According to John Dominic Crossan, Jesus was crucified by Rome not because he was a violent revolutionary, but because he represented a nonviolent resistance movement that challenged the Roman Empire's ideology. Jesus taught that the Kingdom of God was already present and accessible, requiring human cooperation with divine action rather than passive waiting for apocalyptic intervention. This message of nonviolent resistance, which Crossan argues was Jesus's core teaching, was perceived as a threat to Roman authority because it offered an alternative to the empire's violent model of civilization. Paul understood this crucifixion as a revelation of the savage heart of civilization, showing that even the most powerful empire could commit violence against its own representative. Crossan emphasizes that Jesus's death was not about atonement or suffering, but about exposing the inherent violence of imperial systems and calling for a transformation of society through justice and cooperation.
Why Rome Had to Kill Jesus | John Dominic CrossanAdded:
John Dominic Crossan, welcome back.
How are you? I am great, thank God. I'm feeling fine. Health is good.
Good.
Good. Yeah, you know, Don, you've been around the block, okay?
You've been in Jesus studies, the historical Jesus, critical scholarship for decades. I mean, what, 50, 60 years? Yeah, the first book was I have I took it in Parables, The Challenge of the Historical Jesus. So, from the very beginning, historical Jesus. That was published in '73. So, basically, I started working on it in '69. Okay, that's a long time ago, 1969.
[laughter] It is, it is. And I I wanted to give your brain and everything you know a sketch for viewers who are learning about Jesus and want to know your decades of wisdom you've learned along the way of like the the the pros, the cons, the oh, I learned that, whoop, I changed my mind, these things. And I wanted to do that with Jesus and Paul, especially since you have the Paul and Jesus Yeah, this is the book. This is the Paul.
Paul? Yeah, Paul. Paul the bear. By the way, Derek, I should say for me, when I started writing about Paul, and that was in about 2000, when Sarah and I and the Bargs started the Barg Crossan pilgrimage every year to Turkey for Paul. People said, "Oh, Crossan's quitting Jesus, going ah."
I consider Paul part of Jesus. Got it.
Because Paul says all the time talking about Jesus, Jesus the Christ, okay?
So, I consider that part of it. Okay, so I'm Sorry, that's No, Derek, that's important because I think there is obviously connections. Everyone notices those connections. Problem is is I think some people disconnect so much that they don't maybe see that they have some light they can shed on one another.
Yeah. So, what I was hoping we could do in this first video, and we're going to have hopefully several here, is imagine like we're not like watching a movie of Mark, uh Christian movies that they've made, uh The Gospel of John or whatever, but a historical critical lens of what you think actually happened, going back into the 1st century BCE, kind of give a portrait, Rome's on the rise, you've got all sorts of power struggles that go on within Rome, you've got obviously Augustus showing up, things like this are happening. Herod is now on power over this territory. Maybe give us a little historical flowering or coloring of the of the scenery, and why a character like Jesus even begins to show up, his legacy, his teachings, what you think he was about, and maybe we can contrast your views with others like Allison and and and Erman and others, and then take it to Paul, and then of course we have the legacy of Christianity. Okay.
Uh first thing, why does the 1st century is the century that formed, for better or for worse, Western civilization.
Two huge transitions, whether you like it or not.
Not really from Republic, in terms of the Romans, we didn't really change from Republic to empire. That's said all the time and it's wrong.
The Carthaginians knew about the Roman Republic.
It changed from a Republican senatorial empire to an autocratic empire.
That's the change. Mhm.
Even under the Republic, of course, they were imperial. What were they doing, burning Carthage to the ground on a tourist visa? No, of course it was an empire.
But it changed to become an autocratic empire. Now, we don't want to say that.
We don't want to really say, even though that's the the Greek term used of Augustus, is was an autocrat.
And that doesn't mean he was above the law because above the law would mean there's still a difference between you and the law. He is the law. He's the autocrat.
I am the law if I say it. Okay. So, that's one huge transition's going on.
And if Christianity or polity has never exist, that's still going on. Secondly, by the end of this century after 70, a huge transition going on in Judaism.
From a sacrificial Judaism led by priests to a Torah study Judaism led by the rabbis.
And those are giant. In one sense, you'd almost say Jesus arriving with his little transition is like a a mini wave when these giant tornadoes going on. But yes, that's going to be a third one and I'm going to argue it is the change from a a Messiah. Let me give you Watch my language. From a Messianic Christos.
Christ, of course, is simply the Greek form of Messiah.
Who is um apocalyptic to one who is here and now present. Who's not talking about the kingdom of God's coming any day soon, next week, next month. It's It's here. And may I may I jump in here with you? Just so I understand. This is an interesting point because you obviously we know that uh Messiah's expectation and this is hinted at in the Gospels, which is why it's an interesting point you bring up. Is it Well, what did they expect when the Messiah was going to come? Oh, it was this apocalyptic, you know, sword-wielding Davidic I'm going to come in and take over. We're going to kick their butt. But constantly the the Gospels do work overtime to say, "No, that's not what he was saying, not what they were saying."
And of course, what usually goes on is the scholars like Ehrman and Allison and others say, "Well, that's likely either cognitive dissonance or something like post hoc rationalization of what failed." And so, then they're trying to make sense of it. You're just saying, "Listen, I don't need all that. That adds more variables that aren't necessary." I think that Jesus really came on with more of a spiritual, "The kingdom is present here now." more like a mystic.
>> Yeah, now I I'd be very careful about that, Derek. For me, help me because first of all, this is if I can follow my word, this is a third great transition.
Okay. If Jesus had appeared, he was a Jew. He certainly was a Jew. And he came to be the Messiah, at least his followers did.
Right. So, if he had simply said that and he was picking up the message, the fallen banner of John the Baptist like Elisha did for Elijah at the Jordan. Supposing he had said, "Well, we you know, John John got it a little bit wrong. He thought it was coming soon, this week, uh next month."
I mean, soon is a very elastic term, as you know. It can be expanded to 2,000 years. So, Jesus could have been an apocalyptic, of course.
And we wouldn't be talking about him, by the way.
In the same way, they're only talking about John the Baptist because of Jesus, really. Unless they're doing Jewish history. Now, that's a third transition.
I think I mean it, a conversion of Jesus took place because everything we know, I would know as a historian, is that Jesus went to John the Baptist's program at the Jordan. Now, we may have to talk what that was, but Jesus was baptized.
Now, he was I don't see the evidence he was a second in command. He was just one of the crowd.
Now, maybe the heavens opened, and that's fine, but so, Jesus had to convert because the next thing we we find him saying is stuff like, "Now, the greatest person who ever said you, the way, the greatest person who ever lived was John the Baptist. But the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater.
And that's exactly how you handle a revered mentor with whom you no longer agree.
But you're not going to criticize.
It's like if I could do a feeble illustration, if this is a revered teacher you had when you were doing your doctorate and you don't agree with them anymore at all. Do you have personal experience of this? Um Yeah, I suppose really because I after my doctorate I went to Rome for 2 years and I'd like to be very fair. I was under the Jesuits at the Biblical Institute.
I'd This would be '59 to '61 and three of my professors, all Jesuits, Augustine Bea became Cardinal Bea and was in charge of Judaism and Chris anti-Semitism and Roman Catholicism in the Second Vatican Council. No, no, no, I totally agreed with him. I mean I don't want to say I agreed with him. I learned from him to agree with him.
I had Leone, I had Zerwick. They were forbidden to teach the following year by the Vatican.
No, I'd have to look around to try and find somebody I disagreed with because I had I had very progressive scholars teach me. I don't want to say I agreed with them. That would make it sound like I was already there. Yeah.
I listened to them say right because they they came at things historically.
That's the whole way. It's not that you're going to say, "Well, I like this so I'd hold on to it. I'm progressive.
I'm liberal." I really am it. I'm historical. Yeah, yeah. We did that the historical method. And if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. I'm historically wrong, but anyway. So, I'm putting the whole phenomenon Christianity, including Messianic, Christic Judaism, all of that as a third great transition of the first century. And this sets up, for better for worse, Western civilization.
A lot of the rest of the world might not like it because it set up Western imperialism as well. But it's it's a century of transitions.
Roman Judaism and then eventually Christianity. So, I'm not surprised if I find that Jesus for me had a conversion bigger than Paul's.
From from when he was baptized by John and must have agreed with John. Of course, if he was baptized by him.
To what he's saying later in the Q gospel, for example.
That's a conversion. Yeah, if you don't like the word, get over it. Is it Yeah, so what what was John's program?
Because in your view, your best guess historically, what was John's program that Jesus was joining? What was his goal? Well, if you go into Josephus, you find out that in the in in in between, say, the armed rebellion of uh 4 BCE, which of course 2,000 people were crucified, and 66 to 73, there was experiments in Judaism with nonviolent resistance. Not about nonviolence.
That means doing nothing. Nonviolent resistance. How you could resist Rome without getting killed.
And one of the ways that was done was by trying to recapitulate the great salvific events of God. You came from Egypt, you helped the desert, you crossed the Jordan into the promised land. You were in in in Babylon, you crossed the desert over the Jordan into the promised land. What if we went and we did it? Mhm. What if we went out into the desert, crossed through the Jordan, and as the waters washed our bodies, repentance would wash our souls, we come into the land as a purified people.
Then my then surely he'll come. We're tired of waiting. What's keeping you up, God? You know.
>> Yeah. Okay, we're getting to what John the Baptist is doing is the same thing that Judas I was going to ask you about that. and the Egyptians. Those three people are all mentioned in Josephus and in the New Testament. Right. And Luke apart from you know, James of Jerusalem and Jesus. Paul's never mentioned, Peter's never mentioned in Josephus, but those three are. Yeah.
Because they're all doing the scenario of repeating the great salvific events.
So, here's John the Baptist.
What's holding up God coming?
You guys.
And that's what his mom says, "Oh, here we go again. It's always our sins. Yeah, yeah, it's all our fault. Yeah." They're saying to get away with the Bible.
It's our fault. God will get so tired of this.
"Okay," says John, "but we can do something about it."
"Okay, John. Now we're listening."
We're not We're not following you, but we're listening. What are we going to do? We're going to recapitulate the great return from exile.
"Oh, I'm listening now."
Remember you were in Babylon? God took us from Babylon across the desert.
Remember Isaiah?
Crossed the the Jordan into the promised land as a purified people. We're going to redo it.
Apparently you're not going to get hit or killed by the Romans when we're doing this.
So, we're going out into the desert and then you cross the Jordan repenting of your sins cuz that's what's holding up the big coming.
And then God's to come.
Now, God didn't.
What came was Antipas's cavalry.
And John died.
I I think at that point now I'm interpreting. I think Jesus had to make a decision.
And decision, the obvious one really was well, Elisha Elisha picked up the fallen mantle of Elijah at the Jordan, right here. So, he's thinking in his real life.
>> Yeah, there's >> I'm thinking I'm thinking of him going through a crisis. I don't even want to put it away. I'm thinking of Oh, well, I'm thinking of a crisis. He's committed himself to John.
And God didn't come.
Now, can you say well, the timing was off?
It's a It's soon. It's next week. It's He could have done it. Right. And he would have had a huge following.
And there is a huge following of John that's still waiting out there. Mhm. Of course there is.
Nobody turned it off like that.
And Jesus said, "No." And I think this is what Jesus says for me. You guys have got it all wrong.
Now, this is a after his crisis. Yeah.
God's waiting for you.
We're waiting for God to do it for us.
And God is waiting for us to do it with God.
Got you. And he would have said, "Will you read the prophets?
Where do you get Isaiah or Jeremiah in Amos saying, 'Well, hang in there and God will do it for you.'?
Where does Isaiah say that?
Every word of his says God will do it with you.
Cooperate.
What do you think Torah is about? Mhm.
God will run it for you?
I Jesus I don't think Jesus would have said just feed my dog.
You know, when Isaiah and Micah talk about beating swords into plowshares, it doesn't say God will do it.
It says, "You will do it."
God will judge the world for its violence, but you will beat your swords into plowshares. And if you don't do it, there ain't be no anvil chorus, except in Verdi. So, I think Jesus went through a massive conversion which I think was a crisis.
That God cooperates with us and we must operate with God.
Because I don't think we have the leverage.
