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Speaker 3There's a case for saying that he's the most influential human being who's ever lived. From the Christmas story through to the passion and the resurrection, I
Speaker 4mean, it's a banger. First person we know in history ever to say, love your enemies. Turn the other cheek. Do unto others what you have them do to you. Those who live by the sword will die by the sword. The truth will set you free. Historical Jesus versus the Jesus of faith has come up time and again.
Speaker 3I kept kind of bumping up against how incredibly close, in time, to the life and death of Jesus Paul was writing.
Speaker 4They know the geography, they know what people are called, they know the sort of jobs people do, they know where the tax collectors should be, and these sort of things. In Luke, you get the story of Caesar Augustus
Speaker 3decreeing that all the world should be taxed. The biggest problem historically in the New Testament. My feeling about the attempts to explain it is that people are only doing it because they want it to be true. We have really good evidence that Jesus really did die by Roman crucifixion. Of course, all four Gospels also claim he rose again. They clearly believe that something extraordinary had happened. And I think to doubt that makes a nonsense of the emergence and spread of Christianity. My gut assumption as a Christian, I am interested in, dare I say, sacralizing them. It's either the Nietzschean abyss or the experience of Marian visitations.
Speaker 5Hello, I'm Justin Briley. Welcome to another edition of The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God.
Speaker 3Today, a live audience conversation in London that I hosted between historian Tom Holland and Cambridge Bible scholar Dr. Peter J. Williams. Now, anyone who has been listening to this podcast in its first two seasons
Speaker 5will know that Tom Holland, co-host of the hugely popular Rest Is History podcast,
Speaker 3has been a significant player in the rebirth phenomenon. Dominion thesis that the West owes its moral imagination to Christianity has been at the centre of much of the conversation around cultural and spiritual renewal. Well, in this conversation, Tom Holland gets pushed a bit further than just whether Christianity works, but whether it's actually true as he explains where he stands on the historical and miraculous claims about Jesus Christ. And as you'll hear, as well as sharing a lot of common ground with Peter J. Williams of Tyndale House, Cambridge, Tom also gets into some areas of disagreement on the birth narratives of Jesus and the historical case for the resurrection. Now, if you want more from Think Faith and to get notified about new shows and events like the one you're about to hear, do subscribe to my newsletter. The link is with the show info. And if you can support my work, it also makes a huge difference. Glyn is a supporter and he got in touch to say, Thank you for your ministry over the years, Justin. It's taken me to a. It's taken me to a higher level in my journey through your podcasts and books. Thank you, Glyn. Your monthly support helps to bring more Thinking Faith to people like Glyn. And of course, you get some benefits too. Silver supporters get access to all of our podcast episodes two weeks early. That's both this show and our sister podcast, Uncommon Ground. And of course, we throw in exclusive bonus content on top of that. Gold supporters get all of that, plus signed copies of both my books and an invitation to a monthly catch-up. We can only do all this because of people who support the show. So do check out the link with the show info to support and thank you. So I thoroughly enjoyed getting to host today's conversation, recorded live for Pillar and Step at All Souls Church London earlier this year. And also to be able to put audience questions to both Tom Holland and Peter J. Williams towards the end of the evening. So I hope you enjoy it too. And welcome along to season three, episode two of The Surprising Rebirth, A Belief in God.
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Speaker 6Tom, tell me how you got interested in this subject of the historical Jesus to begin with.
