Bart Ehrman on Armageddon

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[00:00:00]Hey everybody. I'm on the road right now. I don't really have time today to record much. So, I thought I would share another classic episode of the data overdogma podcast. Bartman has a new book out called Love Thy Stranger. You should go check that out. But in the meantime, here is one of our very first episodes of the data overdogma podcast where we talked to Bart about his previous book about Armageddon and the book of Revelation. Enjoy.

[00:00:27]There are there are many beasts spoken of in Revelation and blah blah blah, but what I was shocked by is how terrifying the angels were in uh you know just sort of to your point like the good guys are horrifying in Revelation.

[00:00:47]Hey everybody, this is Dan Mlen >> and I'm Dan Beecher >> and welcome to the Data Over Dogma podcast where we try to combat the spread of misinformation about the study of the Bible and religion. And we have a very special show for you today. Uh our guest today is Bart Urman. I will introduce Bart briefly and then uh we'll get into things. Uh Bartman earned his PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary I think in 1985.

[00:01:14]Was that uh >> That's right.

[00:01:16]>> the year. Now we're dating the guy.

[00:01:18]We're just uh that's how we're launching. Oh, okay.

[00:01:22]>> Where he uh he studied >> I was only seven when I got it though.

[00:01:28]>> You're only a couple years older than me then. Um and he uh studied textual criticism, the biblical cannon, the apocrypha under the inimitable Bruce Mezer and now is the James A. Ray, distinguished professor of religious studies at uh University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, who will hopefully have better luck next year in the NCAA tournament. Um and um correct me if I'm wrong, uh UNCC Chapel Hill, the first public university in the United States.

[00:01:55]>> Um uh the first to to graduate a student. Yes, that's right.

[00:01:59]>> The first to graduate a student. All right.

[00:02:00]>> That's right.

[00:02:01]>> So um I'm imagine you're enjoying things um very well there. We appreciate your time very much and uh welcome to the show. Now uh for those who don't know uh Bart, he has published a number of books including six that are on the New York Times bestseller list. And I didn't look it up, but my personal favorite is How Jesus Became God. Is that on the uh uh is that among the six?

[00:02:25]>> That's that's one of the six. One of the chosen six.

[00:02:27]>> That's one of the six.

[00:02:28]>> All right. Congratulations. And um the uh I believe the first was misquing Jesus. Is that correct? Okay. And that's the name of the podcast that you now have that you are hosting with Megan Lewis, uh, who is also known as Digital Hammurabi. Uh, and you also have a, uh, blog, a subscription-based blog where all of the proceeds are donated to charity at manblog.org.

[00:02:53]And you also let us know you're going to be teaching uh, a remote class this uh, April 15th on the rapture. And that can be found at barter man.com. Correct.

[00:03:03]>> That's correct. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about the both the blog and the uh the the courses that you teach.

[00:03:10]>> Yeah, I'm happy to. The blog, you know, the blog I've been doing for almost 11 years now. Um I post uh five times a week, 12 or 1400 words a day. I've done it for every week for 11 years. Um and uh it's on anything having to do with scholarship connected with the New Testament, historical Jesus, early Christianity going, you know, uh anything related to it, Roman religion or Old Testament. Um people pay a a small subscription fee for it and uh there are different levels. The more somebody pays, the more they get, but anybody who pays the the fee gets gets my posts anyway. People can make comments. I answer every question I've ever gotten on this thing every day. Uh, and so it's a lot people can get for a small fee. And we give the feed to charities dealing with hunger and homelessness. Uh, this last year we raised over $500,000 on this blog.

[00:04:01]>> Wow. So, >> that's impressive. That's amazing.

[00:04:04]>> Yeah. So, I I urge people to take a look because it go all goes to a good cause and you get, you know, they get tons of tons of information. The the other thing I've got going is I've got a um I have a I have a business I run called the Barterman professional services where I do remote courses, lectures and sometimes eight lecture courses uh and that's available at my website uh bartermanman.com and I am doing this one on April 15th.

[00:04:29]Let's connect with this book I just did uh on the book of Revelation and this the lecture is going to be where the rapture came from.

[00:04:38]>> That's awesome. Uh well, you know, since since you brought it up, let's talk about this book. This is the this is the new book, uh Armageddon, and uh the I guess the subtitle is what the Bible really says about the end.

[00:04:55]Uh and it opens with you, uh talking about uh receiving a uh a call from a reporter about the end of the world.

[00:05:06]Talk about that a little bit.

[00:05:07]>> Yeah, it was a little surprising to me.

[00:05:08]I I before I came to North Carolina to UNCC Chapel Hill, I was teaching at Rutgers University in New Jersey and uh so I I got this position at Chapel Hill and in 1988 and I moved here in August and I knew it was going to be different in the South because I had been teaching New Jersey students, you know, they not not to make Bible thumpers up there and I'm thinking, okay, here we go to the south and I knew that North Carolina UNCC Chapel Hill is not known known as a bastion of conservative thought at all.

