a part of how people thought about the world, you know, in terms of, like, this is what's infiltrated their brains. Kind of like somebody who's raised as a fundamentalist Christian and doesn't read a lot of other stuff but the Bible, you know, like, it infiltrates the way they think. And so for me to show that somebody like Mark was dependent on something like Homer would require a lot of solid evidence. And I don't think he's got the evidence is the shortcut. You mind if I quickly follow up on that? [00:41:38] Speaker B: Okay. [00:41:39] Speaker A: I'm not his John the Baptist, by the way. I just sort of been intrigued by what he's doing. And of course, he does it across other gospels and poets. And he's referring to Greek education as you did. And for somebody to write with a kind of sophistication, the gospel writers do, and had to go to school that encounter what you said they would and that they would familiar with the Septuagint, familiar with Homer, they would have access to these various tropes. And just one more quick point. The thing that Denis MacDonald has done is set forth seven criteria which would have to be fulfilled were any particular example to be qualified as an illusion or a parable. Now, you can quibble whether any example actually conforms or not, but that's the nature of the debate. Yeah, well, thank you for that. And that's right. And I would say it's not a quibble. I think exactly his entire case rests on individual instances. And I would say that there's very little in Mark's accounts where he finds these parallels that would make you think the Odyssey, unless you were trying to, trying to establish that as your thesis. And so that's just my, my opinion about it is that these people would have of course read lots of literature, not just Homer. And these are common tropes. So you know, shipwreck. I mean, you get them. Look, you just get them in time. You get, you get these tropes and lots of literature. So if you're saying that he, that he's like intentionally imitating something in Homer, I think you've got to have proof for it. And I, I just don't find it convincing myself. So it's stimulating. [00:43:38] Speaker C: So. [00:43:40] Speaker B: All right, let's go to you, Kevin. [00:43:45] Speaker D: Thank you, by the way. I was in graduate school in Chicago and attended a meeting at Moody Bible Institute, was hanging out with some of the people there. I was still quasi fundamentalist at the time, at 29, and one of the guys, I hadn't heard of you at that point. And he said, boy, Kevin, you ask a lot of questions. You sound like you're going to become a barbecue Herman. Anyway, and I still remember because I, I had to look, I looked you up and then, and then I thought, oh my goodness, that's a lot of challenging stuff. Anyway, here's my question. So I've been listening over the last several months, catching up with your podcast, very first podcast and on my way to work and I've been listening also to Love Thy Stranger. Really enjoying that. And based on that it seems like, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you don't feel, quote unquote, called to change others views towards your secular humanist worldview. However, you have suggested this conversion may have had some part in Love thy stranger and making you more altruistic and perhaps happier as a result. And I can understand that. And I believe that for myself as well as someone who's recently, I guess you say deconverted. Why don't you feel drawn towards deconverting others, given the results of your deconversion or at least the resources that are directed towards religious beliefs that could be directed towards humanitarian efforts. I'm curious why you don't feel called. [00:45:41] Speaker A: Is that, does that make sense? It does, yeah. It does, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So basically why am I not an evangelist for secular humanism? To make the world a better place? Yeah, I think some people think I am. I get accused of it a lot anyway. I, when I was a fundamentalist, I was convinced I was right and that anybody disagreed with me was wrong. And I don't have that assurance anymore about myself. I, you know, I, I don't know that becoming, becoming, becoming secular, that deconverting, I don't know that that's good for everybody or necessary for everybody. I would like to convert more people, including Christians and non Christians, to be a little bit more concerned about suffering in the world than they are and to do more about it. And I do try to promote that as a cause, but I don't think that secular humanists are necessarily better at it than others. And you know, the thing about, I mean one of the really good things about the Christian tradition is so, you know, fundamentalism is one thing and the kind of evangel, conservative, evangelical stuff that, that's, you know, and fundamentalism, that's kind of one thing. But people make a mistake when they think that's Christianity. It's, I think it's a, it's a kind of Christianity. And I don't think it's really, there's not much Christian about it in many ways. I have a lot of, I know a lot of people, a ton of people who are church going Christians who agree with, they agree pretty much with my scholarship. They're still, but, you know, or, but, you know, so they haven't given up the faith. But, but whether they agree with the scholarship or not, they go to church every week and in the