Now, I'm using my language.
I think we human beings need some transcendental leverage.
It could be evolution, by the way.
But some leverage to take on civilization. Not to take on Rome.
But how do you take on civilization since you're inside it?
You're not here looking at it out there and say, "Ooh, I don't like that violence."
It's in us.
We're part of it. So, you need what my language my neutral language. If somebody says, "Well, I don't believe in God and this fiber and all that stuff."
Fine.
Do you believe in gravity?
Well, I don't believe in I accept it.
Whether I like it or not. Okay.
Think evolution, then.
Think about evolution.
Are we going to get away with violence?
According to evolution. Mm. Are we a sustainable species? Now, I'm using my language. I'm using my language to translate what Jesus is saying into my language today.
I put his challenge as saying in my language again.
Are we a sustainable species? Or does the trajectory of violence guarantee that we will do it?
The next one. That we will eventually use the atomic bomb against one another.
Because we've always used, even if it takes a while, the weapons that we have.
So, I'm looking trajectory and not I'm not a I'm not doing prophecy. I'm just saying we did this, we did this, we did this.
Now, everything could change, of course.
But we've never had a weapon we didn't use. So, I look at this whole thing and I can look at it from the Bible.
But I'm going to be blunt. I don't need the Bible to see it. I also see it over here. Right. Right. And it's because I see it in both places that I spent my life in the Bible.
Right.
I I could have spent my life and the only other thing I could ever imagine it would be with Shakespeare.
Shakespeare is the only one who has a vision consistently and predom- produced it over and over again. So, that's the big scenario for me. Okay, and that's Jesus' program. So, this is an important, you know, aspect. We can get into the weeds of details and things, but yeah, I think it's important that we move to Jesus' non-violent resistance, of course, gets him killed. We'll get into that in a future episode to get more details about your thoughts about what happened there. Hey, um I I do want to mention briefly, you brought up Theudas, and before we forget, the program of Theudas and the Egyptian seems like obviously Theudas may have been non-violent, even though it seems like Josephus seems and help me out cuz your reading may be different than my understanding, and I'd be interested to hear yours, not mine, is that Theudas goes to the river doing this reenactment thing that John did in a way in his own program, of course, for whatever his intentions were. It didn't seem violent, but because he's doing this with a crowd, they thought this is potentially violent, and therefore, I think it was Festus goes and gets him killed, and and off goes his head according to the Acts, I believe. Um it might been Josephus, but I think that Steve Mason's done a fantastic job of showing the dependence on this character. Um I'm convinced, but my question is this, as far as Theudas goes, what's your reading on him? As much as we can, cuz we only get like barely any thing.
>> And then the Egyptian, he seems to have had more of a violent approach versus Theudas talking about that the walls coming down and like Is that sounds like he might have had a different Joshua Okay, that's Joshua he crossed the Jordan the trump the trumpeters go around seven times boop boop. Now that's not a military strategy. Right. I I don't think we're going to send trumpets to Iran.
You know. Uh it's not a military strategy it's a trust in God to do it.
Okay. Now I read let me go wider.
John the Baptist excuse me John the Baptist Josephus has a thing he calls fourth philosophy.
Now he mentions it through gritted teeth.
Because what terrifies Josephus? This is a big reading of Josephus now. My understanding of Josephus treating him as carefully and as critically as I do Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and Paul. Mhm.
Carefully.
Trying to say what makes him tick.
Long before I disavow What terrifies Josephus is that the Roman Empire might decide that the reason for the Well, he doesn't know there's going to be four great revolts.
But he knows there's going to there'll be two of them.
And the one of seven of 66 to 73 the Romans decided to take the money as you know that used to go to the temple from Jews around the diaspora that went to the Jewish temple in Jerusalem is now going to the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus in Rome.
That's that's a that's a punishment.
And it's a religious punishment.
So I think what Josephus is terrified about.
What if Rome decides that the reason for these rebellions is their religion?
It's like those Celts you know, it's their religion that's the a >> Or the Druids that they had. The Druids of the Celts. So, we make it a forbidden religion. So, we we the Roman Empire declare Judaism a forbidden religion. If you circumcise your male child, you can be put to death. Whatever whatever they decide. We're going to destroy Judaism.
Now, Hadrian came comes very close to do that after the revolt of 132-35.
Changes the name of Jerusalem Aelia Capitolina, I think. No Jews are allowed in Jerusalem.
I mean I think if to understand Josephus and understanding somebody is nothing if you really the traitor you are Mhm.
Yeah, but you know I think that's what terrifies him.
So, he's going to bend over backwards not to mention apocalyptic stuff. Not to mention Messianic stuff. In fact, that's really Vespasian.
Vespasian is really the Messiah. We got it wrong. We thought it would be a guy of Judea. It was a guy from Judea.
Vespasian.
Now, the cheap way of saying it is that he's just a you know, he's just taking care of himself. He's betraying his and people are going over to the Romans.
Yeah, but that that doesn't explain 20 volumes of the Jewish Antiquities.
What terrifies him, I repeat is that Rome might decide that the reason that we get rebellions.
You know, nobody else in the Pax Romana after it's established does actually what the Jews of Jerusalem and North Africa did.
An armed rebellion four times against Rome in 200 years.
Now, you know, okay. That's the Irish against the British Empire. They did it for 300 years or more. But the Jews. So, I think to understand Josephus, to read him and to understand him. Then you can agree or disagree.
He bends over backwards to say we have only three we we have only three philosophies.
We don't have we don't have political factions. We have philosophers. Oh, isn't that lovely? Just like you people have philosophers.
They're all talkers.
They're They're They're not They're not activists. And then he has to admit and he he grinds through the Jewish War without admitting it. But Jewish Antiquities he admits Yeah, there was a fourth philosophy.
And it was non- violent resistance.
And Josephus hates it even more than violent resistance.
Cuz that's what people do, you know.
Cowardly rebel against empires.
But that's what terrifies them. And so I put Judas, I put the Egyptian, I put John the Baptist in the same group as part of this non-violent experimentation.
And the same wave rebellion or uh non-violent resistance against uh pilot, for example, about the the um temp- it's bringing the banners into the uh Jerusalem uh against uh Caligula's statue. All of this is non-violent resistance, like sit-down strikes. It's all in Josephus.
And the fact that he hates it I think he hates it a little bit worse than violent resistance.
Because he says they have What's his phrase? They have purer hands but impure hearts. Hm. Because they don't take a sword and kill you, but they come at you with non-violent resistance. And his instinct is right.
Cuz that's what's going to get you.
It's going to get the Roman Empire. It's not the Chrissy is going to take up the sword and fight them.
They're coming at you ideologically.
And you ain't ready for that. Um So like a movie should be made based on what you just painted. I'm loving this.
I love this. Okay, okay.
Gosh, we could go on and there's so much. I wish you had another 80 years, you know. Um I'll tell you So we're dealing with non-violent. We dealt with through this Judas.
We need to do a little transitioning and maybe you want to paint the picture however Paul comes into the scene, but things happen between the death of Jesus and Paul's writings. So can you paint the picture specifically your book and everybody make sure you go get a copy Paul the Pharisee a vision beyond the violence of civilization as you've been hinting at here. And I love how you take it to the modern day and apply this to us now because this is an important message. There's a reason that this I would say religion has had success and is still being held on to by so many people. There's something to it that we we talk about baby and bathwater, you know. Some stuff you you think yourself is bathwater.
You're like, yeah, I read that and I'm like, not needed. But there's some things that you think is baby. And I kind of want to get into Paul. So if we could take it to from Jesus's what Jesus's goal was obviously non-violent resistance. You've pointed it out. Gets himself killed because they're still problematic. I mean, it's like today.
The analogy I would give is like a modern protest. Uh sometimes it can turn violent and you can see they obviously have turned into riots.
And maybe governments know that non-violent protests turn into riots and therefore they sometimes might even jump the gun and assume it's going to become violent when it's not and their intention is really pure in the sense of trying to make change. And I bet Rome felt the same way about groups that you had gathered No.
The question that I keep probing all the time that I just did with your Cephas when I read some of these what makes this guy tick and what says I'm trying to figure that out myself and I don't know the answer to it. Somebody else has to figure that out. Um.
Somebody once said.
Rather it was Sanders once said well Crossan is Irish and he doesn't like the British Empire.
So he's taking all of that dislike and he's putting it on to Jesus and Paul against the Roman Empire.
And I thought the only answer to that was a humorous so I.
I said I don't dislike the British Empire. I mean how can you dislike an Empire that gave up all of India and held on to a part of Ireland?
That's the sense of humor. They gave up.
Gave up Hong Kong and kept Belfast.
Took.
I mean I just laughed at it.
No, I mean, of course that's true.
That does make me tick, of course.
I was born in 1934 and the first generation after the British are taken Well, they weren't gone yet.
It was called when I was born, it was called the Irish Free State.
Irish Free State. Well, well from what?
Free from England at the moment. It was It was much later that it became the Republic of Ireland. So, I Yeah, I know that stuff. I I grew up with that stuff.
And when I was in the happy moment when the empire is gone, but you could still blame it for everything. Yeah. That That's marvelous. The first generation, second generation, you know that you got all those problems. You're making some of them yourself and you can't You can't blame the empire for everything. So, first generation is great. Anyway, I'm trying to understand what makes Paul tick, honestly.
And here's where I see it. Again, this is an historical reading of Paul to understand his mind.
Paul talks about his phrases, the mystery of God.
He also talks about the power of God and the wisdom of God. The mystery of God.
And it's not just that God's mysterious.
As I understand it in 1 Corinthians in the first chapters and also in Romans, in fact in the last thing Paul ever wrote, at the end of Romans, and I think he was kind of suspicious this might be the end cuz he knew he was going to Jerusalem, it was dangerous.
The last thing he wrote first to the mystery of God.
Well, you What do you talk about? Of course God's a mysterious mystery of God. It's kind of crude redundancy.
And he talks about mystery of God was eternal. Well, of course it was eternal.
Then here's what he's saying. Now, this is Paul. This is me understanding Paul.
It's not the question I would ask.
The question that haunts Paul's mind, as I see it, is God knew, says Paul to himself, from all eternity, that when I send Paul's thinking, the Messiah Christ, when I send the Messiah Christ, he would be incarnated as Jesus of Nazareth, but this when I send the Messiah Christ, it'll be into the the maelstrom of the Roman Empire, and they'll crucify him.
Now, Paul says to himself, why, in the name of God, did God do that?
That's his question. It's not my question.
And that's what he called the mystery that was there from all eternity. It's not the mystery of who God is, it's the mystery of what God did.
It's like you and I might ask of somebody who did some I don't know, whatever, crashed their car or something, so why'd they have to do that?
Did they have a heart attack? Did they have a temporary blindness? So, you know, we we ask why. Right.
Paul's asking, why did God not send Jesus 100 years before, 100 years after, you know, why right in the He knew what was going to happen. And Paul's answer, which is quite clear in the beginning of 1 Corinthians, is because this would reveal to the world, to the nations, this would reveal to the nations the savage heart of civilization.
Here is the Roman Empire, Roman civilization, order, law, justice, Pax Romana.
What does it do to the Messiah Christ?
It crucifies him.
Publicly, legally, officially. Now, it doesn't make the mistake, we have to come back to this, of rounding up his followers.
Doesn't do that. So, it doesn't judge him to be violent, to be 12 crosses up there, 13.
But in Paul's mind, he says, "Oh, I see it.
This was God and this is my job now to tell the nations, do you see what you're like?
Do you see finally this revelation?
It's like things that have happened within our lifetime in our own country that have revealed to us that there's violence in our culture.
Mhm. That have made us maybe think we're not violent because we have guns, but we have guns because we're violent.
Oh my god.
Is that why this happens? Is that why that happens?
Are these like the points where where a cancer breaks out on the the surface of your skin and you suddenly see it, but it was there for months, maybe years.
Paul sees the crucifixion by Rome, legally, officially, publicly of G of the Messiah, not just that one poor Jew, but of the Messiah as the revelation.
Preacher Paul is then told to take to the nations.
>> Mhm. I say, "Do you see it?
Do you see the violence at the heart of civilization?
What do you think it's going to do to you?" And I'm pushing Paul at this stage.
