Polymath World #51: Dr John Nelson on What Jesus Really Looked Like

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[00:00:04]Hello and welcome to the Polymath World channel. And today we're digging back into philosophy. Today we're doing some philosophy of religion, in fact. And I'm delighted to be joined by someone who um I've taken far too long to get to know, uh Dr. John Nelson. Thanks so much for joining me today, John. It's a pleasure to speak to you.

[00:00:22]>> Hi, Sam. It's great to be here.

[00:00:25]So, well, we do like jumping from science to philosophy now and then. And um I'm really struck by by you and your background. I love talking to young upand cominging researchers as well as the uh old heads who've been professors for a long time. Tell us how you got into your field and what your study background was.

[00:00:44]>> Yeah, so I I studied biblical studies and theology at the University of Nottingham. I'm actually a pastor's kid, a PK. So, uh, I probably as a late teenager wanted to find out is any of this true, you know, and so I I thought a good place to start would be to to go and study the Bible. Um, and yeah, after that went on to uh do a masters in New Testaments at Oxford. Uh, and then a PGCE I was training to be a teacher because I think sort of teaching is my one of my great passions. Um, but then COVID happened and I was sort of scattered north. So I went and thought I thought I'd do a PhD um in New Testament and Christian origins. So that was with Professor Helen Bond um at the University of Edinburgh. So that's kind of a little bit of my academic trajectory.

[00:01:33]>> Yeah. So you've gone from the the very south of the country all the way to the very north and everything in between. Um what was it that drew you to Edinburgh?

[00:01:42]I mean Edinburgh's got a fantastic reputation particularly for this. Um so what was it like studying there?

[00:01:49]Yeah. So, um, when I was in a graduate New Testament seminar at Oxford, um, Helen Bond came to the seminar and she was talking about Mark as an ancient biography. And I'd always been interested in this idea that the Gospels were ancient biographies. My first essay at Nottingham was just asking that question and I said, "Yes, they are biographies, but um, there was always something a little bit uncomfortable about that designation." you know when you turn from the gospels to Plutarch or Suonius or Nepos they don't really I mean they they have this they have this focus on a single individual but beyond that there are a lot of ways in which the gospels are distinctive um in that genre and so it was really trying to look at initially the project was how is the gospel of Mark our earliest gospel distinctive as a Greco Roman biography and so I wrote a couple of thousand words on the physical description of Jesus and how that's missing in the gospels whereas we find it in a lot of biographies and my supervisor said that's your PhD. So I I blew that that 2,000 words up into a into a doctoral thesis and that's how I got interested also in this question of Jesus's physical description, his physical appearance and why that doesn't appear in the Gospels as well.

[00:03:08]>> Well, there's there's already a lot of things I want to ask you about there.

[00:03:12]Um, obviously my background is um history and philosophy of science. So there's plenty of history involved in what I do. But um I and I do do have a theology degree and a a theology masters as well. But um but it's um actually well I will start with the personal um my limited experience of um pastors kids and missionaries kids is that they uh they tend to hate religion by the time they're in their late teens. So how was it that you ended up going the opposite way? and um studying it professionally and academically.

[00:03:45]>> Well, so I I mean I was as a teenager I I sort of became intoxicated by this prospect that I could in some way demonstrate my beliefs. You know, I had very sort of strong personal convictions but then sort of encountered that whole world of philosophy of religion and biblical studies or or at least people using that field uh to try to uh buttress their their worldviews. Um, and so I think in some ways I did I did rebel. Uh, I became an Anglican. Uh, whereas I was not I was not raised I mean I went to the Church of England school but I wasn't raised um in the Church of England. But so I I did my faith did change. I suppose you could say I did lose my faith or at least my childhood faith in one in one sense um but but sort of found found another version which I I think you know is more robust. I think my whole my whole thing with um apologetics, which I know you engage with on this channel, is just I I see it as just thinking. I see it as sensemaking. And um about 10 years ago when people or about five years ago, I think when people started talking about deconstruction online a lot, I thought, "Oh gosh, that sounds rather familiar."

