These 5 Evangelical Beliefs Are Completely Wrong — And History Proves It

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[00:00:00]In 1633, an old man knelt before the most powerful religious tribunal on Earth.

[00:00:06]His crime was not murder. It was not theft.

[00:00:10]It was not blasphemy in the way you might imagine.

[00:00:14]Galileo Galilei, one of the greatest minds in human history, was forced to recant his scientific observation that the Earth revolves around the Sun.

[00:00:26]Because the religious establishment of his day was absolutely unshakably certain that the Bible taught otherwise.

[00:00:34]Psalm 104:5, they said, >> [music] >> "He set the Earth on its foundations. It can never be moved."

[00:00:41]Case closed.

[00:00:43]Except it wasn't closed because Galileo was right. And the church, despite its confidence, despite [music] its sincerity, despite its authority, was dead wrong.

[00:00:54]Not wrong about God.

[00:00:56]Wrong about what it assumed the Bible was saying.

[00:01:00]And that tension between deeply held religious conviction and demonstrable historical fact is exactly where we are heading right now.

[00:01:10]Because there are beliefs held by millions of Evangelical Christians, >> [music] >> beliefs repeated from pulpits every single Sunday, beliefs taught to children in Sunday schools, >> [music] >> and defended with fierce passion online, that simply do not survive contact with the historical [music] record. And I want to be crystal clear about something before we go any further. This is not an attack on faith. This is not an attack on Christianity. This is not an anti-religious screed designed to mock or belittle [music] anyone.

[00:01:44]What this is is a journey through actual history, through documents you can go read yourself, through archaeological findings, through the words of the earliest Christians who ever lived. And what that history reveals is going to surprise you.

[00:02:00]It's going to [music] challenge you.

[00:02:02]And if you let it, it might actually deepen your understanding of a faith tradition that's far [music] richer, far more complex, and far more fascinating than many modern preachers would have you believe. [music] Before I get into it, I'm curious.

[00:02:18]Drop a comment >> [music] >> and tell me what profession you're in and what time it is where you're watching right now.

[00:02:27]I always find it fascinating to see the range of people who show up on this channel from nurses on night shifts to history teachers on their lunch breaks.

[00:02:40]This is Professor Archive. And if you're the kind of person who thinks history should be honest even when it's uncomfortable, hit that subscribe button. And if you really want to support what we do here, drop a super thanks. It genuinely helps us keep making deep dives like this one.

[00:02:57]All right, let's get into it.

[00:03:00]The first belief we need to examine is one of the most foundational claims in modern evangelical Christianity. And it sounds like this.

[00:03:08]The Bible has always been interpreted literally. And literal interpretation is the only faithful way to read it.

[00:03:15]You hear this constantly.

[00:03:18]I just believe what the Bible says.

[00:03:20]I take the Bible at face value. [music] If God said it, I believe it.

[00:03:26]That settles it.

[00:03:28]And those statements sound noble.

[00:03:30]They sound faithful.

[00:03:32]But here is the problem.

[00:03:34]The earliest Christians in recorded history, the men and women who were closest to the apostles themselves, [music] did not read the Bible literally.

[00:03:44]And they said so explicitly in their own writings, which you can still read.

[00:03:53]Let's start with Origen of Alexandria, born around 185 AD.

[00:03:58]Origen was one of the most influential theologians in the first three centuries of Christianity.

[00:04:04]He was a student of Clement of Alexandria, who himself was educated in a tradition that traced back to the apostolic generation.

[00:04:13]Origen wrote extensively about biblical interpretation, and [music] in his treatise on First Principles, composed around 230 AD, he laid out a clear system.

[00:04:25]He argued that scripture has three levels of meaning, the literal, the moral, and the spiritual or allegorical.

[00:04:34]And here is the part that would shock most modern evangelicals.

[00:04:40]Origen explicitly stated that [music] some passages of scripture are not meant to be taken literally at all.