That Paul got to that. He doesn't have a clue about what what we know about violence, that we can destroy the world.
And God would never do that because that would be embarrassingly admitting that I blew it. So, God would never destroy creation. That's that's not in Paul's mind.
There'd be a new creation, maybe, but but I think what what drives Paul in the same way as I said what drives Josephus is the fear of what Rome might do is the fear of what civilization is.
That it's violent. It's not just that, it's not just that. Because Paul Paul knows Daniel. It knows it was the Babylonians and the Medes and the Persians and the Greeks.
And the Syrians and and now we thought the Romans. So, empires are going like that. They're not going like this.
So, where is this kingdom of God stuff?
How can it go against the thrust of it I I almost said evolution. The thrust of empire still get stronger. We thought Daniel 7 thought that the the greatest of violence you could imagine was the the terrible killing machine of Alexander.
But the Romans took it out.
Those 15-20 foot pikes that Alexander's phalanxes had, the Romans took care of it with their short swords.
Now, nobody's asking the obvious question.
The Romans certainly weren't asking, "What's going to take care of us?" If you watch the trajectory, "Who are next to be running the world?" they would have said. So, I I think that's what terrifies Paul.
Everything else comes from that.
Now, God revealed the savage heart that of Rome.
We say and we say rightly, but inadequately, that Jesus and Paul were against the Roman Empire. Of course they were.
That's why they got killed. But, not because the Roman Empire was the problem. The Roman Empire was civilization in a toga.
It just the current contemporary incarnation of civilization.
In the same way, quite frankly, that when I'm looking at the evening news right now in our own country, >> Mhm.
I see this as the current contemporary incarnation of civilization.
We're doing it in the name of civilization.
American interests, of course, but so Paul's function was revealed to the nations, we call them the Gentiles, to the nations.
That's a marvelous word because the nations clearly include Israel.
Yeah. Then you can think about Jews and Gentiles if you want, but if you talk about nations, well, what do you think you are?
That's right. You might be a separate nation, a chosen nation, fine, but you're a nation.
And you could be destroyed as the nations.
Yeah.
Where are the Where are the Ammonites and the Moabites?
Today, they're disappeared into the gene pool of the Middle East. So this is what I think Paul is about.
The salvation He He He uses a term which is absolutely his own, new creation.
It would This is This is really getting in the weeds, but Paul's program that he believes is the program of Christ, that he believes he's having some kind of experiences, that he is attributing these interpretations.
I'm sure he's reading He's reading the tea leaves and he's reading the signs in the time right in front of him, it seemed.
Um you know, a lot of people talk about Paul as a Jew, which you bring up Paul the Pharisee.
And we're going to end up circling back to Jesus to discuss some of the the cynic stuff eventually in another video, but Paul the Pharisee, yet he uses mystery language that does share contact uh in that culture with mystery cults. So, there's this combination, I think, that Paul seems to carry in his message that is touching the nations and when I use the nations I mean maybe the non-Jews as well. His message is selling to them.
It's Yeah. It needs to It needs to tickle their ears as well as but it's clearly not a program that's being as receptive by the Jews it seems cuz a lot of that he he's he's kind of crying out in anguish going I wish my own kinsmen figured this out. They're not listening.
Um what do you think Paul's purpose like what is his goal with his with his message? Like he wants people to believe he's all about Christ crucified.
Is that image I guess two questions is what's his goal and is that image of him crucified we get atonement language, we get this idea of a martyr-like figure, you know, that's killed that he believes is innocent. Um is that image there he wants to constantly I want to hear about him crucified for people to see what you're talking about the violence that is within us that that there needs to be a change by the pneuma that we need to start, you know, living according to some spiritual kingdom now.
Of course he kind of seems to have a now and an expectation of something to come to but what what what do you do with those two questions? That is I do I need to rephrase them?
Yeah, I mean I got distracted because I don't like to use the phrase spiritual kingdom. I I never use it.
>> Okay. I never use it. Is it spiritual?
Of course it's spiritual. But then you get people saying, "Well, if you guys stay out of politics we're doing spiritual. The kingdom of God is within you does not mean it's just inside you. It means it's in the world.
Nowhere nowhere in the entire Bible I'm going to say is there any concept like we have that God might destroy the world.
It's just not there. Now, we know we can do it.
We can do it. We don't need God at all.
We know how to destroy the world.
Really.
So, that's not on their horizon. On their horizon is the transformation of the world. And if you want to say that's the end of this world, yeah.
Yeah. Cuz a lot of people are going to be out of business.
Yeah.
People who are making swords will be out of business.
Um so, the thrust of the Bible is a vision.
Actually, in which the world is transformed. The way they put say it is heaven comes down because they look up at heaven. Imagine heaven. Good shape.
All the angels are, you know, tightly organized and they they behave themselves and Satan is out gone so cuz he wouldn't get the with the movement.
So, heaven's in great shape.
Now, we take heaven, the kingdom of God, it have down to earth. It is not that we leave the earth and go to the kingdom of God. We're just not there.
Um in the Our Father, if you read it in Greek, in Matthew's Greek, it says, "As in heaven, so on earth."
And we translated that into English, "In earth as in heaven."
And I don't think that's an innocent translation. Could be, but I think we want people to think "On earth now, in heaven eventually."
>> Mhm. Uh that's not the way it is. Even the apocalyptic and the Book of Revelation finally admits, "Heaven's coming down." Yeah. We're not evacuating the operation.
Leave that to the left behind then. Cuz he all seems to talk about meeting Christ in the air to bring him down.
>> Yes. Uh when his word is parousia, pick up that for me for a moment.
Parousia under the Pax Romana was not like parousia under Alexander.
Talk about Tyre and Gaza, but parousia meant the minister, but in the Pax Romana, what was a parousia, or parousia if you want? It meant that the emperor, if you were at the time of age, was coming on a visit, or the new imperial legate was coming. What did you do? If you had walls, if you still had you threw your gates open, got into your best dress, and the boule, the city council, went out to meet him.
Now, what to do to meet him?
To say, you know, off you go back to Rome. Ah, to bring him in.
Feasting, celebration, sacrifices, food for everyone, big celebration.
So, Paul's vision of the end, the consummation, is Jesus' coming, of course, from heaven.
What do you do? You go up to the air to meet him.
Which way you're going?
Back up to heaven? No, no, no.
That's That's not the metaphor. You bring him into Earth.
You're bringing peace of God down to Earth.
Let me use peace of God instead of the kingdom of God. Peace of God down to Earth.
Nobody, nobody in the entire Bible can imagine what you and I can imagine without even thinking that we can destroy the world. So, when we read in the Bible the end of this world, of this world, we're thinking of God going Yeah, yeah. It's It's just unthinkable for The reason for that is not Oh, that would be awful for us. It's how embarrassing for God.
You know, it's like you're calling the car back to the factory.
God created the world and is admitting that I made a mistake.
I'm not sure I So, it's it's not that they're they're they're being so liberal or so They just don't want to embarrass God.
So, that's that's their vision. Now, I don't want to make it spiritual. It is political religious. It is economic. It is political.
In fact, the four great powers are all involved. So, if somebody wants to say, "Well, it's virtual and it's all internal and you and you you pray between you and God." That is the cute American individualism.
>> Right. And nobody in the Bible would understand it. God so loved the world.
Quote John 3:16. It doesn't say God so loved me and you.
Of course, God does. In the world.
That's where we are. That's what Paul No, this is good point.
>> I like you bringing into the political Paul's using language that was clearly a well-known Greco-Roman, you know, imagery of bringing the emperor in and he's talking about Christ. So, do you like your reading of Paul historically, how much of Rome does he have in mind with in maybe his message as a Pharisee who's a believer in Christ, he was attacking the group and now he's one of them? Um how much of his message is in contrary to the empire or how do you read Paul that way cuz I've had some people say Paul's pro-Roman, he's a spy for Rome. I mean like obviously it's not a not a critical scholarly position, but you have different views of how to understand Paul. Is Paul not really big he's not a big fan of Rome really technically?
>> First of all, Paul has a vision.
Paul has a vision. His vision is not I'm against Rome. I'm going to be a little bit personal at the moment.
I have a vision.
It is opposing everything that President Trump stands for.
Is my vision anti-Trump?
It's pro something else and therefore anti-Trump. There are people who are simply anti-Trump.
And those are the people who didn't see it coming.
Now, I'm going to be a little bit personal autobiographical. May I? Sure.
I came to this country on a student visa in '51 and 1951.
I got 6 years here, then went back my doctorate and all the rest of it. Came back in 61, 1961, on a green card.
Okay?
And I thought, "Well, fine. I can live here on a green card. There's no problem with it." I got married in um 19 um What was it? Now I have to have the I have to the think now. Um 69 69, and I thought, "I really should become a citizen." 60 969. I got the great big form in in about six six different copies. Put it into my um typewriter. Remember typewriters? And I I was doing fine.
Then I got There were six lines.
Say every city you've every country you've been in, when you entered or when you left in the last 10 years.
I'd been in every country in Europe.
And every country in the Middle East except Algeria and Libya. Every one of them within those years.
And I had 10 passports. Filled with it.
I thought, "I'm scared. I They may know all this stuff. They know when I've been out of the country cuz they saw my passports. I can't fill this out. Six six lines."
I give up. Okay, 69. Now, along '97, so I've been on the green card from '61 to '97. Newt Gingrich took out He said his contract with America. I called it a contract on America.
I said to sir, "This is not retro Looking back, I'm scared.
There is something happening in this country. I don't feel safe here. This is '97 any longer on a green card." 1997.
And it's Newt Gingrich that did it.
Honestly, it is. I said I said I could see these people saying, "Look, anyone who's been here for 25 years on a green card hasn't bothered to become a citizen doesn't respect us. Get out of here."
I said I could. Are you kind of an inheritor? You know, if I die, you can inherit.
I've been on a green card from what was that? '61 to '97. That's 36 years.
They could say, "What what's what's up with you? Why are you staying you're on a green card? If you want to live here, become a citizen."
I said, "I have no way It's not political. I just sheer laziness, to be honest with you. I just never got around to doing it. But, I'm scared now."
I In 19 In 1997, I applied to become a citizen.
Turned away to it no problems whatsoever. By 2000, I became a citizen.
Now, that scared me about the country I live in.
I I think it was one of the most prescient things I've ever done.
I smelled the autocracy with Newt Gingrich and the Republicans. Yes.
Cuz he wasn't alone. I smelled it.
And I smelled it from my experience in in Ireland. It was in my history, in my genes. I don't even know where it came from, honestly.
But, I knew I was afraid. And I've checked this with Sarah. It's not me retrojecting anything. No, that's easy stuff. No, I said to her, "I have to do it right now."
Because I I didn't intend to do it. It's I could live here happily. So, there can be a time when something happens that revealed to me the savage heart of America.
It's there. Yeah. Because if Newt Gingrich had said at any rate, "Get get out of here."
I wouldn't have heeded it.
We I knew we had nuts in Ireland leaving the country. So, I knew you can have a nut.
But, when the whole country starts to sound nutty, then that's when you get scared. So, I'm watching a Jesus and a Paul and a Josephus with the Roman Empire.
How the Roman Empire impacts them.
So, I I want to make certain that it's a vision of the world they're talking about. So, it's it's obviously ideological. It's obviously political.
It's obviously economic. It touches all of them. Now, it doesn't tell you whether the price of you know, bread has to be this much or that much. Though, it might tell you it's too expensive for the ordinary people, and that's not right.
It's about justice. It's about justice.
It really honestly it's and if I can pick up that word, I found myself again, I talk about justice, and people talk to me about justice and mercy.
Justice and I said, wait a minute. Wait a minute.
Justice and mercy means you're talking about punitive justice.
Like if you were to a court, and I was being judged in the court, I certainly you would like some mercy and clemency and all of that. But, I'm talking about distributive justice.
I'm talking about everyone getting a fair share.
And even you couldn't have punitive justice if it wasn't distributed fairly. So, the basic meaning, the logical meaning of justice and the basic meaning in the Bible is not punitive justice.
When Israel is crying, "God, give us justice." They're not really asking to punish us properly.
Right. They're distributive justice. How does everyone get a fair share of a world that belongs to God? That's a biblical question.