[00:04:57]But I always thought that that was just thinking, you know, just sort of always that that continual process of revising your beliefs and trying to make them stronger um with without having necessarily to sort of jettison the the sort of the core essence of of what you what you believe and what the tradition believes. H how I there can be this problem in philosophy of science or or in the practice of science that you're very attached to your pet theories and your your ideas and so >> the way you interpret data can always be colored by your particular the outcomes you're hoping for the outcomes you're you're wanting and you have to be careful in the pursuit of objectivity when you you have a religious faith how do you maintain a level of objectivity when you're doing research, whether it's textual criticism, which I'm sure we'll get into, or um other methods of researching the kinds of things you've already mentioned like uh the Gospel of Mark or um or anything to do with antiquity.

[00:06:05]Yeah, I think I think to to a certain extent I mean first of all you have to acknowledge what kind of biases that you have and and maybe um I think especially with scripture the main thing that is going to color your interpretation is the the doctrine of scripture um that you have um so a lot of people might as I did you know inherited quite a wooden literal um interpretation of of scripture or a doctrine of scripture which then colored my interpretation of the biblical text. Um so I think it's first of all being aware of that. Um, and I think my my own approach was to um apply apply different uh sort of try to treat the Bible for what it is using a whole range of different uh methods, interpretive methods and historical methods and then building kind of building my understanding of what scripture is from the data of scripture rather than the other way round. Of course, there is always this sort of dynamic relationship between your theory and the evidence, but I do just find that sort of naturally that will that will change over time. You're always coming I think some something fascinating about biblical studies um as I'm sure it is for many other fields as well is just like the way in which you can deal with a text as a historian, but then you're you're always coming back to those bigger interpretive questions, theological questions. Um, and that interplay is quite quite fun to do as you're sort of constantly tweaking, you know, your theory to fit the evidence and but of course you're looking at the evidence. It's a little bit like uh Dily's hermeneutical circle or hermeneutical spiral. You know, this idea that to understand the whole of a sentence, I would have to understand each of the individual words. But to understand each of the individual words, I have to have a sense also of the whole. Um, and so that's what biblical studies and theology feels like to me that you sort of you you've got to be you've got to be open intellectually open-minded and curious and you will just engage in that interplay naturally.

[00:08:14]I feel um but yeah, I do I do think that the evidence is is is not so hospitable to maybe the adoptions and ideas of scripture that I had probably going into um my degree. I think though that in certain Christian circles there is a fear that uh you know people go away to study theology and it's liberal and you're going to lose your faith. Um actually my experience was the opposite.

[00:08:40]I saw a lot of people take take up a faith um studying theology who didn't have one before. Um and yet maybe in other subjects people you know moving away from their faith and I think that's because theology you know properly studied gives you critical resources to actually think oh gosh my my whole idea of reality and God and the Bible and tradition is so much bigger and can can accommodate so much more than than what I've inherited in whatever particular tradition you grew up in. And so I think that's that's the exciting thing about um theology, the way that it can give you resources to sort of make sense of the the so-called big questions in your life.

[00:09:23]>> Oh, I'm glad to hear you say that. I um you know, my first degree was in theology and I I was I was given it for free. You know, it was um it was a perk of doing the social work job that I was doing was they were paying for me to do a free theology degree. So, I I hadn't um I hadn't chosen to do it, but um >> yeah, >> I'm really glad I did it. And uh we were it it was a very international setting.

[00:09:48]I loved I was surrounded by Asian students, African students, European students, students from the Americas. Um and uh we were exposed to a lot of different ideas.

[00:09:58]Um, I think I'm more familiar with the more skeptical ones, sort of Bart Airman and John Dominic Crossen and those sorts. Um, excuse me. But, um, no, I'm glad to hear you say that because I think the expectation is if you are a religious believer and you're studying a subject like >> uh, history of Christianity or or New Testament studies or or um, theology, you're just going to be biased. But um my wife did a a biblical studies degree at Sheffield and none of her professors were religious believers. Um and sometimes that can go the other way then you find the people who are teaching are are just trying to convince the students that your beliefs are nonsense which is maybe the other trap you can fall into.

[00:10:47]Um did you come across anything like that at either extreme?

[00:10:52]Well, I think I think you know because we're all human beings, I think there is a sort of type of New Testament scholar who maybe can come in with quite a wooden view and um and but when when they're disillusioned by research can sort of swing the other way. You know, it's a sort of you know, you can take the man out of fundamentalism, you can't take the fundamentalism out of the man. And I think so all of us are prone to you know binary thinking in in some areas of our lives. And so I think that that does sometimes happen. Um but yeah, so there there are certain professors who maybe sort of relish uh his historical criticism for example with a bit of a smirk and you know they they feel like they you know they take some sort of joy out of debunking um maybe the sort of the more primitive faith of their students or something like that. But um so yeah, you do come across these types. But actually um I think the vast majority of professors I've encountered have probably been Christians of one sort of another themselves um and and haven't had that kind of critical that that crit that sort of cynical attitude to towards their students. So on the whole I would say that um I mean New Testament studies is actually filled with a lot of you know religious conformity. I think most people uh even at a conference like the British New Testament Society I would say that you know even you know Anglicans are probably over represented um at at something like that conference.

