hello everyone and welcome to blogging theology today I'm very happy to welcome back Dr Alia Thai from zetuna college assalamualaikum sir how are you I'm doing very well very good to see you again for those who don't know Dr Alia Thai is a scholar of biblical hermeneutics specializing in sacred languages comparative Theology and comparative literature at zetuna College in California just what happened to Jesus of Nazareth at the end of his Earthly Life 2 000 years ago is a point of dispute between Christians and Muslims the Christian gospels Matthew Mark Luke and John tell the story about the death of Jesus at the hands of the Romans by crucifixion yet the Quran disputes these accounts today Dr Alia Thai will look to establish the historical plausibility of an uncrucified Jesus of Nazareth so over to you sir thank you so much yeah so about a year ago um as you may remember Dr uh Louis fatuhi appeared on blogging Theology and did a wonderful presentation uh on this topic and I highly recommend uh that people watch that podcast if they haven't already or to watch it again but I've been thinking about this topic now for a while um and when I saw Dr fatuhi's presentation I just sort of further motivated me to contribute something similar to the public discourse so maybe this will be um something of a supplement or sequel to what he uh presented I'm going to cover some of the same ground but also look at a few additional things inshallah my presentation is a bit long-winded uh so I apologize in advance no no we like you like Long Winter presentations of blogging theology because we like content detail quality stuff so I wish you produce an abundance so don't apologize for that sir that's good so I do have a slideshow so let's uh yeah let's go to the title slide here it's up there great so I've titled this presentation they did not kill him or crucify him establishing the historical plausibility of an uncrucified Jesus of Nazareth peace be upon him Okay so okay how do modern secular quote unquote scientific historians establish history well it's all a game of plausibility plausibility is everything so historians like Bart Ehrman for example determine what happened in the past by asking a very simple question in light of the evidence what most probably happened right so this is how modern history is done did Barack Obama win the presidential election in 2012. well the answer is yes because that is most probable it is highly highly unlikely highly implausible uh that there was some sort of elaborate Global conspiracy and that we were all fooled um but let's go back in time a bit was Lee Harvey Oswald the lone wolf in the JFK assassination well now here it used to be very very probable that he was but in light of new evidence over the years it is now at least plausible that he did not act alone and the fact the house select committee on on assassinations uh concluded in 1979 16 years later that there was probably more than one gunman so the pass did not change only our perception of it has well let's go back even further did Constantine convert to Christianity uh before or after after the Council of nicaea 25 of the Common Era now things get a bit more hazy right the farther back we go the hazier things get um we're uh were Muslims in the Americas First or were Christians here first now here it actually depends on Whose history we're reading ethic historians or Muslim historians Eastern or Western if you ask an American historian um who was the first man to fly an airplane he'll probably say Orville in Wilbur Wright of course uh the Wright brothers uh if you ask a Brazilian historian uh he'll probably say Alberto Santos Dumont so whose history are we reading so there are four main criteria of modern historiography okay so historians they look at four main things so number one multiple independent attestation of sources and number two early sources number three Criterion of embarrassment and number four social coherence so in the case of Jesus of Nazareth peace be upon him most uh so modern historians point out that we have four gospels and several Epistles written by first century Christians that mentioned that Jesus was put to death via crucifixion so apparently multiple independent and early sources the first two criteria Jesus was believed to have been the Messiah by his early followers so they certainly wouldn't make up a crucified Messiah that's embarrassing therefore he was likely a crucified Criterion of embarrassment also the Romans crucified thousands of Jews in Palestine so what's another Jew why should he be so exceptional so you know Occam's razor in other words it is socially and contextually coherent that Jesus was crucified in addition to this it is very clear that the life of the historical Jesus of Nazareth peace be upon Him ended abruptly around 31 32 or 33 of the Common Era and that James became the leader of the nazarenes until his death around 62 of the Common Era this was probably because Jesus was killed and buried somewhere so in light of this historians have concluded that Jesus was most probably crucified this is how secular history is done what most probably happened and I'll return to these four uh criteria at the end of my presentation to re-examine inshallah so for historians the most compelling evidence here is that a lot of Christians in the first century said Jesus was crucified yes I agree but a crucial question here is which Christians whose Christian history are we reading and I'll go back to this point uh as well inshallah but let's pretend that there's a man standing on the top of a tall building um and I tell you that he got there one of three ways so either he flew up there like Superman or he took the elevator I guess he would call that the lift right or he took the stairs I think most people would say he probably took the elevator now is it true without any reasonable doubt that he took the elevator no he could have taken the stairs that is plausible it's just not very common flying however is a miracle okay now A Miracle by definition is the least plausible occurrence a breach of natural law a breach of customary occurrence or physics both Muslims and Christians believe that Jesus's birth and end of his Earthly life were miraculous in some fashion in other words both groups believe in the Virgin birth of Jesus and the Ascension of Jesus from this world both groups also believe in many of the same Miracles that Jesus was able to perform during his life by the permission of God from the standpoint of modern secular history these things are considered non-historical why because modern historians do not presuppose God's existence they have no access to God they don't even consider the supernatural they are naturalists this is how modern historians like Airmen operate this doesn't mean that they necessarily deny the supernatural they simply don't consider it in their method and this is a bit different than how the father of history in the West's Herodotus approached history so Herodotus openly acknowledged the Supernatural and that sum of event could have a double explanation one natural and one Supernatural in other words the what and the why uh so so modern has secular historians are except are essentially explanatory monists like everything will be explained naturalistically uh so in agreement with modern historians Herodotus used a costs uh which is a Greek term meaning a reasoning uh for example Herodotus interestingly enough um did not believe that the Greeks attacked Troy because the Trojans were holding Helen he finds that implausible uh he thinks that the Greeks attacked Troy simply because they wanted to conquer Troy for their glory and Herodotus was a Greek um Holland was just a pretext for war Helen was a way to Garner public support for an invasion so he thought it was much more likely that Helen was in Egypt not Troy in Asia Minor so so they did so I didn't draw that this Brad Pitt film then whatever it's called uh you know Brad Pitt and the others uh is all wrong then because it was all about Helena Troy in the Hollywood movie isn't it so we've got to look again and perhaps question that as as a true account yeah yeah it seems like it was political propaganda you know the face that launched a thousand ships not really right but Herodotus you know he never discounted the supernatural he considered the supernatural as well and he's the father father of Western history so it's ironic when a Christian polemicist says to the Muslim that the night journey of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him to Jerusalem in one night and his Ascension into the heavens is unhistorical so Muslims should stop believing in these things so yes according to Modern secular historians who never consider Miracles the night journey and Ascension are highly implausible but then again so is the resurrection of Jesus are Christians going to stop believing in that and Christians need to admit this about the resurrection right they need to stop claiming that the resurrection is historical according to the Paradigm of modern historiography and I would make a distinction between the terms non-historical and unhistorical so yes from the standpoint of secular history the night journey of the Prophet peace be upon him as described in Muslim sources is non-historical because it is a miracle and miracles are not considered by modern historians they're only looking for naturalistic explanations the Supernatural is just on an area that they concern themselves with but I would argue that the night journey is not unhistorical because apart from its Supernatural Elements which modern historians could explain away as being the prophet's dream the historical circumstances that surround the event of the night Journey are plausible now let me cite one example for clarification in the book of Acts right so Luke quotes Paul who gives the account of his conversion at his trial right the Damascus Road conversion as it's called so according to Luke Paul explained that he had a vision of the resurrected Jesus so this is a non-historical event why because it is a miracle a supernatural event from a modern historical standpoint did it happen exactly as Paul through Luke told us probably not now a Christian may still believe in this because he trusts Paul or Luke or he trusts the scripture or he has other good reasons for believing be they theological than a physical personal or otherwise and he can make those arguments however the reason why this story seems to be unhistorical is because of the non-supernatural circumstances of the story this story encroaches Into the area the domain the field of the secular historian how well according to the story the high priest in Jerusalem commissioned Paul to bring Christians from Damascus to stand trial in Jerusalem This is highly implausible historically why number one the term Christian is second century so there's an anachronism number two the high priest did not have jurisdiction over anyone in Damascus as Paula Frederickson points out the high priest didn't even have authority over the essenes who lived in his own backyard such a disappointment obviously is a very distinguished American New Testament scholar uh um a professor uh an expert in this particular field uh just so I clarify who she is yeah yes thank you yeah so so Paul's conversion story is not only non-historical due to the presence of a miracle due to the presence of a miracle it is plausibly unhistorical as well because of its non-supernatural claims it's naturalistic claims so this would be the equivalent uh of the Hadith about the ninth Journey about the prophet uh it would be equivalent to the Hadith saying something like the prophet prayed at the Dome of the Rock when he arrived in Jerusalem so here a secular historian would say well wait a minute that mosque was not built until seven years later by the Umayyads clearly this is a later tradition of course the Hadith does not say that now Airman believes that after Jesus's death he was seen by some of his disciples he believes that but he also says that any explanation is more plausible than a man rising from the dead the the disciples experienced a group hallucination much more plausible than a man rising from the dead so if Christians want to believe that Jesus did rise from the dead then that is their faith conviction it is based primarily upon theological evidence and The credibility of those who made the claim but it cannot be historical in the modern secular sense and that's okay I mean we have faith commitments as well as Muslims I believe the prophet Muhammad peace be upon him when he said that he journeyed to Jerusalem in one night I believe in because there is convincing evidence to me that he was a truthful man with unimpeachable Integrity the Arabs before Islam would refer to him as Assad the truthful and trustworthy one so it's not Blind Faith it's reasonable Faith right so if he said it then it's true and I have good reasons for believing him despite the night Journey being non-historical and implausible according to Modern naturalistic historians so so Muslims and Christians at some point will both butt heads with the likes of Bart Airmen both groups make non-historical claims according to the standards of modern secular historiography I agree with secular historians uh as do the Christians that Jesus dropped out of History around 31 of the Common Era but not because he was buried in some unmarked Mass grave uh but because he ascended into heaven and this is a miracle so a secular historian would say that my view is not historical and I'm fine with that I believe that because my Prophet said that Jesus ascended and I have multiple reasons why I believe that the prophet was truthful the focus of my presentation today is not on the miraculous birth of Jesus nor is it on his miracles of uh curing the line and the lepers and raising the dead by God's leave nor is it on his Ascension uh at the very end uh today I want to talk specifically about the historicity of the crucifixion and its immediate aftermath from a secular standpoint within a modern secular Paradigm is it plausible just plausible from a standpoint of modern history to conclude that Jesus was never crucified if so then the quran's claim about the crucifixion is historically valid according to the method of Modern historiography Okay so interesting there's no secret that the Quran categorically denies that that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified and we'll look at the verse so so the The prominent criticism of the Quran right is that the Quran is denying a non-supernatural historical event that is accepted by consensus of modern historians therefore the quran's position regarding the crucifixion is unhistorical so this is the sort of uh prominent criticism now to this uh a Muslim might say so what I don't care what some Modern historians say I believe the Quran because I'm convinced that the Quran is the word of God and not the author of the Quran has direct access to history as as Dr fatori said I trust Alana's messenger I have I have many reasons why I trust Allah in his messenger so just as I believe that Moses split the Red Sea by God's leave despite what modern historians say about that event I also believe that Jesus was not crucified despite what modern historians say about that event I have confidence in my text I have confidence in Allah and his messenger if the greatest monotheist of all time the most influential man who ever lived the prophet Muhammad peace be upon him a man whose name literally means the praised one who is constantly praised by human beings in every country around the world if that man said that Jesus wasn't crucified then I believe him and I don't care what Barbara Dale Martin or Dale Allison whatever they say I hear and I affirm the prophet is a man whose fruits demand are serious consideration so if a Muslim were to say all those things that's fine I understand and and Paul you you mentioned in the past that the quran's claim about the crucifixion is unfalsifiable in other words a modern historian can say to the Muslim that he's denying history as he sees it but he cannot say that he knows what certainty that Jesus was crucified without a Shadow of Doubt no one can prove that Jesus was crucified through the modern scientific method to do this you either have to go back in time and actually witness the event which is impossible or reproduce the event which is impossible so as Dr fatuhi pointed out the past is rape it's unseen so even the atheist has Iman villare belief in the Unseen a belief or a confidence or faith in what may have been in what what in what may have happened in the past uh based upon available evidence now Dr fatuhi also made another excellent point and I'm paraphrasing he said he said that the Quran explicitly says that prophets were murdered by their communities in the past martyred or murdered prophets are not incompatible with the quran's prophetology now if the prophet Muhammad is the real author of the Quran which is the claim of Jews Christians and atheists and he desperately wanted to convert Jews and Christians to Islam and to become his followers then why in the world did he deny the crucifixion of Jesus when both Jews and Christians maintain that Jesus was crucified why would he invent and uncrucified Jesus why would he create an unnecessary roadblock to conversion the answer seems to be that the Quran is stating in actual fact since it has direct access to history as a divine revelation it is simply a fact that Jesus of Nazareth the son of Mary peace be upon them was not crucified in addition to this I might add that the Quran consistently revises uh biblical stories um in a way which makes them more plausible historically the author of the Quran consistently avoids the historical pitfalls of the biblical narratives I'm not I'm not necessarily talking about the Miracles I'm talking about the events that historians concern themselves with so we see this concerning the stories of the flood the story of Joseph The Exodus from Egypt and with the quran's sort of overall christology that Jesus was a human being a prophet a teacher and a Healer for example just one example the Quran does not say that basically two million people to 2 million Israelites from Egypt as the Torah does This is highly highly implausible historically the Quran as it was a small Remnant so now when the Quran denies the crucifixion this denial should not be immediately dismissed as unhistorical rather it should it should deserve our serious consideration but here's my contention today okay so I'm not contending that it is necessarily more historically likely that Jesus was not crucified it is my contention however that the historicity the crucifixion is highly over emphasized by secular historians uh and as a tradition of secular history historians continue to endorse the crucifixion but when we look at the actual evidence the historical case for the crucifixion is not nearly as strong as we have been led to believe when we actually examine the evidence we will come away with the historical plausibility of an uncrucified Jesus and if it is plausible just plausible that Jesus wasn't crucified then no one can say that the Quran contains a historical error or that it is unhistorical if there is a reasonable doubt that Jesus would crucified and secular historians must admit that the quran's position is at least plausible okay can I sorry can I just pause that just for a second just to add the what way that many westerners have difficulty with the idea of a non-uncrucified Jesus is to do with our culture in the last two thousand years we we see crucifixes in churches we see in war memorials the first second world war uh you know all over France and in Britain too of crucifixes yeah Big Stone statue crucifixes it's part of our cultural experience to see a crucified Jesus uh this is not an historical point about first century of course it's about for us it's axiomatic as westerners that it happened because it's all over the place in in our churches in our memorials all over the world and so it has a certain kind of axiomatic quality to it but you're saying if we go back to the uh the actual evidence in the first century then there is reasonable uh doubt that this was crucified as you say to re-examine the evidence I mean think about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln so if I said that a Moroccan immigrant shot Lincoln um is that a historical error the answer is yes why there is zero evidence to support its plausibility so I'm not asking if it's possible rather plausible there's a difference is there a reasonable degree of certainty that a Moroccan immigrant shot Lincoln no but now think about the JFK assassination you know if I said that there was a second gunman is that a historical error not necessarily why because there was some evidence to establish its plausibility it is plausible that there was a second gunman so my claim is that I can come up with a theory of the crucifixion that is both an agreement with the Quran as well as historically plausible in other words we do not need to postulate the historically implausible to in order to explain how Jesus was not crucified and how he was seen after some crucifixion event okay okay so all of that was sort of just introduction let's move on here um okay now on a previous podcast um I explained uh both the Swoon and divine Rapture theories okay so just to very quickly review and then assess the Swoon theory is this idea that Jesus was placed on a cross but he didn't die right he survived the crucifixion the Divine Rapture theory is this idea that Jesus was placed on a cross but before he could die from his injuries Afflicted upon him by his enemies God directly intervened and seized Jesus's soul um both theories give the impression to his enemies that they killed him hence they did not kill him nor crucify him but it was made to appear so unto them as the Quran says under the Swoon Theory Jesus was able to recover from his injuries and then he was seen by his disciples and maybe others alive right still alive under Divine Rapture God returned Jesus's soul to his body after seizing it and then he was seen alive once again alive but here's the question are these theories convincing both quranically and historically so this is our project today to postulate a theory of the crucifixion that is both in agreement with the Quran as well as historically plausible within the Paradigm of modern historiography so it seems to me that a potential problem with the Swoon Theory from a quranic standpoint is that it cannot be easily reconciled with the broader quranic discourse um for example we're told in the Quran excuse me that that God will say to Jesus on a day of judgment is behold I restrained the Israelites from harming you right and the verb Katha in this verse uh is used seven other seven other times in the Quran and in every case it means to restrain or avert from physical harm so if Jesus was fastened to a cross with ropes and or nails or both after having been probably flogged and beaten it seems doubtful that this would constitute being restrained from harm right even if he never died so it seems to me that the Swoon Theory doesn't quite work when we look at the Quran more comprehensively and by the way Psalm 20 Psalm 20 verse 6 says that God will save his Messiah right it says God will save his Messiah none of the tanaki passages that Christians claim are Messianic explicitly mention the word Messiah but Psalm 20 verse 6 does and it says God will save his Messiah and the verb is yahsha in Biblical Hebrew which means to save from physical harm just as in quranic Arabic does divine Rapture from the cross also uh suffers uh pun intended from this same problem a flawed beaten bleeding Jesus is very difficult to reconcile with these broader quranic statements concerning him Divine Rapture would also necessitate that some type of Resurrection must have occurred if Jesus made most crucifixion appearances to his disciples either the soul of Jesus was returned to his corpse by God who reanimated Jesus's body or the disciples had individual and or shared visions of a Fantasmic Jesus who had left his body behind in his grave the former is the position of the gospels while the latter seems to be the kind of Resurrection that Paul described in his