I would put it in ordinary terms, say, "How does everyone get a fair share of a world that belongs to all of us?"
So, I I rephrase, of course, again and again from God.
So, so that With justice on his mind.
>> Right. Cuz I think we're we're both seeing that in Paul.
Then it then the atonement of Jesus in his mind he he's reading Jesus' death as an atonement in some way. How do you understand that the this is an interpretive thing? I know some they have not the same as a historical even though it overlaps. It's difficult more difficult to really wrap one's mind around what the meaning in his mind might be, but what do you envision the meaning of the atonement of Jesus is doing to that justice? Because okay, sounds like there he portrays and it's not just him. You get this in scripture that the nations out there they don't have a light. They're in darkness. They don't really know. They're ignorant of the things. You kind of get hints at it with like the divine council and stuff where it's like you didn't teach the nations to help the widows and you didn't do it. He has this Israel had that problem. Prophets cried to Israel saying, "You know, I didn't ask for a sacrifice. I wanted you to do justice. I wanted you to do good and have good religion and help other people. Turns out you wanted to just keep killing an animal thinking that was going to cover these issues." Um so what does atonement in your mind in Paul's mind on your reading of Paul?
Okay, what is that about? All right, let me be careful.
I always begin historically. So if I don't get back to your question come at me. Let me start historically.
Jesus goes up to Jerusalem.
All right?
Why did Jesus go up to Jerusalem?
Now, I'm not going to try and read his mind cuz I can't. I'm going to read his actions.
Did Jesus go up to Jerusalem to get himself killed?
I don't mean that unreasonably. He could have said, you know, the only way to get this movement going is to become a martyr. If they kill me, people would see what they're like.
Yeah, you could do that.
Martin Luther King could have said the the way to let this really obvious is go there and I know they'll kill me. He did the opposite as you know. He kept saying I don't know if I go there cuz that's not where I want to die.
Everything Jesus did this I'm talking now historically.
In the week he's there.
Shows him trying to avoid getting killed.
That that that's an historical statement. That means that an historian can disagree with me on it. It's not an It's not an interpretation. For example, the truth.
Every day in the temple.
Mark keeps saying again and again, uh the crowd is on his side, but that's how the authorities wanted to get him, but they feared the crowd. He says about four times, every day.
Why does he do at night?
He gets out of Jerusalem and goes around the Mount of Olives.
And stays with his friends.
Now, that's the smart thing to do. Don't stay in Jerusalem at night. There's a full moon, but you know, dark streets, people just disappear. They don't get They just They're never heard of again. Get out of town every night.
And Mark keeps emphasizing that, coming back, coming back. So, what happened is when I read Mark and trying to see the historical background to it, I understand that probably his friends said to Jesus, Let me Let me imagine. This is probably rude. You know, if you're serious about this message about God's rule on earth, will you get out of those hick towns up there in Galilee? Take it to the capital city here in Jerusalem, where everything that counts takes place.
Come at Come at Passover with the Jews from all over the world. If you're serious about your movement, take it to the capital at Passover.
That's the only reason it makes sense to me of what Jesus did. Now, as you see, he everything he does tries to uh avoid getting killed, but if I'm Caiaphas now, I'm not even don't need a Judas for the moment. If I'm Caiaphas, I know what's going on.
Now, this guy's in the temple every day.
The crowd protects him. I can't risk a riot. I can't risk a riot in the temple.
It's too too dangerous.
He goes out every night. He goes out to his friends.
But every night he has to go through the valley down there. And he has to make a decision to go around the Mount of Olives north or south to Bethany.
If I was right down there, he's out of the temple and the crowds are not protecting me. He hasn't got to his to his friends yet. I get him there.
I mean, I'm convinced historically Jesus was crucified. I am convinced from Josephus that the high priests asked Pilate to do it. I think the collaborator with Pilate couldn't do it themselves, of course.
They convinced Pilate. So, I have to ask myself, why did it take a week?
You know, Pilate was very accommodating.
He killed you right off.
Why did Jesus get away with all this stuff day after day?
He got away with it cuz the crowd was on his side. So, the only logic for Caiaphas, I don't think even Judas, though it's good story.
I know where to get him. I get him in between the crowds in the temple and the friends at Bethany. That's where I'll get him. In the darkness too, by the way. And I'll get this whole thing over before anyone knows what's going on.
I think that's what happened. I don't think the whole world was watching the top of a hill with, you know, and two other people.
I think it was done fast. Do you think and I don't want to derail you. I want to stay on Jesus, but do you think that the night he was handed over is that image in Paul where he says on the night he was handed over kind of thing or >> Oh, yeah. I've no problem with that.
>> Yeah. Okay. That that he would know that. Now, the whole trial Yeah, that's I think that is written, I think, by early Christians who are giving a model for how you should act. Now, if you're going to be on trial, and you will be on trial, don't act like Peter who then says, "Jesus, never heard of him. Jesus, I'll put So, he Mark counterpoints Pilot, excuse me, uh Peter denying him.
Yeah, and Jesus affirming who he is.
Yeah, and so So, it's a perfect thing. Now, if I'm a Christian and you know, around the year 70, and I'm reading this, okay, I should act like Christ who is brave enough to say, "Yes, I am." And not like Peter who says, "Uh Jesus, never heard of him."
They're They're models of how to operate.
They're They're fiction, if you will, but they're powerful fiction to console people of how to work. How do you operate under persecution? Well, you operate like Jesus. Might get you killed, by the way.
But, if you want to operate like Peter, well, Jesus even forgives Peter. But, you're not You're really not being advised. Just be like Peter and Jesus will forgive. Right. He doesn't He doesn't look good in that. He He doesn't look good. I mean, it's it's a woman who says to him, you know, he's They're trying to make him as bad as possible. Of course. Of course. You know, if he's smart, he'd get out of there the first thing. So, as I understand the crucifixion, it is not Jesus trying to get himself killed. Now, let me pick up your word atonement.
Okay.
The word that is absolutely wrong is vicarious.
If you say vicarious a vicarious atoning sacrifice, I have no problem with the word sacrifice. Yeah, maybe define vicarious so people understand. Let me see it. This is theological, yeah. The Now, we're moving into theology. We're We're moving into people trying to understand why was Jesus crucified when they don't know history.
We're talking about Curio Ansel, around the year and round numbers 1100.
He's the second um Archbishop of Canterbury under the Normans. He's a Norman Archbishop of Canterbury. In other words, he's an imperialist. Mhm.
He's the Norman Archbishop. 1066 they arrived in England.
I know that because everyone in Ireland learned that from their school boy. 1166 they'd be over in Ireland. Took them 100 years. So, he's an imperialist. And like all imperialists we're here for justice.
We bring justice to you savages.
So, the great model for Anselm is God the judge.
God could not possibly forgive everyone because that would mean he doesn't care. Judge I'll walk into the courtroom and say, "I forgive you all.
Feeling good today." No, no. God must punish.
Yeah, but Anselm, no. Now, if you if you if you accept Anselm, God is judge, you've lost the argument.
Cur Deus Homo will wipe you off the map.
What I would say to Anselm is Anselm, why do you judge what why do you make God a judge?
What if God is a father?
Mhm.
And you know how fathers we don't let fathers judge their own sons. Right.
So, you you make God a judge. Why do you do that? Because that's your vaunted Roman justice, Norman justice. Yeah, we got it in Ireland, too. We bring you justice as if you savages didn't have your own justice before. We bring you our justice.
So, Anselm is going to say, "The only way I I understand the emperor language is God couldn't possibly forgive the human race for offending him." And they have, by the way.
For offending him because God has injured the human race is finite.
So, that's what the incarnation is about. God sends his son who's divine and human, and God executes his son in our place. That's vicarious atonement. In our place.
Now, I think it's the most obscene piece of theology.
Why am I going to back off?
I said this yesterday, by the way.
I mean, it's a funny theory. It's not just wrong or a mistake. It's an obscene theology. But you have again to understand what You see what I'm doing?
What makes Anselm tick?
Anselm actually is in the time of the first crusade. He, to his honor, doesn't think it's right to go out killing Muslims and killing all the Jews you meet on the way to kill the Muslims. He said He says you should argue with them.
How do you argue with somebody who doesn't accept your scripture? You argue, he says, from reason.
What's the reason? God is a judge. Now, once you accept that, boy, you've lost the argument. But I was to put Anselm, you were one of the the best spiritual advisers in the the late 1000s. You were You You ran a monastery as an abbot.
As Did you have an As an abbot spend your time as a judge?
He said He would have no monks pretty soon. Yeah, you have a monk who makes a mistake and maybe you you might I you know, give give him water water and bread for a week, but but he's still there.
If If you If you start killing off people, you You You're an abbot. What if God's an abbot?
And it kind of the whole world is a monastery and God is trying to make people holy.
I would argue with him not down the road. I'd argue with him on his first idea, God is the judge, cuz you've lost it after that. And his argument then that quite right, a judge cannot walk into the courtroom anywhere in the world and say, "I'm feeling merciful today. You're all forgiven."
He'd be impeached or whatever the language you use to get rid of him.
Right. So, vicarious means that God Now, now, take that word out for a moment. Atonement is a perfectly good It's an old-fashioned word. If I bump into your car, I have to make atonement. That means I have to tell you, I have to apologize, and maybe if our insurance take care of it, I might send you a bottle of wine or flowers just to say apologize. Right. That's making atonement. And we don't use that word.
It's kind of like making amends in a way. It's making amends. Atonement is just a fancy old-fashioned word for fixing up your mess. Right. You know, we all do it all the time. So, atonement is a perfectly good word. Sacrifice.
A firefighter outside a burning house.
There's a There's a child up there in the third floor. Firefighter rushes in, gets the child, drops it down to the firefighters below, catches it. The whole house falls in on her, and she's put to death. The The firefighter?
Firefighter. Yeah.
The only word for that is sacrifice.
Right. Right. And that's actually a noble thing. Of course it is. It's It's She has made her death peculiarly, especially, emphatically sacred. Now, you could say all life and all death is sacred, and it is.
But by giving up her life for the child Now, think about it.
Suppose it was somebody said, "Oh, you see, God wanted somebody dead. And if it couldn't be the kid, fine, the firefighter will do."
Ew, that's obscene. Yeah. You'd say, "No, the firefighter knew that it's a dangerous business. She knew going in there was dangerous. She knew all of that." Maybe if she'd said to her, "Would you be willing to give up your life for the child?" Maybe she'd say yes, or I don't know.
But it's the sacrifice. So, if you're writing in the paper, you wouldn't say firefighter dies.
Right. It'd be more Firefighter sacrifices her life. Roderick, if I may >> Watch that. No, don't interrupt. This is a very good point. Um cuz it's a fine line theologically between you know, the language of father and judge, and then like him needing and wanting the death of his son in order to appeal to like it sounds really cruel and it does not give a visual that I today find appealing at all. But, the the portrayal you just painted actually has nobility. That's a different image than a father wanting his child's blood kind of thing. It sounds really gross, it sounds archaic, and even barbaric. I don't want to hear it that way. But, there's a scholar um Courtney Friesen, you've probably heard of him. Um he's a classicist. He wrote um Reading Dionysus one book and then another one he's reading uh he's how like later Christians and Jews, how they've negotiated and worked with the plays of Dionysus through history. Um this one's not about Dionysus, but I had him on an episode and I didn't know this, but when I interviewed him he said he looked at the Greek very carefully in Paul's letters. And and on this moment of atonement, or as we like to say sacrifice, better yet, is he looked at the play Alcestis, where Heracles um is in the story and there's a husband and a wife, they're in love.
And of course, it's a play, it's a fiction, but the the I believe it's the wife or the husband, I can't remember, one of them dies and they go to Hades.
The other one is like saying, "I I want them to be alive." Okay. So, they they they they sacrifice themself and they brought back their loved one through this means in the play.
Heracles saw it.
Saw the the you know, somehow compassion in this and decided he was going to resurrect the loved one who went to the Okay, Um and so now it's kind of a happily ever after for moments kind of Paris, but he said the Greek and Paul sounded very much a tone atonement a sacrifice in the language like Alcestis. It kind of like you did with the firefighter, um, there's a sense in which they almost selflessly said, "Hey, I'm I'm going to have to do this." And and that kind of view is prettier than the modern theological and I think you brought up Anselm for a reason is that they had this idea of the strict judge, but then they want to use father language, but it doesn't sound like the picture of a father.