[00:12:27]>> Very interesting. Um so you you said before that the Gospel of Mark was the earliest um >> the earliest of the four gospels that was written. How does someone go about knowing something like that historically? I mean I I don't believe there are any first century manuscripts of the Gospel of Mark or or any of the Gospels. So how does one find out the truth of the matter?

[00:12:56]>> Yeah. So in the case of the Gospel of Mark, I mean the Gospel of Mark is one of the synoptic gospels. So Mark, Matthew, and Luke called them synoptic because they are a synopsis. They can be seen together because they share a lot of the same material. um and we're talking you know verbatim material copied out by you know the other gospels. So just to give an example 600 around 600 of um Mark's 660 verses are also found in Matthew and many of them are verbatim. So this isn't someone who's just memorized this or this is this is someone who has the text of Mark in front of them most likely. Um and so we have this question of okay which one which one came first you know which one borrowed from the other one. I think one of the one of the interesting things to look at is the way in which certain potentially embarrassing things or or difficult things are cleared up by the later um by the later evangelists. Um so just to give one example of that you know famously um Mark says that Jesus could not heal um in in in one passage and uh Matthew changes this to Jesus did not heal. So avoids this this problem uh you know this sort of christoologgical problem raised by Mark. Um but also if you look at this from the lens of ancient biography I think it's much easier to explain Mark uh or what we would call Mark and priority um as the best hypothesis because Matthew and Luke if they'd read Mark you can see why they would fill Mark out in the way that they've done. you know, eventually adding infancy narratives and sort of completing that very mysterious ending to Mark. Um, also removing all these little odd bits which don't really make much sense. I mean, you think of that that young man who sort of runs away uh naked in the garden of Gethsemane. Like Matthew and Luke, I think they read that and they were like, "What the heck is going on here?" So, they removed that.

[00:14:56]So at those places where you might expect them to change or add or improve something, they do so. And I think that is a very strong indication that Mark was Mark was written prior and then the other gospels came along later and and rewrite certain elements of Mark to sort of clean it up. So that's just what that's just one one evidence for for Mark and priority.

[00:15:20]I have a question there about how one can take the other gospels seriously as objective or or as as objective as possible um history if they are changing things to to make Jesus look better um like you mentioned. So, how does one deal with with that? And how does one balance the the validity of the testimony in in something like uh an ancient gospel as an ancient biography?

[00:15:52]So, to to sort of maybe address your your um your latter question first, I think ancient biographies were not modern historioggraphies. So an ancient biographer for example might feel more free than a modern one to just invent speech you know or to say something like the thing that the person would have said in that circumstance. Um, so I mean you might think not not a biographical example but even just like the trying to get back to Socrates himself. You know what is Zenapon? What is Plato? How much of this goes back to Socrates? Because people generally speak in each other's voices. I mean you see this most most powerfully in the Gospel of John where Jesus seems to speak in quite a different way to the synoptic gospels.

[00:16:44]Um, so I would say that we've got to sort of maybe temper our expectations of historicity when we come to ancient biography. I think plain history was not so much important as revealing the character, the athos um of of the subject in question. So I think everything is subordinate to that purpose. This is not to say that um ancient biographers didn't care about history at all. I think all of all of the biographies we have were of people who were at least believed to have existed. Um, but some of those are a little bit more fictional. So, we've got a life of Asop, which is written in a kind of novelistic style, and we've got a life of Alexander the Great in a in a similar style. Um, and then on the other hand, we've got people who are citing their sources and discussing their sources. We don't find that in the Gospels. I feel like the gospels might fit somewhere in the middle. Um they're kind of maybe like a docu drama of Jesus's life and trying to convey the essence. Um so I don't think we should always expect to find history in the gospels. Just to give maybe one example of this from um a sort of a Lenton example would be Jesus's temptation in the wilderness. So we find this story in three of the gospels um and in Mark. uh it's just this short line that Jesus before his ministry went into the wilderness and sort of fasted for 40 days and 40 nights and so on. In Matthew and Luke, it's a much more extended dialogue with uh with Satan. And so a historian might ask, did this did this dialogue with Satan actually occur?