famous passage in First Corinthians 15 although neither Paul nor the gospel writers maintained that Jesus's Soul was raptured by God at least not in the sense that I am describing what it means to be raptured in other words both Paul and the gospel writers say that Jesus was killed by human agents on the cross but they differ on the nature of the Resurrection The Pauline resurrection of Jesus is where the bodies stay buried and appearances were in the form of Visions Paul never spoke of an empty tomb that is a later development I'll return to the MP tomb later inshallah that's a good place this has been noticed by biblical Scholars that Paul doesn't mention the empty tomb at all and this is a it only appears in the much later gospels written after ad70 Mark being the earliest of course so it's actually not there in the uh first part of the first century this idea is unknown it's not there yeah and we'll talk about Mark in the mp2 narrative now in addition to the uh scriptural that is quranic problems with the Swoon Theory uh the Swoon theory is also historically a bit thorny so uh Muslims would have to Grant at least in a general sense uh the claim of the gospels that Jesus's body was promptly removed from the cross at the request of one or more of Jesus's followers so this is by itself highly unlikely although although not entirely unheard of so in his autobiography entitled the life of flavius Josephus the Jewish historian that Josephus who died around 100 of the Common Era he actually mentioned how he successfully requested Titus to remove from their crosses three crucified victims whom Josephus had recognized as being his old friends all three men were still alive when removed from their crosses but only one managed to survive so this event if it's true probably took place around 70 of the Common Era right around the time Mark wrote his gospel interestingly in Mark a man named Joseph or Joseph of Arimathea which sounds a lot like josephus's name Joseph barmattathia maybe it's a coincidence in any case Joseph requested the body of Jesus from Pontius Pilate and pilate marveled that Jesus had died already perhaps josephus's claim was floating around orally and Mark heard it and decided to model Joseph after Josephus but made it a point to emphasize that Jesus was in fact dead I'll come back to Joseph of Arimathea historically speaking however the truth is according to Airmen that most of the time crucified victims were left on their crosses long after they had expired precisely to deny them the Dignity of proper burials right leaving bodies on process to rot or to be eaten by animals was also an extremely effective way of deterring others from committing similar crimes against the state uh furthermore if Jesus swooned on the cross this would mean that the Roman centurions in charge of Jesus's crucifixion utterly failed at their job and such negligence would have put their own lives in imminent danger so in my opinion the Swoon theory is is problematic both scripturally and historically um when it comes to uh Divine Rapture from the cross as I said earlier secular history is a game of plausibility right while it is certainly possible that God intervened and seized Jesus's Soul before his natural death uh we can't say that it's plausible simply because secular history does not have access to God and cannot verify his actions this would be a non-historical claim um for example if if some absolutely conclusive archaeological evidence of an Israelite Exodus from ancient Egypt during the 18th or 19th dynasties were to be found a historian at least in the secular sense uh would not conclude that they left because God ordered them to do so this is simply unknowable from their perspective likewise if Jesus died unnaturally fast which is what Mark actually suggests there's no way that a historian could verify that God miraculously hastened the process of death maybe God did but it's not plausible for secular historians so when it comes to the event of the crucifixion our goal today is to steer clear of both scriptural and historical implausibility again we seek a theory of the crucifixion that is both in agreement with the Quran as well as historically plausible now what about the substitution Theory so this is in fact the most prevalent Theory found among Muslim exegets right and there are a few versions of this Theory but they all include some sort of Supernatural identity transference in other words according to substitution theorists somebody else either Judas Iscariot or Simon of cyreni or Barabbas or some unnamed Jew was magically transfigured into the likeness of Jesus uh and then crucified by the Romans by instigation of the Jewish leaders from a standpoint of quranic scripture this Theory works most exigents they take the phrase they did not kill him or crucify him to mean that Jesus was never anywhere near a cross right he did not Swoon nor was he raptured this this also works with the verse uh that states that g that God uh restrained the Israelites from harming Jesus peace be upon him so scripturally this seems to check off uh historically however this would constitute a miracle and miracles are the least plausible occurrences in addition to this I have my doubts as to whether Judas Iscariot and Simon of cyreni were actual historical persons perhaps some of these figures or the literary creations of the gospel writers for the purposes of advancing their respective christologies and I'll get into that later inshallah maybe Jesus was indeed somehow substituted the problem is that the substitution Theory does not help us achieve our stated goal of offering a crucifixion theory that is both historically plausible and scripturally sound let's go to the next one here now I want to say something about historians before we continue so a common Trope we hear from some atheists uh is that secular historians are objective and unbiased and inductive right they go where the evidence leads them while religious people are are impeded by their respective Faith commitments so this is just false we are all biased to a certain degree and anyone who denies this is just delusional all of us bring our various degrees of knowledge and limited experiences and emotions to Bear upon every aspect of Our Lives if secular historians were perfectly objective and unbiased then they should arrive at Absolute consensus on all matters of History obviously they do not I think it was um John Dominic Crossing who said and I'm paraphrasing we all make Jesus in our own image you know so was Jesus a protozealot and a scene a Pharisee a sad you see an apocalyptic Prophet a cynic philosopher or a slick-talking public Faith healing con man it depends on what historian you read uh in fact um there have been seasoned historians such as Bruno Bauer and G.A Wells who didn't even affirm a minimalist history of Jesus in other words they thought that it was more plausible that Jesus never existed and there are now at least two peer-reviewed books written by highly trained modern secular historians that deny that Jesus even ever existed these historians are called mythicists now personally I don't find their historical arguments very convincing uh but their conclusions just demonstrate uh the point that in modern historiographical uh studies even the entire concept of plausibility is a bit nebulous and ultimately subjective to a certain significant degree for mythicists uh such as you know Richard carrier and David Fitzgerald Tom Harper and Robert Price their shared contention that Jesus never existed has a probability greater than 50 percent that is non-existence of Jesus is more plausible than any minimalist historical existence according to carrier for example his book is called on the historicity of Jesus Jesus started out as an angel in the Pauline Epistles who made a revelatory appearance as a certain men after he was crucified by demons in the celestial realm not on Earth this Angelic Jesus was later you hemorized by the gospel writers who wanted him to be a man in an actual human history a literary Incarnation if you will the same thing happened to Zeus and Uranus who started off as Gods but were then made into human Kings by euhemoris who was this Greek writer in the third Century before the Common Era uh therefore the myth the mythicist concludes that the gospels are nothing more than historical fiction I.E myth masquerading as true history giving the appearance of History very similitude and this is what kelsus said in the second century about the Gospels I mentioned this because it is important to note that mythicists arrived at their conclusions by employing essentially the same Historical Method and looking at the same historical evidence as mainstream historians such as Airmen and Martin and Allison in litwa and Frederickson who vehemently defend the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth for example you know if you watch the debate between Robert price and Bart Airman two atheist historians they are quoting the same texts and looking at the same evidence yet arriving at vastly different conclusions right and then Airman would say the price you're not being inductive you're not going with the evidence is leading you but then Dr Dennis McDonald would say to Airman you're not being inductive you're not going where the evidence is leading you and McDonald's like Airman is a historicist yeah that's James Tabor who just retired from UNC you've had him on blogging theology yeah is a brilliant historian and has always been a brilliant historian Tabor believes that the talpia tune uh discovered in 1980 was plausibly the Tomb of Jesus and his family now I know that Airman disagrees with Tabor but what Airmen say that tabor's position is absolutely crazy and devoid of any reason I doubt it I mean would he say that that Tabor is blinded by his fundamentalist Christian faith Tabor is not a fundamentalist so I just put you make an extremely good point there actually and I I'm it's good to sometimes biblical Scholars professional historians into uh the first century particularly Jewish history and historical Jesus sometimes they're honest about this professor Dale Allison for example from Princeton who I've um held on Broadway a couple of times in in a recent work admitted that the uh and the tools for historical criticism of this period have failed to produce consensus amongst historians and he's very critical you know the form of criticism redaction criticism and so on you mentioned the Criterion of dissimilarity and so on he said there's actually been the whole project has failed and and this this show you initially when you spoke or at the very beginning about the uh the so-called you know the scientific Historical Method but it shows that really it's not really scientific because we don't say that about physics when it looks at the laws of physics we don't say it was just failed completely because physicists Just Disagree whether or not there are laws of physics it simply doesn't happen so it at the project according to Dallas and it has actually not produced the goods that his entire uh scholarly apparatus was set out to deliver and this is a damning indictment by one of of America's leading uh New Testament Scholars uh at Princeton so I think your point is well made yeah I mean I mean what air and say that it is not the least plausible that the talpiac family tomb once housed the ossuaries of of Jesus and some of his family members if he does say that then this just confirms my point that quote unquote objective Faith bracketing historians looking at the same evidence can come to vastly different conclusions yeah that's the whole point secular historians can be very much at odds and they also tend to change their minds now I'm certainly not a Jesus a Jesus mythicist right but I do believe that myth and Legend has probably so permeated the gospel accounts of Jesus's passion narratives that it is not at all Beyond Reason to dismiss them completely as historical fiction the passion narratives and I will demonstrate this we'll get there inshallah now now Muslims in the past have had good theological reasons for believing the words of the Quran and those reasons continue to hold true nowadays as I said we have ample evidence for trusting Alana's messenger but historically speaking and by historical here I mean the modern secular Western Paradigm historically speaking does it make sense to entertain the claim of the Quran on this matter I would argue it does if the quran's claim can be supported by historical evidence so people tend to dismiss the Quran because it came so many years after Jesus you know what does the Quran know about Jesus they say but if something is true then it's true so let me offer the following analogy suppose an American black man in the year 1900 uh claimed to be a descendant of Thomas Jefferson right and he believed this with all of his heart along with his family and friends and he was known by all who met him to be a good upright and truthful man throughout his entire life in his day mainstream historians would have rejected his claim and ridiculed him if not outright persecuted him now a hundred years later his descendants allowed authorities to exhume his body and lo and behold his claim was verified by DNA analysis now you know doing history is not like examining DNA it's not nearly as conclusive in fact history is probably the most imprecise of all the Sciences there's always going to be a degree of interpret of interpretation and of course the past cannot be reproduced in the science of History all we must do is demonstrate that something is plausible not simply possible if Muslims can show that it is plausible that Jesus of Nazareth was not crucified by examining the sources and evidence then critics cannot say that the quran's position is unhistorical after that mainstream historians must admit that they may not have gotten things right and as you said there are some like Dale Allison who are starting to come around if they refuse then they are guilty of the same type of dogmatism and deduction that they frequently accuse people of religion as having now Bart Airman is a very interesting example he has said many times in public debates that he does not consider the the canonical gospels to be very valuable as as historical documents and he rightly points out the inconsistencies historical improbabilities and outright contradictions in the passion narratives and mentions that if the gospel writers got the minor things wrong then how do we know that they didn't get the major things wrong in other words if the details are wrong historically why do we assume that the big picture is right he says this all the time you know here's a quote from him quote they are meaning the gospels uh sorry are they the gospels the kind of sources that historians would want to establish what probably happened in the past I think the answer to that question is no end quote yet when he is confronted with the quranic position regarding the crucifixion it seems like he suddenly turns Christian apologists tooth and nail to defend his opinion that the crucifixion of Jesus is one of the most quote solid facts of history and even mocks those who say otherwise and yet among his uh among his primary pieces of evidence for the crucifixion are the gospels the same gospels that he has made a career of tearing limb from limb so his logic seems to be that despite uh the problems in the gospels they are still before the Quran right so he's an atheist historian so before and after are very significant for him and I'll address that in a minute but what gets me uh is when Christians use this before after argument right they say why do Muslims believe a text you know I in the Quran uh that came 600 years after the New Testament why would you believe a man the prophet Muhammad peace be upon him who said something that contradicts the New Testament 600 years later so I have a question for the Christians why would you believe in the New Testament Jesus who committed blasphemy by claiming to be divine over 1400 years after Moses said God is not a man that he should lie why would you believe a man the New Testament Jesus who said something that contradicts the Torah 1400 years later so my response to the Christian who also believes in Revelation and prophecy is very simple God revealed the truth about Jesus 600 years later in other words the Christian narrative is wrong you know this is not difficult and now we'll get into that but how will they answer my question will they say no no Jesus did not commit blasphemy they won't say that they can't say that because then Jesus didn't claim to be God you know if they say that the passage and the Torah that says God is not a man is not authentic then they're admitting that the Bible is corrupt if they say something ridiculous like yeah it says God is not a man but it doesn't say that he won't become a man then Jesus didn't commit blasphemy so they are stuck at an impasse now with respect to the quran's position regarding the crucifixion let me offer a useful analogy so I'm going to read something and then I will comment so on November 22nd 1963 President John F Kennedy was assassinated while riding in his presidential motorcade in Dallas Texas almost immediately the authorities had a suspect in custody his name was Lee Harvey Oswald a former U.S marine Oswald was the perfect person for the American public to hate he defected to the Soviet Union a few years earlier and was apparently a dedicated communist this was during a time when the average American citizen had very little knowledge of the dark workings of his government this was well before we had heard of the Gulf of Tonkin or operation Northwoods or naira asaba or Building 7 and wmds two days after his arrest Oswald who claimed that he was quote just a patsy was shot and killed by a nightclub owner named Jack Ruby who may have had ties to the FBI and organized crime syndicates Ruby conveniently died in prison of an apparent blood clot in 1967. in September 1964 the Warren Commission conducted uh sorry concluded that Oswald assassinated the president and that he acted alone we were told definitively that Oswald fired three bullets from his position on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository One Missed wildly while two others found their Mark with a deadly precision this was exactly what the freedom loving American masses wanted to hear one man a lone wolf a traitor and he's dead any talk of conspiracy at this point was just ridiculous unpatriotic and even dangerous at the very scene of the assassination however there were several eyewitnesses who said that they heard gunshots coming from a hilly area of several hundreds of feet in front of the president's motorcade this area was called the grassy knoll a young married couple William and Gail Newman were standing on Elm Street in Dealey Plaza along with her two sons when the president headed directly toward them the Newmans were situated exactly in between the grassy knoll and the president's motorcade Williams stated in an affidavit that he thought the first two shots sounded like distant firecrackers that seemed to startle the president the third shot however was believed by William to have been fired from directly behind him and his family from the grassy knoll this was unstickably a gunshot and both William and Gail remember the president's head exploding with blood and brain matter just a few feet in front of them at this point William and Gail instinctively hit the deck and covered their son's bodies in fear that they were caught in the middle of a deadly Crossfire Williams said that he was close enough at one point to hear Jackie Kennedy's horrified cries coming from the presidential motorcade both William and his older son also stated that they remembered seeing armed men running toward the hill behind them despite their eyewitness testimony in proximity to the assassination the Newmans were inexplicably not interviewed by the Warren Commission wow throughout the 1960s and early 70s historians were confident that the Warren Commission had gotten things right but then on March 6 1975 a short film shot by an eyewitness to the assassination named Abraham Zapruder was aired on network television the separator film vividly captured the gruesome damage caused by the final bullet as a struck the president the president's head flew back into the left causing brain matter to explode out onto the trunk of the presidential limo the footage corroborated the statements of the Newmans who stated that the final shot originated from in front of the president's motorcade and behind them from the grassy knoll the importance of this appruiter film cannot be overstated although nothing is absolutely conclusive the film provided compelling evidence of a possible nay plausible second gunman and that by definition is a conspiracy today however people are split on the matter interestingly only the youngest Newman's son who is now in his early 60s and who does not remember the assassination believes in the standard Narrative of The Lone Gunman okay so let's put this into proper perspective historians are still trying to figure out what exactly happened in broad daylight in Delhi Plaza on the early afternoon of November 22nd 1963 less than 60 years ago and this is with access to multiple eyewitnesses and video cameras yet Bart Airman and Christian polemicists want want us to accept that the Quran contains a quote historical error because it denies that the solitary execution of a specific man took place two thousand years ago in Palestine an execution that may have lasted no more than a few hours and about which a single writing or statement from an eyewitness is not Extant in addition to this anyone who believes this uh this event as constituting anything short of historical Bedrock must be blinded by his religious zealotry and is thus deserving of mockery so this is not a perfect analogy I must admit but I think it's adequate enough to get my point across verse 157 of Surah number four of the Quran is analogous to these apruder film the supreuter film was broadcast over a dozen years after the assassination uh but originated with someone who had first-hand experience of the event the quranic verse 4157 was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad in the year 626 627 by one who has direct knowledge of history for a secular historian however my my claim of the quran's revelatory status is not nearly good enough The crucial question is is um there is if 4157 can be substantiated by examining the evidence in other words can the claim of this verse that they did not kill Jesus be historically plausible okay the verse declares they did not kill him I.E Jesus nor crucify him but it was made to appear so unto them but then to qualify this statement the Quran says and those who differed about it the crucifixion were in doubt concerning it they did not have certain knowledge except that they followed conjecture wow there are four key words used in the second half of this verse okay the Quran is essentially making a claim here that it wants us to investigate so first we are told that the early peoples about the crucifixion that the crucifixion was a point of contention then we're told that there was a shack check means doubt about the crucifixion and Shaq is like 50 50 like two positions that are basically equal in probability it can go either way then we're told that they did not have adamant knowledge about the crucifixion meaning that it was just information it did not come from a reliable source lastly we are told that they ended up following Thun conjecture hearsay where one position was given preponderance over another however then in Arabic suggests that the contrary may also be the case in other words the contrary is still plausible this is what the Quran is claiming if we do the research we will come to this conclusion the Christians and Jews ended up following hearsay reports about some crucifixion event from non-eye Witnesses when there was a difference of opinion with multiple scenarios being plausible historically so is this accurate can I before so before we continue I just want to ask you um about that verse um just a small question when you say it was a mage to appear to them that it was so who is the implied actor there who made it appear to them that it was