>> No, mhm. And it's almost like he needs his blood in order for you to be forgiven rather than just the strict behavior of a man willing to lay down his life or risk his life even if he wasn't named that way.
And that's what you're saying Jesus did.
He was he's clearly not trying to die, but he got himself killed. And I'm honestly trying to stay close to history. I mean, I I am I am open if if if I knew for a fact that Jesus said to his people in Galilee, "The only thing to get this going is go up to Jerusalem and make this this guy show us show us claws by killing me. Then we see what he's like."
Yeah. It's almost like I'm going to say if if you had a very corrupt I want to be very careful with my language. If you had a very corrupt group today in this country, I won't say who it and the only way to make people see it was to go in and provoke them to do something. Mhm.
>> Okay, I understand that.
I understand that.
If that's what I thought was there, I would say, "Yeah, I it's not." It's not that that because I don't know what Jesus is doing for a week.
This So So, to be fair, okay, if he was doing that, then we can't even trust what we're reading is your point cuz what we have is evidence in the text that that you're reading and going he's not trying to get himself killed.
It seems more like if we were to read behind or between the lines, Jesus went there because this is a popular time, more voices, more more people's ears are able to hear his message.
And so it's the best place to go and advertise what he's trying to push. And his friends. I mean, I think it the Bethany, by the way. I think they were his relatives. I've been saying friends.
I think I think the people at Bethany are his relatives. That's not weird because under the Maccabees um Judeans flooded Galilee.
So I I've I've no problem with Jesus having uh relatives at Bethany. And I think what happened, they said to him, "Look, come here.
For all that reason I said, you'll be safe because there's enough people on your side. It's not he's bringing them with with enough people that they won't risk it.
It's too dangerous. They're all in this temple and the gates are here. If you have a riot which did which they had in what in um What is it? Three up uh six at They They They had riots in the temple and they were horrible because they crushed people. You wouldn't need the soldiers.
They'd They'd kill themselves just trying to get to the the southern gates.
So they they said, "We can protect you in the temple. You can come in here.
We'll get you in. We'll get you out.
They won't They won't dare come against you. And get out every night."
Now when I'm reading Mark, it makes sense to me. I could say well Mark's a heck of a good reader, but I don't think that somebody who's making it up would be smart enough to have a go out every night to Bethany and come back.
>> Mhm. It It's It's a lot of Why'd he bother doing that? Just You could leave that out. You could just say he's at the temple. Yeah.
I think Mark knows enough of the story of what happened in that week. Now he puts it of course in a whole theological framework, of course.
So let me go back to one thing and tell me if this goes off the subject too much.
Forget about Jesus for a moment. Let me talk about blood sacrifice. Okay.
The logic of blood sacrifice.
You know, if you only had it in Judaism, you have it in Hinduism. Why do people have blood sacrifice? Why do people think God or the gods like carrion?
Like dead meat?
What's going on there?
This is anthropology 101.
If you and I are friends and we have a row and I want to get back again, I invite you to a meal.
A reconciliation meal.
Do I have um hummus and pita bread at the as the main course?
No, that's probably a calculated insult, but it would be fine for a snack or something.
If I invite you to a meal, a reconciliation meal, there is going to be blood. Mhm. Because there's going to be meat.
Now, we won't see the blood. Of course, we'll have it Saran wrapped. But everyone in the ancient world knew that when the prodigal son came home, it was not good news for the fatted calf. Yeah. Of course.
If you have a reconciliation meal, so when Hebrew says no reconcili- no reconciliation without the shedding of blood, they're just making a butchering statement, as it were. Right. Right. So now, okay. And as that by the way, that just maybe the viewer doesn't know, but like that historically fits as far back as we can tell when humans are sacrificing to gods that when you go further back like Mesopotamia and other other ancient Near Eastern deities that we can look to and even the Greek ones, they the gods eat. They have meals and that the way that humans are appeasing to them is food and we have the famous one of one of the examples I can give you in the several, but I don't want to derail you have more you're heading because this is important. Um I just want to make the comment that when Enlil, for example, said, "Hey, I'm I'm wiping out humans. They're too noisy."
Yeah, we're way, way back there, right?
Um and then he sees, "Oh my gosh, what the heck is Atrahasis and his wife doing alive?" Uh "Enki, I know you little sneaky trickster. You had to told him." And he's like, "Nope, I kept the vow. I didn't tell him." He told the reed wall, and the reed wall, you know, the dove was overhearing. So, what's he do? He smells the barbecue.
And he goes, just like Yahweh in in Genesis. Yeah. He goes, Oh, man. Yeah. I won't do that again.
The logic of it is I say anthropology 101.
Reconciliation meal Mhm. or I could I don't want to invite you for a meal cuz you mightn't come. I might send you a gift.
Right. Now, you might reject it and send it back. But those are the two ways that humans keep relationship or restore relationship. Now, human beings that figure, how the heck Let me use the Celts, for example. How do I do that with God? We've had no harvest three years in a row. The gods are clearly angry at us.
How do I reconcile?
I'm going to give them a gift. What's a good enough gift for a god?
What's the most precious thing I have?
Well, that's up to you to make your judgment.
But I'm going to take that and put it on the bog because the gods live under the bog and see it disappears down into the bog. And we find it 2,000 years later.
So, the gods have received my gift. So, it's absolutely normal anthropology theology 101 to think that if the gods are If you want to keep good relations in general or restore relations as with human beings, so with the gods those.
Whether they like the smell or not, that's all fine.
But blood sacrifice goes back to eat in meat.
Now, can you do it without blood? Of course you can. There's all sorts of gifts you can give to the god. There's Celtic gifts in which like a whole temple is dismantled and put into the bog on this What's your big gift? Whatever you think it is. And unfortunately, it might even be your the king's son.
Not the king's daughter, but the king's son because he's the heir apparent. If you're really desperate and the gods have really hit you and your people are dying then it's time possibly for the king's son, the heir. Yeah, like a famine or plague or you have an Iphigenia in the story of Homer like Yeah.
>> Well, the Druids decided you you it's not savage. In one sense, it's it's fearfully logical.
We we In our minds as humans. In our minds as humans. In that context that the gods have decided to destroy us because they're mad at us for whatever reason.
>> And we think a self-sacrifice is the way to bring it back.
>> I Yeah.
That's why you have human beings in in bogs in Ireland. I mean, I've seen their bodies in the museums in Dublin. Uh because they were the Celts that did this. The Oh, yes. So, we're talking about the Druids for those who don't know.
>> Well, they're Celts. Yeah, okay. Druids are Celts. Yeah. They're I mean, it depends. It's not like they For example, a sword, an iron sword would be a great gift. Now, if I put the iron sword on the the bog, somebody's going to steal it. So, I take the iron sword, this is literal, and I pretzel it.
I I literally take an iron sword and I bend it all the way like that.
And I put it into the bog. I'm taking it out of human usage as a gift to the gods. Now, that might be my most precious thing, an iron sword. If I'm the king or something like that. So, the logic of blood sacrifice comes from gift and meal. Those are the two things.
And it's just projected onto the gods.
Mhm. And by the way, it's it's dying out by the 4th century.
Um I think Judaism was I'm not going to say lucky that's really an awful term but blood sacrifice was kind of dying out Yeah. because what we're getting now instead of blood sacrifice is the holy person of which Augustus is the first. Yeah, I mean we mightn't use the word holy about it but divine is as holy as they come. So all of a sudden it's shifting from the temple. Temples are still there of course it's all going on but the future is not is not with them.
So in one sense it's psychic. You know, you have a horse-drawn carriage and your horse happens to die and then you figure okay it's time for a car.
Okay, but the car is the future not the so I think we have to understand sacrifice.
We still use it and we should use it in certain circumstances.
Did Jesus know Jesus knew what he was doing?
Did he know it was dangerous to go up to Jerusalem? Of course.
Did Did Martin Luther King know it was dangerous to be on the pedestal bridge?
Of course he did.
Did he go there to get himself killed?
No, I don't think so. All the evidence is he didn't.
Um Jesus probably knew that well John the Baptist we know what happened to him.
So probably what saves Jesus in Galilee is the John that ans- I can't say answer Antipas.
Antipas is too smart to take out another popular prophet right after John the Baptist. So Jesus is safe under Antipas for you know 5 years, 6 years, 7 years. I don't know how long.
You you prorate the death of one prophet. But what he is doing is he's dying for non-violent resistance and here's my proof for that.
This is historical.
Forgetting Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John if you only had Josephus and Tacitus they say that Jesus the Christ was crucified under Pontius Pilate under Tiberius.
And they don't mention anything about my language, his top lieutenants being crucified with him.
Well, it should have been 13 crosses up there. Forget about Judas. 13 crosses.
Because when Rome was up against a nonviolent group, what they did was crucify at least the top hierarchy. Mhm. And you know what they did with the uh with with the gladiators all the way from Mantua to to Rome. The point of having a whole row up there is "These are violent revolutionaries.
Don't act like these people did or you'll land like these people have."
Mhm. Now, when Rome crucified a single person, now, it could just be some special, but the fact that Rome crucified Jesus and didn't round up his followers, we call them the disciples, the 12, means that Rome, judge, Pilate judged Jesus to be a non- violent revolutionary.
And by Roman civil law, and we we have this, it's on the web, by Roman civil law, what we would call an activist like Jesus, that's what he was, not just a philosopher. Philosophers don't get crucified. Mhm. Activists do.
An activist is somebody, this is a Roman law, who stirs up the people, who disturbs the people.
Pilate would not have gone along with the Jewish high priest because they didn't like his theology. He would have He would have get out of here. "Bother me." They wouldn't They didn't care.
Yeah. Or he would have said, "Just make him disappear. Don't bother me with that. Take care I Take care of it. Just That's what dark alleys are for. Go away. No, you can't have a public execution. No, you can't. But you can make him disappear. But he's convinced.
Yeah.
This guy's talking about what what what do you the kingdom of God?
What does he think he's a king? I don't know. He's talking about the kingdom of God and that's supposed to be Rome.
Well, get rid of him.
So, yeah.
Pilate would have crucified him.
I think even that thing above his head king of the Jews that's not what any Jew or any Messianic Jew would have said is king of Israel. Right. King of the King of the Jews is Roman language.
And it's mocking here, of course, like Interesting. I never really thought of it that way. Real quick on this Would actually Herod that's Herod the Great's title. Right.
>> But Yeah, according to Josephus he was formerly I think king of the Jews.
Sorry, go on. No, that's a good point.
So, we have to think of Herod when we think of that as in like Rome is saying hey, I don't know, in some way this could be a jab at Jews by the Roman >> Oh, yeah.
This is an insult to the Jews.
>> Yeah.
>> It it's mocking. One one of the things you you've scandalously said and I say scandalous so I'm looking at my notes occasionally as we go here. This is just going to be one long video. I see no reason why we break this up. This is so good that um I'd love to clip some of this stuff into separate videos, but like this could be the one one-stop shop content because there's a lot of material here and I love how we're freestyling into this. So, you have scandalously said and I say scandalous, but it's you're not the only one um that Jesus when he was killed likely didn't get buried um in a rich man's tomb same day etc. etc. Historically, we can talk about what the Gospels are doing with the material, but historically, do you see it really probable that you know, they could go and just say, "Hey, Pontius, I know you just had this guy killed. We're trying to make a a point, right?" Cuz that's what crucifixion's all about. It's not just the death, it's the agonizing extended misery Yeah. of the people. Um and and I want to ask you historically how you navigate this because you've gone on record saying he he was eaten by dogs and you know, buried in a little shallow grave kind of thing and like people go, "Ooh, vivid terrible image."
Well, that's what happened to crucified people. Do you honestly think Pontius Pilate, and I mean historically, would have said, "Yep, nope, kill him." Few hours later go, "Nope, nope, take him down, honor and respect to the like do we really imagine that makes sense?"
No, and to be honest with you, I I said I didn't say that the uh sorry to Jesus cuz it hadn't occurred to me. I said I tell you when it occurred to me.
I was actually reading the Psalms that were used at the crucifixion of Jesus. In in Mark, what you notice the whole um everything that happened is in a tissue of resonance with the Psalms. The the garment's being sold.