[00:18:25]Well, it's interesting that we don't have it in the earlier source potentially.

[00:18:30]um uh and depending on your understanding of you know where Matthew and Luke have got their source from. Um but then we also have rabbitic texts which have kind of these sorts of dialogues and we also have texts in which for example Abraham will have a similar dialogue with Satan and they will trade Bible verses. So this very much looks like it's a dialogue created at the hand of a Christian scribe who is kind of imagining you know a conversation that Jesus could have had with uh with Satan. So I think this I think this conversation never happened and actually if you were taking a very wooden view of scripture you would run into difficulties because actually the way in which the different temptations that Satan brings to Jesus actually occur in a different order. there is no sort of highest point in the world by which to see all the world like it doesn't work as a literal story and origin realized that um early on in the third century. So, but does that mean that it says nothing about the historical Jesus? Well, I would say no.

[00:19:35]I mean Jesus um even if this memory is completely invented, it's it's a literary fiction, it can still carry truths about the essence of who Jesus was. Because what does it show Jesus doing? It shows him citing the scripture. It shows him rejecting um sort of worldly ambition. He obviously ends up dying on a cross. So there are there are sort of historical truths that are carried by this literary fiction. So I think we need to get away from this binary between you know everything is either historical or it's all just made up you know the sort of apologetics or the palemics. I think we need to we need to have a more balanced view and ancient biography gives us the backdrop for having such a view.

[00:20:20]>> Oh to answer your former question sorry >> what your former question was actually >> uh oh about how um the later evangelists clean up things maybe in the earlier accounts. Yes. And uh and what to do with that. Um I think that is that is a difficult question if you if you see sort of every part of scripture as a sort of timeless revelation but I think actually the way that the scripture behaves is as a kind of dialogue with itself. So you see a dialogue about issues like you know esquetology for example um and you know what what Jesus could precisely do and how he could do it. So I think um if you have a sort of more dialogic view of the nature of scripture then that is perhaps going to be less of a problem. Um and I also think that in some instances you can see improvements as almost clarifications almost like pastoral clarifications. So in that instance for example you know Mark says that he could not do it but uh maybe Matthew has a slightly higher or different view of of Jesus and he just wants to clarify that to his to his audience. So I don't think all of them are um all of them are devastating problems.

[00:21:38]These are usually minor changes um though there are some bigger ones as well.

[00:21:44]>> This is really fascinating. I mean, all of my history research is 20th century.

[00:21:50]Um, so it's it's within a hundred years or so, whereas what you're dealing with is 2,000 years ago. I just find it fascinating how people go about doing history uh there. So, what are the tools of the trade? How does one go about being a um a scholar of antiquity?

[00:22:11]Well, um, in terms of in terms of approaching texts as historical sources, for example.

[00:22:17]>> Yes. Doing I mean people think of textual criticism or they think of archaeology or or something in between.

[00:22:24]>> Well, I think that that that's the fun thing about biblical studies is that you're drawing on lots of different fields. It's sort of intrinsically interdicciplinary um in that way. I think one of the one of the tools of the trade um in the last kind of 40 50 years of Jesus research has been to sort of develop some quite sort of scrupulous criteria by which we can sort of reveal the Jesus behind the text in some way. You know, recognizing that these are different portrayals of Jesus and they're not all doing the same thing. They're not all engaging with the historical Jesus in the same way. um we can devise criteria by which to say okay this probably goes back to Jesus. So one of those criteria would be you know multiple attestation. So we find in the gospels this idea that Jesus calls 12 disciples. But we also find in Paul a hint that Jesus appeared after his resurrection to the 12. Okay. So I've got the 12 in Paul. I've also got the 12 in the Gospels. you know this is uh this is probably something that goes back to Jesus himself. Um and then say if we were taking that particular datim we would then ask okay well what what might be the significance of um of having a group called the 12. Well, if we look at contemporary sources of the time, maybe in the Dead Sea Scrolls and elsewhere, we find that when the Messiah was thought to come or the Messiahs, you know, there would they that he would reconstitute the people of Israel that they the the 12 would come back together again. So, sort of putting, you know, doing a bit of uh source critical work, um trying to, you know, work out how far this tradition goes back, filling it in with context, we can start to sort of piece together an understanding of why Jesus might have called 12 disciples and, you know, how he would have seen himself in relation to them. Um, another big thing is just yeah, understanding as best as we can the provenence of ancient texts. So their origins and where they were written and how we can date them and who wrote them. Um I think that a big problem is that you know in modern history you have an abundance of sources and you you do tend to know where where things are coming from and that's that's really not the case um in antiquity. So, um, you've got to sort of be be aware of the missing pieces and what you don't know as well. And, um, and really have just a bit of like historical imagination and the recognition that very few of our thesis will be like absolutely will gain a sort of level of consensus where they will be agreed upon by everyone. Because the data is so sparse, it opens itself up to multiple plausible interpretations. Um, So that is going to be that is going to be a big a big problem. I mean even on something like um the sources for the gospels.