so is this referencing God or is it or some other uh who is implied in that episode I mean be conceptual sort of um um active uh the the the doer of the verb most of the Exodus say that God God uh engineered this event God made it appear so unto them uh there may be some different opinion about this and I have uh something else to say about this okay later in the presentation all right thank you yeah we'll get there sorry yeah yeah no it's okay so so according to the so according to the second part of this verse we are essentially told okay that none of the evidence that Jews and Christians Marshall to support Jesus's crucifixion was written by an eyewitness to this alleged historical event every epistle gospel and historical record in Christian Jewish and Roman sources without exception came much later and were authored by people who were not there these sources are conjectural they are than me as the Quran said today we know that this is true but back when the prophet first uttered these words Christians believed in the following and many of them still do uh Paul took his teachings from the original disciples with whom he had a congenial relationship Mark a student of Peter a disciple wrote the Gospel of Mark which states that Jesus was crucified Matthew a disciple of Jesus wrote the Gospel of Matthew which states that Jesus was crucified Luke a pupil and traveling companion of Paul who was taught by the disciples who wrote the Gospel of Luke and acts which state that Jesus was crucified John the disciple whom Jesus loved wrote the Gospel of John which states that Jesus was crucified Peter a disciple of Jesus wrote first and second Peter which states that Christ suffered for our sins presumably by crucifixion all of these attributions turned out to be false all of them this is standard historical criticism these gospels and Epistles are later writings that were either anonymously written or they are Brazen forgeries where their authors are pretending to be Apostles of Jesus and pretending to be eyewitnesses in other words the Quran is correct the Quran made a statement 600 years after Jesus that turned out to be true according to the dominant view of modern historical critics it took historians a few centuries so I just um just a great what you say but I just want to emphasize that when you say this is the standard historical critical view in my to my knowledge most historians in this field are actually Christians in the United States and Germany and France and Britain it's overwhelmingly Christian dominators about people like Urban are exceptions these are he started off of course as a Biblical scholar who was an Evangelical so he moved into atheism later in his career the reason I mentioned that is what you've said is actually accepted by most Scholars who are Christians to be the case so we're not dealing here with hardened Skeptics who hate Christianity uh we're dealing here with Christian committed Christians themselves I mean I mentioned a whole raft of names from Jimmy Dunn onwards who do believe in the Trinity but nevertheless acknowledge the historical evidence is so compelling to them then to the company conclusion say the gospels for example are not written by eyewitnesses and the problem is most ordinary lay Christians shall we say who are not familiar with what their own Scholars have been saying for a couple of centuries now are unaware of this and continue to believe that Matthew the Apostle Matthew wrote Matthew the Apostle John wrote John etc etc so this huge golf this Schism which is well understood uh that Bob ehrmann has references uh other people uh that most Christians are not educated unfortunately in basic historiography which is practiced by their own Scholars so this is a real problem in terms of the uh the scholarship for uh the Bible actually but anyway right yeah no you're right this is the standard historical criticism among non-confessional and confessional spell I mean Dale Martin is a trinitarian he believes in the Trinity absolutely uh Raymond brown right so yes um this is across the board yes that's true Quran also says the Quran says their forgeries have deceived them about their religion so this is true now compare this to the New Testament Jesus who made confirmed false prophecies not the so the New Testament Jesus not the real Jesus so here's my question to the to the Christian if the New Testament Jesus made false prophecies why believe him when he claimed to be divine and in fact most historians do not believe that Jesus claimed Divinity most historians agree with the Quran here not the New Testament and by the way any man and we mentioned this in the past in almost every podcast any man uh Jew or Gentile priest or Rabbi Carpenter or blacksmith any man who claims to be divine is the liar according to the Torah and the Quran okay now years ago I debated a Christian apologist named Mike Lacona uh and he would go on to write a 700 page tone called the resurrection of Jesus right Mr doctor now Lacona use the analogy of the Titanic right so he said that everyone agrees that the Titanic sank the differences are in the peripherals the details when did it sink exactly when did it sink you know when did it break in half did the band really keep playing Etc so his point is Jesus was crucified everyone agrees the differences are in the details so my response is twofold to this number one I do not Grant the premise that quote everyone agreed that Jesus was crucified I think there's evidence to suggest that Christians prior to and concurrent with Paul including the disciples plausibly denied the crucifixion and I'll get into that number two uh in addition to eyewitness testimony there is forensic physical evidence that the Titanic sank this is why everyone agrees that it's saying you can see pictures or film of the Titanic today sitting at the bottom of the Atlantic right is there physical forensic or material evidence of Jesus's alleged crucifixion is there any material evidence of any Jew who was ever crucified by the Romans in ancient Palestine apparently tens of thousands of Jews were crucified and all archaeologists I've ever found was a single heel bone of a man with a nail driven through it they call him johanan I don't know how they know his name but that's what they call him I think he just made it up uh tens of thousands apparently crucified one heel One Nail that's it so either the numbers are greatly exaggerated or the vast majority of the time victims were tied to their crosses and by the way only the Gospel of John says that Jesus was nailed to the cross and it's an implicit reference now Christian apologist might say at this point but there is physical evidence of Jesus's crucifixion uh what about all of these holy relics sprawled across the Christian world that provide material evidence of Jesus's crucifixion what about the crown of thorns the pieces of the True Cross the Shroud of Turin okay so let's deal with these briefly uh because this is you know easy so the so-called Crown of Thorns displayed at Notre Dame cathedral in France this only popped up in the 5th Century before the of the Common Era 5th Century CE it is impossible to trace it back to first century Palestine let alone back to Jesus of Nazareth right if Christians want to believe it's authentic because of a spiritual hunch or some feeling or Insight fine but but don't tell me it's valid historically um when it comes to the various pieces and splinters of the quote True Cross church leaders have been very hesitant to submit fragments for scientific testing since testing is not only expensive it also damages The Relic perhaps more importantly however is the church's desire to preserve its reputation especially since uh what happened in 2016. so a supposed fragment of the so-called true cross you know venerated for a thousand years at Waterford cathedral in Ireland was radiocarbon dated by researchers at Oxford in 2016 and the results were less than thrilling for the church the fragment was dated to the 11th century of the Common Era wow uh the most famous Christian Relic by far is called the uh the Sacramento or the Shroud of Turin so the Shroud first emerged in France in the middle of the 14th century and was almost immediately immediately denounced as a fraud by the bishop of Troy's uh nonetheless the popularity and sort of the Mystique of the Shroud grew exponentially especially when it was moved to Turin and Italy in 1578. it was radiocarbon dated by scientists at three different institutions in 1988 and all three tests determined a range between 1260 and 1390 CE with a 95 confidence today the official position of the Catholic Church a lot of people know this but the official position of the Catholic church is that the Shroud of Turin is a representation of Christ not emphasis on the prefix re representation in other words it's not an icon uh sorry in other words it is an icon not a relic that's the official position it's not a relic okay and and by the way there are two Scholars Andrea nicoletti and um uh a man named uh I think cast Andrew Casper who have done fantastic work on this topic conclusively the Shroud of Turin has nothing to do with the historical Jesus of Nazareth the truth is that the manufacture of relics in the Middle Ages proved to be very profitable you'd have these hood-winged masses right in hopes of attaining blessings uh they would flock to various pilgrimage sites just to catch a glimpse of these counterfeits and Relics were often sold to unsuspecting and well-mean buyers for incredible prices I mean it was a really it was basically big business right it's one of those sad but uh famous relics is the if I can put it this way the foreskin of Jesus and apparently there are thousands of foreskins of Jesus as sacred relics around which obviously all can't be real uh just obviously yeah and also also you uh Church authorities realized that there were several death crowds you know and over and over 30 crucifixion Nails wow yeah yeah and over 100 Thorns from the crown and these are all floating across the Christian world and all hailed as being authentic so what the church actually did is they conjured up this idea that most of these objects were contact relics right in other words these were objects that came into contact with the genuine articles and were thus also genuine in some sense that's you know some hardcore damage control the bottom line is that there is no direct evidence no direct material evidence of Jesus's death by crucifixion so who said Jesus was crucified well the authors of the four gospels traditionally believed to be two Disciples of Jesus and two Disciples of the disciples all stated clearly that Jesus was crucified by the Romans at the instigation of the Jewish leaders and that he died on the cross but here's the problem according to a near consensus of New Testament Scholars both confessional and non-confessional as we mentioned the gospels of Mark Matthew Luke and John were anonymously written books that were later attributed to their supposed eponymous authors these books were actually written between the years 70 and 100 CE or plausibly later by Highly Educated third or fourth generation Greek speaking Pauline Christians not by the Aramaic speaking Disciples of Jesus nor even the Disciples of the disciples in fact it is very likely that the authors of the gospels had no connection whatsoever with the original disciples furthermore none of the Gospel authors claimed to be disciples where I wish witnesses to the events that they described if the disciple Matthew wrote the Gospel of Matthew it doesn't stand to reason that he would copy substantial portions of Mark's gospel verbatim especially since Mark never met Jesus with respect to the book of Acts I think it can be convincingly argued that it was mostly a work of historical fiction as it plainly contradicts material found in the earlier Paul line Corpus and I mentioned in a previous podcast the author of Acts clearly intended to present an idealized picture of the early church it's revisionist history it's written in the second century that severely sanitizes the conflict between what we call yeah on one side and Camp Jane slash Peter on the other yeah I mean acts reads very much like an ancient novel I mean this doesn't mean that it's totally fictitious but Luke did write according to his genre and Luke never claimed to be an inspired writer how did an ancient historian write history well the answer is by simply making up a lot of things Luke imitated the literary style and method of his perennial teachers Herodotus and thucydides who made up the dialogue according to what they thought was appropriate I mean thucydides admitted that he was the real author of Pericles famous funeral oration you know this is why Peter and Paul sound like the same person in Acts they are the same person in reality Luke right these are very uncomfortable facts when I first came across them myself when I was studying uh uh studies were very very disturbing as you say facilities you know one of the founders of History historiography uh and you know I respected historian but he said look I wasn't there at this battle at this war and this is what my jet this is what I think the generals there would have said on the occasion because that would have been the appropriate thing for them to say so he created speeches and put them into their mouths so the idea of ancient historiography was actually to invent speeches not out of some kind of malicious or I'm creating forgeries here but simply because there was no record of the speeches and so they put them into their mouths and what you've just said is actually the standard view when it comes to acts the book of Acts by Luke that Luke wasn't there the speech is attributed to Paul and Peter and others were put on the lips of of Peter and Paul and others and that this is the standard view now because that's how they did history in the first century and today to read back we wouldn't do that today well no of course we wouldn't because we have a different methodology different criteria you don't invent speeches just like that but at that time you could and you did and it was respectable to do so and Luke as a man of his time would have done exactly the same so we don't really have the words of Paul and Peter and acts at all unfort I wish we did but unfortunately it's very very implausible to suggest that these are the actual words of these two people unfortunately right yeah this the author would say this is what I think they said this is what's plausible to me and historians they generally they generally like thucydides better than Herodotus because thucydides is actually considered to be this were the father of scientific history uh because he he doesn't entertain this idea sometimes Herodotus will say well there was an earth earthquake in a certain place and maybe this was Poseidon you know doing something in the ocean right whereas thucydides he sort of you know sticks to the facts as it were from a more or secular standpoint but yeah he admits this is this is what I think and we look at first and second Peter you know I mean these are these are Brazen forgeries written by someone pretending to be Peter at the end of the first century or early second surgery so this really leaves us with Paul the earliest author of the New Testament right and as we know Paul was not a disciple of the historical Jesus uh nor had he known the historical Jesus now obviously then he was not present at Jesus's alleged crucifixion not an eyewitness according to the synoptic gospels no disciple was present as a crucifixion there are 13 Epistles in the New Testament that explicitly claimed Pauline authorship okay yet Scholars are almost unanimous that Paul only really wrote seven of them so first Thessalonians first and second Corinthians Romans Galatians Philippians and and Philemon are fight Neiman however you want to say that the other six are forgeries in his name in fact according to mainstream textual critics at least 11 of the 27 books that made it into the New Testament Canon are forgeries to say it another way over 40 percent of the books in the New Testament that many Christians consider could be the words of God were written by imposters who according to Airmen may have intended to deceive their audiences and and got away with it uh Mrs according to mainstream historians so why is Paul so important for us right now well the answer is Paul of Tarsus was the first person in recorded history to claim that Jesus was crucified and no one other than Paul Christian or otherwise explicitly mentions that Jesus was crucified and any other document we know of until we get to Mark and 70 of the Common Era and of course the Evangelist Mark was highly influenced by Pauline christology in fact Paul is by far and away the main character in the book of Acts I mean it should really be called the acts of Paul yeah Christian apologists insist that surely the disciples believed that Jesus had been crucified I mean this is a nice claim but there's no there's simply no compelling evidence for it nor is there any compelling historical evidence that tells us what happened to the original disciples all we have are later Legends the the so-called Epistles of Peter and James are later forgeries intended to smooth over Pauline and jamesonian hostilities they were not written by Peter in Chains and we already mentioned that the gospels of of Matthew and John are anonymous according to historians James the just right uh yeah was the leader of the Apostles after Jesus's departure for 30 years and yet we have no record whatsoever that James ever wrote anything are we really to believe that during the first 80 years of Christian history Paul was the only Christian in the world who was writing letters to various believing congregations where on Earth are the authentic letters of James Peter Thomas Etc why do we only have one side of the story James as head of the Jerusalem nazarenes wrote nothing really for 30 years Peter wrote nothing Thomas wrote nothing Dr Steve Mason he he said it like this he said it's like he said it's like hearing one side of a telephone conversation right what's the other person saying we don't know I mean we can make educated speculations but we don't know for certain where are the books and gospels and Epistles and histories of the James sonian Jewish Christians of the first century why was the first 80 years of Christianity scrubbed with a pawline sponge I mean is not the Quran correct when it says that the Christians disregarded a significant portion of what was given to them by God the Quran is is correct again here's a quote from former New Testament uh professor of Christian origins of Burton Mack okay he says quote for almost 2 000 years the Christian imagination of Christian Origins has echoed the gospel stories contained in the New Testament that is not surprising the gospel accounts erased the pre-gospel histories their inclusion within the church's New Testament consigned other accounts to Oblivion end quote Burton Mack on redescribing Christian Origins you know Josephus mentions 21 different jesuses 21 different yeshuas according to Steve Mason the only Undisputed mention of Yeshua hanutsuri Jesus of Nazareth is when Josephus speaks of James and the death of James in Antiquities 20 many many historians consider the testimonial flavian in book 18 to be a total fabrication therefore it is plausible that Josephus did not even mention a death of Jesus by crucifixion James was much more important to Josephus than Jane than than Jesus and this actually makes sense from the perspective of a non-Christian non-confessional historian because James was the head of the nazarenes for almost 30 years Jesus was a public preacher for probably only one year now a Christian apologist at this point will say what about the Creed of First Corinthians 15 right the Creed the Creed this is their sort of bread and butter right Paul said that he received it and then delivered it to the Corinthians uh he received it from the original disciples this is the claim okay first of all what does the so-called Creed say it says Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures and that he was buried and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures which scriptures it's hard to tell it continues and that and that he was seen by kehus who's probably Peter uh the Aramaic name of Peter was kefa it continues then of The Twelve says Paul a bit strange right according to the gospels Peter was one of the twelve and Judas is already dead also in the gospels women were the first Witnesses I'll get to that later the cree continues after that he was seen by more than 500 Brethren at once of whom the greater part remain unto this day but some are fallen asleep after that he was seen of James and all of the Apostles and last of all he was seen of me also okay so the point that Christian apologists want to make here is that Paul quote unquote received this ancient Creed directly from the disciples that the disciples taught him that Christ died for our sins okay Etc at first glance this seems like a good argument it seems like this is what Paul was saying however uh such an interpretation ignores the broader context of Paul's claims Paul is extremely adamant in his letter to the Galatians that the gospel he is preaching is not of human origin and he clarifies this in the next verse for I neither received it of man nor was I taught it but by the revelation Apocalypse of Jesus Christ elsewhere after Paul claimed that he met with Apostles in Jerusalem he wrote as for those who were held in high esteem they added nothing to my message wow so there you have it Paul received quote unquote his gospel from what he claimed was a was a revelation of Christ not from the disciples nor any human Witnesses notice that Paul used the same exact verbon in both First Corinthians 15 3 in the Creed and in Galatians 12. it was a so-called revelation of Christ that told Paul that Christ died for our sins Etc he is not claiming that he received this from the disciples in other words the is not the chain of transmission of Christ died for our sins Etc the is not of the of the Creed of Christianity begins with Paul historically now I'm not saying that Paul invented the crucifixion I do believe that there was a crucifixion event where probably multiple Jews were crucified and that certain other Jews from the very beginning were under the impression that this one crucified Troublemaker was the same man who instigated a disturbance at the temple a few days earlier and I'll go step by step through my plausible historical narrative or the end of my presentation inshallah but for now let me say this I think that rumors of Jesus's alleged crucifixion trickled down from certain Jewish authorities in Jerusalem into the general population until it reached the ears of Saul of Tarsus AKA Paul who was somewhere outside of Jerusalem rumors also spread of this man Jesus appearing to his disciples after his apparent death on the cross so my contention is that while Paul wasn't the first Jew to say that Jesus was crucified he was however the first professed quote Christian to maintain that Jesus was crucified and his main motivation was christology okay now Paul accepted hearsay reports that I'd come out of Jerusalem stating that Jesus had been put to death on a cross but could not explain how it was also reported that many people saw Jesus after his reported death you know the simplest explanation the most historical explanation is what that Jesus was never killed that he was never crucified uh not that he was killed buried and then his disciples had Mass hallucinations nor that he was killed and raised from the dead so Paul believed a false report you know this happens you know it was fake news as they say on the day of uhud okay there was a false report that the prophet Muhammad was killed and we actually know what happened a companion named who resembled the prophet and who was the standard Bearer on the on that day was killed by an idolater named IBN kamiya IBN kamiya shouted I've killed Muhammad and this rumor spread like a wildfire and some of the companions actually retreated back to Medina to defend the city and many residents of Medina heard this false report as well it happens so so Paul was able to reconcile these reports after