Alex O'Connor Confronts the Gnostic Gospels They Banned From The Bible

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I just had him back on, actually. He's a really popular episode. I mean, I know people. I don't know people like David Deutsch, but something about that multiverse stuff just really, really piques the interest. Yeah. What was his exact point on that again? Like, obviously, he believes that could be a thing. Yeah, well, he believes it is a thing, but he's a quantum. Well, I don't know if he's actually a quantum physicist, but he's got a great deal of interest in quantum physics at the very least. And so he's talking about what's called the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. So in quantum mechanics, there are multiple ways to interpret the data. So you'll have heard that quantum mechanics says that something can be true. And false at the same time, or that atoms can be in two places at once. And that's one way of interpreting the data. I mean, it seems as though, for example, you know, an electron, when you imagine it, it's like a little particle zooming around a nucleus. It's actually this cloud of probability. And when you observe it, the wave function collapses and suddenly it's all in one place. You know, Schrodinger's cat. Yes. Yeah. We talked about that a bunch. Schrodinger's cat is a lot of people forget or neglect to mention. A reductio ad absurdum. It's supposed to sort of be a bit of a joke. A reductio ad absurdum, which is a reduction to absurdity. Sorry, I'm sort of, we're really off to the deep end here. We're running into it. This is a really useful tool, and you'll have come across it before. It means taking an argument or a position, pushing it to its logical conclusion, and showing that that's absurd. So, for example, suppose you said, I think that we should minimize suffering. For everyone. That's what we ought to do. I said, okay, well, the easiest way to minimize suffering for everybody would just be to kill everyone on the planet, and suffering's gone. But that's a ridiculous conclusion. So, I've taken the idea, I've pushed it to its conclusion, shown the conclusion is ridiculous. Yes. Therefore, the premise must be wrong, and we have to adapt it or change it. It's called a reductio ad absurdum. Or change a way to do it. Yeah. So, you might say, oh, okay, then, well, we need to reduce suffering while keeping everyone alive, you know, or something like that. So, to disprove. To disprove an idea, you can take it to a conclusion, show that the conclusion is ridiculous, and say, so the idea must be wrong. So, Schrodinger does this with quantum mechanics, because quantum physicists are observing weird stuff going on in the quantum level. And it looks as though, until you observe a particle, it's in multiple places at once. Yeah. It's like a probabilistic cloud. Yeah, for people who haven't seen my episodes of Michio Kaku and some of the others we talked about, can you just explain the Schrodinger? Schrodinger's cat. Yeah, exactly. So, Schrodinger comes along and he says, okay, so if the idea is that quantum randomness, basically when a quantum random event happens, until you observe it, both of them have happened, and sort of both of them are true at the same time, but when you observe it, it collapses into one sort of option. Schrodinger says, okay, well, imagine we've got a cat inside of a box, and we've got this quantum event, which has a 50% chance of killing the cat. So, Schrodinger says, okay, well, imagine we've got a cat inside of a box, and we've got this quantum event, which has a 50% chance of killing the cat, and a 50% chance of having the cat remain alive. And that box is, it's a, you can't see through the box. So, crucially, you can't observe it. The idea is that if quantum mechanics, if this interpretation of quantum mechanics is true, then because that quantum event both happens and doesn't happen before it's observed, well, if half of the time it kills the cat and half the time it doesn't, that means the cat must be both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box and find out. This has captured the imagination of pop culture, because the cat is both dead and alive at the same time, and that's the bit that people remember. But people think that this is some kind of, like, truth about science, that Schrodinger's cat is like this argument as to how a cat can be dead and alive at the same time. No, Schrodinger is doing a reductio ad absurdum. He's saying, that's ridiculous. The cat can't be dead and alive at the same time. Therefore, this interpretation of quantum mechanics must be wrong. It can't be that, you know, everything exists in this cloud of probability until you observe it, and then suddenly it just snaps into a. into a real position. That doesn't make any sense. So, that's what Schrodinger's cat is supposed to. is supposed to demonstrate. And the interpretation of quantum mechanics that this relies upon is called the Copenhagen Interpretation. And as I said to David Deutsch, and apparently he said that he's been using this ever since, I said, you can't spell the Copenhagen Interpretation without cope. Which, apparently, he's picked up on and started using, so I'm quite proud of that one. There is another interpretation of quantum mechanics called the Many Worlds Interpretation. Which, instead of saying that, like, you know, imagine quantum event, you've got option A and option B. Yes. And until you observe it, both kind of happen probabilistically, and then when you observe it, it collapses into one or the other. The Many Worlds Interpretation says that, when a quantum decision like that needs to be made, both of those realities exist. Option A and option B both happen in sort of separate branching realities. One of, if not the most common DMs I get on Instagram, are many of you asking me what my favorite books are. Well, today's your lucky day. If you use the link in my description below to join my newsletter, I'm going to give you my top 10 book recommendations right now. Also, if you'd like to join my clipping community for a chance to make money producing content from the show, you can do so via the Discord link in my description below. And finally, you can join my Patreon for early uncensored releases of the full episodes via the Patreon link in my description below. As always, please take one second to hit that subscribe button if you haven't already. I really appreciate that. Also, the like button's a big help, and you can join my newsletter via the link in the description below. And when you open the box, you're not collapsing a probability wave, a cloud. What you're just doing is finding out which of those branches you're in. You just find out. And so there is another version of events in which you open the box and the cat is dead. And there's another sort of alternate universe, so to speak, in which you open the box and the cat is alive. As far as I understand from David Deutsch, so David Deutsch is a big proponent of this idea. And he's like certain of it. He's like, yes, the multiverse exists. But it's not like when you think of the multiverse, you imagine like a bunch of orbs sort of existing in the ether next to each other. For him, it's not so much that there are these different separate universes that like exist in one big space, but rather every time a quantum event can go one way or another, there's like a different branch of reality. Yes, and that's what the multiverse is. So for him, the multiverse definitely exists, but it's this like quantum multiverse branches of reality that occur every single time a quantum decision has to be made. Yeah, Dr. Kaku got me. He got me really obsessed with that, like the way that he talks about it. And then when I talk with him, like he was explaining, building upon it about how it's like, he's like, it's almost like the radio is turned to just the right transistor. Yeah, yeah. At that point, it'll be, you know, we could be in this room and it's you and me. But if you just turn it a little bit this way, they could be like a dinosaur walking through here instead. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, it's all, it's theoretical. So it could all be bullshit. And probabilistically, maybe it is. But. When there's things in the universe that line up that don't make sense, like ideas that will match from across the planet to one place or another, or like a lessee, as we pointed out, reaching out to you when I find your channel and don't say anything like, you know, could it be coincidental? You know, we're looking at similar things. Sure. But I always think about that with the deja vus of the world and stuff where it's like, maybe there's some sort of like little cross pollination happening. And maybe it's not a full blown multiverse, but there's something to that transistor radio idea that that that could. That could create other realities for us. It would be cool if you could travel between these branches of reality for different reasons as well. It's not just that you could enter a universe in which, like, you were wearing a blue jumper instead of a red one. But I thought about this, like, is there another universe in which everything is identical except like time moves at a different rate? When you're in that universe, it feels the same because you're also moving at a slower rate. But compared to the other branches of reality, time is moving slower or faster. Which means that potentially by moving between these realities, you could move into a universe that's identical, except like further back in time. And so it's kind of this way of of maybe regaining the ability to do backwards time travel, which seems impossible within one universe. That's kind of a conjectural, entertaining possibility. But the idea that we could just move between these branches of reality, I think, doesn't doesn't work like that. They're essentially impenetrable because they are literally branches of of reality. You'd have to somehow step outside of it, which. I think in principle might be might be impossible, but it's exciting. Another motivation. Yeah, I mean, I'm not a physicist, so I'm not sure about that. But I think if there were any realistic potential for that to be the case, I think theoretical physics would have some kind of grasp on it. A lot of theoretical physics is stuff that although we'll never do in practice, here are some things we could do like wormholes or what would happen if we traveled at speed of light, and although we'll never do that in practice, still do the math and work out what would happen just in principle, but moving between quantum branches of reality or outside of our own universe, I mean, I'm not even sure what it means to go outside of our universe or like what the mechanism would be. But another sort of motivation for some form of multiverse is the fact that it's not just coincidences like, you know, oh, isn't that crazy? I was just thinking of this guy yesterday and then he called me. It's like the fundamental constants of the universe, the stuff that allows the universe to like exist, are an incredibly finely tuned set of properties. And so a lot of people use this as an argument for God's existence. Other people use it as a motivation to believe in the multiverse, because if the strength of gravity were stronger by an unfathomably small amount, just like the tiniest, tiniest nudge, too strong. Then after the Big Bang, everything would have collapsed in on itself and the universe would have imploded. Why does it have to be one or the other on some of these things? That's one thing I sit up and think about. I'm like, what? Like the two examples you just gave, like God and the multiverse, for example, why couldn't they both exist at the same time? Oh, well, they could. That would be really interesting. It's certainly possible, but we wouldn't have any sort of considerations or evidence that would point to that, because take that fine tuning of gravity or whatever constant you want to pick. If you hypothesize, well, that's because God designed it that way. That doesn't rule out a multiverse, but there's no need now for the multiverse as an explanation. So you'd kind of want some other reason to think that the multiverse exists. It doesn't rule it out. I mean, it could exist, but you no longer need it as an explanatory tool. Similarly, if you're like a physicist and you say, well, I believe in the multiverse and that's how we get the fine tuning of gravity, because there are infinitely many universes with different degrees. And of course we have to be in the one that has them all tuned perfectly. That doesn't mean God can't exist, but suddenly God is no longer needed as an explanation for the fine tuning because you've got the multiverse. 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But particularly with the fine tuning, it is the case that if those constants were different, then nothing could exist, like atoms couldn't form. And so your only options are that those constants are so tuned by pure coincidence, by chance. There's one universe and it's just chance. That seems unfathomably unlikely. Or that there's some necessity, there's some reason they have to be that way. Or there's design. And so if you think the answer is chance, you end up in the multiverse. Because it's so unlikely that there just has to have been millions of universes. And so there happens to be one that the constants are tuned correctly. That's chance. Necessity means you're looking for some kind of theory of everything, some kind of physical law, which entails all of these constants, but also would kind of have to be self-justifying or self-explaining. Because even if you found some single theory, which explained why gravity is the strength it is, why the strong and weak nuclear forces are the way they are, and they all collapse into one law, you'd still kind of have to explain that law. Like why is that law the way it is? And it depends on the nature of the law. But it might be some other kind of constant. They might all collapse into one constant. And it's all encompassing in the sense that if there's one chip within that row of that law that falls, it means the entire law falters. The whole thing with the universe couldn't exist. So then you just push the problem back and have to ask, well, why is that fundamental law that way? And so it would have to somehow be like self-justifying. Like at the basis of a lot of our thought are some self-justifying ideas, like the idea that a proposition can't be true and false at the same time. The law of non-contradiction, all of our logical thinking rests upon that assumption. But you can't prove that assumption. It's just something that we just think is true. It's just self-evidently true. If there's some kind of scientific equivalent of that at the basis of the universe, then okay, maybe you've got necessity. So you've got chance, you've got necessity. But the third option here is that the constants are so finely tuned because they're designed that way. And that's where you get people arguing for the existence of God. Do you ever sit up at night, like stressed about all these things that you think about? Because you are literally, your entire basis of philosophy all comes back to the very meaning of life itself. And like, I think about this stuff a lot too, but I don't, you know, I talk about a lot of different things in here. You know, it's not all looking at this, but do you ever sit up at night? You know, not really. Not so much, because I'm extremely interested in this kind of stuff, but I don't have the kind of existential like dredge that a lot of people report. And I think part of the reason for that is because of my violent agnosticism. Violent agnosticism? Yeah. I mean, like, I've got no idea if we live in a multiverse or if there's a God and that's why there's. constants are so finely tuned or if there's something obvious that we're just like totally missing or like, I just don't know. And so it might keep me up in the sense of wondering about it, thinking that's kind of interesting, but not in the sense of dread, because I'm not confident enough in any view to be like anxious about it. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, I understand that. So I don't sort of have that fear. If anything, the thing that keeps me up is like interesting implications of views that. are just fascinating, more so than like, man, what does it all mean? And stuff is like, oh, this is kind of cool. Like this is this is kind of fascinating. Like there's a like the fine tuning argument for the existence of God. People use this all the time. Christopher Hitchens, famous atheist journalist, famously said in the back of a car once that this is the argument that gives him pause for thought, that everything is just perfectly balanced. You know, why would it be that way? And like, I've been really interested recently in some of the. non-canonical Christian literature. So like Gnostic Gospels, other stuff that sort of isn't in the Bible and alternate religious views. Right. And one of these alternate views in the history of Christianity is the idea that there are kind of two gods in a way. There's like an evil demiurge who creates the material world and the material world is evil and bad and terrible. And there's the spiritual realm, which is good. And we're sort of trapped in the material realm. And so some of these heretical views believe that, for example, the God of the Old Testament is this demiurgic creator, evil or incompetent creator of the material world. And Jesus comes from the spiritual realm to come and help us break free of our material conditions. Right. So that's a bit of a weird, wacky, dualist view, right? Dualist view? Well, dualist in the sense of there being sort of two realities. OK. It's like the material world and the spiritual world. Is that a British word, dualist? Dualist, as in like dualism, so like dual, like two. OK, so no. Well, in different contexts, it means different things. OK. So in the philosophy of mind, for example, if you're a dualist, it means that you believe that the mind is immaterial, but you've also got like a material brain. Oh. So it's like a physical thing and there's also the mental thing and they're distinct. There's two of them. It's called dualism. Got it. OK. As opposed to monism, like mono, one. Which means that either if you think that all there is is the brain and there's no immaterial mind, you're a monist because there's only one thing, it's just the brain. Some people think that there's only the spiritual and that the material world is essentially either an illusion or something. I thought you were saying dualism, not dualism. Dualism. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. That's the second time. Gary Harrington did that too. It's an accent thing. Got it. Yeah. So yeah, it's kind of dualist. Got it. In that there are these two realms, evil, whatever. That's besides the point. The interesting thing is the fine tuning argument. One question that comes to mind is, OK, so everything is super finely balanced and if something changed by the smallest amount, the universe couldn't exist. You might want to ask, like, why is it like set up that way? Hmm. question as to how given that they have to be finely tuned, they are finely tuned, that's a mystery, but why do they have to be finely tuned? Why are there like meta conditions such that it's seemingly incredibly difficult to create a functional material world? And so a friend of mine came along and said, "You know this Gnostic idea that there's a good God and that the creation of the material world is some evil or incompetent act of a demiurgic sort of bad creator. Could it be that the true creator didn't want the material world to exist because the material world is evil and so sets up the meta conditions such that it's extremely improbable that a material world would ever exist?" Because he doesn't want that. The whole world, the whole material world is evil. The whole material world is evil according to these Gnostics. To go on a little tangent on that for a second though, because I want to understand. Yeah. We live in a world where there's war, right? That's evil. Let's just stay with that example. Within war, there's stories of people though who save other people at a cost of their own life. That's good. Yeah, but it's only good in so far as it comes over, like overcomes a bad thing, right? Yes. In that like. And also, what is it that's good about doing that? You're saving the life of another. You're saving the life of another person and putting it before your own. Yeah, sure. So there are a few ways that you can think about this. Like, the first thing is that all of the bad stuff comes from the existence of the material world. Because of the material world, we have suffering. We have bodies that can be put in danger and can suffer. And yeah, that does give you the capability to save somebody, to overcome something. At ZocDoc, we know you care about your health. You wouldn't do that early morning cardio if you didn't. So the fact that your annual physical is overdue just shows how hard it can be to get seen by a doctor. Sorry, that doctor's not in network. Press 1 for more options. You've reached us outside normal business hours. The next availability is in three months. But ZocDoc makes finding the right doctor easy. Download the app and search by specialty, insurance, and availability. Read real patient reviews, then book instantly. ZocDoc. Ready to be seen? Welcome back, frickin' frack. Welcome to the Jungle, ABC Wednesday. Abbott is back. It's gonna be the best year yet. Thank you. Now we can finally turn this up. And everyone's going wild. Y'all think you run this school, but you don't. It's going great. Abbott Elementary. Anything can happen in the jungle. Right, guys? Season premiere Wednesday on ABC and stream next day on Hulu. But you'd still rather have none of that altogether. An analogy might be that chemotherapy is a really good thing, right? Chemotherapy is wonderful because it helps people overcome cancer. I'll let you continue with that. But if I said like cancer is really bad and we should get rid of it and you said, well, hold on a second. Cancer is really bad. Yeah, but it does allow us to do this really good thing of chemotherapy. Without there being cancer, we couldn't have chemotherapy. Chemotherapy is wonderful. Yeah, chemotherapy is great, but only because it overcomes something bad and we'd rather just not have the bad thing altogether. Right? Right. And so, yeah, like sacrificing yourself, throwing yourself on a grenade, for somebody else is like a good thing. But if you could have no grenade and no need for the sacrifice, that would be better. Right. But then what about lower scale good things that just happen when people do good things just to do good things? Like I, someone's 20 meters behind and I see them coming to the door I'm at and I decide to wait and hold the door for them. Yeah, but there wasn't a bad thing that led to that. If you want to get really like techie about it, like why is that a good thing? Because it means they don't have to push the door for themselves anymore. Because it's a nice, yeah, it's a nice thing to do. Yes. It's nice to make it such that they don't have to push the door. Yes. Pushing the door is a physical action that causes some level of like stress on the joints or whatever. That's why you do it. Right. And so that sounds really trivial. Yeah. But it's also, it's also trivially good. Like it's a good thing, but it's not like some amazing, great thing. It's kind of trivial, but that's because it overcomes a trivial problem with the material world, which is that you have to navigate it. You have to push things. You have to effort to move around, and stuff. So for Gnostics, the good thing about people, about all of us is the spiritual stuff. It's like the non-material stuff that's inside of you. That's what goodness is. And all of our ills come from this material world. And we're constantly in this battle between the material world and our spiritual selves. And if you think about the fact that somebody wants to have a loving relationship, but they're addicted to pornography, it's like the soul versus the material-like body. You