I don't think any of that happened. But what's happening is they're talking about the death of Jesus and they're saying he's not just one more poor Jew.
This is what's been going on along. Read our Psalms.
It's all about the the suffering the suffering. He's just he kind of incarnates our suffering.
That's what they're doing with those quotations. They're not proving, I think, first of all, proving he was the Messiah, that's later. They're saying the only way you can understand it is the Messiah is the Messiah dies as the climax of the suffering of Israel. Hm. That's what that is saying. He's not alone. So, you shouldn't be surprised the Messiah You should have expected it. What do you think was going to happen? What do you think happens? So, there's one thing that when I'm talking with colleagues and lay people about the crucifixion of Jesus, a lot of times I find them talking about the suffering of Jesus.
And it's very delicate because do you suffer with the Of course you do.
But the point is that honestly suffering was not the point for the Romans.
The Romans didn't crucify you to make you suffer.
If they wanted to make you suffer, they had other ways of doing it by keeping you in in the barracks and doing what they wanted to to do.
Of course you suffered, but the this was state terrorism.
The function of this was to put you up there and not to say, "Look how this person is suffering. We are annihilating this person's identity."
Rome talked about suprema supplicia. One was been fed to the beasts.
Why? Cuz you suffered? No. Because there's going to be nothing left but bones.
Or gear, you can bury it, but they're annihilating your identity.
That's what they're doing up there.
We're going to crucify you up here and there's nothing left of you. So, the idea putting you up for an hour Now, Jewish crucifixion, as far as we can tell under the Maccabees, Jewish crucifixion was after death. Mhm. We put you to death, we hang you up there.
But we take you down at nightfall.
It's It's a bit like putting the heads of people on pikes on Tower Bridge under the Elizabethans. Did that make the head suffer? No.
No. Hang, drawn, and quarter. Yeah. But again, it was to horrify the crowd rather than to make the person suffer.
I don't know if you're going to shock. I I I don't understand that, but but it's to horrify the crowd and to say, "We can even do this." So, I don't want people to say, "Well, it's all about suffering."
And there's a danger in Roman Catholicism that they stress the suffering of Jesus.
And therefore suffering is good. Mhm.
And therefore I'm going to make you suffer a bit.
That's That's very dangerous in Roman Catholicism.
But suffering is good and therefore if I'm going to make you suffer, cuz it's your own good.
Is That's not quite the same as an an athlete going going through through training. No, suffering is not good. It may be part of life.
And we should alleviate it. But the function of crucifixion is to wipe you out.
When I started looking at the burial, the text of the burial, I I did kind of start there because all we know of what happens historically is yes, yes, you could bribe the guards.
There were guards put on crucifixion so you couldn't get the poor poor man, usually a man, poor man down before he was dead.
And Josephus talks of people up there for 3 days and living. So, depends how cheap you are, I suppose. So, we have to guard you for 3 days. That's why it's expensive, by the way. You have to have You have to have trained torturers.
Not everyone could beat a person before You had to be scourged before crucifixion to the state that you would not resist them all the way to the cross, cuz that's that's bad publicity.
I've got to be fighting the whole way.
No, no.
But you don't want to dead. You can't beat you to death.
So, we need trained torturers that have beat you to the stage that you you can just barely make it.
But you will make it.
So, that's very expensive.
That's not your ordinary soldiers could not handle a crucifixion. These are trained torturers. They could be soldiers, of course. So, it's expensive.
So, you only do it to make a statement.
And that's what they're really doing, making a a statement. Now, I want to insist again, the civil law the civil law says and it's on the web if you want a history of Roman civil law that anyone who disturbs the peace raises up the people should be according to their status either crucified given to the wild beasts or exiled to an island. That's a quote-unquote. And that's exactly what happens of course to Jesus of Nazareth um Ignatius of Antioch and John of Patmos.
So the fact that somebody is crucified alone in this context at least, tells me the judge this case Pontius Pilate has said this person is the non-violent revolutionary. We took the we waste 13 crosses. That's That's a lot of work.
We take out the leader.
They're non-violent, so the leader gone, they're finished. Right. Right. They'll be gone. And if they're still at it we take out the next leader.
That's why Tacitus and Josephus have to explain if we executed the leader, this guy Jesus the Christ why is he still around?
Huh, we're in the year plus or minus 100. So they have to explain why it continued. Mhm. Mhm.
>> Tacitus says, well, it's like a disease.
Disease continue.
And Josephus kind of says, well, they still loved him.
But they have to explain why an execution of a leader didn't do what it was supposed to do, finish off the movement. That's That's that's a different path we could actually explore further, but I getting to the crucifixion and burial idea um many apologists online they will always say, oh well, the honorable burial honorable burial is multiply attested. They constantly use that phrase to make it like a case that this happened. Jesus was buried in an honorable way by rich man Arimathea. You know, yeah. Um, what's what are the problems with that based on your historical research?
>> let me tell you how I really puzzle with this.
I mean, if you love a person, even an ancient person, I respect him. You don't really want to have it more horrible than it is.
So, what happened what happened with me, I knew for example, they only um crucified bone we've ever found in Israel, as you know, Yeah. is is somebody who was buried respectfully in a uh ossuary, in a tomb. So, yes.
As a historical fact, it's possible to be crucified and get a respectful burial in an ossuary in a tomb, the whole thing.
Um either soldiers abandoned abandoned the person and they took him down or they bribed the guards, which is always possible.
But he'd be dead.
So, yeah, of course. Could you get an honorable burial? Of course you could.
Second question.
2,000 people were were crucified after the first revolt.
500 >> Judas the Galilean revolt, right?
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. Uh well, that's the one The near Sepphoris, right?
>> That's it. No, that's the one um 4 BCE in Jerusalem. Okay. Okay. The death of Herod the Great. Got you. Herod The revolt of Herod the Great, the um legions had to come down from Syria.
Right. Um and 2,000 were crucified in Jerusalem. Then at the uh 66 and 70, when the temple was was destroyed, 500 a day after they ran out of uh trees.
Why have we never found any?
Why are we only at Just odds?
This is the punishment.
>> Mhm. Just the odds you see one we found.
And of course that's the only reason because or you could say well we haven't found too many burials of this and these are people who who die there there's more than it to the ground.
Anyway, um we we've only found one but I I knew that could happen. Now, the Jewish law is that you're not supposed to be left on the cross overnight.
Therefore, Jewish crucifixions as far as we know as I said were postmortem crucifixions. You were strangled or put to death and hung up as a warning. Like I said, the heads on the pikes. I mean that didn't happen as part of your body.
They were just afterwards.
So, that's that's possible. I'm trying to understand what would happen when the rabbis had more power, maybe they had tombs that were used for the dead like Potter's Field for the dead. Yeah, all of that's possible. Now, under the Romans, especially when someone has been put to death as an activist, what would the Romans have allowed?
That's the thing. Now, I hold that one part. Then I go and look at the text.
Here's what bothers me about the text.
When someone says, "Well, they all have a gorgeous burial." Let's say you have Mark, Matthew, Luke, John. Now, Mark says a rich pious Jew goes out and asks for the body. Is that possible? Absolutely possible. Of course. That's the only way you could imagine. Certainly wouldn't be one of the disciples.
Probably they would say, "Hey, here's there's another one of them. Get another cross." Yeah. So, you'd have to imagine that and you have it in the extra-biblical story of Tobit that his pious act is go out and find people who've been put to death and are left there and bury them. Yes.
It is exactly what a pious Jew, not a Christian of any way, would do.
All right, so we have it.
Now, it's a bit hurried. This is in a big hurry.
So, I'm looking at Matthew and Luke, who are both using Mark as their source. Are they satisfied with it?
Read them.
Read what Mark does. I'll show you what Matthew does. Read what Luke does with Mark. They expand the thing. It's getting bigger because they see the problem. Well, if Joseph Arimathea put it into his own tomb, how do how do we find an empty tomb?
If he got mixed up there with all the other bodies. So, it has to be a brand new tomb. He was first in.
They're thinking. They're improving the burial.
So, I I'd ask people to read Mark, then read Matthew and Luke.
As Mark is their source, remember, they don't have more information, but they're thinking, they're improving the burial.
Then you get to John. John's gospel is the burial of a god.
People have talked about the might of ointment in there that would fill the whole burial.
It's an ascended garden.
The ideal of a garden tomb, says like what Caesar tried to make out for his own make put the trees all around the tomb. A garden tomb filled It It's a splendid burial. It's that of a king. It's for a god.
How do you bury a god?
That's John's question. So, I look at the Matthew, actually me, Mark, Matthew, Luke and Mark. John, which I think, by the way, I don't think the story of the passion and resurrection in John is independent.
I don't think it.
Not even John 21 is the same as Luke at that five or whatever it is about the And And you're not alone. I mean, Goodacre and and others, uh, James Barker, they're all seeing fourth the fourth gospel as a narrative nation near near again from the vein Duven University. His whole team is he's showing how you know, I think there maybe there's independent tradition in there but I could I could say take Mark, put Jesus in charge of the whole operation and write me the story.
So, is it you know, Mark says that Jesus prompts written on the ground and gets only Father, let this pass from me. What does John say?
Of course, I'm going to accept the cup. And who's prostrate in the ground in John?
The 600 troops.
And when Jesus is good and ready, he lets them up.
John is Mark on steroids.
Right. But the steroids are Jesus. Let's get you. And it makes sense. I understand that. John sets up the show.
Jesus is divine.
How do you crucify a god? And the answer is very carefully.
Very carefully. But that was my problem was I said can I trust I I look at the story.
Nobody's Nobody's satisfied with Mark.
Why don't they just all follow Mark if if that's the way it is?
They're all making it up.
A little bit guided by Mark, but they're getting better and better.
And they have a splendid one. What actually happened? Now, what happened to me with these on my mind I'm reading Psalm 22, I think it is.
I am understanding that the first people who are thinking of the crucifixion of Jesus didn't didn't know exactly what happened. They didn't know what the soldiers said and what they were doing in casting lots. They were saying Jesus died as the climax of his persecuted people. I got it. I got it. Okay.
Now, he's going to be buried like that, too.
And then I saw the line and did saw it.
I know it's metaphorical.
The dogs around the crosses in Psalm 22, dogs surrounded me. It's not about a cross.
There's a a person appealing to God for their suffering and to say the dogs surrounded me. Now, of course, it's metaphorical.
Right. Of course, it is in Psalm 22.
>> What Allison calls a typology.
>> A typology.
>> Yeah. There there simply strong bulls surround me. I don't think there's bulls around me.
Yeah, but it certainly struck me.
But that's what the Romans were would have expected. If they kept him on the cross, they would want them to stay there if he is a warning to people not to do this.
They might well say, "You're not allowed to take him down."
They wouldn't even let you in into ask for it, maybe.
I hope it happened. What if it was left to the dogs and the crows?
No.
To be honest with you, I put it into the Jesus Revolution biography, and lots of people who were all in favor of that book were horrified by it and told me, "You shouldn't have said that."
But the trouble is you I thought it.
And I thought it was a possibility historically.
And to leave it out because I thought it was a horrible possibility.
And this said love you. So, well, did you do it just to make us realize how awful crucifixion is?
I said, "No, I wasn't thinking of you when I did it. I was thinking of what happened to Jesus."
I wasn't just thinking, "I'll make it as bad as possible to wake you up for these crucifixions have right now." Not at all. I was just trying to figure historically, do these people know what happened?
Or is the situation that we really don't know what happened to the body of Jesus?
But our hope Our hope, dear God, is our beloved Jesus was buried.
So, I'm thinking of it today like places where people disappear.
You know.
My son just disappeared. The government didn't try My son disappeared.
And lying in a ditch somewhere. And you want to say, "Oh, no, no, probably probably buried." You know, you if somebody a child has disappeared and you don't know what happened. You don't say, "Oh, yeah, probably lying in a ditch somewhere."
No, I I'm sure somebody buried.
That's what you say. Yeah, it it's a sense of comfort psychologically in imagining that. So, so just getting to the historical um issue here, is you do you paint it a Jewish crucifixion, which makes sense, especially if you have to take him down each evening by law in their own Judeo law. Um um it makes sense why they would need to be dead first. Yeah. So, there's a sense in which it seems like, and I don't know if Mark portrays him John wants to make sure he's dead, right? Uh I think Luke does this, too.