churches they go to, they, they learn that they need to be loving toward other people and they need to be a better, they need to strive to be a better person and they need to take care of their families and they need to share their resources and they hear this every week in church. And I'm thinking, man, that's not a bad thing. And as a Secular humanist. I don't have any place to go to hear that. And so I'm not opposed to them being Christian, although I think it is better for them to reflect on in what sense are they Christian and what, you know, what about the Christian message do they think is really true and really right? And if they do decide to leave the faith, it's not the loss of everything, because in fact, it often does lead to a kind of a recognition of kind of a bigger view of the world. And for me, it did lead to a kind of a more satisfied, happy, exist, happy existence. But maybe you won't for everybody. And so. So I'm not so much concerned about converting people religiously or non. Religiously, as long as they're. They're behaving in the ways that I think are. Are moral and that I think we all, you know, we all ought to act that way. Does that make sense, Kevin? Yeah. So, okay, yeah. Actually, you know, they've oddly. Moody Bible Institute has not invited me back to give a talk. Can you figure. The head pastor at the Moody Church, which is kind of up, you know, some blocks up the road from Moody Bible Institute? I forget what this guy's name was, but some years ago, he sent out a petition to revoke my degree. Okay, then. Love thy neighbor as thyself. [00:49:36] Speaker D: Thank you very much. I appreciate your thoughtful response. [00:49:41] Speaker B: All right, Anna, let's go over to you. Thank you. So there's a question about Eucharist. So a Eucharist? Yes. I'm thinking that there are very uncertain things about Jews, but two are pretty certain. First is that they bless the bread and wine before eating and meal. And then second is that they were forbidden to consume blood. That was strictly because it was God's domain. So when Jesus blessed bread and wine, it was completely okay with Jews. But when he raised the cup and said, this is my blood, drink it in remembrance, that would revolt the Jews. So where does this come from, this wine being blood? Is this like Greek mythology element? Yeah. [00:50:35] Speaker A: So I don't think Jesus ever says this is. He does in John, the Gospel of John, but in Matthew, Mark, Luke and Paul, he talks about, you're to drink from this cup. This cup is the new covenant in my blood. And so you're to drink it. And I. You may. As you may know, there's a big split within Christianity about what he meant. Within the Catholic tradition that subscribes to the doctrine of transubstantiation, the wine that is given at the Eucharist actually becomes the blood of Christ, and you drink it, you ingest his blood, just as the bread, the wafer, becomes his body. In the Protestant tradition, they don't hold to transubstantiation. They don't think that the wine becomes the blood and the bread becomes the body. And the logic, it may be because I was raised Protestant, but the logic of the Protestants makes pretty good sense to me just historically, that when Jesus says, you know, this is my body, he doesn't literally mean that that's his body. It's a piece of bread. It's like if. It's more like if I. If I hold up a picture and of my daughter and I say, this is my daughter. I don't. I don't mean that this is literally my daughter. I mean, it's a picture of my body, my daughter. So that's the. So when he says, this is my body, it's. It's using a metaphor. It's not using a kind of a literal description. And so in that event, you know, you're not drinking. You're not actually drinking blood. Where you. Where you do get him drinking them, drinking blood is in the Gospel of John, where it seems to be taking it literally. He doesn't have a last. He doesn't institute the Lord's Supper in John, but in John, chapter six, when he multiplies the. The bread, the loaves of bread, he starts talking in Eucharistic terms and he says, you got to eat my body and drink my blood. And so, yeah, that would be offensive to Jewish readers. It's striking that Jesus really seems to condemn Jews even more vehemently in John than the other Gospels. The idea that it actually is the blood, though, is only a later development within Christianity, the doctrine of transubstantiation. You'll find big debates about this between Catholics theologians and Protestant theologians and just secular folk. But it doesn't look like the idea that it actually is the blood develops until centuries after the New Testament. And it develops in part because of this insistence that you are ingesting. You are part of Christ and you're ingesting his body and blood, which alone brings you salvation. So it becomes literally his body and blood. I'm not sure if I answered your question fully enough or not. [00:53:52] Speaker B: Okay, great. [00:53:53] Speaker A: Thank you, Anna. [00:53:54] Speaker B: I have another question. We have six more minutes, and I think. [00:53:56] Speaker A: Okay, yeah, go ahead. [00:53:58] Speaker B: I recently heard from some podcast that the effect of canonization, and, sorry, the effect of switching from scroll to codex in Christianity was one of the factor prompting the canonization. Would you agree? [00:54:18] Speaker A: It Needs some explanation. So