[00:05:41]It's a but you know it is in the Bible belt. So I get here in August a couple weeks after I finish unpacking my office. I'm in there doing some work and the phone rings as local reporter and the local reporter has heard that I'm a New Testament scholar has moved to to teach at Chapel Hill and he and he's got an urgent question for me. He wants to know if it's true that Jesus is coming back next month.

[00:06:05]>> That's amazing.

[00:06:06]>> Oh boy, here I am. Welcome.

[00:06:08]>> I want to know if that's true, too. I That sounds That sounds like an important thing to know.

[00:06:12]>> It would be important to know. And it turns out there was a booklet in circulation that not too many people in New Jersey had heard about, but it was a big thing in the south. Two million copies of this book were in in print. It was called 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Occur in 1988.

[00:06:28]>> This fellow guy named Edgar Weissant had uh had written this booklet. He was a he was a smart guy. He started out as a Nassau rocket engineer, but he he ended up uh writing books like this where he had 88 reasons for thinking that Jesus was going to return to Earth sometime between September 21st and 23rd, uh the festival of Rashashana that year uh and take his followers out of the world before the seven-year tribulation hit. And so, so this this guy wanted to know if it was true. I said, "Yeah, no, it's not going to happen."

[00:07:02]He's kind of >> Turns out the Bible isn't rocket science.

[00:07:05]>> Well, well, exactly right. The but the problem is it's not even in the Bible.

[00:07:09]This guy's just making stuff up.

[00:07:11]Although he had he had he had biblical arguments for it. Um and you know had 88 arguments for this and it had convinced a lot of people. Um and I had a student that semester actually at Chapel Hill. I had a student whose parents had literally literally sold the farm.

[00:07:29]>> Um >> Wow. because they were convinced that Jesus >> just in in anticipation of of of the rapture.

[00:07:34]>> Yeah. Yeah. So, this always hap not always happens, but it often happens when somebody sets a date, then the firm believers, you know, put their put their house in order and if they've got like family or something that's going to not make not going to be taken out of the world, they provide them with funds and so they give them, you know, sell the farm, give them the money and then uh then they'll take off to heaven.

[00:07:55]>> Wow. So you mentioned so my book starts with that because I'm trying to explain that how important this this this thing is that this idea that we know what's going to happen at the end has driven the interpretation of the book of revelation for about 200 years and my book tries to explain one of the things it tries to explain is why that interpretation is wrong. You know, it's it's not just wrong that it's going to be September 21st to 23rd. The that and whatever date you pick is just it's it's not wrong because you got a little detail wrong here or there or you picked the wrong verses. It's not wrong because of that. It's because it's the wrong way to interpret the book of Revelation.

[00:08:32]>> And so that's why I try to show in my book. And I and I know that on on my social media channels, every time something happens, whether it is uh an earthquake in Turkey or the um Euphrates River water level dropping significantly or Russia and China forming an alliance to potentially create a 200 million man army. Everyone sees these things as indications that the end is imminent and that everybody needs to get their house in order. And and I think it's interesting you mentioned that uh a student's family sold their farm. Later on in the book, you bring up the great disappointment which uh took place in the early 19th century and mentioned a bunch of people did very similar things.

[00:09:11]Sold the farm uh gave money to the poor or to family members who were not believers who they did not expect to uh be joining them uh in the heavens uh as soon as uh Jesus returned. Um, I think it's it's interesting that you you make an interesting point about uh the Bible as a puzzle for some folks where the pieces get put together to create uh this idea you have the futurist interpretation and then um some people think the only other option is a predtoist interpretation that you either think uh it's being fulfilled in the future or it was fulfilled in the past.

[00:09:50]Um, but I don't know if you've ever had this uh shared with you. Frequently when people talk about the Bible as a puzzle, something that comes up is, well, you've got to look at the picture on the box.

[00:10:01]Have you heard people say that to you and and the correct way to interpret the Bible, but there is no box. There is no picture on the box. And I think one of the things that you you don't say it explicitly, but throughout the book um give this impression that a lot of times the picture that we think is on the box is really whatever is going to make the text most meaningful or most useful to us in whichever circumstances in which we find ourselves. Could you talk a little bit about the difference between the picture on the box that people in the first 2nd centuries saw versus the people on or the picture on the box that people saw in the 19th and 20th centuries?

[00:10:39]>> Yeah. Well, the first thing I'll say is that I mean you're right that is how people treat um the book of revelation and the Bible as a whole. Mo most people of course don't read the Bible at all.

[00:10:48]Most people uh people who do read it um pick and choose what parts they read.

[00:10:54]the the the strange way that people read the Bible to know what's going to happen in the future is that they they don't read it like they'd read any other book.

[00:11:02]Um they'll take a verse from Zechariah and a verse from Ezekiel, then a book verse from Matthew and a verse from Revelation, a book from Daniel, and a ver and they they take these scattered verses and they put them all together and they end up they end up like saying something coherent. Uh but they they've they've the bo the picture that they've assembled is the one that's in their head. It's not in the text. And um it's a weird way to read a book because you know you wouldn't you know you wouldn't read you know great expectations that way or you know or a Harry Potter novel.