know, somebody wants to be the best and most productive person they can be, but they're too lazy and they can't bother to hit the gym or whatever. And it's like a physical impairment on the things that they want to achieve, you know? And so all of the bad stuff comes from the existence of the material world. It's not just Gnostics who think this, by the way. There are all kinds of philosophical views throughout history that sort of posit the material and the spiritual as kind of in battle with each other. Or more broadly, maybe just the good and the bad. There are like good forces and bad forces, and they're in like a battleground on earth. For the Gnostics, and Gnosticism is a broad term. A lot of scholars think it shouldn't be used because it describes so many varying views. But broadly speaking, you could say that you've got material world, bad, spiritual world, good. And that we have essentially, as spiritual beings, that's what our soul is, we have been trapped in a material world. And that material world has been created by an evil or an incompetent creative being, sometimes called the demiurge. And that the ultimate goal of life is to escape from that material trapping and regain our place in the spiritual realm. So the material world is where we're then forced to experience pain, suffering to varying degrees that ends inevitably in death, because we're in a place that we spiritually should not be. That's right. Yeah. And we shouldn't be here at all. So for Gnostics, the creation of the world is essentially a cosmic disaster. Cosmic disaster. Something went wrong. And if you read some of this Gnostic literature, which we only really rediscovered in the 20th century, like this is new. Why did we rediscover it in the 20th century? So we've known for a long time. And by the way, I'm talking in the context of Christianity here. So Gnosticism comes from the Greek word gnosis, which means knowledge. And so in mainstream Christianity, the thing that saves you is the sacrifice of Jesus. Jesus dies on a cross and he resurrects, and that's why you're saved. For the Gnostic Christians, it's not really about what Jesus did. It's about having the right knowledge. Jesus brought knowledge. And if you know the right stuff, that's what will save you. Meaning you can access that within you. Yeah. So it's very like inward looking. It's very knowledge based. Like some of these Gnostic gospels don't even mention the crucifixion or the resurrection, or they have a different interpretation on what was going on there. And so within the Christian tradition, the Gnostics believe that the thing that's important is knowledge. And so they have their own sort of scriptures and these are like later than the books we have in the New Testament and they're condemned as heretical. So the sort of early Christian church. Which books are you talking about to be specific? So in the New Testament, we have four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, right? That's right. There do exist other gospels, the gospel of Judas, the gospel of Thomas. Philip, right? The gospel of Philip. Yes. And also other like letters. Mary Magdalene. Yeah. And some of them are much more tenuous than others. There are some really interesting obvious forgeries, for example. But you've also got like apocalyptic literature. So like the Apocalypse of Peter, which is incredibly interesting. I think there are actually two of them. And there's all these texts that people are writing. And at some point in the early church, you've got these texts floating around. And you've also got people claiming to be Paul the apostle and writing letters in his name, and they're not really written by him and stuff. And so at some point people decide we should start putting together some kind of scriptural canon. Interestingly, the first person to give this a go that we know is called Marcion. Marcion. Marcion. Yeah. And Marcion decides to. God, you say everything way cooler than that. So I'm like, Marcion? It's like Marcion. Marcion. Yeah. It's fascinating. I mean, he's cool and Gnostic, but it's a little unclear as to exactly what his views are, because he doesn't have this crazy cosmic theology. But the one thing that he does have that's Gnostic is he thinks, like he reads what we now call the Old Testament. So he reads like the Hebrew scriptures. And he reads about a God who is like a bastard. He's like committing genocide and slavery, and he's jealous. And he's punishing people and all of this kind of stuff. And then he reads these texts that have begun to emerge, which eventually become the New Testament, these gospels. And he's like this Jesus figure is kind and he's about love and all of this kind of stuff. So for Marcion, he decides I'm going to put together a biblical canon. The entire Old Testament is omitted. It's not in there. Why did he make that? Just because Jesus wasn't there at the time? Because he reads the gospels and he's like, okay, Jesus is our guy. Jesus is this God figure, this spiritual being that we're all approximating. And when he reads the Hebrew scriptures, he doesn't recognize that God in those scriptures. He thinks this God is evil. This God looks to be a monster. And so this cannot be the God that I'm worshiping through Jesus. It has to be something else. So Marcion thinks that the God of the Old Testament is this demiurge I mentioned earlier, this evil creator of the material world. The material world is bad. The God described in the Old Testament is the creator who brought about the material world, evil guy. So all of the Old Testament is gone. And all that we have left is like a slightly shortened version of the Gospel of Luke. And I think 10 out of 13 of Paul's letters that ended up in the New Testament. So the first attempt at a Christian Bible actually just excludes the Old Testament on these grounds that the Old Testament God is evil. I never heard that before. Yeah, it's fascinating. I think, yeah, you pulled it up there. I'll probably say something about compiling the. Yeah, so he considered himself a follower of. Marcion preached that God had sent Jesus Christ, who was distinct from the vengeful God, brackets, demiurge, who had created the world. He considered himself. A follower of Paul the Apostle, whom he believed to have been the only possible Apostle of Jesus Christ. His doctrine is called Marcionism. He published the earliest record of a canon of New Testament books. And so his canon didn't include the Old Testament, because as it says there, he believed that this vengeful God of the Old Testament is an evil being. There's a text that he wrote. I forget what it's called. There was some text that he wrote, which we don't actually have anymore. But it just compared the Old Testament God and Jesus. It just lists out things that the Old Testament God does and things that Jesus does. We don't have it anymore, meaning it got destroyed or lost? For whatever reason, we don't have it. It might have been destroyed. It might have been lost. But we have it through the works of his enemies. So people were responding to him at the time. And so we know what's in there because people were writing about it. And so we know that Marcion is comparing the Old Testament God with Jesus and saying, this doesn't line up. This doesn't line up. This doesn't line up at all. God is saying an eye for an eye. Jesus is subverting that and saying, turn the other cheek. God is committing genocide. Jesus is saying, love your neighbor, all of this kind of stuff. And so, yeah, he just concludes that this Old Testament God is evil and bad and terrible. So that's the earliest attempt at a Christian canon that we get. But the early church that develops and becomes the Christian church that we know today takes a different view, believes that the Hebrew scriptures are legitimate, and it lands on these four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, as the four gospels that people should be reading. And the earliest account we have of that is Athanasius, who sort of, he writes this like tract saying, only read these four books and don't read the