[00:25:20]Well probably over half of scholars today think that Matthew and Luke shared independently a source uh which a quella in German which they call Q for source.

[00:25:33]So yeah I think um but then many many scholars reject this and they say no Luke used Matthew um and there is no independent source. even on s such a basic issue as you know where are we getting this information from the origin is often indeterminate um and our theories therefore are often underdetermined um and so I think to be responsible and honest um researchers we have to we have to acknowledge those difficulties um and those silences in our sources >> h yes I mean underdetermination is a challenge in philosophy of science as well So it's not just um not just a problem for religion and religious scholarship I'm aware but um tell me about your own research. So um either for your PhD or things you've done since.

[00:26:25]>> Yeah. So my my PhD was starting out as I said by looking at Mark as an ancient biography and how it differs from other ancient biographies. And I got on this question of the physical description of Jesus. And so I went back to biography to see, you know, is it really surprising that the gospels don't describe Jesus's physical appearance?

[00:26:43]And so I sort of trailed through the biographies. I found that the evangelists were the only biographers in antiquity not to use the topos of physical description on their subject at all. You know, everyone else does it to a certain extent. And the reason for this is antiquities what Elizabeth Evans a classicist calls their physomic consciousness. You know there's this sort of widespread idea that you can read someone's nature or perhaps even their character from their appearance.

[00:27:14]Um and so this explains the sort of wise proliferation of uh physical descriptions. And it was clearly a very useful literary topos because you know if you're a biographer you want to reveal someone's character. So if you can say, "Oh, they're beautiful," or whatever, or maybe if you can even fit them into a certain type. So Socrates and Asop um are described as as ugly.

[00:27:36]And that that figures as part of their sort of subversive character that they sort of um subvert the traditional expectations of Callos Kagatha, you know, this idea of the beautiful and the good. Um so so ugly descriptions, attractive descriptions, they're all very helpful for ancient biographers which makes it all the more surprising that when we come to the gospels which have a light which are lives of a divine man, you really expect physical descriptions of divine men like you know Caesar Augustus or Appalonius of Tiana.

[00:28:10]Um and they're also lives of a royal figure as well. And so kings are often are frequently described in in ancient literature. So, um, I I I just was my research was really trying to explain why don't the Gospels describe Jesus's physical appearance. And so, it was kind of a 100,000word argument from silence.

[00:28:30]Um, but also using the physical description as a kind of springboard to explore their characterization of Jesus, whether that would fit with different sorts of descriptions, their genre, how exactly are they engaging this Greco Roman genre as Jewish authors? um and also their overall treatment of the question of appearance as well. So that's kind of it in a nutshell. Um yeah, my research >> very interesting. Uh yeah, you get these stories in antiquity of um you know all the all the leaders who are treated as great. They're all, you know, over six feet tall and so muscular and and so wise looking. And I'm like, yeah, of course they were all they were all exactly like that.

[00:29:16]It's an interesting thing because they the evangelists could have invented a description if they wanted to. I believe I think a lot of these, as you say, they're very ideal, you know, there stylized. They're kind of idealized descriptions. Um, which which makes it very puzzling. I mean, Joan Taylor in her book, What Did Jesus Look Like? she says that, "Oh, no, they didn't describe Jesus because he was probably just average-looking and um they couldn't just invent that he was like the suffering servant or like David in his beauty." Um, so they kind of just left it as it is. I'm not so persuaded by that. I think they could have invented a description if they if they wanted to.

[00:29:52]And so the mystery does go um somewhat deeper.