having an epiphany what he calls an apocalypsis a revelation that eventually led to a religion called Christianity now I encourage the viewers to go back and watch the podcast that we did on Paul versus James for more clarity but here's what I'll say about Paul for now um and I'm not going to mince words and I apologize in advance if some Christians find this offensive probably this entire podcast is a bit offensive to them but I think it's important to speak honestly uh and with clarity about these things so I'm going to tell you what I really think okay so Paul of Tarsus was an ethnically jewish Roman citizen okay he was a traveling Tent Maker an amateur Hellenistic philosopher I think that Paul wanted to make it big in philosophy okay he was a marginal religious Jew who had also studied some stoicism middle platonism epicureanism and he was familiar with the beliefs of some of the popular mystery cults in fact Tarsus in the days of Paul was one of the major centers of Greco-Roman philosophy in the ancient world I believe that Paul was a very tormented man I mentioned this before he admitted that a messenger of Satan abused him uh he said that he had some sort of uh thorn in his flesh and I agree with the opinion of Scholars who say that the thorn was some sort some source of continual annoyance or trouble you know imagine running a marathon with a rock in your shoe right it's a continual source of annoyance it keeps poking you I think that Paul's Thorne was people constantly denouncing him as a fraud Jews pagans and Christians this was continuous throughout his entire life I do not believe Paul when he says that he was a Pharisee and I certainly don't believe Luke who claimed that Paul was a student of Gamaliel after years of contemplating this issue I have come to leaned towards the position that Paul was basically a charlatan Paul was a self-aggrandizing mean-spirited deceiver a con man basically a snake oil salesman who would say just about anything to get Fame and wealth he wanted desperately to make a name for himself he was a prototype of the televangelist swindlers who deceived their gullible audiences for fame and money I mean just from the subtext of First Corinthians I think it's I think it's very clear that the Corinthians were seriously questioning is Apostolic pedigree legitimacy he says am I not an apostle have I not seen our Lord this is my defense to those who would question my authority I I think there are several reasons why people suspected Paul for one thing Paul deliberately misquoted the Torah to advance his theology right uh in First Corinthians he quoted Deuteronomy 25 4 accurately but then makes this very bizarre midrash you know he says he says it is written you shall not muzzle in Ox while it is treading out the grain so what he means by this is that you should all pay me money for what I have done for you he says uh in First Corinthians 9 11 uh if we have so in spiritual seed among you is it too much if we reap a material Harvest from you I mean just watch these popular preachers and televangelists the New Testament Jesus actually said it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle and for a rich man to enter Paradise but if you listen to these preachers they say you know sow that seed and reap that Harvest paraphrasing Paul all the time in other words pay me pay me money so I think that the so-called ebunites who were really the early James Sonia nazarenes of every nights as a pejorative term I think that they were on to something about Paul he was a deceiver and an apostate in First Corinthians 9 Paul tells the Corinthians you know collect the money and when I get there I'll give it to the poor Saints in Jerusalem you know okay in Romans 3 Paul refers to my lie as he puts it my lie now there are different ways that Christian apologies try to explain what Paul may have meant here everything from Paul was speaking hypothetically to Paul was quoting an imaginary interlocutor but it seems to me that Paul was caught in some lie we don't exactly know what and so he essentially says if my if a lie of mine ended up glorifying God is it really still a sin this seems to be his argument um this doesn't mean that Paul did not believe in anything he was saying I think he did believe uh I uh that he was living in the end times I think he was sort of a half believer half deceiver who had Justified his deception in some way to himself probably like most televangelists you know whatever made these guys you know sleep at night um that's what made Paul sleep at night uh I also don't believe Paul when he claimed to have met James or his Claim about withstanding Peter to his face I doubt that Paul ever personally knew the Disciples of Jesus uh but he knew of them and I think that James in Jerusalem was aware of Paul's false claims and would send missionaries to cities that Paul had evangelized to correct Paul's Falls gospel Paul claimed to have met these men James and Peter because it gave him clout it bolstered his credibility in the eyes of his followers who were being told to denounce him by the Nazarene missionaries sent by James so so so Paul saw an opportunity to marry Judaism with Greco-Roman religion and thus become the founder of a new religious and philosophical movement and he would make his teachings I.E his gospel as he puts it the intersection of two Traditions Judaism and Hellenism according to Paul the Jewish Messiah was the latest iteration of a dying and Rising savior man God who vicariously atoned for our sins now naturally Paul knew next to nothing about the historical Jesus he never met him and frankly did not care much about his actual Ministry and teachings all he knew was that some Jewish authorities were claiming to have killed Jesus of Nazareth a man who allegedly claimed to be some sort of Messiah and yet many claimed that they saw him alive after his alleged crucifixion this was all Paul needed to get his project off the ground his entire gospel was formulated around these two rumors essentially that Jesus was killed by crucifixion and that he was seen alive thereafter so just to be clear again Paul was not the first person to suggest that Jesus was crucified this is not my contention my contention is that Paul was the first so-called believer in Jesus as Messiah to insist that Jesus was crucified and he did this primarily for theological reasons we do not know whether the Disciples of Jesus believed that he was crucified and I think that there are good reasons for maintaining that they did not believe he was crucified okay the gospel writers who were not disciples were Pauline Christians they believed in these sort of broad Strokes of Paul's gospel that Jesus was killed by crucifixion for our sins and was then resurrected in some sense this is the Bare Bones of Pauline christology the gospel writers were also very much aware of much dissent as to whether Jesus was actually crucified and there's evidence of this in their gospels the gospels are essentially extended passion narratives that support the central Paul line message that Jesus was the Divine Son of God who died on the cross for our sins then rose from the dead in some sense the evangelists presented their specific passion narratives as being events that took place in history however the primary goal of the gospel writers was to impart theology not to give us accurate history they wrote history through the lens of their theology so these are polemical tractates the author of John admitted this in John 20 31 these things have been written in order to convince you that Jesus is the son of God and a close examination of the passion narratives leaves little doubt that the series of events that they described are highly implausible from a historical standpoint and we'll go over these events in a few minutes inshallah I'll show you uh what I mean um but let's first answer an important question posed by Dr Bart ehrmann okay this question is actually stumped many Muslim duat callers to Islam his question is who would make up a crucified Messiah right in other words Jesus must have been crucified because no Jew would make up a crucified Messiah crucified Messiah or killed the Messiah as an oxymoron what Jew would ever cook up such a thing well in my mind the answer is simple the answer is Paul of Tarsus so Paul is a highly hellenized Jew who said a lot of things that the majority of Jews found offensive I think FC Bauer and Walter Bauer got it right Paul was the corrupter of the Gospel I think Thomas Jefferson also held this position as an educated Layman but even with that said Paul likely believed as did several Jews in the first century that the Prophecies of Daniel 9 were about to be fulfilled right I believe that Paul was an apocalypticist he genuinely believed that the world as we know it was about to end and in my opinion Daniel 9 has has nothing to do with the first century CE uh but many Jews in the first century did believe that Daniel 9 was referring to their time including most likely Paul and in Daniel 9 we are told that a messiah will be cut off that is a messiah will be killed a messiah there's no definite article in the Hebrew the term Messiah as you know is a very loose term and that's enough it could refer to a priest a prophet or some military leader now Dr Richard carrier who's an atheist and a mythicist although I think a very interesting thinker and historian he makes a good point here he says that the reason why Josephus mentioned so many jesuses that is so many Joshua's because Jesus's name Yeshua is essentially Joshua right a shortened form like Josh the reason why there were so many jesuses during Jesus's time was because Jewish parents were naming their sons after Israel's Greatest Warrior Joshua in hopes of him becoming uh being martyred while fighting the Roman that's interesting due to this passage in Daniel 9 they wanted to self-fulfill this prophecy there they wanted their sons to be this Messiah so to answer Airmen the idea of a dying or killed Messiah giving his life as a martyr for the sake of saving his Nation as it were was not unheard of among Jews in the pre-christian first century now Paul being an intensely ambitious amateur philosopher and desperate to make a name for himself sees the opportunity to marry this trendy Jewish idea of a murdered Messiah with the popular Pagan notion of a dying and Rising savior man God but for Paul Jesus wasn't simply a messiah he was the davidic king Messiah who whose supposed Resurrection inaugurated the coming kingdom of God which was imminent Paul believed that it would manifest in his lifetime and he was wrong so for Paul the danielic idea of a martyred Messiah was significantly and radically modified theologically Paul's Messiah was the Messiah who saved people by literally dying for their sins so who would make up a crucified Messiah an ethnically jewish apocalypticist and syncretistic Hellenistic philosopher named Paul of Tarsus that's who I have to I'll have to remember that string of adjectives it's very good in in my next next time I mentioned who paulus was yeah um and and now um so let's let's look let's look briefly at a couple of passages in Paul's letters okay one to the Galatians and one to the Corinthians so this is Galatians 3 and First Corinthians 1. okay the the alleged crucifixion was definitely a point of major contention among the congregations that Paul had founded this is just a fact and this is what the Quran says the Quran says that there was among the early Christians about the supposed crucifixion again that's 4 157 chapter 4 verse 157 of the Quran the Quran is correct there was a plurality of christianities even in Paul's day the Quran is correct about this I personally believe that Paul wrote his letter to the Galatians because he was being exposed as a fraud you know Apostles sent by James from Jerusalem traveled to galatia to correct Paul's deviant teachings Paul had to do some major damage control so just some quick background information so Paul had a big problem on his hands when writing his letter to the Galatians so number one he needed to convince his congregation that his gospel message was consistent with that of James because James was universally recognized as the head of the nazarenes after Jesus and number two he had to simultaneously explain why that James Soni and apostles who must have appealed to James when they visited galatia and Paul's wake were in Paul's words false Brethren Hypocrites and teachers of a different gospel I mean we can only imagine the confusing scene in galatia the Galatians must have been scratching their heads and wondering why they're seemingly trustworthy teacher Paul had taught them doctrines that did not agree with Jesus the successor brother and recognized head of the entire Messianic movement James the just so in chapter 1 of of Galatians Paul tried to mitigate this tension by insisting that despite receiving his gospel from no man he did nonetheless eventually go to Jerusalem to meet with Peter and James and Paul mentioned this while swearing before God that he was not lying I'm not lying I'm not lying this is probably because the apostles were calling him a liar Paul's desperate oath to the Galatians reveals an interesting potential subtext it is likely that the jamesonian apostles accused Paul of being an unauthorized teacher of the gospel and a false Apostle of Jesus it is also likely that the apostles asked the Galatians as they had asked the Corinthians to demand Paul to produce a letter of recommendation from James and ejaza a teaching license from James only James authorized Apostles everyone answered to James now interestingly interestingly marcion um who is the early Christian heretic he had an early version of Galatians that he quoted in his book The apostolicon he died around 160 of the Common Era and in marcion's version of Galatians uh um verses 18 to 24 of chapter one we're not even there in other words Paul's claim of visiting Jerusalem and meeting James and Peter is not there wow naturally tertullian and other early church fathers accused marcion of truncating and falsifying the text however many scholars maintain that marcian's virgin aversion may have represented in many respects an earlier form of Galatians gosh that was subsequently interpolated by the proto-orthodox to bolster the teachings and claims of Paul the the the oldest extant manuscript of Galatians is called p46 okay and it's dated to 200 of the Common Era perhaps as early as 175 but even if we take the permanent post like the early date of 175 that's 120 years after Paul wrote the original Us in chapter two Paul seems to have doubled down on his claims he boldly asserted that 14 years after his initial meeting with James he returned to Jerusalem to preach the gospel there as well it was then claims Paul that James kephus and John who seemed to be pillars in Paul's World so-called Killers after having recognized the quote Grace that was given to Paul bestowed upon him as well as Barnabas the right hands of fellowship and just as a side note Bart Urban is inclined to the position that Paul claimed to be the Apostle to the nations of Isaiah 42. and we know from a previous podcast that the servant of Isaiah 42 is clearly the prophet Muhammad right and in Galatians Paul claimed that he went to Arabia for three years why because the servant of Isaiah 42 will convert the catarites and the nabataeans the arrows Isaiah 42 is very clear about this of course Paul failed in Arabia if and it's a big if if he was even telling the truth that he did in fact go to Arabia but I doubt he actually went to Arabia I don't think Paul can be trusted so Paul claimed that the pillars authorized him right as a fellow Apostle uh although even these verses are contested as well after that point Paul felt it was necessary uh to score points with the Galatians at Peter's expense so we briefly recounted an incident that supposedly took place in Antioch uh during which Peter revealed his own quote hypocrisy by refusing to continue to eat with Gentiles when Peter saw that certain men from James had arrived Paul then claimed that Peter and other Jews who committed hypocrisy with him were not following the quote truth of the Gospel so Paul Justified his Claim by stating that since Peter had already discarded the Jewish laws and was living like a gentile why did Peter now require Gentiles to follow Jewish laws Paul wrote that he confronted Peter to his face in front of all the people because Peter was worthy of condemnation this is what Paul is saying to the Galatians about some supposed event that happened in Antioch the subtext here I think is very subtle so Paul must have meant that the men from James were the real distorters of Hypocrites it was their presence that caused Peter to deviate from The Gospel According to Paul you see Paul cannot explicitly condemn James James was too big of a figure in the early Messianic movement however Paul implies that the men that James sent to Antioch must have falsely represented James and that this misrepresentation must have happened yet again in galatia when they condemned Paul that jamesonian apostles were the enemies and not necessarily James himself I think this is what Paul is trying to say therefore in one Fell Swoop Paul was able to do three three things number one denounce the James sonian Messengers who denounced him number two demonstrate his own superiority over Peter who buckled under the pressure of the notorious false Apostles and number three Express an ambivalence towards James I mean it would have been nice if Peter had responded with a lit with a letter of his own to the Galatians in response to Paul's grieve his claims of him being a hypocrite a coward a deviator and a closet antinomian unfortunately there is nothing that can be authentically dated uh to that time again with Paul we only have one side of the conversation for me Paul's story of his Showdown with Peter and Antioch reeks of fabrication I mean if Peter could not get the gospel right in in the one to three years that he spent with the actual historical Jesus what makes us think that Paul got it right after having a one-minute conversation with a vision that he claimed was Jesus if Paul's understanding of the Gospel based upon his vision caused him to be in direct opposition to the understandings of Jesus's actual disciples such as Peter and James then what does it say about Paul's Vision if Jesus could just reveal the truth of the Gospel as Paul puts it to Paul in an instant why did Jesus bother to hand select and teach and train a bunch of disciples who are ultimately going to get it wrong anyway and then forsake Jesus in his most dire time of need you know a Christian once told me Paul was right Peter was known for misunderstanding Jesus in fact Jesus himself called Peter uh Satan at one point due to Peter's failure to grasp his message Peter also denied knowing Jesus three times because he was a coward this is what the gospels say now yeah this is true but but the Christian often forgets that the gospels were written after all of Paul's genuine letters were composed and widely circulated and that the positions of Paul I would say the lies of Paul most likely created many of the narratives and the gospel accounts in other words Paul is the indirect author of the Gospels in fact James was completely written out of the gospels even though independent historical resources such as Josephus tell us that he was the leader of the Messianic movement after Jesus and if it were if it were not for the uh the the tiny Epistle of James tucked in somewhere in the back of the Christian Canon uh the leader of the early nazarenes for 30 years uh would have been basically written out of the entire New Testament even in Acts James is mentioned about four times I mean Paul has mentioned 127 times if James was an unbeliever during Jesus's entire ministry as most Christians claim why would he be selected as the leader of the Apostles if his knowledge of the gospel and experiences with Jesus drastically paled in comparison to any other disciple including Judas whom I doubt ever existed by the way I'll get that later clearly the author of Acts had an anti-jamsonian bias he mentioned the leader of the entire Jesus movement four times but Paul his hero 127 times again is this Acts of the Apostles or the acts of Paul why did the early Pauline Christians including the gospel writers claim that James was an unbeliever during the life of Jesus well the claims of Paul and his Epistles were highly influential in his famous quote Creed Paul said that he resurre said that the resurrected Jesus appeared to kiephus right then the 12 I.E the disciples and then at 500 then James and then to me Paul knows that he himself is a uh what do you call them Johnny come lately right that he wasn't a disciple but notice where Paul places James at the end just before himself it doesn't seem to me that Paul is giving deference to James it seems to me that Paul is putting himself on par with James but then he goes even further and he says but by the grace of God I am what I am and his grace toward me has not been in vain on the contrary I worked harder than any of them first Corinthians 15 10. Paul claims to be better obviously the Paul is great at boasting and boasting about his ministry boasting about his gospel boasting about his career uh you know which sits very ill with a kind of humble kind of follower of Jesus that we would expect I think right yeah so let's examine what Paul wrote to the Galatians at the beginning of chapter three of his epistle this is key for a present discussion Paul severely reprimanded the Galatians for allowing themselves to be swayed or Bewitched according to Paul by the Jerusalem Apostles sent from James I.E nazarenes into believing a different gospel than his own so Paul wrote O foolish Galatians who has Bewitched you that you should not obey the truth before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified so this verse is usually overlooked or interpreted in a very basic sense Without Really analyzing its potentially explosive significance the standard meaning is that the Galatians were convinced by Paul's opponents that the crucifixion of Jesus did not free them from the obligations of the Jewish law however the wording of the verse as well as its overall context may suggest that Paul's opponents who arrived in galatia after Paul's initial visit not only advocated adherence to Jewish law but also disagreed with Paul's very portrayal of Jesus being crucified that they repudiated the cross altogether and that Paul himself was the source of the crucified Jesus Christ it was as if Paul was saying why do you now maintain that Jesus was not crucified didn't I convince you that he was didn't I portray prographo in Greek didn't I portray him as crucified it appears that Paul's Apostolic opponents also visited Corinth in his wake right in his second letter to the Corinthians he cautioned his congregation to not let their minds be corrupted by accepting another Jesus then Paul went on to reveal that is the uh that his opponents whom he mockingly referred to as super apostles were of Jewish descent right so he said he says uh are they Hebrews so am I are they Israelites so am I are they descendants of Abraham so am I are they Ministers of Christ and then he says I sound like a fool but I served him more Paul then provided a laundry list of his alleged sufferings for the sake of Christ which included being beaten Stone flogged Shipwrecked as well as uh a daring escape from the grip of the governor of Damascus by being lowered in a basket through a window I mean this was supposed to convince his audience that he was truly sincere and more worthy of respect than his opponents who had actual teaching Authority from James so it is very plausible that the subtext of the book of Galatians is that Apostles from James who went to galatia repudiated the cross altogether and condemned Paul for teaching a false gospel where are the writings of James and Peter teaching that Jesus was crucified and resurrected where elsewhere in Galatians Paul told us that he noticed that during his first trip to Jerusalem he says there were many churches in Christ sprawled across Judea where are the writings of these churches that speak of Jesus crucifixion and Resurrection where perhaps there were writings but