They don't want me to break his legs, but like he's already dead.
>> Yeah. Um so then, oh, well, we got to take him down anyway. We might as well take him down since he's dead already.
And I think that this bypasses the point of Roman crucifixion, your point. And it's like they would Paul like, could you imagine Pontius Pilate giving the green light and then hours later just giving the Nope, take him down. Go in your mind than the more common understanding that he would have done these things. See, there are other friends of yours, other colleagues, um you know, we had uh James Tabor here.
Yeah. Um James has this idea that he plays with the tombs, right? He he has an idea, well, let's grant that there was tombs. And I like hearing different scholars with different takes. Where he goes, well, the problem is even in John you get this hit like, "Where have they laid him?"
She goes to the tomb and it's empty.
He's not there. She immediately thinks someone took his body and buried him somewhere else. Which, you know, in James Tabor's mind he goes, "Well, if he was buried, I granted it was he it was another tomb. They they they temporarily put him somewhere and then once Sabbath was over, you know, they took him and put him somewhere else. They can't find him."
You have another model here that's saying, "What happened to him is likely just disgusting and terrible." And then if you do take that pressure kind of approach, the look to Psalm 22 or other passages, while he's buried, you know, with the wicked but with the rich, I'm sorry.
You find these passages that make you go, "They're probably looking to scripture and painting a portrait using uh scripture to it makes sense of whatever's going on."
Couple that with real psychology of going like, "My son, he's okay. He's alive somewhere. Or if he is dead, it's he's at peace. They buried him. He's he's okay."
>> Yeah, I I said it's hope. It's not history.
It's when you don't know historically what happened. And there's certain times and events to which all you can do is hope that if this happened, I hope this happened. And that's perfectly all right. I I would never want to get really into an argument with somebody for whom this is emotional and personal. But I will argue hard with any idea of vicarious atonement.
Mhm. I really will. Cuz I or that it's up just for a couple of hours. No.
This is what the Romans were doing. And I know what they were doing.
But there's also an interesting stuff I've I've forgotten that it's in the in the revolutionary Jesus a revolutionary biography.
By the way, the original version of that it was done very deliberately. It was Jesus a revolutionary line biography. So, you could read it as Jesus a revolutionary biography.
Or Jesus a revolutionary biography.
Right.
The way I intended it was Jesus a revolutionary biography.
It was tends to be deliberately, but if you're smart, you read it as Jesus a revolutionary. You know what? Yeah, I mean when I look at the whole thing I really have a profound respect for the quotations from the Psalms. Now, later in the 2nd and 3rd century, they used that stuff Christians used that to batter Jews.
Can't you people see it was prophesied that the soldiers would do this? See, they did that. Look, it said you stupid people can't Yeah. That That is so wrong. You You describe it in terms of the Psalms and then use the Psalms to to prophesy. Come on.
You know what? But the important thing is I think that Jesus didn't die alone.
That was the consolation. So, you could see that okay, Jesus was the Messiah as the climax of our people.
Of course, he had to die. Of course, he had to suffer by the Romans.
Now, I almost say to Paul, "Hey Paul, if Jesus had lived to be about 65 and died of old age or whatever in his bed in Nazareth, do you think he'd still be the Messiah?
Now, this is a real question asked to Paul. Jesus was not crucified, let's say.
He went on doing everything he did, preaching, teaching, you know, everything. Yeah. And just died an ordinary death.
Would he be the Messiah?
Christ.
>> I Can I make a guess?
>> Yeah. I don't think Paul would have seen him as that. I I mean, he's so about the crucifixion. I can't I mean, I can't prove that he is.
>> I would question that. I would question that, yeah. The only thing that makes me hesitate I don't think he'd ever have got there.
Right. I mean, if If If he was there already and you said we found out Jesus wasn't crucified, maybe you know, theologians get around anything, but it would never have occurred to him.
Because I think from Paul, that's the mystery of God we were talking about.
Yeah. That was my answer one time uh when James Tabor, my good friend, was talking about finding the the bones. I said, "Okay, teaching moment for me.
Let me imagine we found the tomb of Jesus, no question, big sign, tomb of Jesus right here Okay. in English. I have I We found the bones.
What would be important for me?
Are there signs of crucifixion? Right.
If If Paul found the bones of Jesus in the tomb, would it have destroyed it? Of course not. Yeah. Of course not.
Whatever happened to the body would Paul would say that a new body comes out of it in continuity. But you said, "Paul, we found the bones of Jesus. He He died from arthritis."
It's clear that most of those people didn't die from severe arthritis. Right.
>> you have too much work. Um He's There's not the slightest signs of any suffering.
It was an orderly death.
I think that would have been I mean, if I said that to Paul after he'd got everything, I think he might well have defended it. Well, well, well.
Yeah, it would have been a problem.
>> What is Yeah. But he'd never have got there.
Right. So, that That was the assumption at first. He would have never have got there. That's your point. And I think that's an interesting point cuz the way we were describing it earlier, you were doing a fantastic job is that the suffering, the justice, this atonement idea is central to his gospel, his gospel. He has his and and I find that a very important point that any portrayal of Jesus in any other way would conflict with this model. Either he would defend himself and say, "No, no, no, this is the proper understanding." And you know, I do wonder what other versions of competitive ideas about Jesus were out there and he's going, "If you hear anyone say another gospel other than the one I'm telling me, you know, what do those look like?" Clearly, he has a version that needs to work for him. So, what are those other versions? I I don't know, you know, there's >> Well, well, you don't have to guess. You got Q.
We already have the earliest two written versions we have of the gospel.
Now, forget Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John after the 70s. The earliest two we have are the gospel according to Paul.
Mhm. I think it's fair to call it that.
But, as you can see, the gospel according to Paul and the gospel according to Q.
And I would not sure if all your audience would know that, but after 200 years of scholarship in which scholars looked at Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and tried to figure out there's some kind of copying going on here.
There's plagiarism and foot there.
The final consensus, it doesn't mean that all scholars would agree with this, but I think it's fair to say the consensus is that Mark is the primary source for Matthew and Luke. Mhm. All right. Mark is the primary source for Matthew and Luke. Now, when you line up Mark, Matthew, and Luke in parallel columns, which by the way is the only way to read them if you're serious, you begin to notice that yeah, there's there's Matthew, Mark, Luke. Yeah, I can see them here. I can see it. And then I begin to see there's Matthew and Luke here and there's no Mark.
So, there's something else going on here.
And the scholars who first noticed that were Germans and they called it source a quelle, German capital Q U E L L, E.
They call it Q.
Could have called it the X files of the Y.
Everything else. They call it Q. That is the source that Matthew and Luke use apart from Mark. Right. Do all scholars accept it? No.
It's it's a hypothesis, but it's what I call a necessary hypothesis.
If you have if you accept Mark for me, there's certainly a somebody else going on if you accept Mark for Matthew and Luke.
And it's like you know, you're on the beach and you see footprints.
And you say, well, the hypothesis is that somebody has been walking here.
Yeah, it's a necessary hypothesis. It could be that a seagull got a got a boot. It no It looks It probably is. So, in the year Let me put a round number.
In the the late 50s, let's say by 60, we have two Gospels.
The Gospel according to Paul, the Gospel according to Q.
In the Gospel according They're both theological, by the way. Nobody's just doing history. The Gospel according to Q says Jesus is the wisdom of God.
He comes down to Earth as wisdom does again and again according to the wisdom tradition. What happens to wisdom when he comes down here? He gets rejected.
Where does he go? I guess goes back to heaven.
Is there a crucifixion? No. Is there a resurrection? No.
Um Q knows about the resurrection because he mentions the Queen of the Sheba arising.
But his theology doesn't need it. It's not the war. Forget about it. Haven't heard about it.
Jesus speaks like wisdom.
And it's radical wisdom, by the way. The quicker they crucify.
But but he's not interested in that.
Jesus is radical wisdom on Earth lived by Jesus.
Okay, that's him. Now, Paul not interested in that.
He would probably say, well, I don't find Jesus saying anything that's different from the prophets.
What I do find different from Jesus and the prophet is he's programmatic non-violent.
Programmatically non-violent. Not just necessarily non-violent. What the can you do to a Roman? A sword. He's programmatically non-violent. And does this revelation and all the rest of it.
So, you have two very different emphasis.
They're both theological. They're both equally powerful. I wouldn't say one better than the other.
They're both dynamic and they're both radical. Now, along comes Mark.
And Mark's great intuition is he can put them together into a story.
Jesus does all of this.
And then he dies. And you can see if you're reading all of this going on, you should be saying that this guy's going to get it. Oh boy, is he going to get it? And you wouldn't even need Mark's prophecy that he's going to get it.
You could see it. So, Mark is the first one. That's why Matthew, Luke can only copy him. And John probably. Cuz he's the one who sets up the story with the sayings and all of that. And then the death and resurrection. So, basically, you don't have to guess.
You don't have to say, "Well, there was a version of the theology of Jesus.
The Q is Q is a theology.
>> Mhm.
I know there's some of my fellow scholars like the late LeBantich John Meyers thinks of Q as a kind of a drawer you put stuff in. No, no. It's a gospel.
It's a coherent gospel all in itself. If you take it out of Matthew and Luke and get a look at it. You can't find it. If you look at Matthew and Luke, you get confused. Take all the pieces out.
Um because by itself then you find it's a gospel. So, >> Right.
>> Yeah, you can imagine. So, with that in mind about Q just briefly. Yeah, I won't keep you too long on this. We've gone quite a while and I really hope people will Okay, get your book. Let me get it grab it here. Again, the latest greatest Paul the Pharisee, get the book. Um there's so much you've learned. Like a lot of your life's work and research on Paul and you've gone to these places on the ground. Uh people need to go and and read what you what you learned.
>> That By the way, that was fabulous. The bar crossing pilgrimage went to Turkey almost annually. We just from 200 2000, sorry, to 2014 every year with 40 people. I would watch them read Paul in the ruins of the Roman Empire, not in the debates of the Reformation.
>> Right. Get them out of the '70s. Said take them back into the first century.
And we watched ourselves too. I'm not just talking. We watched ourselves change. Well, Paul in the ruins ain't Paul in the Reformation.
Oh.
And especially with Americans, I mean, my totally myself too.
After 9/11.
>> Oh, wow.
You know, before that there was kind of all the ruins of the Roman Empire. Too bad for the Romans, you know.
We're we're That doesn't apply to us.
After 9/11, Marcus said to me one time, "Are we getting better at this?" And I said, "No. No, no. They're seeing it on the ground." Yeah. When we talk about this stuff now, via cell that they're not They what obviously, you know, 2000 years ago.
It's nice. We We let them talk about it, but anyway. That's why this is so relevant.
Um yeah, Q uh there's many scholarly friends who have different kinds of understandings of this, but your point about it being in another version and there might have been many for all we know of ideas floating around with different gospel math.
>> Oh, yes. Um but Q seems to have a very I I almost want to use the word Judaizing uh tendency because when you get what's in Matthew, the way he portrays it, it does sound very Jewish focused and I said I think that's fair enough, actually.
I I think it's the wisdom tradition is probably the one that maybe a lot of Christians don't know well. They've heard of the Torah, they know the prophets. Right. But the wisdom tradition that the first thing God did to create the world was create intelligibility. Right. If I use wisdom, everyone says, "Wait, what's in when you're What God did in really the wisdom tradition is, "Before I create the world, I'm going to make it intelligible.
So, we, we, the people, are going to understand what's going on. That's huge.
And wisdom then comes down like a philosopher looking for clients and talks to us and tries to say, "Don't you guys get it?" And we say, "No, no, no, no way." Yeah. The wisdom tradition is powerful and it's universal, by the way.
Right.
>> It's it's it's more open to to thinking. Yeah. Because the wisdom tradition says to everyone, "Don't you see it?
Yeah. Take a good look at the world and see what see what you see. It's intelligible." Now, we have other answers. We have evolution and all sorts of other things, but yeah, but it makes us look at the world. It doesn't say, "Look at yourselves just look at the world and yourself in a sack Right. No, that's a good thing. Yeah, it's good to to have people understand that because I guess the contention would be if if Paul has in mind a form of some other gospel, uh it's likely one that's going to do what I think Galatians starts to paint.