[00:29:57]>> Uh more things for you to pursue um as it continues. Um I I find um so I mean you've got to be careful here with with um apologetics because my a lot of my experiences of apologetics haven't been overwhelmingly positive um uh es especially on the science front. But um I do find that religious apologists perhaps overestimate the strength of philosophical arguments, but the the atheist critics certainly overestimate their assessment of the historical deficiencies as they put it. um ridiculous things like um Jesus mythicism aside that there's sort of an idea that um that we we really don't know anything at all and so it's all just made up. I mean Richard Dawkins who I do love and admire um you know mockingly referred to theology as as medieval studies or something like that but um you know let's focus on the positive here. What's the um what's the really the really good um process of working with when it comes to theology and New Testament studies?

[00:31:14]>> Well, I think that you know, as we've talked about, the gospels have different portrayals of of Jesus and they are not always aiming at sort of a level of historical accuracy that we would describe today. Um they don't sort of have the same I I think notion of history. And yet, you know, there are lots and lots of things that the gospels agree about. Um, and I think that if we're approaching these as biographies, we should really be looking for the gist. You know, a great scholarly term, I think, the gist of Jesus's life. And I think what's interesting is that, you know, similar things are showing up in all of these different traditions in the Gospels. So clearly I I mean I'm assuming that the gospel writers had various sources um for you know for the material that they included and that they were probably selective with their sources and so on. So it's very interesting on that level then that sort of similar things are cropping up in different places and I think you know uh the the great New Testament scholar CH Dodd he says that this is evidence that this goes back to a distinctive you know Jewish genius essentially uh you know a distinctive a single Jewish mind um which is not to say that the evangelists did not have a role to play in shaping their material but it is to say that we do encounter something of a personality um through the gospel texts. Um and I think we can sort of reconstruct a kind of picture of Jesus which is um which sort of makes sense um in terms of second temple Judaism, you know, the sort of and the Palestinian Judaism of his setting. Um so I think we would I think if the gospels were heavily heavily unreliable, we would expect um a very different set of data uh to the data that we would have. I think the gospels, however we might we might sort of talk about their historical reliability, which is a kind of probably a term that needs to be thought about more generally. We can we can we can find a we can find a Jesus who I think called 12 disciples, spoke in parables, proclaimed the kingdom of God, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, you know, and you know his disciples had experiences of him um you know after after his death and so so I think these are I would say relatively non-controversial points um within within the academy. um you would be looked at you know rather incredulously I think if you started you know rejecting these and certainly you know things like Jesus mythicism you know don't really have any place in uh in the academy >> yes yes quite I I think we're very fortunate in this country actually we we've got um you know we've had the codec saticus um the oldest sort of complete cannon of the New Testament at the British Library we've got um the oldest New Testament fragment what at all of the John Rylands in Manchester where I've spent so much of my time.

[00:34:18]>> And we've got the um the British Museum with uh with the the Bible wing with some extraordinary artifacts from antiquity and you know really really ancient and a lot of stuff. So we're very fortunate in this country I think.

[00:34:32]>> Yeah. I mean the British Library is just fantastic. Although sadly I I've been in a couple of times recently and haven't been able to see the siticus. So, I don't know what's I don't know what's going on there. Maybe they have it on loan or they're restoring that that wing of the building. But, yeah, I definitely sort of encourage people, especially students, you know, if any are watching to um yeah, to go to the British Library uh because yeah, it's got all these amazing uh codices uh which and it's quite fun. I mean, if anyone's a Greek learner to sort of just try and read this uh this unsealed script which is all capital letters, no punctuation. I really I really struggle when I go in.

[00:35:12]>> It was it was um yeah, a decade ago now that I left my my theology studies. Um I would not claim to be a theology scholar at all. I I've got a degree and I did a masters and I I published a few short reviews, but yeah, I wouldn't call myself a scholar. Um, but I remember when I was leaving there was this sense of anticipation that perhaps scholarship here was going to go into a a bit of a revolution. Partly because of things like artificial intelligence, but also um I was aware of some really fascinating work being done with with laser technology to to read scrolls that were too um fragile to touch. So, for example, if you tried to turn the page, it would fragment in your hand, but now you could scan and use lasers and X-rays and all sorts of things to read previously inaccessible um but very fragile texts. Um, do you think that the field, your field, your discipline is is going to move into a new sort of renaissance?