[00:04:47]He wrote that God intentionally placed [music] stumbling blocks and impossibilities in the text so that readers would be forced to look for the deeper spiritual meaning.

[00:05:00]He used the creation account in Genesis as an example, pointing out that it describes evening and morning existing before the sun was created, which he argued was a clear signal that the passage operates on a level beyond the literal.

[00:05:18]But Origen was not some fringe figure.

[00:05:21]He was enormously respected, and he was not alone.

[00:05:25]Augustine of Hippo, arguably the single most influential theologian in Western Christian history, took a very similar position.

[00:05:34]>> [music] >> In his book, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, written around 415 AD, and yes, the irony of the title is noted, Augustine actually warned Christians against insisting on literal interpretations of Genesis >> [music] >> that contradicted observable reality.

[00:05:52]He wrote, and I am paraphrasing only slightly, that it is a disgraceful thing for a Christian to speak nonsense about scientific matters claiming the authority of scripture because non-Christians who actually understand these subjects will see the Christian as an ignoramus and will be less likely to take the faith seriously.

[00:06:16]Augustine was saying in the 5th century what many people are still trying to say [music] now.

[00:06:21]Do not stake the credibility of Christianity on claims that can be disproven by simply looking at the world around you.

[00:06:30]The early church father, Gregory of Nyssa, writing in the 4th century, >> [music] >> interpreted the six days of creation as a logical framework rather than a chronological account.

[00:06:43]Basil of Caesarea, while more sympathetic to literal interpretation, acknowledged multiple valid readings.

[00:06:51]The point is not that none of them ever read anything literally.

[00:06:55]The point is that insisting on rigid literalism as the only faithful approach would have [music] been completely foreign to them.

[00:07:03]Completely foreign.

[00:07:05]The idea that the Bible must be read as a flat literal document, that every passage means exactly what it appears to say on the surface, is not an ancient Christian position.

[00:07:18]It is a modern one.

[00:07:20]It emerged primarily in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a reaction to Darwinian evolution and higher biblical criticism.

[00:07:30]The Princeton theologians like Charles Hodge and Benjamin Warfield, and later the fundamentalist movement that produced the famous 1910 pamphlets called The Fundamentals, crystallized this approach into what we now recognize as evangelical literalism.

[00:07:47]It is roughly 150 years old.

[00:07:51]Christianity is 2,000 years old. The math should tell you something.

[00:07:57]Now, let's turn to a belief that is so deeply embedded in American evangelical culture that questioning it can feel [music] almost treasonous.

[00:08:09]The belief that America was founded [music] as a Christian nation.

[00:08:13]You see it on bumper stickers.

[00:08:15]You hear it in political speeches.

[00:08:18]It gets repeated endlessly in evangelical churches, especially around the 4th of July.

[00:08:25]Our founding fathers >> [music] >> built this nation on Christian principles.

[00:08:30]America has a covenant with God.

[00:08:33]We need to return to our Christian roots.

[00:08:36]It is a powerful narrative. It is also historically inaccurate in some very important ways.

[00:08:42]Let's start with the document that matters most. The Constitution of the United States. It was ratified in 1788.

[00:08:50]And here is something remarkable about it.

[00:08:53]God is not mentioned in it, not once.

[00:08:57]The word Christian does not appear. The word Bible does [music] not appear.

[00:09:03]The word church does not appear.

[00:09:06]The only reference to religion in the original Constitution is in Article 6, which states [music] that no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. Think about that. The very first time the Constitution mentions religion, >> [music] >> it is to explicitly prohibit the government from requiring any particular religious belief for public service.

[00:09:34]This was radical. In 1788, most nations on Earth had official state religions.

[00:09:40]England had the Church of England.

[00:09:42]Spain was officially [music] Catholic.

[00:09:45]The Ottoman Empire was officially Islamic.

[00:09:48]The American founders deliberately, consciously, pointedly chose not to establish an official religion.

[00:09:55]And they did this on purpose.