the crucifixion was nowhere why is it that the first believer in Jesus's messiahship to claim that Jesus was crucified in recorded history was Paul a man who admittedly persecuted Jesus's disciples before his Damascus Road conversion and slandered and ridiculed them after now before we get to the gospels let me take a a quick look at First Corinthians 1. so Paul wrote this letter because he was informed about Massive Internal quarreling what he calls Eris okay Eris which was also the name of the Greek god of of strife heiress in Arabic is Paul wrote this is in First Corinthians 1 12. some of you say I am of Paul I.E follow Paul others say I am of Apollos or I am of kefa Peter or I am of Christ so this verse is very strange uh this is um that I quote this yeah First Corinth so this is First Corinthians 1 12. it's very strange and has been notoriously difficult to make sense but throughout the centuries so it seems that Paul was told by certain con Paul uh sorry it seems that Paul was told that certain competing factions had Arisen in Corinth and that each faction championed its own teacher as authentically teaching the gospel right thus the followers of Peter disagreed with those of Paul and both both disagreed with those of Apollos but what was the nature of their of their disagreements and and what are we to make of those who disagreed with Paul Apollos and Peter and preferred to follow Christ now Paul goes on to say in essence that we should all follow Christ right he says is Christ divided was Paul crucified but what Paul really meant was that the Corinthians should follow Christ by following him Paul and this is what he says later explicitly follow me because I follow Christ in Philippians 3 17 he says brothers and sisters join in following me he tells the Corinthians if you are not married follow me just be celibate right the world's about to end anyway what we do know is that Paul reprimanded the Corinthians that when he first came to them uh he did not try to speak with impressive speech or wise arguments he says but only to present Jesus Christ and him crucified so Paul is saying that he could have sort of philosophically elaborated upon his teachings but at the bare minimum the Corinthians must believe that Jesus the Messiah was crucified if you don't believe that you don't believe in my gospel right so in First Corinthians 1 it is very likely that the crucifixion of Jesus was the main cause of the dissension the heiress among the different factions with some even rejecting Christ altogether because of it perhaps some of the Corinthians were influenced by the prevalent Jewish understanding and some by the by a philosophical Greek understanding because Paul stated but we preach Christ crucified and impediment unto the Jews and and absurdity unto the Greeks that is for the Jews the idea of the sort of long-awaited davidicing Messiah being crucified it was an oxymoronic Scandal scandalon while for the Greek wise men I.E philosophers the notion of a literal God dying for our sins was morion nonsense only uneducated fools believed in the literalness of such mythology as kelsus once uh pointed out so so Paul did not know the exact extent of the quarreling among the Corinthian factions but only that it had something to do with the original his original pronouncement to them that Christ was crucified and that Peter's name was thrown into the mix okay Paul wanted his congregation to rest assured that he and Peter and James for that matter were on the same wavelength about the crucifixion despite what they may have heard to the contrary it is possible that when Paul stated that the crucifixion of Christ was an impediment or stumbling block unto the Jews by Jew he meant both non-Christian Jews as well as Jewish Christians this is possible because he refers to Peter as a Jew in Galatians maybe the faction of Peter in Corinth denied Jesus's crucifixion again Paul is the indirect author of the Gospels this is a really important point that Paul is the indirect author of the gospels in Mark why does the mark in Jesus really the Pauline Jesus that's really who it is why does the mark in Jesus refer to Peter as Satan well Jesus in quotes says that he will suffer be rejected and be killed when Peter heard this he took Jesus aside and started rebuking him so then the mark in Jesus shouted get behind me Satan for you are setting your mind not on Divine things but on Earthly things now what does Paul say about his opponents in Philippians 3 he calls them dogs who mutilate the flesh so these are Jewish Christians who practice circumcision then he's then he calls them enemies of the Cross Who quote set their minds on Earthly things what did quote Jesus say to Peter in Mark 8 33 he said that he was setting his mind on Earthly things the mark in AKA Pauline Jesus calls Peter Satan for objecting to Jesus being killed and says his mind is set on Earthly things Paul calls his opponents in Philippians enemies of the Cross and says their minds are set on Earthly things it is plausible that they were followers of Peter and Paul's day who opposed Paul's notion that Jesus was killed I think Mark is well aware during his time that they were Jewish Christians who claimed senad they claimed a link to Peter and denied the crucifixion this is why the mark in Jesus called Peter Satan because Paul called the followers of Peter enemies of the cross 20 years earlier for plausibly denying that Jesus was killed now whatever the disputes actually entailed we will sadly never know for certain we do know however that eventually Jewish Christian Apostles with letters of authorization from James visited Corinth and preached another Jesus unto the Corinthians that diametrically opposed Paul's teachings so to me it seems that James was informed that Paul was throwing his good name around to bolster the authority of his own deviant gospel by the end of Paul's second letter to the Corinthians he warns the Corinthians that if they continue seeking proof that Christ genuinely speaks through him in other words if they keep questioning Paul's Authority and legitimacy Paul will confront them harshly and they will be punished by Christ he tells them to not be deceived by a seemingly weak Christ hanging on the cross Christ will demonstrate his power when he judges them so it is historically plausible that there were factions of Christians living in galatia and Corinth and Philippi who repudiated the crucifixion altogether yes it is also plausible that these Christians were persuaded by Jewish Christians who are teaching another gospel and another Jesus compared to what Paul was teaching they were teaching uncrucified Jesus this is totally plausible now let's move on to the Gospels most historians believe in the existence of Q right Bart Ehrman certainly does q also known as the sayings gospel was a written source of Jesus's sayings that Matthew and Luke used when writing their gospels I've spoken a few in the past so I'll keep it brief in addition to the subtext of Paul's letters q is absolutely key for understanding what non-pauline Christians believed about Jesus how well Q was most likely written in the 50s independent of Paul now Q probably had different strata of authorship over several years uh but even despite this let me quote what John Dominic Crossing said about Q This is a direct quote from J.D Crossing there is nothing nothing in The Gospel According to Q about the crucifixion of Jesus or the resurrection of Jesus wow there is nothing nothing nothing in The Gospel According to q but the crucifixion of Jesus or the resurrection of Jesus J.D cross in other words the passion narratives of Matthew and Luke right either come from Mark really a redaction of Mark or they are unique to their own Gospel accounts What textual critics call Special M and N L material special methion and Lucan material and of course sorry I didn't interrupt your flow but do you have another source of John Dominic crosson uh which book he said that in nothing nothing nothing this was in a podcast and I I can uh I'll send it to you inshallah all right I didn't realize okay thank you sergeant in a recent podcast oh really gosh oh yeah I'll send that to you so so let me say that again according to historians the earliest known source of the Gospels said nothing about the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus in addition to this the Traditions found in queue are plausibly representative of jamesonian Christianity pre-paul line Nazarene Christianity Jewish Christianity is it plausible that the community that author Q did not believe in the crucifixion of Jesus yes it is plausible Dr Dennis McDonald reconstructed the contents of Q which he calls the First Gospel uh First Gospel compared to Matthew Mark Luke and John she was the first gospel he says that Q was not written by a Christian but by a Jew he means a Messianic Jew a Jew who believes in Jesus but not in the Pauline sense he says in queue there is no salvation by Jesus because of his crucifixion end quote and in fact there is no crucifixion according to McDonald Jesus is making the Jewish law more compatible and more compassionate for people who are sort of on the margins of society and this is why Jesus has these arguments with the Pharisees he says that when you demythologize Jesus you get a Jewish reformer you get a prophet and teacher of a more relaxed form of the law of Moses this is very close to what the Quran says Jesus is quoted in the Quran I have come to confirm the Torah before me and to make lawful for you some of what was unlawful so fear God and obey me God is my Lord and your lord worship him this is a straight path now as I said earlier the four gospels are the main quote historical sources of the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth and here's something else about the gospels just as the uh Divine status of Jesus increases as we move chronologically through the gospels you know this evolution of christology from Mark to John that James Dunn and Bart Ehrman talk about likewise the evangelists want to increasingly convince their readers that Jesus was crucified and one way in which they do this is by exaggerating the events surrounding the crucifixion so in Mark Darkness came over the whole land and the curtain of the temple was torn into okay and Matthew there's Darkness the curtain tears but there's also an earthquake and a zombie apocalypse many Jewish saints were Resurrected and they walked around Jerusalem uh appearing to many according to Matthew some contemporary Evangelical Scholars have admitted that this is most likely a legend and these include Dr Mike Lacona who debated me several years ago and back then defended the absolute historicity of the crucifixion and Resurrection accounts in the New Testament it seems maybe he's changed some of his views in more recent years in his book he referred to the resurrection of the Saints as poetical and an embellishment and special effects right so lacona's new position has invited upon himself the wrath of many Christian apologists including the notorious Norman giesler of of answering Islam Fame let me quote you Norman giesler he said he meaning Lacona claims that Matthew is using a Greco-Roman literary genre which is a flexible genre in which and now he's quoting from Lacona from his book the resurrection of Jesus page 34. in which it is often difficult to determine where history ends and Legend begins wow Lacona also this is now gisler again Lacona also believes that that other New Testament text may be Legends such as the mob falling backward at Jesus's claim I am he in John 18 and the presence of Angels at the tomb record in all four gospels so this is very interesting Lacona admits that this event in Matthew sounds a lot like plutarch's death of Romulus it's probably a legend now Luke does not mention the rising of the Saints from the dead the author of John does something amazing John I'll just call him John for convenience John has the advantage of hindsight so in light of new developments among the Christian Community John can correct and revise elements in the synoptic passion narratives right John moves the day of the crucifixion up one day to the day of the Passover preparation when the Lambs were being slaughtered John is making a theological Point here again this is history made subordinate to theology either John is right or the synoptics are right but both cannot be right and Jesus was not crucified twice but both can also be wrong John eliminates Simon of cyreni burying Jesus cross saying that Jesus bore his own cross John has Jesus impaled on the cross and he has Jesus's body anointed before his burial all contradicting the synoptics and all made to demonstrate that Jesus was not substituted he did not Swoon he was dead on the cross and buried in the Tomb now the so-called Gospel of Peter was written after John and by the time we get to that gospel the church father said okay enough is enough in the gospel of Peter the cross comes out of the Tomb and starts speaking to people the the early father said we can do what Saints rising from the dead but not with the talking cross so we go from Mark where pilate marveled is he dead already and no one sees a resurrected Jesus all the way to a talking cross in Peter so-called Gospel of Peter Matthew Luke John and Peter increasingly trying to convince their readers that Jesus was crucified now why was there any why was there an increased insistence upon the Divinity of Jesus from Mark to John according to historians the answer is because the evangelists were responding to Christians who differed about the Divinity of Jesus I would argue that this is the same reason why we also see an increased insistence upon the crucifixion of Jesus the evangelists were responding to Christians who differed about his crucifixion this makes total sense so okay let's let's examine the let's exam the passion narratives of the gospels okay and you will see that event after event in these passion narratives is either historically implausible okay or most likely myth allegory or legend that is to say the authors making a theological Point not relating a natural event in history yet these gospels are the main sources that establish the quote most solid fact of history that Jesus was crucified my contention is that it is very plausible that every event including the so-called crucifixion of Jesus in these gospels is Legend Q the earliest historical source of the gospels uh written independently of Paul did not have a passion narrative in queue Jesus did not say my God my God why have Thou forsaken me he did not say father into your hands I commend my spirit he did not say it is finished he did not say father forgive them for they know not what they do he did not speak to his crossmates he did not promise one of them Paradise he did not speak to Mary and the Beloved disciple from the cross the author of Q recorded none of these things why because he probably never heard them why because Jesus was probably never crucified and here I have to recommend a scholar an underrated scholar Dr Dennis McDonald so he's a former fundamentalist Baptist pastor and the son of a fundamentalist Baptist pastor and he ended up getting a PhD from Harvard and he's been professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at Claremont Graduate University so his book is called mythologizing Jesus from Jewish teacher to epic hero and also a book called The Gospels and Homer so Dr McDonald he highlights a major blind spot in New Testament historical scholarship a major blind spot and that is Hellenistic literary mimesis or more specifically homeric literary mimesis so Dr McDonald is not a mythicist okay so if he affirms the historical Jesus what is homeric literary mimesis or mimesis criticism so it is this notion that the gospel writers are borrowing stories and events from the lives of homeric Greek Heroes like Odysseus revising these stories to fit their narratives and replacing those Heroes with Jesus in other words these events are not historical the Highly Educated gospel writers knew fully well that many of these events never happened and their educated Greek audiences knew that these events probably never happened this is the flexible genre that Lacona was talking about don't forget that Mark for for instance was a highly educated Greek convert who definitely studied Homer Hessian and Herodotus this was the standard Greek curriculum at his time the passion narratives in the gospels were written as literary works of art they were written to make theological and philosophical points okay for Mark historical accuracy was very much in the background and when he does present history he does it through the lens of his christology and of course Matthew and Luke heavily depended upon mark this is also why the gospel writers constantly tell us that Jesus was walking and teaching walking and teaching walking what is the significance of emphasizing that Jesus was a walking teacher well the Greek verb for walking is peripateo the peripatetics were originally philosophers Aristotle was famous for walking around the lyceum and teaching his students the gospel writers want to present Jesus as the new great teacher the new Aristotle for the Greco-Roman audiences it was only when huge masses of uneducated Greek speed and crit Greek speaking Christians began hearing these gospels that all of these events mentioned in these texts began to be seen as true and literal that they forgot the genre of literature so let's start with the anointing of Jesus by a certain woman okay so we can call this um event number one and I'll go in chronological order more or less okay so in all four Gospels we're told that some woman takes oil and anoints Jesus prior to the passion narrative in Mark in Matthew this happens in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper this woman is not named and she anoints Jesus's head in Luke this happens in a Pharisees house and the woman anoints Jesus's feet with oil and with her tears in John the woman is identified explicitly as Mary Magdalene and she anoints his feet as well now in book in in Odyssey Book 19 after a long journey Odysseus returns home to Ithaca dressed as a beggar his wife Penelope tells his old wet nurse and made uraclaya to wash his feet and later anoint him with oil while she washes his feet she notices his childhood Scar and Odysseus says to her don't tell anyone or else I'll be killed so we have this theme of secrecy and this is very prevalent in Mark right William Reed he calls this the mark and Messianic secret MacDonald calls this a homeric borrowing now you're a Clea then dropped Odysseus's foot in the vessel after recognizing him uh she is the only one who recognizes him in Mark 14 the woman in Bethany who anoints Jesus does this because she is the only one who recognizes that Jesus will die now what was the name of this woman in the Odyssey you're a Clea uraclaya means Renown far and wide what does the New Testament Jesus say about the woman who washed his feet he says wherever the good news is preached about the world This Woman's deed will be remembered and discussed in other words This Woman's deed will be Yura Clea known and renowned far and wide now of course there are differences between these two accounts but the literary points of contact just seeing too many to be coincidental it seems that Mark based his story about Jesus upon Odysseus furthermore it is totally Haram it is totally forbidden for a woman to touch a man whom she is not related to according to Jewish law so if the story is true then the New Testament Jesus is a sinner according to his own law now I'm not saying that this story definitely never happened nothing is definitive you know a Christian might say here that this is a coincidence or that God engineered this event uh in this way in order to facilitate the conversion of the pagans and maybe some people find these arguments persuasive what I am saying is that from within the Paradigm of modern secular history this story is highly implausible therefore while Mark believed that that Jesus existed it is reasonable to conclude that this specific event never happened to Jesus Mark is deliberately appealing to his Greco-Roman audience this is deliberate Mark wants Jesus to be the new Odysseus the new hero this is homeric literary mimesis so probably not historical now Dr McDonald says that Bart urman is resistant to this methodology uh and yet Airman offers no alternative explanation he just refuses to recognize these parallels and this is because the dominant way to deal with inconvenient truths is to deny or ignore them and McDonald also said that Airman he would have to rewrite half of his famous intro and testament if he were to admit homeric mimesis of of the New Testament of course he doesn't want to do that you know so much for induction uh event number two the Last Supper so the gospels tell us that a Jewish rabbi and Messianic claimant celebrated a Passover meal by ordering his disciples to drink his blood and eat his flesh for a Jew this would be totally and absolutely revolting but in various forms of paganism theophagy or eating one's God was a common ritual so this is Highly Questionable historically it is socially and theologically out of whack in its supposed context I think that Mark created The Last Supper narrative because of something in Paul again Paul is the indirect author of the gospels Paul says on the night he was delivered he took bread Paul also calls Jesus quote our Passover Lamb in First Corinthians 5 7. it seems to me that Mark used these statements to create his last supper narrative and made the Last Supper a Passover meal the Last Supper is most likely not historical event number three the garden scene in book 12 of The Odyssey Odysseus and his men face a great Temptation on the island of thronesha wherever whatever they do they cannot harm the sacred cattle of the sun god Helios Odysseus goes into the interior of the island alone to pray and falls asleep while his men in the boats remain awake eventually his men revolt and Slaughter the sacred cattle is reversed by the gospels Jesus goes alone into the interior of the guard of Gethsemane to pray and is tempted to not go through with this suicide mission and he stays awake while his disciples sleep eventually his disciples forsake Him and flee so McDonald says that this does not seem like a coincidence this is homeric literary mimesis this whole garden scene is plausibly not historical event number four the naked young man in Mark and only in Mark we are told that a crowd that when the crowd arrived to arrest Jesus in the garden a young man and yaniskas who had followed Jesus there was wearing nothing but a linen cloth a syndone this is Mark 14. when the men grabbed this young man he managed to slip out of his linen cloth and run away naked the identity of this man has baffled Scholars for centuries two chapters later when the women go to the empty tomb they see the same young man nianiskos dressed in a white robe sitting in the Tomb and he tells them to go to Galilee this is not an angel in mark this is not an angel so we have a young companion of Jesus who was naked and is now clothed according to mimisa's critics this young man is Mark's variation of Homer's El penor El panor was the youngest companion of Odysseus who died in untimely death in Odyssey book 10 in book 11 the soul of el panor comes out of the Netherworld and Greece Odysseus and asks Odysseus to bury him in popular cree and popular pre-christian art El Conor was depicted in this scene as naked to symbolize his soul so then Odysseus goes back and buries elpinor in a tomb by shrouding his body a young companion of Odysseus was naked and is now clothed again maybe this really happened maybe this is a coincidence but is highly unlikely foreign event number five the person of Judas Iscariot I think this also originates with something Paul said but was interpreted with much license by Mark so again in First Corinthians 11 23 Paul says on the night he was handed over or delivered not betrayed so pro-dittany in koine Greek and New Testament Greek means to betray but Paul didn't say that Paul said that Jesus was Para didomi hand it over hand it over presumably by God to be sacrificed this is most likely what Paul meant in fact Paul used the same verb to mean exactly this earlier in