[00:11:36]You wouldn't like just take a line here and a line there and put it together and say that's what the author meant. And you know, even even when I'm talking to a Christian, I say, "Look, you know, if you think that God inspired the book of Revelation or even if he inspired the entire Bible, it means he inspired a book. He didn't inspire a jigsaw puzzle.

[00:11:55]He could have he could have set down the box, but he didn't do that." And so, so, and the problem, of course, is that then everybody, everybody who does this has a prediction about when it's going to come. And these days, most people avoid picking a date because it's just gotten too embarrassing because every time somebody picks a date, you know, they're wrong. And so they so they end up saying, "Well, it's just going to be soon." And but your question about the first and second third centuries is really important because John um was was writing John of Patmas the author of this book was writing it in the first century near the end of the first century and he explicitly tells us that he's writing it to Christians of uh Asia Minor. There are seven churches in Asia Minor that he's addressing and he names these churches. These are people who know him and he's writing them a message and that that almost certainly means he thought that this book would mean be meaningful for them. He's not he's not warning them about something that's going to happen 2,000 years later.

[00:12:56]They're going to be dead. He's he's talking to them about something in their own day. And if you actually read Revelation by putting it in its historical context, it's completely clear. This is not predicting what's going to happen in 2,000 years. John's talking about stuff in his own time. Uh, and that can be >> Yeah, it has always felt it has always felt a little weird that people keep talking about like, you know, there are lots of people who believe that the Armageddon will happen literally any day now. But the problem with that is that it seems like some of the people who thought it was going to happen any day now were like Paul and Matthew and John the Revelator. Like, >> any day now was was then, not now, right?

[00:13:38]>> Yeah. So what you know people come up with ways of explaining it. Of course I go all the way back to the Bible. The book of second Peter explains why it hasn't happened yet. And second Peter's explanation is that with the Lord a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day. And so you can't just measure soon by human standards. And when somebody tells me that I say no I you know that that might be right. So if you're saying Jesus is coming back in three days then you can start looking for him in the year 523.

[00:14:08]And even even the author of the author of second Peter there is riffing on uh I believe it's in the proverbs where it talks about as a day and and then it says or like a watch in the night >> or a three or four hour period. So we got a handful of different ways but that that makes the Bible more dynamic. You can find these different pieces to be able to put it together in uh whatever way you like. Um, something that I I appreciated you talking about was uh in the book the idea of uh power and domination. And one of the things when I look at the authors of for instance Daniel which is being written under um pretty heavy persecution and this is another piece of apocalyptic literature that even in it in its own day around the time when Revelation is is being written we have people rereading Daniel to try to make it relevant to their own day. And when we have revelation going, you've got it's not the Seolucids who are oppressing them. It's it's the Romans at this point. The these texts are being written under periods of heavy oppression and persecution, at least in their minds, if not in reality. Do you think that there's something we're missing when we try to say this is about us when we are in the positions of power and domination? uh Christianity particularly in the United States in the 19th and 20th century looking at these people who are under the boot of empire saying oh well this is about us this is for us to interpret is there is there something that uh that some folks are missing in not taking note of that power differential >> yeah it's one of the points I try to make at the end of my book is that um revelation really is about um turning the tide and and and making the people who are the enemy in the ones who are subjecting you uh making them subject to you. And so it's a it's a book about dominating the enemy and overthrowing the enemy, destroying the enemy, taking all the wealth from the enemy, taking all the power from the enemy. Um and uh that is a natural response for people who are being uh being persecuted. Uh I'll say that um scholars are pretty well convinced these days that Revelation uh was probably written in the '9s. uh under when emperor the um when the emperor dimmission was the was the ruler and there's actually no evidence that he was sponsoring any kinds of persecutions revelation imagines that there are you know millions and millions of Christians being persecuted for one thing there aren't millions and millions of Christians but there's not much evidence of there being widespread persecution at all one of the interesting phenomena uh of Christianity broadly is that um because of the way it began Christians have always felt persecuted even when they're not. Um I have students at Chapel Hill, Christian students who insist that they're being persecuted and they're they're you know in in North Carolina Christianity rules the day in in terms of the state legislature and the I mean you know it's it it is uh massively uh run by by Christian standards of things and and so I don't see much persecution going on. There are places in the world where Christians are being persecuted. So I don't want to deny that. I mean there there really are places they're seriously persecuted. But when you have a people who are dominant and powerful uh complaining about being persecuted and thinking you've got to take over the power, there's something wrong with that.

[00:17:35]It does feel as you know I I'm I'm an atheist and as someone who sort of observes Christ American Christianity man it feels pretty backwards when the massive majority of our country is complaining about being persecuted not you know being not having control all of that sort of thing it's it it can be a little nuts >> and I think that's probably one of the uh one of the side effects of wanting to identify with the folks in the biblical text is we're on the other end of that of that power differential, but we still need to identify with the people who are being persecuted. And so we've there's a sense in which in order for that identification to hold, we need to find a way that we are being persecuted. We need to find a way that we are the powerless that there are forces of evil that uh are wielding more power than us.