Tell them to be circumcised. Tell them to be kosher, you know, to stick something that Peter might have been doing according to Paul's own letter.
And it's like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa." You know, Paul's program's different. I just wanted to highlight that that that clearly it's interesting to see how each this development took place from, you know, the first century BCE, Rome comes in, they take control, you have this Roman Imperial kind of program as well, another program, and they claim peace, they claim this, and I can't imagine that Christians weren't watching in the year of the four emperors and thought >> They used, by the way.
I mean, Augustus is divine because he brings peace, and you are there wait a minute. All he did was start a civil war. I mean, well, his Julius Caesar started it, but yeah, he ran a civil war, won it, and declared peace.
That's almost like as if we started a war with Iran and won it and declared peace. Well, yeah, I mean, it's peace from the war you started. Right. So, I I wouldn't say that, by the way. It would be very very unwise to say that to Augustus. Yeah.
But, it's true. Augustus, you brought peace from the war that you started. Right.
Right. So, but violence still like your point is, and I think even the philosophy of them, they I don't think that these people are dummies, okay?
None of these people are dummies. Paul, none of them. Whether you agree with their theology or not, they they they see there's still violence. There's still the It's a They're looking almost at a deeper level of saying like it needs to be derooted. You've temporarily put a band-aid over the scab by creating the wound and then going, "All right, now we're good, right?" Cover the scab as long as they can wield the sword long enough and continue to do what what Romulus hinted at in his his Coriolanus kind of Listen, go and tell the Roman world to to keep war going, you know?
That'll keep the peace. Well, sure, temporarily, but like it keeps it perpetrating violence. And so, And it escalates. It escalates. But, I can't imagine Christians were seeing the year of the four emperors. What I was getting at was like and saw what was going on and went, "This is BS. Like, come on.
You guys Like, where is the peace?" You you want to say I I wouldn't I would as I say I would I wouldn't say this to Augustus.
Your Excellency, do you know the difference between peace and lull?
>> [laughter] >> L U L L in English, lull, it means you're waiting for the next round. And you could say, "Well, you went through three rounds there Pompey against the Julius Caesar round one, Julius Caesar's assassins, Brutus and Cassius Cassius against Octavian and Why don't you think this is a lull? Now, to be fair to Augustus, it's going to be a long lull because the the Roman Empire had figured out you put the legions on the periphery.
Then, you know, the periphery is war-torn, but everybody inside is peace. Rome invented what's known as a territorial empire. It was a brilliant idea. The periphery is war-torn. Of course, they're all fighting with the German tribes and they're all going to be Ireland, but inside there is the Pax Romana or the Pax Augustana Pax because there is You're not going to see the legions beating up people in the streets of Alexandria or Ephesus or Rome. Of course not.
So, there is peace. Now, how long before the Celts figure out or the German tribes figure out to cross the border. Of course, that that's which is what happened to the Western Roman Empire. It didn't fail. It was just taken over by their mercenary troops.
They didn't even, you know, this just like the the government fell to the army, as it were, which is something to think about, too, by the way. So, when that happens, you want to say, "Okay, is this our fate?" Mhm. Mhm. I watch the Roman Empire all the time. I really do. And I think, you know Greece had a democracy.
They really invented democracy. Then they got an empire.
And they blew it.
Cuz you can't have empire and democracy.
You can't.
Rome had a republic.
And they got an empire.
Can't have it.
We are a democratic republic.
And we have an empire.
And do we really think that we're going to be excused from the fate of Greece and Rome? Mhm.
I I I keep thinking of that all the time. You know, I I went to a classical boarding school left over by the British when they left. And I often wonder wonder when the British Empire was teaching its people by the Roman by the Roman the Greek and Roman Empires, did anyone ever say, "Excuse me." Raise your hand at Eton and say, "You know, they all failed.
Is that our destiny, too?"
Can you imagine what the teacher would have said? If they said, "But But they were they were an empire.
And they were democracy. They were an empire and a republic.
What What are we that we think we're excused from the curse because the violence of empire washes back home. That's what we find out. There's no way except for a maybe a temporary autocracy or a temporary dictator that the violence that you export won't wash back home. It just In fact, sorry, this is the this is depressing.
And I think this wraps up our whole session here specifically on this topic and and this overall thing because it gets back to something you've been saying from the beginning, but after all this talk, you know how you hear something over and over and then you learn deeper each time and you really it hits you differently. You What you've been trying to tell me for I don't know how many times we've met and done these sessions. It's it hit me a little deeper here. So, we have a program that humans have been trying and it's worked temporarily and then it fails and then it temporarily and then it fails and it seems like what they're doing in a philosophic sense just when I am saying that I am saying in a thoughtful sense they're they're thinking of a program they're coming up with an idea they think they have a solution to this problem.
But even the Christian program hasn't solved this solution, right? I mean you almost wish the magic of God really coming in and really fixing it all making it all perfect would work but it clearly isn't happening and I personally not holding my breath on that ever happening. We have to do it. So then if every program that humans have come up with to solve the problem of violence to try and actually get justice to be a practice that we all are able to accomplish as humans and yet we keep we still have in our blood in our bones violence that's still going to somehow come out. How in your estimation do does the message Jesus is presenting solve that problem that you think is unique?
>> All right. Now let me put this in abstract language as if not just for Jesus or somebody can say well I don't really care about Jesus. All right.
Our species the human race there's only one race by the way. Let's talk about other races you know that's bunk that's ethnicity. There's only one race that's why we can have sex with anyone you know race. Right. The human race.
And the question I want to ask you which is the question that haunts me and maybe it has to do with I'm 92 and I'm in sunset but are we a sustainable species?
If you asked me I I I I'm not very optimistic some days.
Some days.
>> Dead.
Rather than put that here's what I want to say. I don't think we have an original sin. Though if we have it's it's the first time it comes up in Genesis 4 when Cain kills Abel, but Right. I think we have an original state state which is that we are a social species with individual wills.
Now, that is a contradiction in terms.
A social species with individual wills.
It has no way to run a beehive.
Mhm.
The great successful social species like the bees or the termites or the ants all have social species but they don't have individual wills.
>> Right. It's all into the queen. It It works. It works.
Now, we unfortunately do not have an instinct for example, that unerringly goes for the common good. Suppose our instinct was we go for the common good.
To put it in very crudely, generally speaking generally speaking the carnivores don't eat their own kind. Now, they may do it every now and then, but if they do it regularly, they they won't be around.
Right.
You know, so they have instinct. They won't do anything really stupid. They Serengeti lions won't decide tomorrow to eat all the gazelles.
I'm tired of chasing these. Let's kill them all and they'll be just there.
They They don't do stupid. We do stupid stuff.
So, because we have to walk a tightrope.
I don't want to give up either.
Our individual wills are magnificent. So is our social species.
Can we balance them? Absolutely.
Can we balance it? If we can't, then we are a doomed species. So, you could say if you want to put it in theology God has given us freedom as a Let me put it this way. as an experiment, what if I made three human beings who are a social species with individual wills, what would they do?
Like a divine experiment, or a divine challenge, or if you want to be very cynical, I'm going to be brutal, a divine joke.
A doomed species, in other words.
So, but it's up to us.
But it's up to us to see the problem.
That is the problem.
It's not that we're violent or something else, it is that if we pull totally towards the individual, cuz if I use violence on you, then you use violence back, and violence escalates, as we found out.
If If all we had today was armies with broadswords, I don't know if I'd worry too much.
Because they don't threaten the world.
The worst day of Roman slaughter, even their worst day, they had to stop at nightfall.
And you can't hold a sword after it gets too bloody. And if you take your sword against an olive tree, the olive tree will win.
So, you know, but we can destroy the world.
So, it's the It's the escalatory violence. Mhm.
I always have to name the escalatory violence that would doom us. Now, that's what I see as the thing, the balance of individuality, individual wills, which is magnificent, and social species, which is magnificent.
And if you want to say the tragedy of each human is that we have to balance those.
If you come down totally in terms of of social, then you kill our individuality.
If you come in totally in terms of it, then you kill the common good. Nobody's taking care of the common good. And if I can get something that's You want to buy whatever it is, even if it'll kill you, I'll sell it. See what happens.
So, even if AI would destroy us, I'm not saying it would, but if it does how many people would say well it's going to be 100 years from now for that happens or 100 200 now we get dead and gone I don't care. Mhm, there's going to be some people but yeah. Yeah, so I mean those are the challenges and the challenges are cooperate. So that's where I see it now.
I do see the two great options are you get peace world peace from the the war to end all wars >> Right. which was supposed to be which was supposed to be a constant that axiom the war to end all wars.
The other possibility which comes out of the Jewish scriptures, it's there is that distributive justice is how you get peace.
Now they all they also are like the battle and all that. I know that I know all that stuff but they also have this other vision which is radically different from the vision I see of civilization that you only get peace when enough people say it's fair.
Now you can say well there'll always be people who don't say it's fair. Yeah but we hear them in public.
If you have to come out and explain to me in a public meeting place why it's unfair that you don't have whatever and maybe I'll say yeah but that's fair enough.
Yeah, I think you you I see what you're doing. I see you need that.
But if if we cannot have distributive justice and I don't mean by distributive justice everyone makes as much money and we take some of your stuff by taxes. I mean whether everyone freely and fully gets health care and education as a natural right.
As a right to live.
Now what happens after that?
Fair enough. You and if if you have some liability we may have certainly I'm not talking charity. I'm talking distributive justice starting from the starting from before you're born.
With And I look at Jesus, what's he spending his time doing? He's healing.
Wow, I thought that was just some kind of miracle stuff.
>> Mhm.
But now we know today that healing is political.
Who controls healing? Who controls vaccinations? Who controls healing controls you.
In fact, give me that. I don't have to bother with anything else. And you can look at Vespasian doing that very thing as well.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Or who controls education?
So what was the most of Jesus has spent doing that? Anyway, that's the way I see it. We have two great options.
Peace by victory or peace by justice.
I'm not mocking the Romans.
They really believed that that was the way of program. Yeah, it worked.
>> It worked. And in a sense, it could continue to work. The problem is is you're going to provide all like in a continuous peace, not 40 years.
>> Yeah. Yeah. We're talking a continuous, sustainable species type of peace. And >> Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I We only would be doing this because of the escalation of violence. I don't think if we were all all our armies were armed like the Romans, we'd be talking about this. We'd say, "Well, it's very unfortunate, like bad weather. You know, we shouldn't have these wars, but you know, they mess up a bit, but then we go right back." So you could get over those wars. And they didn't threaten the world.
But now we can do that. That's the difference.
So Anything else that you wanted to >> Yeah, I just I guess I to the point is that's what the program, at least your best interpretation today and how this applies is that his is not by death. And I'm not I'm not killing. It is ultimately a whole different program.
And that's an important thing people need to check out. So look, ladies and gentlemen, I won't keep you any longer.
You really get behind people that you like and that, you know, have some wisdom I think that they could help us with. John Dominic Crossan is not only an excellent mind, but an excellent friend. I highly encourage you to go get his book, his latest book. I'm now in contact with Westar Institute myself.
Amazing publishing company, amazing people. Let's get their name out there.
Let's let's let's start getting some great work from companies that are actually trying to put out good scholarship. And Dom, you you've put some amazing insights into this work. I hope that people get a copy of and yeah, is there anything else you'd like to say? No, the only thing is that we put the um the voice copy as as cheaply as possible.
The ebook so people can get it though we published this ourselves on Amazon.
Um Sarah and her sister Nancy did the whole formation of the book actually on Adobe. Um You know, so we're trying to keep it down as cheaply as possible. It's still the hard covers or the soft covers are but we've managed to keep the ebook as the prologue here is um I was speaking in the prologue in I so I'm the voice of the prologue. But then after that, we have a very very good Westar scholar. We did it.
So we did it to keep the price down.
>> Yeah. Yeah. That's what we're trying to do to make it available. Yeah, go get the book. And thank you so much ladies and gentlemen. Like the video, share it, comment down below. I hope that this long deep dive with John Dominic Crossan was something that helped you have a great day cuz it helped me. Until next time, never forget we are MythVision.
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