the very same verse he said for I received from the Lord that which I also delivered parody to me to you the Lord Jesus on the night he was delivered took bread I don't think Paul had knowledge of Judas so I think that Mark misinterpreted this to mean betrayed or more likely Mark decided for the purposes of telling a good dramatic story that he was going to interpret parody to me as betrayed it's good storytelling it adds to the pathos of the story you know Paul did say however that the Jews are unpleasing to God and contrary to all men so Mark invented a betrayer whose name was drum roll please a Jew from the cities Judas Iscariot who betrayed Jesus and his country bumpkin disciples a Wily deceitful thieving city-slicking Jew this is a Markin anti-jewish Trope gosh this Jewish character is so evil he even identifies Jesus to the temple guards by kissing him what is Mark really saying here even if a Jew appears friendly and loving he's not to be trusted Paul famously said that the resurrected Christ appeared to the twelve this is just further evidence that Paul did not have any knowledge of any disciple betraying him the twelve the longer ending in Mark however whoever wrote that not the original Mark he didn't have a choice but to state that Jesus appeared to the 11 because Judas was dead so Judas Iscariot plausibly not historical event number six the midnight trial Jewish trials in the Sanhedrin were only conducted during the day everybody knows this also trials are never held in the houses of high priests also there was a 24-hour waiting period before one could be sentenced the gospels ignore all of these all of these rules are mentioned in the mishna Sanhedrin here the Christian apologists will say well it's still possible that it was a midnight trial in the house of the high priest and that Jesus was condemned and beaten and spat upon on the spot but yeah it's possible maybe that's what happened but it is not plausible you see Mark wants to get his story going a secret midnight trial is just more exciting it keeps the story moving so the midnight trial likely not historical for that number seven Mark knows the transcript how did Mark get a transcript of Jesus's trial in the house of the high priest who told Mark exactly what they were saying to each other not Peter Mark says that Peter was in the lower Courtyard of the palace warming himself by a fire so he was outside the answer is Mark like Luke imitated the literary style and method of his perennial Greek teachers who made up the dialogue this was a standard practice of the Greek writers and novelists including Mark if a Christian says that the Holy Spirit revealed it to Mark Fine believe that if you want but that is a non-historical claim and Mark never claims this for himself that number eight Pilots reluctance we are told in all four gospels and acts over and over again that Pontius Pilate was reluctant to condemn Jesus that pilate was sympathetic to Jesus but that bloodthirsty mob of Jews outside essentially forced him to crucify Jesus no friend of Caesar are you they said the pilot This is highly historically implausible unlike uh Paul who never mentions pilate in his genuine letters Mark knew that pilate was the governor of Judea at Jesus's time and that he was known for crucifying many Jews so Mark assumed that he must have been involved at some level in the crucifixion of Jesus Mark's brilliant storytelling was once again on display I mean he's a brilliant Storyteller by mentioning pilate Mark historicized Jesus for his Greco-Roman audience but by exonerating pilate of all culpability in the execution of Jesus Mark carefully avoided criticizing the Roman authorities for Mark uh pilate like Jesus was innocent both were victims of the same bloodthirsty Jewish mob this in Mark's mind created a type of fraternal kinship between the Christian Community in Rome where Mark was living and the Roman government the problem however is that Mark's depiction of pilot as a torn man who was essentially manhandled by a shouting rabble of Jews is simply historically implausible pilate described uh sorry Philo described pilate as quote a man of inflexible stubborn and cruel disposition Josephus said pilate was willing to slaughter a multitude of innocent Jews who peacefully protested the erection of standards that is statutes of Zeus in Jerusalem yet in Matthew we have pilate washing his hands I am free of the blood of this innocent man let his blood be upon us and our children and John pilate says shall I crucify your king So in John pilate affirms that Jesus is the king of the Jews the Abyssinian Church uh canonized pilate and his wife he's Saint Pontius Pilate in John pilate turns to Jesus and says tell me what to do really the historical pilot would not have an Adam's weight of compunction about killing a Jew okay um so look a Christian might say here well Jesus just had just had this incredible effect on people and I agree with that I completely understand that Jesus was a blessed man peace be upon him a prophet who changed the hearts of those he interacted with fine but don't tell me that this is a don't tell me this is historical according to the method and Paradigm of modern historians event number nine Sanhedrin to Pilot to Herod and Back Again described in Luke the author who claimed to have a perfect understanding of the life of Jesus so apparently Herod the puppet tetrarch of Galilee and perea who was not exactly known for being a Pious Jew uh made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover he was in Jerusalem amazing not only that Herod was apparently not too busy to interrogate Jesus so you know this is how a play or a movie works right fast moving scenes all during the day Jesus before the Sanhedrin then before Pilate then before Herod then back before Pilate then he's condemned then he walks to the place of crucifixion and then he is crucified and all before brunch all of this happened before the sixth hour according to Luke that's 12 noon this is a plague this is fiction this is not how real life works event number 10 the Pascal pardon so in his continued efforts to present pilate as a benign uh dare I say magnanimous Roman Governor Mark claimed that pilate presumably due to the kindness of his art wanted to release a Jewish prisoner in celebration of the impending Passover holiday therefore he gave the crowd a choice between Jesus and a criminal named Barabbas the crowd shows Barabbas who was released while Jesus was reluctantly delivered up to be crucified now given what Philo and Josephus said about the character of Pontius Pilate it is highly historically implausible to say the least that pilate would even offer such a pascal pardon let alone assent to release a dangerous murdering insurrectionist against Rome and of course there is no historical record of pilate ever doing such a thing in addition to presenting a more flattering depiction of Roman authorities I think there's a much more substantive theological reason why Mark invented probably invented this story remember that Paul called Jesus our Passover Lamb right and Mark loved that but how did he tell a good story well in Leviticus in the Torah we read the following it says he Aaron shall take two goats and set them before the Lord at the entrance of attentive meeting and Aaron shall cast lots on the Two Goats one lot for the Lord and the other for Azazel Aaron shall present The Goat in which the lot fell for the Lord and offered as a sin offering but the goat on which the lot fell for us as Azel shall be presented alive before the Lord to make atonement over it that it may be sent away Into the Wilderness to Azazel so in Mark's symbolism the Two Goats represented two versions of the davidic king Messiah so you have Jesus who was a selfless non-violent itinerant preacher and he got Barabbas the son of the father who was a violent political Zealot in Assassin the Jews cheered more loudly for Barabbas because he was the type of Messiah that they wanted however the type of Messiah that the Lord wanted was one that would willingly give his life as a divine Savior on the surface pilate was basically bullied by the crowd to execute Jesus but at a deeper symbolical level pilate was an Aaron figure who sacrificed the Lord's goat for our sins the other goat Barabbas was sent back to the demon Azazel I.E the Jews that's who they wanted so that's who they got thus for Mark as well as for the evangelists who followed him the incident of the Pascal pardon of Barabbas served a key theological and political function in their overarching christological agendas this is not historical event number 11. Simon of cyrening so in the synoptics we're told that for no apparent reason the Romans compelled a man named Simon of cyreni to carry the cross of Jesus while Jesus walked in front was this usual would the Romans Force innocent men uh to carry the crosses of The Condemned Christians claim that Jesus was so battered and beaten that he simply could not carry his cross and this is a nice Theory but the gospels don't say this this is ad hoc apologetics uh Luke who again claimed to have a perfect understanding of Jesus's wife does not mention that Jesus was scourged Luke intended his gospel to be the gospel right not to supplement three other gospels he intended to write the definitive gospel and he did not mention that Jesus was flogged yet Simon carries Jesus's cross what's going on here well believe it or not this whole episode is yet again a Pauline inspired anti-petrine Trope this is not history it's polemics the synoptic Jesus says whoever wants to be my disciple must deny him and take up his cross and follow me you see Peter whose real name was Simon denied Jesus three times and abandoned Jesus he did not take up his cross and follow Jesus but this other Simon does right now Mark says that Simon of cyrini was the father of Alexander in Rufus two Greek names and cyrini was a Greek Port City it seems to me that Mark created this person Simon of Cyrene an ethnically Greek convert to Judaism who is willing to follow Jesus while Shimon baryona the ethnically Jewish disciple of Jesus was not willing to follow Jesus so Simon of cyreni is a symbol of the Gentiles replacing the Jews who refused to follow Jesus so Simon cyrini probably not historical maybe there was a Simon or cyrini but he never carried some cross event number 12. a father sacrificing his son so in Genesis 22 we're told that Abraham the father of Nations put wood on the back of his son Isaac and made him March up a hill in order to sacrifice him and the gospels the quote unquote father put wood on his quote son's back and made him March up a hill to sacrifice it this is memetic of Abraham and Isaac in the Tanakh God stops Abraham uh in the Tanakh the height of evil is parents sacrificing their children but in the gospels a father sacrificing his son is the height of love and Glory okay okay number 13. um being sold for shekels of silver and three condemned men so in Genesis Joseph is sold by his brothers for 20 shekels of silver Joseph is eventually imprisoned although he is innocent and he has two cellmates a pair of wine and a baker of bread three condemned men in total one of them will be crucified in the New Testament Jesus initiates a New Covenant by passing around wine and bread one of his quote Brothers Judas betrays in her 30 shekels of silver Jesus is imprisoned although he is innocent eventually he's crucified again there are differences of course there are this is how literary mimesis is none but it is clear that Jesus is the new Joseph Mark modeled his passion narrative Upon A Josephine archetype this is reason enough to have Reasonable Doubt about its historicity event number 14. Jesus's quick death in the synoptics especially Mark as I said Jesus dies unexpectedly quick here again the Christian apologists say of course Jesus was bleeding out since the night before and So eventually the blood loss caused his body to go into shock after just a few hours on the cross again this is their wishful thinking if Jesus was in such a bad condition before his alleged crucifixion then why did Mark tell us that pilate marveled that he had died so quickly why was pilate who was a master crucifier of Jews so shocked that Pilots had already died sorry that Jesus had already died you see a long drawn out death which was normal for crucified victims did not lend itself to good storytelling Mark wants this thing to end quickly he wants the story to keep moving this is not history it's a Passion Play It's artistic storytelling event number 15. the earthquake Darkness the curtain tearing and dead Saints rising from the graves look maybe these things happened I believe in miracles but you cannot say these things are historical according to Modern historiography if the curtain of the temple tour from top to bottom the curtain that veiled the holy of holies this would have been a huge deal for the Jews why Why did no one mention this maybe they conspired to conceal this probably not what happened to these Saints did they die again are they still alive did they appear to anyone we know of event number 16 the centurions confession I'll talk about that event number 17 Jesus's body taken by secret disciples after asking pilate I already talked about this highly implausible event number 18. women coming to the tomb to anoint the body so this is really strange okay now here's a question why did Jews anoint dead bodies with oils and spices okay so the answer is that bodies would start to smell shortly after death the anointing was meant to mask the smell until uh the body was finally buried or entombed well John tells us that Jesus body was anointed before his burial by his secret disciples Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea so if that is true why would Jesus body need to be anointed Again by the women maybe the women didn't know that he was anointed the apologists will say but even if that were true Jesus has already buried why would they anoint a body that is already buried it makes zero sense interesting question did Jews anoint bodies that were already buried the other thing is it's totally unlawful for women to anoint men's bodies and men to anoint women's bodies according to Jewish law besides how are the women planning on getting access to Jesus body I thought they were expecting Jesus to be risen from the dead anyway according to Christian apologetics so why were they even bothering and they just they should have been you know waiting for it to happen but obviously they didn't believe yeah they were coming to and they were told explicitly you're coming to anoint the body how are they planning on rolling the stone away so here's what's really happening I think Mark needed some plot device he needed to give someone a reason to go to the tomb and find it empty this whole episode of the women coming to the tomb to anoint Jesus's body which is already entombed and then finding the tomb empty is highly highly implausible event number 19. women were the first witnesses to the resurrection I'll talk about that later uh let's move to okay let me finish this section with this going back to this idea of homeric literary mimesis okay just something to think about here Hector the son of Priam was the prince of Troy the son of the king actor what happened to him in books 21 and 22 of The Iliad well Hector was essentially abandoned by all of his fellow Trojans they all they all retreated into the city they forsook him and fled sounds familiar Hector was the only Trojan left uh outside Troy Hector refused to retreat thus demonstrating his willingness to suffer and die for his cause sounds familiar at first however Hector tries to negotiate with Achilles and then tries to run from him Jesus in the garden tries to get out of his so-called Mission remove this cup away from me yet not as I will but as thou will now Hector then realizes that the gods had forsaken him the Markin and methane Jesus cried out my God my God why have the user why hast Thou forsaken me same exact verb in the Greek now a Christian apologist might say wait a minute this is Psalm 22 1. so how can this have anything to do with Homer well McDonald calls this memetic hybridity you see a skilled Storyteller like Mark can seamlessly thread two Traditions together it's Master storytelling Achilles stabs Hector in the throat Jesus is apparently nailed to the cross and John he's stabbed in his side Achilles then allows the dogs and birds to Maul Hector's body the dogs have encircled me they divided up my garments Psalm 22 again other Greeks come and stab Hector's corpse the New Testament Jesus is mocked on the cross Hector's mother and wife witnessing the spectacle weep and whale with grief in the New Testament Jesus of the mother and wife figure witnessed a spectacle and weep and wail in grief Hector's little brother Paris Witnesses his brother's gruesome death in John the Beloved disciple whom Jesus makes his brother woman behold your son Witnesses his brothers gruesome death in book 24 Priam begs for his son's body and achilles now full of regret agrees in the New Testament a man named Joseph and man who has the same name as Jesus's adopted father asked pilate for Jesus's body McDonald's says that this was no accident Joseph is the pream of the Gospels in book two of Virgil's Aeneid the slain Hector appears to Aeneas and tells him to flee the city of Troy in the gospels the slain Jesus appears to the women and tells them tell my brothers to go to Galilee there they will see me in other words flee the city of Jerusalem now there's a famous Jewish trap tape called yeshu the book of the history of Jesus this is the sort of first polemical Jewish response to the New Testament Jesus okay first political Jewish response and they're different versions of this but in the Aramaic version the oldest the rabbi said that Jesus was executed for sorcery by stoning and then crucified uh his body was then removed from the cross and dragged through the streets by the Jewish leaders exactly like what happened to Hector and The Iliad the Romans had nothing to do with Jesus in the Toledo just like the Romans had nothing to do with Jesus and Paul's letters by the way Paul never mentions Romans or pilate in his authentic letters and says explicitly that the Jews killed Jesus so the toledoth yeshu is a polemical counter narrative to the gospels that probably goes as far back as the late second century my hunch is that the Jewish writers of these things knew that they were making things up one could argue that the rabbis were mocking the New Testament passion narratives and exposing them as false it is as if the rabbis were saying we know that the passion narratives and the gospels are fiction and based upon these ancient myths so here's another myth for you also from The Iliad you want Hector will give you Hector so in the second century in the second century there were Jews pagans and maybe other Christians attacking the New Testament gospels and calling them mythology the author of second Peter who was a charlatan a forger pretending to be Peter writing in the second century says something very telling he says for we did not follow cleverly contrived myths when we make known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ we were eyewitnesses of his majesty second Peter 1 16. I mean look at the subtext the author of second Peter who falsely claimed to be an eyewitness to Jesus was responding to critics critics of the gospels who accused the gospel writers in early Pauline Christians of making up entertaining stories cleverly contrived myths now a Christian polemicist might say well the idolaters and Mecca said something about the Quran that it was Tales from the Ancients the difference is that the Quran presents itself as a corrective of these previous stories be they biblical or ancient near Eastern tradition the Quran acknowledges that it is revising correcting and rejecting these accounts for example in the Quran Allah he says the prophet peace be upon him we relate to you some of the story of Moses and Pharaoh in truth for believing people in other words this is what really happened the gospel writers on the other hand took Jewish and Greek stories about other people tweaked them a bit and then replace the protagonist with Jesus that is a very different that's very different than what the Quran is doing the Quran tells us what it's doing the Quran is transparent the gospel writers were writing according to a well-known flexible genre of Greco-Roman literature where mimesis and Legend were standard the Quran on the other hand is a sui generous it's a one-of-a-kind text that does not conform to any classification of anti-seeded Arabic prose it is not asatir it is not shared it is not such out it is not it is not myth it is not poetry it is not rhymed prose it is not straight prose it is not sooth saying the Quran is unclassifiable and the Quran says explicitly in The Havana these are the true accounts so last one before we move on we're coming down towards the end of the presentation inshallah so check this one out so Plutarch wrote a book of biographies called parallel lives okay 48 biographies of famous Greeks and Romans and one of these men was cleominis III who was a Spartan King and radical political reformer okay so he died around 220 BCE cleominis escaped Alexandria where he was eventually killed he was stabbed in his side and then his body was crucified while he hanged on the cross a snake coiled itself around his head preventing the ravening birds from mutilating his face there was also a group of women who were watching this and weeping Plutarch said that when the king of Alexandria one of the ptolemies when he saw this he was suddenly seized with fear maybe this was a righteous man who was beloved to the gods wow so he gave the women permission to perform the rights of purification Plutarch then says that the alexandrians started to worship cleominates and would come to the spot of his crucifixion and addressed cleominis as a hero and Son of the Gods remember the Roman Centurion and Mark truly this man was the son of God or in Luke truly this man was righteous a historian might say okay fine but Jesus was still crucified only the details were lifted from these stories maybe maybe not it is plausible that none of these things happen to Jesus it seems to me that an honest person must concede this now before I get to my plausible stories and sort of the finish here let's briefly go back to something I said earlier okay if the details of the passion narratives are wrong okay why do we assume that the big picture is right if the smaller events are implausible if the smaller events are all implausible why do we assume the bigger picture is historical here's another quote from Airman he says these are not reliable historical accounts meaning the gospels the accounts are based on oral accounts and circulation for decades you know he says this all the time the authors are not eyewitnesses there are creek-speaking Christians leaving 35 to 65 years after the events they narrate there was no one there at the time take there was no one there at the time of Jesus's death taking notes many stories were invented most were changed now let me give you one example of modern historians changing their minds about the big picture okay and there are more controversial examples I can give here but I'll keep it tame uh perhaps people heard the story of Nero playing his fiddle his Rome is burning right a fire that he himself apparently started there are three ancient historians who wrote about Nero suetonius tacitus and Cassio deal the first thing to consider everything we know about Nero comes from his political opponents they're highly biased now I remember Mike Lacona arguing that we can't trust that the followers of apollonius of Tiana saw him after his death because the sources are late Anonymous and biased well is exactly what historians say about the gospels so suetonius who wrote about 60 years after Nero said Nero was responsible for the fire and that he watched it Blaze from the Tower of messiness while playing an instrument and singing about the destruction of Troy others however said that this was just a rumor okay so we have difference of opinion another thing is that the fiddle didn't exist in the first century okay so he was probably playing a harp or a liar but