[00:18:31]Which unfortunately usually means we are looking for folks who are less powerful than us and finding ways to persecute or oppress them which Christian nationalism is uh pretty notorious for.

[00:18:44]>> Well, it is for doing this.

[00:18:45]>> And the huge irony is that that is precisely contrary to the teachings of Jesus himself. Um Jesus Jesus said to turn the other cheek. Jesus said to love your enemies. Uh Jesus said blessed are you when you're persecuted. He he he wasn't saying blessed are you when you're persecuted because you know uh next year you're going to be whack them be able to whack them over the head with a rod of iron. You know it's not that you're suffering now and you're blessed because you're going to you're going to wipe them out eventually. Uh Jesus actually was was in favor of nonviolence in the face of persecution. And the author of the revelation of John, John John of Patmos, that that author had just the opposite view. His view was that God, you know, Christ, yes, Christ suffered as the innocent victim. Uh he was the lamb who was slain, but he's he's coming back and he's coming back for blood. And um and he does uh and so John's go John the book, the book of Revelation is filled with wrath and vengeance, violence, and it's just you don't find that in the teachings of Jesus.

[00:19:48]Yeah, I it's interesting that you say that. I because I do see a lot of association uh in modern America with specifically with the rhetoric of Revelation, the book itself.

[00:20:03]>> Yeah.

[00:20:04]>> Now, I I got to admit every time I look at Revelation, I am baffled. I like either there was some mushrooms growing on that aisle of Patmos that I didn't I like I it it completely goes over my head every time which is why I'm so grateful for your book because I none of it makes any sense to me. But I look at sort of uh you know like things things like in the the 2016 election I remember hearing Trump supporting pastors referring to Hillary Clinton as Jezebel and I remember you know people talking using the word Babylon a lot and people and you know anytime a new technology comes up people talk about the mark of the beast whether it's you know barcodes or RFID or you know the COVID vaccine or whatever. Do you think that there's something about the association with specifically with uh Revelation that is informing uh American Christianity right now sort of almost superseding other books of the Bible?

[00:21:11]>> Yeah, it's an irony because uh the book of Revelation is not read much by people. Um, most people who read it either do the jigsaw puzzle thing because somebody's told them how to assemble the pieces and so they just look for a piece here or there instead of actually sitting down and reading it.

[00:21:26]Those who do try to read it uh tend tend to be befuddled uh like like you're saying you are Dan. But let me say that that my my book is meant to show why it doesn't have to be that puzzling that if you look at it as a historian does. you have a historian explain it to you, it actually it it really does make sense and it's not it ends up not being that complicated once you see what the symbolism is really all about. But the real irony is that these people who don't read the book um many many Christians in our country today take the ideology of the book and run with it.

[00:21:59]That it's all about dominating those who are weaker than you. And it's about asserting power, American power, Christian power. It's all about power.

[00:22:09]And that is true in the book of Revelation. It's all about power. And it's not true at all of Jesus. Uh and so in my book, I ask, you know, whether Jesus would have recognized John of Patmas as one of his followers. I mean, John John certainly thought he was an avid, he was an avid Christian, but I'm not sure Jesus would have recognized him because he's preaching just the opposite of what Jesus said. Mhm. I wonder if if you might talk for a moment about uh the canonicity of revelation because the when we look at the early discussions, revelation is frequently if not outside the boundaries, it's le at least kind of straddling the boundaries. Um do you you know better than most? What were the concerns with revelation? Was it about this power struggle or were there other aspects of the book of revelation that uh contributed to a number of people uh saying no we're not interested in this?

[00:23:01]>> Yeah, it's you know I get asked this question a lot like why is revelation in there anyway?

[00:23:07]Mainly by mainly by either more liberal Christians or moderate Christians or or non-Christian like why' they let that one in? And for the strange thing is that what strikes us as completely bizarre and weird and like unacceptable uh isn't what what the problem was in the ancient world. Um for us, we read this thing and we read about all this blood and gore that that God is inflicting. Christ Christ is is allowing is having people tortured not not just like killed but tortured for months and all sorts of horrible catastrophes on earth that Christ is causing and um for us we say wow I don't know that just doesn't seem to fit um but in the ancient world that wasn't the problem at all so there were there were two problems in the ancient world one was that uh a lot of scholars in the ancient world knew that this was not written by the same person who wrote the gospel of John. Um, his name is John. The irony is that book of Revelation claims to be written by some somebody named John, but we don't call it John. We call it the book of Revelation. The Gospel of John does not claim to be written by somebody named John, but we call it John.