rest of them. And this is- When did he write that? This is like, I don't know. You should look it up to be sure. But I think we're looking at like third or fourth century. So around the time of the Council of Nicaea? Yeah. So one big misconception is that the Council of Nicaea like set the scriptural canon. That's not true. That might be Da Vinci Code inspired, I think. Yeah. Well, there's stuff in there that's also fictional. They didn't, it's not, look up Athanasius canon or something. Athanasius. Oh, I can't spell that. Spelling is not Alessi's strong suit. A-T-H-A, A-T-H-A, and Athanasius. There you go. Yeah. Alessi kills it on our channels with titles and stuff. And he's extremely smart. But like, he and I joke behind the scene, the one thing he can't do is spell. Spell, yeah. He has some interesting spells. I'm pretty bad at that too, actually. I'm really, really bad at spelling, especially doing it out loud. But yeah, you can see he's third and fourth century. So it will have been in the fourth century, like early fourth century that he writes this. Okay. And it might even say something there about it. I'm not sure, but- And you're saying that at the Council of Nicaea, that was not scripturally where they defined- No. No, Council of Nicaea was about determining like church doctrine, specifically like relationship of the- Jesus is divine. All of this kind of stuff. Like what is this Jesus stuff actually about? The canon is a separate thing and it might've been determined earlier or elsewhere, but the earliest version that we have is Athanasius saying, only read these four texts. And so after this, what probably happens is some kind of suppression or like, virtuous destroying, like people might do it with their own accord because they're not supposed to be reading these other texts, but these other texts sort of fall out of fashion. They're not spread around. They sort of exist in different esoteric groups. And there are some like smaller groups that have cropped up with their own scriptures and stuff, some which are more popular and travel around. But for whatever reason, they end up sort of getting like lost. Either they're destroyed or people just forget about them or whatever. We just don't have them. But we know that they exist because in the fourth century, sorry, in the first, in the second century, Irenaeus is an early church father who writes a text called Against Heresies. And this is a huge, huge text, which basically argues against every single Christian heresy, which he knows exists and sort of says why it's wrong, why you shouldn't believe this, why you shouldn't believe that. And he's writing about these other views. He's writing about a gospel of Judas, you know. And so we have Irenaeus' work and we know that he's writing about this gospel, but we don't have the gospel. And so for the longest time, all we knew about these texts was through their enemies. And you can learn a thing or two, but obviously it's always going to be skewed if you don't have the original literature. Then in the 1940s, there is a teenage farmer in the desert in Egypt near a place called Narkom. And he's digging in the desert and he comes across this jar. And he's scared to open it at first because he's scared it's got a jinn in it, like a devil. He's terrified to open it. And eventually it gets opened up and there's a bunch of old papyrus in there. And so the story goes, he takes it home and his mother uses some of the papyrus to feed the fire. And eventually it's sort of, I realized that these are sort of worth something. So after, it's a bit of an insane story, actually. And I don't know all of the details, but this is where a lot of our Gnostic literature comes from. And so we've got, they're these like Coptic translations. Coptic is an Egyptian dialect and there's Coptic translations of Gnostic texts. So the gospel of Thomas, for example, the gospel of Judas actually isn't in this text, but the gospel of Thomas is, for example, probably the most famous Gnostic gospel. Although it might not even be Gnostic, and it's our only copy that we've ever found of this gospel. And so just by chance, this guy happens to find this jar, and now we have the gospel of Thomas. And they didn't burn that one for papyrus. No, that one was not burned. Interestingly, the gospel of Judas, which was found not as part of this collection, but nearby. Oh yeah, that has some burn marks. Yeah, you can see, look at it. So look underneath, see that one down there, that's the gospel of Judas, right? So this is found in a different. I think it's found nearby, but it's not found in the Nag Hammadi library. And the gospel of Judas, this spends a long time in private hands because people are trying to sell it. People really want to sell this. And so I can't remember when this is discovered. I think it's discovered maybe in the '70s or '80s or something. And it spends like decades. It might have been slightly earlier than that. Maybe you can look that up actually, to be sure, just if you click on the gospel of Judas. It spends decades traveling around, private sellers trying to sell it. The thing about Egypt is it's got the perfect climate for the preservation of papyrus. That's why these things last for so long. And that's why we always find them in Egypt, because it just happens to have the perfect air to make sure that these things don't disintegrate. Someone takes the gospel of Judas, and for example, it spends about 16 years in a safety deposit box in New York City, which almost destroys it. 16 years? Something like that, yeah. It might've been more like 10 or 15. How did it get to New York City? Because people are moving around trying to sell it. Somebody's trying to find a buyer because this thing is absolutely golden. This is an unbelievable gospel. And it's huge, and it's going to change the whole face of New Testament scholarship. Eventually, National Geographic buy it and publish it. I think they publish it in 2006 or something like that. So it's been going around for decades, and it's only at the turn of the millennium that finally the gospel of Judas is available for people to read. But it's a crazy story. And here's the really weird thing, man, is that people think, "Oh, I'm going to have to go to the library. Again, that's not where the gospel of Judas is found." But if you want to ask the question, why was it buried in the desert? And so one popular suggestion was, well, when Athanasius said, "Only read these four gospels," the rest of them are buried, either to hide them, or keep them secret, or because they've been condemned, get rid of them, put them in the desert. And that's the theory for the longest time. Then there's this whole weird story about how the farmer boy mentions that there was a corpse, and his older brother is like, "No, no, no. There was no corpse. I don't know what he's talking about." And so there is this suggestion that this was actually a grave robbing, because it was quite common to bury papyrus documents with people who died. And so there is an idea that these guys were out there trying to rob a grave, and they happened upon this expensive set of papyrus. Do we have speculation of whose grave it could have been? I don't think we have an idea of whose grave it could have been. No, because we don't know much of the details. I'm not even sure if we know the exact location where it was found, but we don't know. it was just, like I say, some teenage farmers in the desert. But so it's this extremely strange and slightly shady story of how it's all discovered because it's. I'll say. There's something about like a blood feud. I think there's some cannibalism in the story there somewhere. It's like a whole. They're just hitting every single keyword. It's like a whole thing. And yeah, I mean, the story is really crazy. But so some people have shifted from thinking, well, they were buried there because of Athanasius's declaration. And then it's like, actually they were buried with somebody as part of their burial properties. There's probably a word for it. I forget what it's called, but like ceremonial burying