[00:09:57]But what about the founders themselves?

[00:10:00]Were they not devout Christians?

[00:10:03]Some were. Samuel Adams was deeply religious.

[00:10:06]John Jay, the first Chief Justice, [music] was a committed Anglican.

[00:10:11]But many of the most prominent founders held beliefs that would get them kicked out of most evangelical churches in America right now.

[00:10:19]Thomas Jefferson famously took a razor to the New Testament and physically cut out every miracle, every supernatural event, and every [music] claim of divinity by Jesus, creating what is now known as the Jefferson Bible.

[00:10:34]What remained was essentially an ethical philosophy guide.

[00:10:38]Jefferson called the Book of Revelation the ravings of a maniac, and referred to the doctrine of the Trinity as incomprehensible jargon.

[00:10:49]Benjamin Franklin, >> [music] >> in a letter written just weeks before his death in 1790, was asked directly about his religious beliefs.

[00:10:59]His response is extraordinary.

[00:11:02]He said he believed in one God, the creator of the universe, and that the soul is immortal.

[00:11:08]>> [music] >> But as to the divinity of Jesus, he wrote, "I have some doubts."

[00:11:14]He was 84 years old. He had helped build a nation, and he had doubts about whether Jesus was God.

[00:11:22]James Madison, who is called the father of the Constitution, was a fierce advocate for the separation of church and state.

[00:11:29]His 1785 essay, Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments [music] is one of the most powerful arguments ever written against government involvement in religion.

[00:11:41]He argued that government support for Christianity actually harmed Christianity.

[00:11:47]And then there is the Treaty of Tripoli.

[00:11:50]In 1797, the United States signed a treaty with the North African state of Tripoli.

[00:11:57]Article 11 of that treaty states [music] and this is a direct quote, "The government of the United States of America is not in [music] any sense founded on the Christian religion."

[00:12:10]This treaty was negotiated under George Washington, signed by President John Adams, >> [music] >> and ratified unanimously by the United States Senate.

[00:12:20]Unanimously.

[00:12:22]Not a single senator objected to that language.

[00:12:26]These were men who had fought in or lived through the revolution.

[00:12:31]If America was supposed to be a Christian nation, apparently nobody told them.

[00:12:37]Now, does this mean the founders were atheists?

[00:12:41]No.

[00:12:42]Most of them believed in God, but many of them were deists, meaning they believed in a creator who set the universe in motion, [music] but did not intervene in human affairs, did not perform miracles, and did not reveal himself through [music] any particular scripture. This was a common enlightenment position. It is very different from evangelical Christianity, >> [music] >> and the idea that these men intended to create a specifically Christian government is simply not supported by what they wrote, what they signed, or what they built.

[00:13:16]The third belief we need to examine involves one specific book, and it might be the most beloved book in the English-speaking world, the King James Bible.

[00:13:27]For millions of evangelical Christians, the King James version is not just a translation, it is the [music] translation.

[00:13:35]Some churches teach what is called King James only doctrine.

[00:13:40]The belief that the 1611 King James Bible is the most accurate, most reliable, and most divinely inspired English translation of scripture ever produced.

[00:13:53]Some go even further and claim it is perfect.

[00:13:56]That its translators were directly guided by God and that any deviation from its text [music] is a corruption of the word.

[00:14:04]The history behind this book tells a very different story.

[00:14:08]>> [music] >> King James the First of England commissioned the translation in 1604 for reasons that were as much political as they were spiritual.

[00:14:19]James had recently taken the throne after the death of Elizabeth the First and England's religious landscape was a mess.

[00:14:27]The Puritans wanted reform.

[00:14:30]The bishops wanted to maintain the status quo.

[00:14:33]There were multiple English translations floating around and each one was associated with a particular religious faction. [music] The Geneva Bible, which was the most popular translation at the time and the one the pilgrims actually brought to America, contained marginal notes that were, shall we say, unflattering to the concept of monarchy.