[00:24:17]But and um but it it already in the year uh in in about the year two um I guess is about 280 uh no 260. In the year 260, there was a a scholar named Dionius from the city of Alexandria who wrote a treatise that we still have that demonstrates on linguistic grounds on the basis of the language that whoever wrote John did not write the book of revelation. They're different authors and he's absolutely right about that. He he uses arguments uh that today Greek scholars completely would agree with do agree with but so they didn't think John they didn't think it was written by John the disciple of Jesus. So that was a problem. But the bigger problem was that um at the end of Revelation after everybody who is not a strict follower of Jesus is um goes through horrendous suffering and is uh tortured and eventually killed and then thrown while still alive into a lake of burning sulfur. After all that happens, then the the followers of Jesus are awarded this this huge city of gold, the new Jerusalem, 1500 miles cube, completely gold, gates of pearl, foundations of jewel, etc. And and it sounds like, you know, they just banquet the whole time and they're living a life of luxury. Now, the early church fathers did not like that. uh they didn't like the idea that eternal life was a big banquet because they thought that spiritual life was more important than physical pleasure and they thought that this is advocating ultimate physical pleasure for all eternity and so that's why they didn't like it uh and they wanted to exclude it >> but it turns out and the re the reason it gets in is another reason that nobody would would expect. So, um, in the 4th century when they're when they're really kind of cranking down to decide which books are scripture in the 4th century, uh, the big theological debate was who is Christ in relationship to God?

[00:26:17]Everybody agreed that Christ was God, but in what sense is he God? Is he is he like a second level divinity that God God created Christ at some point in the past and and so he's a second level divinity who then himself created the world and came to die for the sins of the world. But he's he's subordinate to God the Father. I mean, nobody could be equal with God the Father. He's God the Father. Uh or are Christ and God completely equal the same level? They're not identical. They are not identical.

[00:26:44]But are they equal in power and authority and knowledge and everything else? And that's the side that won. So that's that's the side that that won the argument. And the book of revelation was useful because in one point uh God several points in revelation God identifies himself as the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. So he's he's everything all-encompassing.

[00:27:06]And Christ identifies himself as the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. That was used to show that they're equal. And so the winning side on that argument about Christ as God valued revelation because it helped them in their helped them make their point.

[00:27:23]>> Okay. Interesting. So that is a uh is a valuable uh instrument in the trinitarian debates. So Aras is basically representing second and third century Christologology but becomes the scapegoat for all of this when uh when it gets decided that no we uh we need them to be absolutely equal.

[00:27:42]>> Yeah. I wouldn't wouldn't have thought about uh the rhetorical utility of revelation for the christoologgical debates once we get uh because by this point we're beyond na I think um Athanasius is one of the uh one of the the kind of tent poles of the inclusion of revelation in the uh in the cannon right in uh what 367 >> 36 >> yeah so yeah so Athanasius was you know as a young man he was at the council of Nika the problem is that when ar when Arias was defeated at the council of Nika. The defeat wasn't permanent. The debates went on throughout the 4th century and uh you know in the middle of the 4th century most people were Aryan.

[00:28:22]So uh there continued to be these debates and so uh but but yeah, Athanasius is the first one to list our 27 books including Revelation and just our 27 books.

[00:28:33]>> Uh that didn't solve the problem. There were still people who objected to Revelation after that. Athanasius didn't decide the cannon. He gave his judgment on it but his judgment eventually prevailed.

[00:28:45]>> Yeah.

[00:28:45]>> So if I'm understanding you're saying that uh because to some extent because the argument that was that sort of prevailed in uh in the discussion of the divinity of Jesus because it came out of revelation of course it had to then be included in the final cannon. Well, what I would say is they didn't get it only from Revelation, but you it's hard to find other books in the New Testament that are in our New Testament that say something that is like that's fairly explicit about it.

[00:29:17]So, Revelation wasn't the major argument in their uh the major weapon in their arsenal, but it was something that was useful to that end. And so, that's why they they ended up approving of it.

[00:29:30]>> Fascinating. I wanted to go back to something that that Dan made reference to before, but I you have a a whole chapter, I think, in your book about the history of apocalyptic predictions. Um, one of I have a personal connection to apocalyptic predictions because, uh, thank God I'm atheist. My other podcast uh, started when my friend Frank and I did a uh, a rapture watch after Harold Camping. uh made his prediction for the day of for the day of the rapture. And we did a a live uh radio show about just sort of waiting for it to happen, checking in, making sure, seeing what what happened. And that that's kind of what launched our show. So, you know, I I I have a a a deep love of people making like dated predictions about when it's going to happen because it's such a it's such a bold move, man. It's like, damn, you you you're going hard on this thing. And it's not new. It's not a new phenomenon. So, so take us through some of that history, some of some of the the history of people making these projections.

[00:30:42]>> Yeah. For um you know, for um a long time, there have been people who who've done that. And for for most of history, this is this comes as a surprise to uh most people and especially evangelical Christians, I'd say this idea that it's predicting our future at all was not the the main way of reading Revelation for the vast majority of its history. For 1800 years, it was very much a slim margin marginal view. Almost everybody agreed it's not talking about our future. But those who did think it was talking about our future sometimes picked picked a date. Um, one of the most famous was well it's not famous people wouldn't know about it today but in the 13th century there were a u there were a group of uh Christians Franciscan monks who had insisted that it was going to happen in the year 1260 um they had a really interesting argument uh they're basing their basing their views on um there was a there was a monk called Yokim Mafiori who had uh decided that the world was created by God and God is a trinity and so the world his the nature of God is built into the world and so the the world consists of father son and spirit and those are three periods of earth and the first period is from the the period of the father from the Abraham the father of the Jews up to Jesus that's the period of the father then Jesus comes then you have the period of the son and then the at the second coming you have the period of the spirit well the period of the father you can date because in the gospel of Matthew uh you have a genealogy of Jesus from Abraham down to Jesus and it's 42 generations. And Yookim said, "Okay, a generation in the Bible, he said was 30 years." So 42* 30, okay, that's 1,260 years. And so after Jesus' birth, uh, his follower, Yokim's follower said, "Well, that's going to be 1,260 years, too." So it's gonna be in the year 1260.