wait a minute according to tacitus who's actually later than suetonius Nero wasn't even in Rome when the fire started he was 30 miles away in a city called antium finally no one actually saw Nero playing his harp in Rome by the city burned there were no eyewitnesses this is conjecture somebody might say well still Nero was known for his outlandish Behavior he was a cross-dresser who loved to perform in drag he was a singing drag queen he had a flare for the dramatic if you heard it first on blocking your theology Nero was a cross-dressing drag queen okay yeah so maybe you know it sort of fits his care this sounds like the argument well a lot of Jews were crucified by the Romans so Jesus was too in light of all of this many historians today maintain that it is implausible that Nero was playing his instrument in Rome up on a tower while Rome was burning this was an unsubstantiated rumor based on biased reports meant to slander a political opponent when none of the details support the main event perhaps the main event is false now here's a quote from the Atlantic monthlies as December 1996 it's an article called the search for a No-Frills Jesus by Charlotte Allen so Allen interviewed Burton Mack the famous New Testament scholar scholar of Q and so this is what she wrote in this uh article in the Atlantic Monthly December 1996. she says the course of a recent interview he Mack revealed his next project putting together a scholarly Consortium that would redescribe Christian origins in some way other than through the gospel narratives and their quote crucifixion drama as he calls it because Q contains no passion narrative Mack believes that no one really knows how Jesus died and that the gospel accounts sorry died and that the gospel stories of his passion like most of the other gospel stories are pure fiction now I don't totally agree with Mac on every Point obviously but he makes a compelling Point here about the passion narratives according to Burton Mack and I agree with this Jesus existed First Gospel akaq records some of his actual teachings but we don't know what happened to Jesus historically because the passion narratives are pure fiction and I would add and politarsus could not be trusted just throw that in okay okay so here it is okay a plausible Story part one so I'm just going to read this verbatim as I wrote it and then I'll take it'll take a few minutes okay so in the year 31 32 or 33 CE a young Rabbi named Jesus of Nazareth traveled from the Galilee to Jerusalem to observe the fasts of the Passover week the gospels tell us that he traveled with 12 male disciples and possibly a few women but the number 12 was clearly symbolical for the 12 tribes of Israel the gospel writers were envisioning Jesus and his disciples as replacing Jacob and the tribes whatever their exact number it makes sense that those who follow Jesus down into Judea were a small group of pilgrims at some point during his time in the holy city Jesus cleansed the temple in some way and marked the earliest gospel we are told that Jesus throughout people were engaged in buying and selling in the temple area and overturned the tables of the money changers Matthew and Luke basically echoed Mark while John added that Jesus made a scourge of small cords and drove out the animals as well the cleansing of the temple is mentioned in all four gospels twice in John and adequately explains why Jesus immediately made enemies in Jerusalem it makes historical sense that something like this probably happened the incident anger that the corrupt Temple establishment who felt that their status and source of Revenue was under attack by Jesus in response they began a propaganda campaign depicting depicting Jesus and his group as potentially dangerous revolutionaries Judean Jews probably looked down at their noses at their Galilean Brethren considering them to be simple-minded peasants or hot-headed troublemakers of course the galileans were known for basically two things fishing and zealotry the latter was due in large part to the slain Jewish Freedom Fighter Judas of Galilee who died six of the Common Era whom Joseph is considered the founder of the fourth Jewish sect known as the zealots to uh judas's Sons Jacob and Simon were still active in the Galilee at the time of Jesus and both would eventually be crucified by Tiberius Julius Alexander around 46 of the Common Era Galilean pilgrims were also easily discernible from other pilgrims due to certain cultural idiosyncrasies such as their distinctive Backwater Aramaic accents my theory is that not long after the incident of the temple some of the temple leaders reported to the Roman authorities what Jesus of Galilee and his band of would-be zealots had done however neither Jesus nor his disciples had any intention whatsoever for political Insurrection personally I think Jesus cleansed the temple as a prophetic Act of symbolism he believed that if the temple leadership did not clean up their act so to speak then God's Wrath would descend upon them in the form of the Temple's destruction over the next few days as Jesus was teaching at various places in Jerusalem his disciples caught a wind of rumors that they were suspected as being zealots afraid intimidated and grossly outnumbered the disciples either fled back to Galilee after taking leave of Jesus or went into hiding in the holy city with Jesus the ruthless Roman governor of Judea upon his pilate already had several Jewish insurrectionists in custody that he wished to publicly crucify during the Holy Week he wanted to send a strong message to any and all Jewish Freedom Fighters toward the end of the Holy Week perhaps even on the day of Passover pilate ordered them and flogged and crucified starting with Mark the gospels tell us that three men were crucified with one of them named Jesus one could make the argument however that the evangelists were employing literary mimises here Jesus was the anti-type of Joseph rejected by his brothers and went to suffer with two other convicts literary mimesis as we saw is very common in the gospel passion narratives thus the Evangelist number three was likely symbolical it was used to cast Jesus as the new Joseph the Romans would crucify men in bunches so it is not inconceivable that pilate crucified 15 or 20 men on this day nonetheless I will grant the three men were crucified and that one of them was named Jesus the name Jesus Yeshua was the fifth or sixth most common name of Jewish males in first century Palestine and given the fact that it was an abbreviated form of Joshua yehoshua Israel's greatest military Champion it was likely even more popular among the hot-blooded galileans for every 10 galileans crucified by the Romans it is very plausible that at least one of them was named Jesus all four evangelists relate that one of the three men that was to be crucified along with two unidentified leistas was known as Barabbas while many while many biblical translators render the word lay Stace in the singular as robber or Thief Josephus running around the time of the Evangelist always used this word to refer to dangerous revolutionaries Barabbas was also called a lay Stace as well as an insurrectionist stasiastes Mark tells us that Barabbas was bound to his fellow Rebels who had committed murder in the Insurrection Entei Stasi it must be noted that in the original Greek the verb to commit or do poyeo is in the plu-perfect plural here Barabbas and his men had committed murder in the Insurrection not just Barabbas therefore it is likely that the duo lestas I.E the crossmates whatever their true number or loyal followers of Barabbas what what but what is the Insurrection Mark did not tell us but it seems that he expected his readers to know about it it was a historical event still fresh in the minds of Mark's readers we can surmise that Barabbas and his small men of terrorists or Freedom Fighters depending on a respect perspective had attempted some active stasis against Romans against the Romans in Jerusalem sometime before the arrival of Jesus From Galilee pilate had kept Barabbas and his men Chained and imprisoned waiting for the perfect time to execute them Passover week pilate's callousness was on full display as the Jews collectively celebrated God's power by his striking the Egyptians with death pilate demonstrated his own power by putting Jews to death on their holiday this is consistent historically with what we know about pilate's character from sources outside of the gospels such as Philo of Alexandria and Josephus interestingly the Arabic name Barabbas is actually a patronymic title meaning son of the father this appears to be a Messianic title perhaps rabbis claimed to be the Conquering King Messiah or was that or was at least touted by his followers as being a Messianic figure but even more interesting than Barabbas title was his first name according to early some early Greek manuscripts of the Gospel of Matthew it was Jesus origen noticed this as early as the third Century CE and note we don't have a complete copy of Matthew's gospel until the 4th Century of the Common Era it is unlikely that Christians would invent the first name Jesus for Barabbas a man who opposed Jesus's teachings at every turn Barabbas first name was removed from later manuscripts no doubt for pietistic reasons so here we have them the three crucified leistas one of them called Jesus the son of the father I.E the Messiah the so-called King of the Jews along with at least two of his disciples you may be chomping at the bit right now wondering but wasn't Barabbas released by pilate and Jesus of Nazareth crucified in his place as stated earlier while the existence of Barabbas is historically plausible the notion of some Pascal pardon practiced by Pontius Pilate no less screams of pure Legend the Evangelist wanted to historicize key statements made by Paul such as Jesus being our Passover Lamb or Jesus is betrayal by night although the evangelists also disagreed with Paul in at least one key area the nature of Jesus's resurrection the evangelists were Greco-Roman authors and Greek Roman authors embellished exaggerated and often created their narratives this was a standard practice and no place that claimed to be a divinely inspired writer yet he presented himself as an omniscient Storyteller who knew what people were thinking he knew what the Centurion had said at the cross he knew the exact dialogue between Jesus and the high priest at the former's trial sincere Christians just assume that Mark knew these things because he must have been inspired by the Holy Spirit but Mark along with the rest of the evangelists were simply imitating the literary style of The Perennial teachers Herodotus and thucydides who made up the dialogue according to what they thought was appropriate my contention is that despite the evangelist's inclusion of real historical persons and their passion narratives such that Jesus of Nazareth Pontius Pilate Jesus Barabbas and Herod Antipas these passion narratives are most likely not historical the evangelists attempted to historicize the passion of their Savior and the mention of several real figures gave their stories a strong sense of verisimilitude the Evangelist in essence created a simulacrum or substitute Jesus of Nazareth which they subsequently tortured and killed with their pens the Jesus of Christian faith countless exceeding generations of Jews Christians and pagans were made to believe that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified due to these writings this gives new insight into the Quran statement which can be translated as but he Jesus was made to appear so crucified that is made to appear so by the evangelist it was precisely their passion narratives motivated and underpinned by Pauline christology written in the standard Greco-Roman style replete with literary mimesis from both the Tanakh and homeric epics and the abounding with historical implausibility that gave the world the impression that Jesus of Nazareth had been crucified part two when Barabbas and his men were crucified not a single follower of Jesus of Nazareth was present why would they be I agree with James Tabor that the most likely spot of the crucifixion was the Mount of Olives countless Jews standing in the heart of Jerusalem would have been able to see the horrific spectacle on the mountain albeit from a great distance as he hanged on the cross Barabbas may have cried out my God my God why have you forsaken me this was a man who generally felt like he was fighting the good fight for the sake of God and now felt utterly abandoned to further mock to further mock Yeshua bar Abba the Romans placed the placard above his head which read the king of the Jews according to Mark or this is Jesus the king of the Jews according to Matthew or this is the king of the Jews according to Luke interestingly only in John do we find the placard reading Jesus of Nazareth the king of the Jews by the time John wrote his gospel around 90 to 100 CE he thought it was necessary to clarify or perhaps correct the synoptics as stated earlier John eliminated the episode of Simon Cyrene carrying the cross he wrote that Jesus was impaled on the cross and he said that Jesus body was anointed before it was placed into the tomb all contradicting the synoptics clearly John went out of his way to convince his readers that Jesus of Nazareth was the one crucified not Barabbas Simon Etc and that he was totally Dead when he was placed in the Tomb he did not survive it is plausible that the johannine community was contending with rival Christian groups that denied the death of Jesus of Nazareth on the cross while the crucified victims were visible at a distance to the people of the city below who may have attended the actual event on the mountain we simply do not know and makes little sense that any of the close supporters of either Jesus would have been present at the scene since Yeshua hanutsuri was considered a persona non grata by the temple establishment and Yeshua barabba was it convicted insurrectionist in fact the synoptic gospels tell us explicitly that all of Jesus's disciples forsook him and fled John of course belied the synoptics and placed the disciple the very foot of the cross and despite mark telling us that passovers by and chief priests were mocking the crucified Jesus it is also unlikely that any members of the Sanhedrin Temple authorities or Pharisees were present it seems to me that the Jewish leaders would have preferred to be at home with their families observing in the Passover rather than exhausting themselves to attend the execution of three criminals by Roman soldiers on the top of a mountain I think the Romans knew that willful Jewish attendance to these gruesome scenes tended to be low this is precisely why they would crucify their victims along busy streets and on high places these spectacles functioned as both an indelible demonstration of Roman power as well as an effective deterrent to Jewish Rebellion Christian apologists point out that Mark tells Mark tells us that several women were looking on from afar and that Mark as a Christian would not have made this up since it was embarrassing that only Jesus's women followers were witnesses to his crucifixion and subsequent Resurrection and patriarchal Jewish law a woman's testimony was next to worthless therefore it must be historical they conclude the Criterion of embarrassment is definitely useful in determining historical truth but I think that when it comes to the prominence of women in the gospels both Airmen and adonald offer more plausible explanations according to Airman a signature Mark and Motif that was picked up by the layer evangelist was that that was that Outsiders get it while insiders such as Jesus's family members male disciples and Jews in general uh consistently struggle to profess faith in Jesus as the Son of God and savior Outsiders such as Roman centurians demons and women recognize him immediately while the male disciples fled like cowards when they felt the heat around the corner as it were the female disciples courageously continued to follow Jesus even to the cross in my view Mark's Motif is really the result of his underlying anti-jewish sentiments and although Mark places Jewish women at the cross and empty tomb it is their status as women as Outsiders that trumps their jewishness part three according to Airmen we have quote no idea what Jesus said when he was crucified the gospels give us conflicting statements if Jesus that is Jesus Barabbas uttered the Cry of dereliction from the cross as I suggested earlier how would we have known it how would it have reached us if a few Jewish leaders were present of the crucifixion along with some women which I doubt perhaps they heard Barabbas say these words and then reported it to others this would explain why Mark and Matthew reported the cry as Jesus's last words just prior to another loud cry before dying if we were being honest however this is not the way a truly righteous man would die let alone a prophet or omniscient God if Jesus of Nazareth knew that he was sent by God essentially himself according to Christian theology on a suicide mission to die for our sins then what is the meaning of such final words Christian apologists defend the mark in slash smithian Jesus by pointing out that he was quoting the first verse of Psalm 22 as a way of signaling to his audience the Fulfillment of Prophecy that although the psalmist started in despair he ended on a much more hopeful note this might be true but it doesn't change the fact that the market and Jesus believed that he had been forsaken by God by being crucified it seems as though Jesus could not have imagined in a million years this is is going to happen to him but despite God having forsaken him perhaps he would be forgiven in the afterlife although the psalmist does not mention anything about death or dying but rather that God would save him from his afflictions in this world whatever the case may be the content of Psalm 22 is clearly antithetical to the Christian to Christian theology which imagines that the Father and Son entered into a metaphysical Covenant before the foundation of the world stipulating that in the year 4000 after Adam the sun slash logos would enter the human flesh and die for the sins of humanity in the greatest act of redemption in all history on the contrary the final words of the mark in slash methane Jesus sound much more like what Barabbas would have said a Theocratic nationalist who dedicated his life to Cleansing the holy land of occupying pagans but who ended up stripped scourged beaten nailed and crucified by those very pagans in his own country in his utter bewilderment and despair he cried out the God and continued to cry out until he died a Christian would argue that perhaps of the women who heard quote Jesus utter these words eventually told the disciples including Matthew and Peter Matthew then recorded it in his gospel and marked Peter's student recorded it in his gospel the major problem of this assertion is that we now know that it makes almost no historical sense to ascribe any gospel to any disciple or disciple of a disciple and we will be hard-pressed to find a single critical scholar who takes this position but even if we humor the Christian argument of apostolic authorship we run into a Cascade of other problems Luke who claimed to have a quote perfect understanding of Jesus's life and times did not record The Cry of dereliction instead he recorded Jesus saying father into your hands I commend my spirit as his final words Luke had access to mark it was one of his sources but he was clearly bothered by the mark and Jesus accusing God of abandoning him and John before being stabbed in his side Jesus spoke to his mother and the Beloved disciple and then uttered it is finished as his final words this beg several important questions why didn't the women attending the crucifixion tell Peter or Matthew about these things if they did why didn't mark or Matthew record them perhaps Peter and Matthew did not believe the women perhaps the women forgot if they forgot things as important as Jesus's final conversation with Mary and his beloved disciple Jesus asking God to forgive the Jews from the cross Jesus promising Paradise to one of the leistas Jesus saying it is finished and Jesus being stabbed by Roman Centurion then why trust these women at all why even trust them when they said that the crucified man was Jesus of Nazareth they were watching from afar they saw a man heavily bruised untidy and disheveled was that really Jesus of Nazareth perhaps they read the placard placed conveniently above his head mockingly identifying him as the king of the Jews or Jesus the king of the Jews but this could have described Jesus Barabbas it is obvious then that when it came to their crucifixion narratives theology was the main motivator of both Luke and John not historical truth this was also true with Mark and Matthew the two evangelists believe that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified not because they were told by eyewitnesses or disciples who encountered eyewitnesses but because they were representatives of the Pauline churches whose founder believed the rumors that Jesus of Nazareth had been crucified later this founder claimed that these rumors were confirmed by special Revelation which also unveiled the reason for Jesus death God's son made himself a human sacrifice for sin it is very likely that Mark and Matthew placed Psalm 22 1 upon the lips of the dying Jesus of Nazareth to make a theological Point despite its bothersome aspects after all the psalm does seem to describe someone being cornered and mocked by his enemies thus none of the purported words of Jesus from the cross hold up well to historical scrutiny the versions of Mark and Matthew are more plausible than Luke and John although generally speaking all four accounts are highly implausible I want to say something briefly about Psalm 22 before we continue the narrative as I stated the anonymous Greek Christian who wrote the Gospel of Mark believed that Jesus of Nazareth died for Humanity's sins motivated by his hero Paul's assertion that this was quote according to the scriptures Mark scoured the Tanakh for something he could utilize as a proof text the best he could find was Psalm 22 however Psalm 22 was not as unequivocal as some of the early church leaders wanted it to be thus verse 16 was distorted by Post New Testament Church fathers to make it a bit clearer for Bible readers that David predicted the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth the Messiah the verse reads in the King James version that dogs have income have uh the dogs have encompassed me uh the Assembly of the wicked have enclosed me they pierced my hands and my feet if this is an accurate translation one would think that the Evangelist would have jumped at quoting this verse in their passion narratives strangely they do not in fact on a single New Testament New Testament writer quoted paraphrased or even alluded to the latter portion of this verse despite apparently its description of someone being pierced through his hands and feet how did they miss that all four gospel authors mentioned that the soldiers casted lots for Jesus garments while he hanged on the cross this was for them the Fulfillment of the prophecy mentioned in verse 18 the very same Psalm verse 16 however was enigmatically and ignored by all the answer to this riddle is revealed when we look at the original Hebrew the uh it literally translates for dogs have encircled me an assembly of the wicked have surrounded me like a lion my hands and my feet yeah the Jewish publication Society rendered the last part as like a lion they are at my hands and my feet the phrase they are at is not found in the original Hebrew but is implied by the context this is Hebrew lyrical poetry and often in such poetry a rhetorical device known as Ellipsis is employed in this case the Ellipsis displayed in this verse reveals that the psalmist was experiencing an extremely heightened state of agitation as he described his present situation the important thing is that the verse definitely does not say pierced so why do Christians consistently translate like a lion as they pierced sometime after the writing of the canonical gospels yet before the writings of anti-jewish apologist Justin Martyr who died 