[00:14:58]James did not appreciate that. So, he authorized a new translation, one that would be produced [music] by committees, one that would avoid controversial marginal notes, and one that would support the institutional structure of the Church of England.

[00:15:16]The translation was done by about 47 scholars working in six committees and they did remarkable work for their time.

[00:15:25]But, they worked with what they had, and what they had was limited.

[00:15:30]The primary Greek text available to the King James translators was what scholars call the Textus Receptus, compiled by Desiderius Erasmus in the early 1500s.

[00:15:42]Erasmus based his Greek [music] New Testament on a grand total of about half a dozen medieval manuscripts, the oldest of which dated to roughly the 10th century.

[00:15:53]He did not have access to the earliest and most reliable Greek manuscripts that have since been discovered.

[00:15:59]In several places, Erasmus actually translated from the Latin Vulgate back into Greek because he did not have a Greek manuscript available for certain passages.

[00:16:07]>> [music] >> The most famous example is the Comma Johanneum, found in 1 John 5:7-8 in the King James version. This passage [music] reads, "For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost. And these three are one."

[00:16:23]It is the single most explicit statement of the Trinity in the entire New [music] Testament, and it is almost certainly not original.

[00:16:32]It does not appear in any Greek manuscript before the 16th century. It is absent from all the early Latin manuscripts.

[00:16:40]It is missing from every early church father's quotation of 1 John.

[00:16:45]>> [music] >> Erasmus himself initially left it out of his Greek text. He was pressured to include it, and eventually gave in, reportedly after a manuscript was produced that [music] many scholars believe was created specifically to convince him.

[00:17:02]Modern textual scholarship, based on manuscripts that are centuries older and far more numerous [music] than anything Erasmus had access to, overwhelmingly concludes that this passage was a later addition to the text.

[00:17:17]Since 1611, scholars have discovered thousands of biblical manuscripts, including the Codex Sinaiticus [music] and Codex Vaticanus from the 4th century, the Chester Beatty papyri from the 2nd and 3rd [music] centuries, and fragments that date to within decades of the original compositions.

[00:17:35]Modern critical editions of the Greek New Testament, like the Nestle-Aland text used by virtually all textual scholars, are based on these earlier and more reliable sources.

[00:17:46]This does not mean the King James Bible is worthless.

[00:17:50]It is a literary masterpiece.

[00:17:52]Its influence on the English language is immeasurable.

[00:17:56]But claiming it is the most accurate translation available flies in the face of everything we now know about textual criticism and manuscript evidence.

[00:18:06]The fourth belief is perhaps the most surprising one on this list, because it involves a doctrine that many evangelicals consider absolutely [music] central to their faith.

[00:18:16]The rapture.

[00:18:17]The idea that Jesus Christ will secretly return to snatch all true believers up into the sky before a period of catastrophic [music] tribulation engulfs the earth.

[00:18:28]This belief is so embedded in evangelical culture that it has generated a multi-billion dollar entertainment industry.

[00:18:37]The Left Behind novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins sold over 80 million copies.

[00:18:45]Rapture theology drives significant portions of evangelical [music] political engagement, particularly regarding the Middle East.

[00:18:55]Some evangelicals support specific Israeli policies because they believe the modern state of Israel plays a prophetic role [music] in triggering the end-time sequence that begins with the rapture.

[00:19:07]Here is the thing.

[00:19:09]No Christian in recorded history believed in the rapture before the 1830s. Not one, not Augustine, not Aquinas, not Luther, not Calvin, not Wesley, not any of the church fathers, not any of the medieval theologians, not any of the reformers.

[00:19:29]The doctrine was invented, and I use that word deliberately, by a man named John [music] Nelson Darby, an Anglo-Irish preacher who was part of a group called the Plymouth [music] Brethren.

[00:19:40]In the late 1820s and 1830s, Darby developed a theological system called [music] dispensationalism, which divided all of human history into distinct periods or dispensations, >> [music] >> in which God dealt with humanity in different ways.