[00:32:37]And so, yeah, they were, >> you can't argue with math.

[00:32:40]>> You cannot argue with math. And so it's been great since the 19th century when when evangelicals generally think that uh it's predicting our end because then you get a lot of very interesting predictions. Uh and Camping is is probably he he's one of the few recent ones who actually picks a date. But what a lot of people don't know is that Harold Camping um predicted a lot of dates in 1994. He wrote a very large book that that uh showed exactly when it was going to happen in 1994. uh I forget what the date was it like in March or something March 21st or something and then and then it didn't happen so he re chose it then for September and then he chose it for October and finally he just gave up and then years later he started this thing with 2001 and uh you know and again he kept changing the dates until finally uh when when it didn't happen he finally just gave it up and he admitted that he'd been wrong and that he had sinned against God and he died a disappointed man two years later >> so he but he's one almost nobody gives it up, you know, they reset the date.

[00:33:45]>> Well, and that's that's a weird thing about, you know, you you hear about a lot of these and uh you know, the believers go all in with them. You know what I mean? Let's all go climb up the hill and uh and watch it happen and then when it doesn't happen, they're not dissuaded.

[00:34:05]>> Oh, quite the opposite.

[00:34:07]>> They they pivot to something else. So talk about that a little bit.

[00:34:10]>> So this is a very interesting phenomenon that um that social psychologists have studied. Um there's a book that uh your listeners really if they can get a hold of this book they can get a hold of it.

[00:34:21]It's called when prophecy fails and it's it started out by um I think uh Dan you mentioned the great disappointment in the 1840s. In 1844 they thought they they knew the date and it was going to happen and it didn't happen and people had sold the farms and things. uh these social psych psychologists who were interested in the fact that when it didn't happen in 1844 that the group that had said it was going to happen generated other groups there were like 30 different religious movements that started from that including the Jehovah's Witnesses and the seventh day Adventists who still think the end's coming soon and the these social psychologists were not Christians they were just interested why why don't they just give up and so the the head of this group was a guy named Leon Fest Stinger and they decided to figure out what happens when something like that happens. And they decided not to follow a religious group, but to follow a UFO cult, a group that thought that the Martians were going to come uh by on December 21st or whatever the date was, 1950ome, uh the the you know, the the spaceships were coming to take us off the planet.

[00:35:30]They had a specific date when it was going to happen. Um, and what Leon Festinger was interested in is suppose you've got a group that has this expectation that is really quite clear and definite and actionable by which he meant like people give up their jobs because they know it's going to happen and so they really take they invest everything in it. What happens when they've got you got a group that does that and then it doesn't happen? What happens to the group? And um they had uh workers infiltrate this UFO cult to see what was going to happen when it didn't happen. And what happened was um well what happened was co what what Leon Festinger invented the term cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is when you've got a cognition you've got an idea in your head that is dissonant with reality. It's contrary to reality. And in this case you can prove that the idea is wrong because it didn't happen. And what what he showed happens is in this group and other groups like it when you're proved wrong, you double down on it and you you reset the date, but you become more missionary and more fervent.

[00:36:41]And the log the psychological logic is if you had a lot more people to agree with you, then it resolves the dissonance you're experiencing from knowing you're wrong because it doesn't seem like you're wrong because so many people agree with you. And so it's a psychological phenomenon and it happens with these with these fundamentalist groups as well. They just and so that's that's what happens. You you get more committed, more evangelistic about it once it doesn't happen.

[00:37:06]>> Now with my my uh PhD dissertation, I did a lot of work with the cognitive science of religion. And this is something that I've I've uh looked into quite a bit. It's a fascinating phenomenon. A lot of people think of religious belief as about kind of binary facts, true or false. And that's uh I would say largely a product of the way the reformation has become embedded within our intellectual history.

[00:37:29]>> But it's religion tends to be about so much more than that. About community, about belonging, about all kinds of different things. And uh and we have these kind of evolutionarily installed uh preferences for u these things, a lot of the the itches that religion and other social identities can scratch. And I talk a lot on my channel about how apologists approach contradictions because a lot of that is about not showing that a contradiction is not there, but just trying to jin up the tiniest little sliver of it's not impossible.

[00:38:03]>> Mhm.