people with their documents. And they were trying to rob a grave and then they came across them. And it's all a bit of a mess. But eventually we have access to all of these ancient gospels. And like I say, we knew that these existed, but now we have the texts themselves. So the gospel of Judas is one of my favorites. You can. When does it say it was discovered or rediscovered? It has been carbon dated to 2080. So notice it says, notice it says, given that it includes late second century theology, it's widely thought to have been composed in the second century, brackets, prior to 180 AD by Gnostic Christians. It's been carbon dated to 280 AD, plus or minus 60 years. So how do we know that it's prior to 180 AD? Because that's when Irenaeus wrote against heresies and he mentions the gospel of Judas. So we can carbon date it to 280 AD, plus or minus 60 years. And then use the previously. The previously known information to. But that's this copy that we have, right? Which is a Coptic translation. So when was the text originally written? Well, it's been mentioned. So there are multiple ways that we can sort of date documents, but the actual copies that we have, like the Nag Hammadi Library is probably, I think, again, these particular scriptures are dated to like maybe the third to fifth century, maybe fourth or fifth. I can't remember exactly. But one interesting question, as well, when are these manuscripts from? Were they from the fourth century? That's cool. But when were the texts written? That's the most interesting question. And they weren't originally written in Coptic. What language were they written in and when were they written? It's also, this is another sticking point for me with any of this. When we think of our current history, shit, 10 years ago feels like a long time to an extent. And then you start looking 60, 70 years out. That's like when your great grandparents were kids. Yes. When you start looking at history, the farther away it gets though, time kind of has a wider lens, at least in how we approach it, which means we hear years like, I'm going to throw out random numbers, 140 AD and 210 AD and associate it with almost the same about time. But it's fucking 70 years apart at a time where the record keeping was you wrote something in the fucking sand. Not only that, but it's important to note, especially when we're talking about gospels, that for example, most scholars date the gospel of Mark, which is our earliest canonical gospel to around 70 AD. And there are various reasons for doing that. Matthew and Luke are generally dated like between like maybe like 90, like, I'm sorry, between like 75 to like probably 85, that kind of decade, like 10 or 15 years after Mark. And they say Christ died in like around 33 AD. Around 30, 33 AD. Yeah. And so John's gospel is then probably between like 90 and 100 AD. And I think that's one of the reasons why it's important for us to think about the gospel of Mark. Finding a doctor is hard enough. Finding the right doctor, even harder. Someone who takes your insurance, has an available appointment when you need one, and feels like someone you can actually open up to. That's where ZocDoc comes in. Download the ZocDoc app to search and compare doctors by specialty, insurance, and availability. Read real patient reviews, find the right fit for you, and book instantly. Because getting seen by the right doctor matters. ZocDoc, ready to be seen? Download the ZocDoc app today. Now compare that to like, suppose the gospel of Thomas. Suppose we just proved beyond reasonable doubt that it was dated to 150 AD, right? And that's probably around about when it was written, sort of second century. Some people think it was dated earlier, but that's controversial. Suppose it was 150 AD. You might think, okay, John's gospel is written in 90 AD and the gospel of Thomas is written in 150 AD. So roughly about the same time, right? So no big difference between the two. But in this context, that could be the difference between like an eyewitness to the events of Jesus's life, still being alive and still being dead. Like if Mark is written in 70 AD, that's still like 40 years after Jesus dies. But 40 years is a short enough time that people could still be alive. It could have been written by an eyewitness. It could have been written by someone who knew an eyewitness. That extra few decades is the difference between eyewitness testimony being possible and being impossible. So it does actually make a huge difference. On that thread though, eyewitness testimony itself also changes naturally without people like trying to lie or stuff. You remember details in a small way. Like the example I always give is the old experiment, I forget what it's called, where you put 20 people in a circle, you start with a story. Telephone game. Yeah, the telephone game. You whisper it in their ear and go down the lane and it changed by 10% or something or 20% by the end through no fault of people other than just human error. And it's not to sit here and be a total skeptic about everything, but it's like when you take something as law or canonical law, whatever you want to say, that's like, this is what happened a hundred percent. We have the proof. It's like, all right, you are relying on tests. Like I'm even talking about the ones where you still have an eyewitness testimony person alive, right? Forget the other ones you point out where you don't. You are relying on the word of flawed human beings, which we all are to assume that everything that was said is how it is. And we even see that some of these people are coming up with different versions of the same thing who lived at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a common analogy that's given is the telephone game. Bart Ehrman talks about this a lot. I do think that it's not wholly appropriate for something like the gospels because the point of the telephone game is you only get to hear it once. And the fun is that you then have to hope you hear it right and pass it on. And you're kind of trying to make it go wrong because that's why it's funny. With important traditions, you pass it on and you check you've got it right. So you're going to tell me something. I'm going to say, I'm going to repeat it back to you. You're going to correct any misunderstandings. I'm going to make sure I have it memorized. And then I'm going to pass it on to my children, for example. And so this, the oral transmission of religious traditions, I think is a lot more reliable than people often realize, because like you say, this was the only way that information is, is transpired. Like imagine if you're learning something important, you're learning about your family history, or you're learning something for class or whatever, and you're not allowed to write it down. And it's not written in a book anywhere else. You would probably put a lot more effort into remembering exactly what was said. And so that's passed down a lot better. But I am suspicious, for example, when people say we have the. So much of Christology, which is the study of the nature of Jesus, relies on his exact words. Like it says in the gospels that Jesus used this phrase, and this is really important. Did he say that instead of this? When it gets that specific, I get highly suspicious, right? You're listening to me very carefully right now, right? You're paying attention to the words I'm saying? Of course. Okay. Excluding the sentence I just said. Can you repeat my previous sentence to me? Word for word? No. No. Can't even come close. You probably couldn't even really paraphrase it very well, but you're paying attention quite well. Because you're. I am transcripting the information you have and translating it into understanding what you're saying versus the exact words and lingo and prepositional phrases you're using to land it there. Exactly. And so you can't remember the words that I spoke 20 seconds ago. And I'm expected to believe that the gospel authors who are writing at best decades after the death of Jesus remembered the exact words that he'd spoken. I'm not convinced of that. There