[00:19:55]A key feature of this system was the idea that God had two separate plans, [music] one for Israel and one for the church, and that the church would be removed from the earth [music] before God resumed his plan for Israel during the tribulation period.

[00:20:14]Darby did not claim to have discovered this teaching in some long-lost manuscript.

[00:20:20]He constructed [music] it from his own reading of various prophetic passages, primarily 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, which describes believers being caught up to meet the Lord in the air, and the apocalyptic imagery of Daniel and Revelation.

[00:20:38]But Christians had read those same passages for 18 centuries without arriving at Darby's conclusions.

[00:20:46]The passage in 1 Thessalonians, when read [music] in its historical and literary context, uses language that mirrors the ancient practice [music] of citizens going out to meet a visiting dignitary and then escorting him back into their city.

[00:21:02]It describes believers going out to meet Christ and then returning with him, not being whisked away to heaven while everyone else suffers.

[00:21:12]Darby's ideas might have remained a footnote in church history if not for one man, Cyrus Ingerson Scofield.

[00:21:21]Scofield was a Kansas lawyer with a colorful past, including allegations of fraud and a term in prison, who experienced a conversion and eventually [music] became a congregationalist minister.

[00:21:35]In 1909, he published the Scofield Reference Bible, a King James Version with extensive marginal notes that taught dispensationalism and rapture theology directly alongside the biblical text.

[00:21:50]For generations of evangelical Christians, Scofield's notes were read with almost the same authority as scripture itself.

[00:21:59]By the time Hal Lindsey published The Late Great Planet Earth in 1970, which became the best-selling non-fiction book of the entire decade, rapture theology was so thoroughly woven into the fabric of American evangelicalism that most believers simply assumed it had always been there. It had not.

[00:22:19]It was born in the 1830s, popularized in 1909, and went mainstream in the 1970s.

[00:22:26]2,000 years of Christianity, roughly 190 years of rapture theology.

[00:22:33]That is less than 10% of Christian history.

[00:22:38]And now we arrive at the fifth and final belief, and in some ways, it is the most profound.

[00:22:46]Many modern evangelicals carry in their minds an image of the early church that looks remarkably like, well, a modern evangelical church.

[00:22:56]They imagine the first Christians gathering in something resembling a contemporary worship service with a charismatic preacher delivering a sermon from a raised platform, congregants sitting in rows, an emphasis on personal salvation through an individual decision to accept Jesus as one's personal Lord and Savior, >> [music] >> and a clear set of doctrinal positions that everyone agreed upon.

[00:23:25]The reality of the early church was so different from this image that it would be almost unrecognizable to most modern evangelicals. [music] The earliest Christians met in private homes.

[00:23:38]There were no church buildings for the first three centuries.

[00:23:42]The archaeological evidence for this is overwhelming.

[00:23:46]The oldest known house church discovered in Dura-Europos in modern Syria dates to roughly 235 AD, and it is literally a converted house with one wall knocked out to create a larger meeting room.

[00:24:02]The gatherings themselves centered not on a sermon, but on a shared meal.

[00:24:08]The breaking of bread described in Acts 2:42-47 was not a symbolic nibble of cracker and a sip of grape juice. It was an actual dinner, a communal feast called the Agape meal.

[00:24:21]The Didache, a Christian instructional text that most scholars date to somewhere between [music] 50 and 120 AD, making it contemporary with or even older than some books of the New Testament, provides instructions for these meals and for early Christian worship, and the picture it paints is strikingly different from anything you would see in a modern evangelical megachurch.

[00:24:47]Leadership in the early church was far more distributed than the modern pastor-centered model.

[00:24:53]Paul's letters mention a host of leaders with various functions. Apostles, [music] prophets, teachers, evangelists, pastors, and significantly, some of these leaders were women.

[00:25:07]In Romans 16:7, Paul mentions [music] Junia, whom he describes as outstanding among the apostles.