[00:38:04]>> If I can if I can imagine scenarios that make it so these two things can be true at the same time. No matter how implausible, as long as they're not physically impossible, then I'm protected. I'm okay. I don't have to acknowledge that contradiction which I argue uh is a way for our minds to kind of wrap that belief in inherency or univocality or whatever in this little security blanket so it does not have to confront the reality of of a belief that is not in a agreement with the data out there in the world.

[00:38:37]>> Yeah. A lot of us who were fundamentalists understand how that works quite well. And it's um it's a it's a strange thing when I tell when I tell people that I tell people that fundamentalist Christians are actually more children of the enlightenment than almost anybody because they actually believe in objectivity and they think they can objectively demonstrate things.

[00:38:57]And sometimes you just need that little thing to make it possible and then that's that's okay then.

[00:39:03]>> Yeah. And and I think that a lot of that is based on the fact that uh well Protestant Christianity has had to respond to the rationalism of the enlightenment and they've and they've had to adopt the tools of the enlightenment to show the enlightenment that we can hang you on your own terms and then they took it over >> because in univer in universities today I mean this idea of objectivity is people just kind of roll their eyes you know because but but fundamentalists are still there and they're they're with the Enlightenment. We're going to prove things.

[00:39:36]>> We got objective evidence.

[00:39:39]>> Let's go back to when rational uh religion and revealed religion were polar opposites. Which side are you going to come down on?

[00:39:46]>> That's right.

[00:39:46]>> Um yeah, >> I wanted to I wanted to raise uh a question. It's something you discussed briefly in in the book. Uh another thing that I find myself combating a lot on social media is uh anti-semitism.

[00:40:01]And one of the things that I have kind of dug my heels into is um pushing back against this bad god of the Old Testament, good God of the New Testament uh ideology which is rooted in anti-semitism and can be very very harmful uh to folks today. I've got a lot of friends, I'm sure you know folks in the academy as well who are affected by this kind of stuff. And you talk a bit in in the book about there there is a violent God in the Old Testament.

[00:40:31]There's a loving God, too. There's also a violent God. But to suggest that there's not also perhaps even more violent God in the New Testament is is to misread the New Testament. And I would argue that there is no God of the Bible. There's no God of the Old Testament. There's no God of the New Testament because there are numerous different profiles, numerous different representations of deities. Some of them loving, some of them hateful, some of them violent. Um would you uh would you mind sharing your thoughts on on how your discussion in the book um resonates with what's going on in the world with uh with that kind of anti-semitic framework?

[00:41:08]>> Yeah. Uh I think um it you know it's the common line, right? Um uh the God of the Old Testament is the God of wrath and the God of the New Testament is the God of love.

[00:41:19]Whenever anybody tells me that, I just asked him, you know, have you read Revelation lately? Yeah.

[00:41:25]>> Love what you know the term love of God never occurs in the book of revelation.

[00:41:30]God is never said to love anybody in revelation. Um the words that are used frequently are the are wrath and vengeance and revenge and blood and violence. And these are these are the terms that are used. The revelation says it's about the wrath of God and the wrath of his lamb. That's that's Jesus.

[00:41:52]Uh, so it's a very it's a very wrathful book. And so I do think that it's really far too uh far too simplistic to talk about the Old Testament God and the New Testament God. And and you're absolutely right. It's not as if every author of every book in the Old Testament has the same view of God. Quite the contrary.

[00:42:12]These are, you know, in English it's 39 books written by a number of different authors from a number of different sources. And there are various depictions of of the ultimate divinity in the Hebrew Bible and and in the New Testament. There's not a consistent view either. But this is rooted this idea that the New Testament is a God of love is that you know uh the God of the Old Testament is this harsh God who wants to hurt you. Uh that's the Jewish God. And the God of the New Testament is a God of love and mercy. He wants to save you.

[00:42:43]Then you say, "Well, okay, what about Revelation?" Well, people are doing it to themselves. They say, you know, you know, they decide to reject God and so it's not God's fault. It's their fault because he they rejected him. Well, okay, but you know, if you reject God, um, and suppose God wants to destroy everything that's opposed to him. Okay, just just suppose there is a God like that. Why doesn't he just zap him with a cosmic ray or something, you know, or give everybody a sudden coronary? You know, in the in the book of Revelation, there's one one of the one of the many many catastrophes that hits the earth is that uh is that the that heaven releases these locusts out of this bottomless pit that that uh they they they have a sting of scorpions and they're flying locusts and they sting everybody who's not a strict follower of Jesus. And this sting torments people for five months in excruciating pain and they're not allowed to die. Uh they can only suffer for five months. They can't even kill themselves to put an end to the pain.

[00:43:47]This is brought by Christ.

[00:43:49]Uh and you why do you need the torture?

[00:43:53]Why can't you just why can't you just kill everybody?

[00:43:57]It's funny when I first delved into uh Revelation, I you know, I'd heard terms like, you know, the beasts and all the stuff and yes, there are there are many beasts spoken of in Revelation and blah blah blah, but what I've was shocked by is how terrifying the angels were in uh you just sort of to your point like the good guys are horrifying. Yeah. In Revelation. Well, in chapter 14, Christ comes out of a uh comes out of heaven with a Sith in his hand. And another angel comes out with a Sith, and they're told to harvest the earth. And so, this angel harvest the earth. You think, okay, he's chopping down some grape vines because it talks about the v the vineyard being harvested. And but then the grapes uh are thrown into the vat of God, the wine press of God's wrath. And it turns out it's blood. These are humans. And the blood flows for 200 miles as high as a bridal of a horse.