is an idea that people had been traditionally remembering the words that he'd said and passing them on to each other and sharing them and authenticating them against different independent traditions. And that can be true. But when it's as important as in this particular instance, did Jesus call himself the son of man or a son of man? And that actually makes a big difference. Yes. Then I think we need to be a lot more suspicious. Hey guys, if you haven't already subscribed, please hit that subscribe button. It's a huge, huge help. Thank you. There are in, to play devil's advocate on some of that though, in our own lives, forget even something as serious as like Jesus or a historical figure, in our own lives, you may listen to someone talking with you for an hour, right? And you're talking about something serious with them. And to your point, I can't remember what they said 30 seconds ago in the exact words, but at some point, the drama of the situation lines up that they land the plane and they say something that isn't those words are ingrained in your head forever. So there could be some of that. And that's what probably happens in a lot of these cases with Jesus. So really, really big Christological moments in John's gospel, Jesus appears in chapter eight to invoke the divine name. He says to his Jewish opponents before Abraham was, I am an, I am ego. Amy in Greek is thought by many to be a call back to the name that God gives Moses as his own name. Um, in the, in the Hebrew, which kind of means I go Amy, which is what Jesus says. And so if Jesus really did say something like that, it is the kind of thing that would stick in the mind. Yes. The mystery then is why only John's gospel reports it. And Matthew Mark and Luke have no mention of such an event. So there are other reasons to suspect that his historicity of that event, but a lot of like reading into the words of Jesus, isn't just the big headline, obvious stuff like that. It's more specific stuff, like the son of man stuff. Jesus uses the title son of man for himself all the time. It's like he uses it more than any other title for himself, I think. And it's a bit of a mystery what it means, because son of man in Aramaic, which is the language Jesus spoke, is just a sort of slang term that means human being, bar nash. It just means human being. So you would say that person is a son of man, just means that they're a human being. They were born of a human being. Weirdly, the Greek New Testament consistently has Jesus use the definitive article, the son of man, which is a really clunky Greek phrase. It's not something that just sort of gets lost in translation. It was very particular. It was done on purpose. It's not a son of man, it's the son of man. So we've got this title, the son of man, which we associate with Jesus. But a lot of scholars think that the way we should sort of think about this is as if, because son of man just means human being, it's as if someone was going on calling himself the human being or the one in like the matrix sense, which until something like the matrix popularizes that, that usage would be really clunky and strange. But it seems like Jesus might've been doing something like that. Like I am the human one, you know, it's extremely strange. But if there were some instances where he was actually just saying, I am a human, it would totally change the interpretation of a verse. So for example, have you ever heard the phrase, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath? You ever heard this before? I don't think so. So the Sabbath is supposed to be a day of rest, right? It's the seventh day of the week. And in Jewish law, you have to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. You're not allowed to work on the Sabbath. Jesus is working on the Sabbath. His Jewish opponents come up to him and say, you're working on the Sabbath because they're trying to catch him out. They don't like him. They want to eventually crucify him. So they say, you're working on the Sabbath. And Jesus goes, have you not read what David did? And he says that King David, does the same thing. He sort of works on the Sabbath when he has to. And then he says that the Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So in other words, the reason that the Sabbath exists is for humankind's sake. You know, it's so that we get our day of rest. And so the criticism he's making of the Jews there is that they've become too legalistic. They sort of forgot the whole reason why the Sabbath exists in the first place. It's not just there because God hates it when you work on the Sabbath. It's there for your sake. The Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Jesus then says, therefore, the son of man is Lord of the Sabbath. Meaning he gets to decide what happens that day. Well, that's the thing, right? Who is the Lord of the Sabbath? The Lord of the Sabbath is God. God is the one who- I thought it was Ozzy Osbourne. God is the one who institutes- Yeah, he's the other son of man. Fuck. In the Gnostic gospels, they associate Ozzy Osbourne. The person who institutes the law of the Sabbath and the Ten Commandments is God. God is the Lord of the Sabbath. But here's Jesus saying, oh, the son of man is Lord of the Sabbath. Me, the title I'm using, the son of man, I'm the Lord of the Sabbath. So he's claiming to be God. Unless this is a tradition that's been lost in translation. And Jesus actually said, son of man, just to mean human beings. Over and over again, though? Well, some scholars like Morris Casey think that that's what's happened. I think that's dubious. I think that- That seems like a stretch. The use of the- The definitive article is too strong to think that Jesus wasn't sometimes using it essentially as a kind of title. But this instance, for example, check it out, right? So he says, oh, can you go to the version of Mark's gospel? Can you type in Mark, Lord of the Sabbath? Mark is our earliest gospel. We also, by the way, I haven't been saying this this whole time, but a whole nother rabbit hole here is the translation of all these gospels where one article can be here instead of- Oh, I've got something for you on that. I've got something for you on that. Does it start with Ammon? Go back and go to the actual- just type in Mark 2 into that, where it says that. Just type Mark 2 and hit enter. Okay, and then scroll down until you get- keep scrolling. Jesus, Lord of the Sabbath. So he says, right. So they come up to him. The Pharisees say, look, what he's doing is unlawful on the Sabbath. Jesus answers, have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? So they enter into the temple and eat the bread that only the Pharisees ate. So they eat the bread that only the Pharisees ate. So they eat the bread that only the only the Pharisees ate. So they eat the bread that only the high priest is supposed to eat. So the first thing to notice is Jesus is justifying his breaking of the Sabbath by pointing to another human being and saying, well, he did the same thing. He then says, then he said to them, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So, and the word does mean therefore, the word so there, it does actually mean therefore in the Greek. Therefore, the son of man is Lord, even of the Sabbath. So one, the traditional Christian interpretation of this is Jesus is claiming to be God because he claims to be the Lord of the Sabbath, which is only God. But if this has been lost in translation, which I suspect of this verse, and Jesus in this instance meant son of man in the Aramaic colloquial sense of just meaning a human being, all he's saying is that human beings are Lord of the Sabbath. In other words, humans are Lord of the Sabbath. Sabbath isn't Lord of human beings, which hold on a second is exactly what he's just said in other words. So my interpretation here that Jesus is just saying that the son of man, what he actually said was like, son of man as in human beings. Now reread the verse with that interpretation in mind. They accuse him of breaking the Sabbath. He says, well, David did the same thing. And then