165 Christian scribes and or proto-orthodox fathers deliberately altered the Greek words of this verse from like a lion to they pierced thereafter the new wording the new wording of the Septuagint the lxx was they pierced my hands and my feet Justin jumped all over this and was quick to remind his readers in his first apology and dialogue that the statement in verse 16 referred to the nails that were driven into the hands and feet of Jesus during crucifixion upon scrutiny however the Christian sleight of hand becomes exposed somebody noticed that the phrase sounded a lot like the verb Kara and thus decided to translate the Greek in accordance with the latter hence the verb uruksan from the lexical form arusu was interpolated in the Greek text I don't want to get too technical here to Summertime to summarize the point the Greek text that the gospel writers were working from certainly did not read they pierced my hands and my feet if it had they would have seized upon the opportunity to point this out to their fears it was sometime after the compositions of the gospels when the Greek of Psalm 22 was altered based upon a deliberate misreading of the original Hebrew and it was only and it was only after that point that Christian apologists began to claim that the nailing of Jesus to the Cross was predicted in the psalm the early Christian apologist intentionally falsified the Greek translation this is exactly what the Quran tells us that they do yet again the Quran is correct and just a quick side note before we get to part four the rabbis actually point out that Zechariah Chapter 13 prophesied the appearance of a false prophet a false prophet clearly false according to the context who would have a very distinctive appearance by the way so Zechariah 13 6 it says this PO this false prophet will be asked um what are these wounds in your hands so Zechariah 13 predicts that a false prophet will appear with wounds in his hands so rabbis say this is Jesus of Nazareth Nazareth but I would argue that this is the New Testament Jesus this is not Jesus of Nazareth because Jesus of Nazareth was never crucified now okay part four the conclusion of the story okay so the crucified victims remain on their crosses for several days this was a standard practice of the Romans it is highly implausible that a secret follower of Jesus of Nazareth a man supposedly executed by Rome for treason will be granted special permission by Pontius Pilate to remove the body from the cross immediately after death pilate had just ordered multiple crucifixions on the Passover but now are we to believe that he was suddenly sensitive the ceremonial Jewish laws concerning the Sabbath rather Mark wanted to entomb Jesus as soon as possible for the sake of his theological narrative a long drawn-out crucifixion of Jesus would not flow well for his overall story but who would ask for Jesus's body it certainly couldn't be a disciple according to Mark they all left Jesus in the Lurch Mark needed to create someone of influence and that someone was an honorable Senator San hedrin member named Joseph of Arimathea and man with the most common first name among Jewish men of the first century who hailed from a town that nobody unto this day has ever heard of the creation of Joseph also served another crucial purpose for Mark Jesus was a Galilean who had died in Jerusalem according to Jewish law corpses had to be buried within 24 hours of death if possible therefore Jesus needed a place to be buried but not in the ground a ground burial doesn't work well with a narrative that involves a physically reconstituted body and a grave that must be verified as being empty rather Jesus needed an expensive above ground spacious Rock tomb and lo and behold Joseph of Arimathea happened to own one and he gave it to Jesus Mark wants us to believe that a respected member of the Jewish sent hedrin in Jerusalem offered his precious family tomb to an itinerant Galilean preacher he met a few days ago who was crucified by Rome and mocked for being a false Messiah but how does Mark explain this was it because Joseph professed that Jesus was the son of God like a Roman Centurion of course not Joseph was a learned Jewish male Insider all we get from Mark is a vague statement that Joseph was quote also waiting for the kingdom of God more plausibly whatever remained of the crucified men on the mountain was eventually thrown into a common grave several days after their deaths naturally they had become the Talk of the Town as they hung on their crosses who are these men who was their leader perhaps after the Passover some Curious Jews made the Trek up the mountain only to find a bunch of unrecognizable and unconscious bodies perhaps some of the temple leaders had heard that someone named Jesus was crucified a Jesus who had claimed to be some sort of Messiah and had led a disturbance in the city perhaps some of them said that this must have been Jesus Barabbas While others said Jesus of Nazareth the man that they had reported to the Romans after he caused a riot at the temple some of the members of the temple cult exalted that they had killed Jesus of Nazareth through the Romans While others doubted they had Shack or doubt and there you have it and historically plausible alternative to the dominant position among secular historians that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified it's quite simple really some of the Jewish leaders believed that Jesus Barabbas was Jesus of Nazareth both men she had the same first name title and reputation as causers of stasis there were probably other commonalities as well such as physical appearance and age perhaps robbus was a Galilean perhaps he was also a Jesus of Nazareth the prophet Jesus neither swooned nor was divinely raptured from the cross no one was supernaturally transfigured nor did the Romans crucify the wrong man the episodes of the Pascal pardon and Joseph of Arimathea taking the body and offering his family tomb are historically implausible this Theory also accounts for the disciples seeing Jesus after the crucifixion some of them simply remained in his company while he kept a low profile somewhere in Jerusalem other Jews who were under the impression that Jesus had been crucified could have seen him as well however I do believe that the disciples must have also experienced something Supernatural after the crucifixion event and that this experience had a profound effect upon them they believed that they had witnessed something miraculous given the circumstances of the Passover crucifixions it seems to me that some of the members of the temple cult continue to search for Jesus believing that he had that he was believing that he was ultimately not among The Condemned criminals at some point God took Jesus from this Earth I understand that this cannot be historical from a standpoint of someone like Bart Ehrman and I admitted this is my faith conviction unlike Christian apologists who insists upon the historicity of the Resurrection I can see that the Ascension of Jesus was a miracle and and therefore non-historical my aim today is only to explain how Jesus may have plausible probably escaped across historically the disciples went back to Galilee and believed that Jesus appeared to them in multiple visions these appearances can be explained scientifically people across time and culture have claimed that they experience visions of their long gone loved ones I believe however that the disciples visions of Jesus were real not imagined Chief among the disciples were James Peter and John the three pillars sometime later these three along with others returned to Jerusalem and founded a sect of Judaism known as the nazarians or the branchites named after the hometown of their Master Jesus of Nazareth under the leadership of Jesus's brother James the Nazarene continued teaching the precepts of the Gospel they were a politically quietest movement that practiced a more liberal form of the Jewish law they stressed asceticism charity love for the poor in relationship with God being devout Jews they did not believe that Jesus was divine or that he had become a human sacrifice for sin and as I stated earlier there is no strong evidence that they even affirmed that Jesus had been crucified the jamesonian nazarenes proved themselves on threatening to both the temple cult as well as the Roman authorities at least for a while they preached that Jesus was a prophet Messiah who predicted the future coming of a powerful figure known as the son of man who set up his monotheistic Kingdom upon the Earth and vanquished the fourth Beast the Roman Empire James nicknamed the just was a highly revered figure hand-picked by Jesus himself before his departure who led the Jerusalem Place based nazarenes until his eventual assassination by the temple called in 62 of the Common Era almost 30 years after Jesus did that the death of James was documented by Josephus amazingly despite being the media successor of Jesus and universally recognized head of the nazarenes for nearly three decades James is virtually non-existent in the gospels and we have no record of a single one of his authentic writings or Epistles in fact most average Christians I have spoken to over the last 20 years plus admitted that they did not even know that Jesus had a brother let alone a brother such as James there's a good reason for this however in his name Apollo his name is Paul of Tarsus who was essentially hijacked the entire movement okay so we're really coming out to the end I know oh so this is taking a while um but just um as another side note here um Paul's conversion story in Acts is also a memetic of popular anti-seed and Greek literature all right so so this is in addition to the other historical problems with his first story I mentioned earlier such as the term Christian being an anachronism and the fact that the high priest did not have jurisdiction over Jews and Damascus so in the first century Jesus and dionyses were two quote Gods who were competing for the hearts and minds of the Greeks okay Jesus turns water into wine of course Dionysus was the god of wine who also had many wine Miracles attributed to him the johannan Jesus says I am the True Vine right and the subtext seems to indicate um that he means true as opposed to the false Vine Dionysus I am the True Vine right so now in the the bakai right the Greek playwright euripides who died around 400 BCE he mentions that the King of Thieves whose name was pantheus was persecuting members of The Cult of Dionysus now Dionysus was the killed and resurrected Divine Son of God so then dionyses as a persecuted God man appears to pantheist his persecutor in Disguise and pantheist sees a light and Dionysus says to him quote I would control my rage and sacrifice to him meaning himself if I were you rather than kick against the goads pantheist is then punished and killed by the members of the dionysian cult in Acts the persecuted God man all right and killed and resurrected Divine Son of God Jesus appears to Paul his persecutor Paul sees a light and Jesus says to him I am Jesus whom you are persecuting it is hard for you to kick against the goats it is the same exact expression so Paul is punished by blindness but eventually converts so Luke wants to demonstrate the superiority of Paul overpantheas but the context of the two stories is the same we have two persecutors of two Divine sons of God who are directly confronted by those Divine sons of God by using the same Greek expression and the persecutors are punished in the same way after seeing a light this story is most likely fiction Luke seems to have taking it from euripides bakai okay so I have two slides left really close to the end now after thinking about this a bit I came up with a second historically plausible story and this one's much much shorter uh but this story is uh this story is premised upon the plausibility that the gospel passion narratives are mostly or completely legendary and I think I demonstrated that okay so according to Paul our earliest New Testament writer the Jews killed Jesus Paul and Paul also says Jesus was crucified obviously now perhaps what Paul meant was that the Jews killed him by crucifixion but historically and legally how would the Jews have executed Jesus right if he was found guilty of blasphemy for sorcery which is actually what the teledafi issue and Quran suggest that the charges were right this is evidence sorcery if that's the case then they would have stoned him and then crucified his body post-mortem and thus the Quran says they did not kill him I.E by stoning nor crucify him uh postmortem as it were so and this is also the Jewish claim in the talmud that he was stoned and crucified so so allow me to clarify then Paul does not mention Roman involvement at all okay Paul says that the archons of this age killed Christ right the rulers or leaders of this age the Greek word archon is very imprecise it could refer to a rabbi a high priest a Roman Governor an angel a demon however in first Thessalonians like 2 15 Paul is explicit the Jews killed Jesus and this verse is authentic so no Roman involvement and this is consistent with Josephus at least a stronger opinion that the testimony of flavian is a total fabrication okay is this also consistent with the Toledo yeshu the talmud and what maimonides wrote in the mishna Torah he says Jesus the Nazarene who claimed to be the Messiah was killed by the Jewish Court debate Dean no Roman involvement this also seems to be consistent with the Quran when it quotes some of the Jewish authorities boasting that they had killed Jesus now if a historian or a Christian apologist wants to say that Paul meant that the Jews killed him using the Romans well Paul doesn't say that yeah it's possible but he doesn't say that in fact in Romans 13 Paul says that the Roman government does not persecute the righteous and innocent you know he says do what is right and the authorities will honor you only if you do wrong should you be afraid now what a Christian who believed that the Romans falsely crucified Jesus say anything like this it doesn't seem likely it wasn't Jesus righteous and innocent now most historians would say that John the Baptist and Jesus were very close okay in fact Jesus was initially a disciple of John and was baptized by most historians take this position it seems that at some point Jesus Took on his own disciples but most likely considered continued to consider John to be like you know his teacher or Mentor okay so so here we have two teachers both with disciples very close in age very similar in their message possibly related possibly cousins who may have even looked similar in fact in the gospels people confused Jesus for John you know we're told that Herod and some others thought that Jesus was John Resurrected that makes sense it's also plausible that John was confused for Jesus now what happened to John so according to Mark and Matthew and Luke take for Mark Herod unlawfully married herodias right his brother's wife okay and I'm going to refer to John the Baptist as the Baptist now to avoid confusion so according to the synoptics the Baptist said that it was unlawful for Herod to marry his brother's wife but because of this herodias wanted to kill the Baptist but she couldn't but then she saw an opportunity so Herod threw this huge you know birthday party for himself and the daughter of herodias danced for all of his guests now Herod was so grateful he said to her ask me whatever you want and I'll give it to you I'll even give you half of my kingdom and the girl coached by her mother said bring me the head of John the Baptist so then Herod had no choice he had the Executioner bring her the Baptist head on a platter okay so from a historical standpoint this story sounds like a romance novel right a story of intrigue and drama and deception you know and hedelistic and Hellenistic novels there's this thing where someone makes an oath to another person and then the and then the other person says something unexpected so then the first person is forced to fulfill his oath right also women in these novels and stories uh um cannot directly confront the men they have to be passive aggressive maybe this is what happened but historically we're speaking you know historically this sounds like Mark just telling an interesting story that never really happened now Josephus who doesn't have a dog in this fight right as it were meaning he's not he's not a Christian uh also mentions the Baptist death but he says something very different than a new testament according to Josephus Herod Antipas imprisoned the Baptist because the Baptist was gaining many followers and Herod was afraid that the Baptist might eventually lead a rebellion against it okay this is an Antiquities 18. very different than the New Testament so this tells us that John was also a Messianic figure of some sort in fact the mandians to this day believe John was the Messiah not Jesus so Josephus says that uh that Herod imprisoned John at The Fortress of macaris which was to the east of the Dead Sea in present-day Jordan then John was executed Josephus doesn't say how he was executed also if you look at josephus's it actually puts the death of the Baptist a little bit later than what the gospels say something like 33 34 even 36. so John's death would have been closer to Jesus's alleged crucifixion it is plausible that John the Baptist was stoned and crucified or just crucified in in the taladathy issue just an FYI John the Baptist is is crucified this is plausible because Herod needed to make a strong statement to both his Roman overlords and to the followers of the Baptist however Tabor points out that Jon was killed at a fortress far away from his supporters so maybe what happened was uh that the Jews living in that area reported the news to other Jews in the heart of Palestine Jerusalem in particular that some Galilean preacher of the coming kingdom of God would seemingly Messianic expectations or aspirations was crucified by Herod Antipas and there there might have been Jewish leaders and members of the temple cult in Jerusalem who assumed that that was Jesus of Nazareth well others said John the Baptist and these were you know men who uh hated Jesus for cleansing the temple exposing their hypocrisy and teaching a slightly more liberal version of the Torah the rumor that it was Jesus spread and then some of those who spread the rumor also heard that Jesus was seen alive thereafter some thought he had been resurrected others disagreed and the rest is history so just a misunderstanding totally plausible none of John's nor Jesus's followers were present at this execution so there was an there was an as to who was actually killed eventually some of the leaders of the temple cult realized that Jesus May still be alive and had never died they pursued him but God caused him to ascend us thwarting their plans and finally finally this is the last slide let's revisit the four main criteria of modern historiography I promise I'd come back to this question number one is the crucifixion of Jesus multiply attested in historical sources I would say no Paul wrote that Jesus was crucified in multiple letters but that is one source Paul um Mark who wrote the first gospel was a Pauline Christian he believed in Paul's gospel that Jesus died for our sins as a Divine Son of God Mark dependent on Paul Matthew and Luke depended on Mark and John had knowledge of the synoptics that's all conceivably One Source Paul and remember Paul was not an eyewitness in fact none of the gospel writers were eyewitnesses what about M and L well it is plausible that M and L were created by Matthew and Luke themselves so m is material that's only found in Matthew and L is only is material only found in Luke it's plausible that they created that material themselves that was part of the genre of the flexible genre we were talking about earlier it's common amongst the Greco-Roman novelists and that's why they don't agree because they they made up these details what about the unique crucifixion details of the Gospel of John well as I stated earlier John contradicts a subnautics regarding the passion narrative time and again he's writing history through the lens of his high christology John is clearly inventing these details besides John is Pauline at his core Jesus must be crucified what about Josephus well the testimony of flavian is a fabrication thus Josephus does not mention the crucifixion of Jesus the earliest known Roman reference to the crucifixion is in the annals of tacitus who died 120 of the Common Era and there's actually some debate about its authenticity but historians generally consider it authentic genuine and thus an important independent I.E non-Christian text that confirms the gospel accounts of Jesus's crucifixion however tacitus wrote the annals around 116 85 years after the supposed crucifixion and it's not clear whether tacitus was relating what was generally known among previous Roman historians or whether he was simply acquiescing to the popular Christian narrative okay tacitus did not have a reason to question whether pilate may or may not have executed some random Jew among thousands of others question number two is is the crucifixion an early source as well it's mentioned by Paul which is earlier than the gospels but Paul gives us zero narrative however it is not in queue which was plausibly earlier than Paul so no the earliest Source about Jesus that we know of does not mention Jesus's alleged crucifixion it is not in cue remember there's nothing nothing in the gospel account of The Gospel According to queue about the crucifixion of Jesus it also seems likely that from the subtext of Paul's Epistles that they were Christian factions in various cities around the Mediterranean that denied the crucifixion and we looked at that question number three was the crucifixion embarrassing well this depends on the type of quote unquote Christian and what text he's looking at so the answer is not necessarily again the name Yeshua was so popular at this time because Jewish parents wanted their sons to be the Messiah mentioned in Daniel 9 who is martyred and martyrdom is not embarrassing it is glorious now Paul was definitely an apocalypticist you know he thought the world was about to end so so there's a high probability that he considered Daniel 9 to be happening during his generation as did many other Jews and Daniel 9 speaks of a messiah who is cut off so I think what happened was that Paul heard rumors that a man named Jesus who was claiming messiahship was crucified but that certain people also claimed to have seen Jesus thereafter Paul said to himself this man is perfect he's named Jesus a perfect name short for Joshua who claimed to be the Messiah who was killed just like Daniel 9 says then seen after his death ah so this is how God is going to inaugurate these end times with Jesus's death as a martyr for our sins than his resurrection so for Paul this messiah in Daniel 9 must be the Messiah because the end is so near so to answer the question no and Paul's understanding insisting that Jesus did die as Messiah was not embarrassing at all finally number four is the crucifixion socially or contextually coherent in other words does the crucifixion make sense in its context yes a lot of Jews were crucified that's the only one that modern historians get in my opinion but the problem here for the historians and Christians is that the specific events surrounding the alleged crucifixion of Jesus and the gospels are highly implausible which makes one question the historicity of the entire event so in conclusion after all of this if someone doesn't admit that there is a reasonable doubt about the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth if they don't admit that it is at least historically plausible that he wasn't crucified then we must question their intellectual honesty and that my dear brother Paul is mercifully the end fantastic well thank you very much indeed Dr Alia Thai for a magisterial exposition of historical plausibility of an uncrucified Jesus of Nazareth and I use the word magisterial very deliberately uh authoritative uh comprehensive definitive uh Exposition there so thank you very much indeed sir thank you okay well we'll leave it there um um and we can all digest the contents over over time I'm sure so thank you until next time