in. It seems weird to us today, but the idea of a book where you've got like two covers and pages inside, you write on both sides of the page and, and you bind the thing, you stitch the pages together at the back or you bind them together somehow. This form of book, which we all think of was not used as books in the ancient world, in the Greek and Roman worlds, you probably do know. And they use scrolls instead. Scrolls were not made like this. Scrolls were. They would combine pieces of papyrus or pieces of parchment and they would manufacture long rolls of the stuff. And writing was on only one side. And so it was on one side. And you'd write and you'd start at, you know, suppose you start at the very left edge of the scroll, you'd write in columns and then you roll it up as you move along. And a scroll could be a long scroll would be, could be maybe 32 to 35ft. And they'd manufacture these things and then you'd go to buy writing materials and they'd cut off as much as you need. I need 10ft. They cut off 10ft. And so. But it's written on only one side. And that was how literature is written. Prior to the Christian era, they knew how to manufacture something like this, but they did not write literature on it. They used this kind of form which is called a codex. A codex is this kind of book form, plural is codices, although some people say codexes, they had small codexes for certain things, but not for literature. Like if you're writing a play or you're writing a story, or you're writing a narrative of some kind of. Or you're, you know, if you're writing something counts as literature, you would never do it like this. They could have, but they didn't. And the reason they didn't is because it was considered a low life wave, circulating anything that's written. It was used for business, it was used for accounting, it was used for like collecting technical things. It was used technical journal, technical books and stuff, but not for literature. And so the, the analogy is that, the analogy I use with my students sometimes is that today if I write a book, I could publish it in a three ring binder. And you think, well, that might be convenient because then I could take out a page, carry it with me. You know, that might be. Why don't you ever do it in a three page binder? Because it's like, you know, reminds me of eighth grade. And so I just, I would never do that. I could but. And that's how they thought of codices, Christians from the very beginning. So far as we can tell, the earliest surviving manuscripts from Christians are written in codex form, not in scrolls. The Gospels may well have been written on scrolls. Paul may have used wax tablets, may have used other writing materials. We don't know what he used exactly. But our earliest manuscripts going back to the second century are from codexes. We know that because even if you have just a little fragment the size of a credit card, if it's written on the front and the back, it's a codex. And so, so what? That's all background to Anna's question, which is, did this facilitate the collection of the books into the canon of the New Testament? Did that facilitate. That's what you're asking, right, Anna? It prompted, yeah. And I think the answer to that is we don't know. It had something to do with the canonization, but I'm not sure it's one of the causes of the canonization. There were canons of scripture that were not in codex form. For example, the Torah, five scrolls. And so the fact that they could have put it on a codex didn't motivate them to make a canon. They had a canon without the codex. The convenience for Christians is they could put far more in a book than they could on a scroll. And so you could put Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all in one book, but it takes four scrolls. And so it's more convenient. And because the Christians were so convinced that authorities were based on written texts, it allowed them to have easier access to the texts. Because if you're looking for something in the middle of the Gospel of Luke and you've got to unscroll it, you know, it takes a while before you get to the place. Whereas if you've got a book, you can just open it up and you're there. And so it made it easier to access these things and it facilitated the collection of the, of the canon because books were circulating with certain writings in them. And so the letters of Paul could all be put in one book. And if all the books have the same letters, well, okay, those are the letters, as opposed to have them separately in some other form than the codex. So it had something to do with it, but I'm not, I don't think that there's good evidence that it precipitated the collection of the books into a, into a canon. [00:59:49] Speaker B: Thank you. [00:59:51] Speaker A: Okay, I believe that takes us to 8 o'. Clock. [00:59:54] Speaker B: That takes us to 8 o'. Clock. [00:59:56] Speaker A: Okay, well, thank you all for coming. Appreciate it. Thank you Jen for doing this well. [01:00:02] Speaker B: And thank you Bart. Thank you all for asking such wonderful questions. As usual, I will get the recording all processed and sent out within the next day or so, so keep an eye on that and I'll also have information for you on next month's Q and A. So thank you all. [01:00:20] Speaker A: Okay. [01:00:21] Speaker D: Thank you all. [01:00:21] Speaker A: Thanks for being Gold members. Thanks for all you do by.