[00:44:57]That's that's that's the violence brought about by Christ and his angel.

[00:45:01]And so it's not the beast doing this.

[00:45:03]This is Christ doing it and his angels.

[00:45:05]Oh man, that's that's bloody. 200 miles up to I mean, whoa, that's a lot of blood.

[00:45:12]>> Well, and that's and that's throwing everybody in a in a big stone pit and then stomping on them.

[00:45:17]>> Yeah. uh if uh if we're using the same idea from antiquity of the >> it's a wine press. Yeah.

[00:45:23]>> Yeah.

[00:45:23]>> People are the people are the grapes.

[00:45:26]>> So what's what's the takeaway? What what should we be taking away both from Revelation as a book and sort of the the the the biblical idea of Armageddon?

[00:45:38]what what should we be taking away from that? And then uh how how should we as a modern uh reader, you know, we're not you're I hear the you know, this isn't a Ouija board. It isn't a a puzzle, a jigsaw puzzle. What is it? Where what is our takeaway from this?

[00:46:00]>> Okay, so most of my book is trying to explain what Revelation really is. And most of my books, you know, I'm not trying to trash revelation. My in my book, I'm trying to show what it really is. And the reason people get mystified by it is because they don't understand uh that this this kind of book was a common form of writing in among Jews and Christians in the ancient world. Today, when somebody reads the book of Revelation, they read it so bizarre, so weird, so you just can't understand all this metaphor and the symbolism. What in the world's going on here? It just blows your mind. And so evangelicals read it or fundamentalists read it and say this is so weird. No human could have come up with this. This must be inspired by God.

[00:46:41]So that's what I So but but >> those people have never been to Burning Man.

[00:46:45]>> Yeah. Well, that's right. They have Yeah. Well, the funny thing Yeah. Okay.

[00:46:48]So, so the um the the thing is that books like this were were written in the ancient world. And so what historians do is they they put revelation within its genre. Uh, and so if you, you know, somebody reads a science fiction novel, they they pretty much know how it works.

[00:47:04]If you had given a science fiction novel to somebody living 500 years ago, they wouldn't be able to make heads or tails of it. But for modern readers, it's not a problem. You're just used to that kind of literature. And, you know, it's not like a short story and it's not like a biography. It's not like a limmerick poem. Every one of these are genres of literature. And authors who write in a genre know what's expected within the genre and the readers know what the author is doing within the genre. So the book of revelation is a gen part of a genre. It's the genre is called apocalypse. We have a number of apocalypses, Jewish and Christian apocalypses. And so we can tell how they work. And if you see how they work, it's not that hard to interpret the book of Revelation. Uh they always work to explain that um that there's a lot of evil in the world. There are powers of evil in the world, but God is going to intervene and destroy the evil and reward the righteous. Uh, and so there will be a good outcome for this thing.

[00:47:58]And so these books are generally meant to be books of hope for people who are on the side of the author. Um, and and they are that. And so, so Revelations is not a jigsaw puzzle. But the other part of my book, as I try to argue, it's also not really a book of hope for the vast majority of the human race because the vast majority of the human race will be brought back from the dead if they've died and or or they'll come alive to the to the judgment seat and uh most of them will be thrown alive into a lake of burning sulfur where by the way they'll be destroyed. There is they're not going to be tortured forever. they're they're they're killed in this in this lake of fire. That's how they die. Um so, uh the only people who escape are the the very devoted followers of of Christ who are called the slaves of God. God doesn't love them. They're his minions. They're his slaves. And the thing is, it's not even all Christians. Every pagan and every non-believing Jew, non-Christian Jew, gets thrown in the lake. And a lot of Christians do, too.

[00:49:04]So, so what do we what do we make of this? Well, I think if you give John, if you want to kind of cut him some slack, you say he's just trying to show that in the end, God will triumph, and that can be a source of hope for people who are suffering. And so, that part can be good. But the imagery he uses to get there is not good. And it's a um it's a book, I think, that runs contrary to um to the actual message of Jesus himself.

[00:49:33]Uh, and so I I think people have to choose whether they're going to accept this this ideology of violence or not.

[00:49:39]Um, because Jesus is against it and John of Patmas is for it.

[00:49:45]>> Well, I think that is a wonderful place to end our discussion. Uh, Bartman, thank you so much uh for coming on the show today. We really appreciate having you here. Well, >> it's been my pleasure. Thanks. Thanks for having me.

[00:49:57]>> Thank you for your time. I appreciate it. Uh, thank you everybody for listening. Hope you've enjoyed uh this episode of the data overdogma podcast.

[00:50:06]Uh, as usual, if you'd like to get in touch with us, you can reach us at contactdatogmapod.com and we will see you all around.