he says, look, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Therefore, human beings are Lord of the Sabbath. Because he's just said that the Sabbath was made for mankind. Is he essentially saying that like, instead of trying to treat this like a law that you're dictating your whole life around to feel like you're doing the right thing, it's really supposed to be a guideline as a good way in this instance? I don't know if I'd phrase it in those terms, that it's just like a guideline saying fuck now. No, no, no, because I think I think you're probably about I think you're probably about right. But I think saying guidelines is too loose. Like it's not it's not like, well, these are rules, but they're only guidelines. So break them if you want to. It's more like understand what the purpose of the law is. The law is there for your sake. You know, the what I'm trying to bring out with this, with this, this particular verse is that I think that that is the interpretation of what's actually happening here. But the specific words here, the son of man is Lord, even at the Sabbath. It's a little bit weird and clunky because he's just said that David broke this habit. And that was fine. He's just said that the Sabbath was made for mankind. And then suddenly shifts are talking about himself. The son of man is Lord of the Sabbath. Then why he's not mankind. Why is he just spoken about David breaking the Sabbath? Why is he just said that the Sabbath was made for mankind? And then suddenly he's talking about himself. Doesn't it make more sense if he would say, well, David broke the Sabbath and the Sabbath was made for mankind. Therefore, mankind is Lord of the Sabbath. I see what you're saying. Therefore, I think when he says here, the son of man is Lord, even if the Sabbath, I think it's probably a, not a mistranslation from the Greek, but the Greek itself is, is probably a misreporting of what actually happened here. And Jesus was just saying that mankind is Lord of the Sabbath, not the son of man as a title. You know what I mean? I could see that one both ways because he's, and maybe this is a way too simplistic way of looking at it, but he's looking at date. He's using David as, as an example of a great man among humankind, not to say like he's above man or anything, and then relating back to himself and saying, but you know, by the way, like I'm the son of man, so I can actually, yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's another great interpretation is he's saying like, well, David did it. And I'm so much greater than David. Cause I'm, I'm the son of man. So of course, I can do it too. That's another interpretation. Um, the, the key is that it's not always obvious and a lot of it has to do this. The reason I brought this example up is because by the way, I might be wrong that maybe this is an authentic tradition. And he really did say the son of man, meaning himself is Lord of the Sabbath. That might be true. But the important thing is here that there's a lot more room in my view in an instance like this for someone to have slightly misremembered what he said, especially if Jesus had been going on claiming himself to be the son of man. And he had been saying like, I am the son of man constantly. And then in this instance, he used the phrase son of man in the non-titular sense, it would be so obvious. It'd be so easy for me to imagine that somebody sort of misremembers and they sort of go, yeah. Remember when Jesus said the son of man is Lord of the Sabbath and they record it that way. So the, the whole, why I said, can you remember my sentence 20 seconds ago is to indicate that in some instances, I think there is a lot more wiggle room for just thinking that something has been misremembered. Whereas if Jesus were to have said before Abraham was, I am that's so specific that it's unlikely that that would be remembered wrongly. So I think it applies sometimes, but not other times. I think that's very fair because like I said, there there's different, you know, for lack of a better way of putting it, there's different levels of drama that, that occur with the context of what you're saying and where you're saying it. But like, who do you in, cause obviously like one of the reasons Alessi spoke so highly of you is, is you've. You've studied this stuff inside and out. You're not just someone who will argue about points in the Bible without literally being able to pull up point in scripture note and the whole bit. But like, you know, in, in your time studying, let's say the new Testament and the character that, that is Jesus. What, what do you make of that? I mean, he was a historical character. We, we, we know he existed, but who do you think he was? And, and do you think, do you think he was regardless of whether he was divine or not? Do you think he was. A force of good to clarify. I'm very much a, I'm very much a student here. And, um, I'm fascinated by the gospels and I have read a lot about them, but I would be put to shame by a biblical scholar, like in terms of knowledge, in terms of interpretation, certainly like grasp of Greek. I don't read New Testament Greek. I know some important terms and things like that, but I'm very much not even approximating an expert here, which is important to clarify because, you know, I'm sort of trying to learn out loud here. When I share these ideas with people, even if I say them kind of confidently, like, hey, this is what I think Jesus is doing. It's all in the spirit of being like, this is how I'm reading it, guys. Like, am I missing something? And sometimes I am like just missing something or someone brings something to my attention. I'm like, actually, you know what? You're totally right. I need to totally re-evaluate my view. That happens all the time. In my estimation, that throat clearing out of the way, the historical Jesus of Nazareth was a disciple of John the Baptist who was essentially trying to adapt and continue the ministry of John the Baptist. John the Baptist is my favorite New Testament character. Why is he your favorite? You know who John the Baptist is? Yes. I ask people this all the time and they say, yeah, of course I do. Who's John the Baptist? Jesus, his cousin. What did, like, who is John the Baptist? Like, what does he do? He was the dude that did the baptizing. Yeah, sure. And what does that mean? What is baptizing? Bringing someone into the belief system. In this case, we're referring to it in a Christian context and being a part of what then became that church. But Christianity didn't exist yet. It didn't exist. So what was it? What was Jesus being baptized into? I don't know what he was being baptized into officially, actually. And what does baptism actually mean? Oh, you're getting meta. It's like. Remember, I recorded for five hours right before you got here. You got to bear with me. I'm being a bit unfair. I'm being a bit unfair because the point is that people always say, yeah, of course I know who John the Baptist is because he's the guy that baptized Jesus. It's like, what does that mean? We don't know. The first time the word baptism shows up is in this report of John the Baptist. Like, who was he? What was he doing? Why was Jesus being baptized? This is really strange. Like, why is it that Jesus, God himself, according to Orthodox Christianity, would need to be baptized? Baptized into what? For what purpose? Now, it's unlikely that the gospel authors would make up this story, right? If they're trying to present Jesus as at least the son of God and possibly God himself, they're not going to make up a story about him being baptized by some other preacher who was. Yeah, because it goes against the narrative. Yeah, exactly. So the fact that all of the gospels report about John the Baptist and his importance mean that we can be pretty certain that historically this is actually what happened, that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, right? Yeah. So, the fact that your annual physical is overdue just shows how hard it can be to get seen by a doctor. Press one for more options. ZocDoc. Ready to be seen?