Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: The reliability of eyewitnesses and Abraham Lincoln's.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: Watch, written by Bart Ehrman, read by Mike Johnson a post from 2012 that I had completely forgotten a fascinating news.
[00:00:15] Speaker C: Item has appeared in the Smithsonian magazine. At first it may not be obvious how it connects to Christianity in antiquity.
[00:00:22] Speaker B: But I think it does.
[00:00:24] Speaker C: It is about a watch owned by Abraham Lincoln. The link to the full story with a photo is in the blog.
[00:00:31] Speaker A: So the deal is as described in the article.
On April 13, 1861, irish immigrant and.
[00:00:39] Speaker C: Watchmaker Jonathan Dillon, working for the MW Galton Company Jewelers in Washington, DC, was.
[00:00:46] Speaker A: Repairing president Abraham Lincolns pocket watch when.
[00:00:49] Speaker C: He heard of the attack on Fort Sumter.
[00:00:52] Speaker A: 45 years later, Dylan told the New.
[00:00:55] Speaker C: York Times what he did that day.
[00:00:59] Speaker D: I was in the act of screwing.
[00:01:00] Speaker C: On the dial when Mister Galt announced the news. I unscrewed the dial and with a.
[00:01:05] Speaker A: Sharp instrument wrote on the metal beneath.
[00:01:08] Speaker C: The first gun is fired.
[00:01:10] Speaker D: Slavery is dead. Thank God we have a president who.
[00:01:14] Speaker C: At least will try.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: Note that the watchmaker himself revealed what he had inscribed on the interior of the watch.
[00:01:24] Speaker D: Word for word, the article goes on.
[00:01:26] Speaker C: To explain what the watch is and what has happened with it recently at the Smithsonian.
Lincolns Watch is a fine gold timepiece that the 16th president purchased in the 1850s from a Springfield, Illinois jeweler. It has been in the safe custody of the Smithsonian institution since 1958.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: A gift from Lincolns great grandson, Lincoln.
[00:01:50] Speaker D: Ishamehethere on Tuesday morning at the National.
[00:01:53] Speaker C: Museum of American History, some 40 reporters and Smithsonian staff witnessed master craftsman and jeweler George Thomas of the Towson Watch.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: Company open Abraham Lincoln's watch to search.
[00:02:05] Speaker C: For Dylan's secret message. Dylan's message was there, but not exactly as he later described it.
[00:02:14] Speaker D: Jonathan Dillon April 13, 1861, Fort Sumter was attacked by the rebels on the above date. J. Dillon April 13, 1861, Washington thank.
[00:02:27] Speaker C: God we have a government.
[00:02:29] Speaker B: Jonathan Dillon, end quote.
[00:02:32] Speaker A: So the wording of the inscription is completely different from what the inscriber 45.
[00:02:38] Speaker C: Years later remembered, or at least said it was.
[00:02:42] Speaker A: In the actual inscription.
[00:02:44] Speaker C: There is no reference to the first gun, no mention of slavery, and no mention of the president.
Memory is a faulty thing, and eyewitnesses recounting events that happened years earlier are not necessarily reliable. The New Testament gospels were written 40.
[00:03:03] Speaker D: To 65 years after Jesus death, and not by eyewitnesses, but by people who.
[00:03:09] Speaker C: Had stories told to them by someone.
[00:03:12] Speaker E: Who had heard them from someone else, who had heard them from someone else, who had heard them from someone else.
[00:03:17] Speaker C: And so on for years.
[00:03:19] Speaker D: Its worth thinking about it should not.
[00:03:22] Speaker C: Be replied that in oral societies, as opposed to modern written cultures, people had better memories and repeated stories verbatim the same year after year.
[00:03:31] Speaker E: Studies of oral cultures have shown that.
[00:03:33] Speaker C: This is simply not true.
[00:03:35] Speaker D: Thats the topic of my book Jesus before the gospels.