[00:25:14]For centuries, translators and commentators tried to turn Junia into a man named Junias, but exhaustive research into ancient Greek [music] texts has revealed that Junias as a male name essentially does not exist in the [music] ancient world, while Junia as a female name appears over 250 times in Roman [music] inscriptions.

[00:25:34]In 2016, the evangelical New Testament scholar Eldon J. Epp published a comprehensive study confirming this.

[00:25:44]Paul called a woman an apostle.

[00:25:46]In Romans 16:1, he refers to Phoebe as a deacon of the church at [music] Cenchreae.

[00:25:53]The Greek word he uses, diakonos, is the same word applied to male leaders throughout the New Testament. [music] Early Christian art in the catacombs of Rome, dating to the 2nd and 3rd centuries, depicts women in postures of prayer leadership and even in a few controversial frescoes presiding at communion tables.

[00:26:18]The early church also practiced a radical form of economic sharing that would make most modern evangelicals deeply uncomfortable.

[00:26:26]Acts 2:44-45 states that "All the believers were together and had everything in common.

[00:26:32]They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need."

[00:26:38]Acts 4:32 goes even further.

[00:26:41]"No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had."

[00:26:48]This was not described as an optional small group activity.

[00:26:52]It was presented as the defining [music] characteristic of the Christian community.

[00:26:57]The Didache reinforced this ethic, instructing Christians to share all things with your brother, and do not say that anything is your own.

[00:27:08]The second-century text known [music] as the Epistle of Barnabas contains similar instructions.

[00:27:15]Early Christianity was, in its economic practice, communitarian to a degree that most modern Western Christians would find radical.

[00:27:25]The theological diversity of early Christianity would also be startling to modern evangelicals >> [music] >> who assumed that correct doctrine was established from the beginning.

[00:27:36]The reality is that debates over fundamental questions, >> [music] >> including the nature of Christ, the relationship between father, son, and spirit, the role of Jewish law, [music] the canon of scripture, and the meaning of salvation, raged for centuries.

[00:27:54]The doctrine of the Trinity was not formally defined until the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, and even then the debate continued [music] for decades.

[00:28:05]The biblical canon was not officially settled in the West until the Councils of Hippo in 393 [music] and Carthage in 397, and even those lists differed [music] from the canons used by Eastern churches.

[00:28:19]For the first several centuries, different Christian communities used different collections of texts.

[00:28:25]The Shepherd of Hermas, a text virtually unknown to modern evangelicals, >> [music] >> was considered scripture by many early Christians and is included in the Codex Sinaiticus alongside the books we now consider canonical.

[00:28:41]The idea that early Christianity was a monolithic movement with a clear, fixed set of beliefs that maps neatly onto modern evangelical doctrine is, to put it gently, a fantasy.

[00:28:54]Early [music] Christianity was diverse, messy, argumentative, communal, and evolving.

[00:29:02]It was held together not by doctrinal uniformity, but by a shared commitment to the person of Jesus, and by the radical social practices that distinguish Christians from the surrounding culture.

[00:29:14]So, where does all of this leave us?

[00:29:18]Five beliefs, deeply cherished, fiercely defended, and historically unsustainable.

[00:29:25]The Bible has not always been read literally.

[00:29:28]America was not founded as a Christian nation in the way that claim is usually meant.

[00:29:33]The King James Bible, while magnificent, is not the most accurate translation available. The rapture was invented in the 1830s, and the early church looked nothing like a modern evangelical congregation. None of these historical facts [music] need to destroy anyone's faith.

[00:29:50]In many ways, the real history is far more interesting, far more challenging, >> [music] >> and far more beautiful than the simplified versions that get taught in so many churches.

[00:30:04]History does not have to be the enemy of faith, but it does demand honesty. [music] And honesty, one would think, should be something that people of faith value above almost everything else.

[00:30:17]If you made it all the way to the end of this one, you are exactly the kind of viewer this channel exists for.

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