[00:36:18]I h I haven't seen I haven't seen that renaissance in New Testament studies. I mean I don't know maybe maybe it's because I don't know if the field is sort of especially arcane or anything but I I haven't seen the so-called digital humanities make a huge impact but that may just be because I'm not a I'm not a textual critic. So um you know the textual critics can do their work trying to reconstruct these manuscripts and then we work with critical editions of those um of of the New Testament say the Slay Arland 28th edition or whatever it is um and so that probably influences um text critics more but I do think there's there's probably a huge amount of material out there which has not been translated. I think a lot of it is, you know, sat in Oxford, you know. Um, I think there are oxyrinkers papar and things. I may be getting that wrong, but there's there's a lot of paparum.

[00:37:18]>> Yeah.

[00:37:18]>> Yeah.

[00:37:19]>> Well, that brings me to my next question here about um students getting into your field and um so I the floor is yours. um make your pitch as to why why young students should get into theology, biblical studies, New Testament studies, you know, classics, all all these things.

[00:37:40]>> Yeah, I think you should I think you should get into biblical studies if you if you're deeply fascinated by the Bible. Um I think the the common university answer to the question why do you want to study biblical studies is probably you know well to understand the Bible is you know necessary to understand western civilization and and you know global global history as well um and it's also that intrinsic interdisciplinary nature of the field which I think makes it very exciting.

[00:38:11]I'm quite a sort of scrambling person, so I I like to dip into lots of different things. You know, with biblical studies, you're not going to be leaving behind philosophy. You're not going to be leaving behind language or archaeology, history. So, you can bring all of those things together um uh to questions that actually have real life implications for people as well. For those people who might be doing, you know, I don't know, um Christian ethics or theological interpretation um and that sort of thing, too. So, um, that's what makes it so exciting to me. Um, and I would say in terms of how to how to actually get into it, I had an old professor who said to me, you need to read seven books on a subject and you will become the world expert on that subject. Okay? And I know, you know, it's difficult. I'm a tail end millennial sort of Gen Z. I mean, we str I think we struggle with reading. Um but you know reading seven books on a subject to become the world expert that's that's quite a that's quite a good offer. Um and of course I think he's there thinking of seven books within a field within a sort of a subset of a field. Um but I think that's pretty good advice actually. Say for example, you know, I got interested in the historical Jesus through reading people like James Crossley and uh and Morris Casey and Entie Rice and and all the others and yeah, so I just started reading lots of books on the historical Jesus. So finding the thing that you're passionate about and then just going for it. Um and maybe maybe seven books is a is a good starting point. Um and then you'll be on your way to be a world expert.

[00:39:51]Yes, this is what I I mean that pulling the polymath hat on. This is what I really love about um the discovery of really delving into theology and New Testament studies and biblical studies is there's such a convergence of disciplines like you mentioned when you're studying ancient history, there's philosophy, there's a there's linguistics, there's there's just so many different elements that come in, you know, anthropology, archaeology, they they they all seem to converge um in in this. So there's there's so many different places you can go. There's so much to uncover. It's just cool to understand stuff about ancient history, especially stuff that's formed the Western world like this. And maybe nothing has done more so than this. Um, if people want to find out more about your research or about yourself, where can they go?

[00:40:43]>> Yeah, so I've got a a couple of different places. Um my my main website is behindthegos gospels.com which is a it's a substack where I talk about historical Jesus and Christian origins and try to make kind of I suppose mainstream ideas accessible to a wider audience. Um, I also produce a podcast now which features my supervisor, Professor Helen Bond, and an ancient history professor, um, Lloyd Llewellyn Jones. Um, and they're just fantastic and they bring on, um, academics from all sorts of different perspectives and talk to them about different aspects which relate to biblical history. So, that's also another really good place to go. And um I've got a revised version of my thesis coming out later this year uh with Bloomsbury which is called Jesus's physical appearance biography Christologology Philosophy. So that teases out, you know, if anyone's interested in why the Gospels don't describe Jesus's physical appearance, that may be the the place to go.

[00:41:40]>> Fascinating. Well, we can look forward to that. Thank you so much for your time today. It's been a pleasure speaking to you. I'm so glad we've done this bonus dip into this particular strand of philosophy of religion.

[00:41:51]Thank you so much, Dan. Bye-bye.

[00:41:54]>> Thank you so much for watching. Don't forget to like and subscribe. Stay tuned for more amazing conversations with incredible researchers who are changing the world we live in and driving humanity forward. Feel free to check out my Instagram at polymath_sam or go to my website at www.sam-mck.co.uk.