Speaker 3Well, I think it's very difficult to be interested in history and not be interested in the figure of Jesus, because there's a case for saying that he's the most influential human being who's ever lived. I mean, my interest in Jesus, I mean, it has many roots. I went to church and to Sunday school as a child. I had a godmother who gave me, you know, Bible stories. And the story of Jesus is a brilliant one, you know, from the Christmas story through to the Passion and the Resurrection. I mean, it's a banger. And although I sometimes as a child got a bit muddled, you know, in between those two bookends, you have these incredible parables. And I think whoever else he may have been, Jesus, if we assume that the parables that we get from him in the New Testament, you know, are authentic, he has every claim to be the greatest short story teller who's ever lived. I mean, they are so memorable and powerful. So I kind of grew up with them. I was familiar with them. As a child, I was much more interested in the Romans than I was in the disciples or indeed Jesus. So I love the fact that the Romans were a kind of usually offstage, but sometimes very onstage presence. And my interest in Rome, you know, I've carried it through my entire life. And I've written a book, Dynasty, that covers the period in which Jesus lived. So looking at the Roman Empire. And I've recently done a translation of Suetonius, who may or may not have mentioned Jesus, but is. is a biographer in the kind of way, I suppose, that the four gospel writers are. And then I think what really sharpened it for me was I'd always had a vague sense that the evidence for Jesus was kind of weak. I'd read, you know, as a kind of precocious atheist, casting off my Sunday school learning, lots of books debunking the Old Testament and the history, and the ethnicity of Jesus. But then about 15 years ago, I wrote a book about the origins of Islam. And my sense had always been that the life of Muhammad was much better attested than the life of Jesus. And I was kind of basically writing that was a process of discovering that that wasn't the case at all. That actually, the seeming depth and detail that we have in the canonical lives of Muhammad is illusory. That these are much, much later. That, you know, they're kind of almost 200 years after Muhammad lived. And that then, when I came to write Dominion, and I was, I had a chapter on Paul, I kept kind of bumping up against how incredibly close in time to the life and death of Jesus Paul was writing. And compared to the sources that you have for the life of Muhammad, I mean, it was astonishingly close. And so that then, I guess, kind of, it re-sparked an interest in who Jesus might have been. How reliable the Gospels and indeed Paul's testimony might be. And I, I think I find, because of all the other work that I've done, I find it a topic of great fascination. However, having said that, I am not in any way an expert on it. And when I came to write Dominion, I pointed out that, you know, I had a lot of work to do at the time. did not write about Jesus, because I just felt unqualified to opine on who Jesus might have been and what his relationship to the Gospels might have been. I mean, it's a huge topic and a complex topic, and there are as many different opinions on it, I think, as there are scholars. Indeed, and whenever you make any opinion public, someone's going
Speaker 6to be there saying something alternative to it. But I'm glad that you're here, even as a sort of interested historian for whom this isn't your core field, obviously. Tom, but to kind of give us your reflections on it. Peter, you've really have dedicated your life to studying the Bible, the historicity of the New and Old Testaments. Tell us sort of what led you to that and why this particular field of the historicity of Jesus matters.
Speaker 4So I had the privilege of growing up in a Christian family and then going to school, Ripon Grammar School, State Grammar School, where you could learn Greek and Latin and having a wonderfully strict and inspiring teacher and another teacher who was very inspiring and not strict. And the combination was great. And so I actually wanted to go to university to study the languages that helped me become a Bible translator, did Hebrew and Aramaic as well. And then it was on the path to that. I did a PhD in Old Testament, six years postdoctoral in Old Testament and came to the end of, I felt a call to biblical scholarship at that time, but came to the end of a contract. And the only job that was going was one in New Testament up in Aberdeen. It was a temporary job and that's the one I took. And then they made it permanent shortly afterwards. And so that's how I switched testaments. It wasn't planned.
Speaker 3So the issue of the historicity, the historical Jesus versus the
Speaker 6Jesus of faith has come up time and again over the centuries. It's something that obviously more
Speaker 3recently you've sort of, you've been grappling with at some level, Tom. I wonder if you could describe what some of those sources are, perhaps beginning with extra biblical sources that you discovered actually bear some witness at least to the person of Jesus. There are an astonishing number, considering this is a guy who gets crucified, who gets put to death by the Roman authorities in an obscure corner of the Roman empire. Jesus is one of many. Many odd people, if you're looking at it from the Roman perspective, who pop up in the region over the course of the first century AD. But presumably he's also one of a large number of such figures who appear across the Roman empire. And occasionally you might, you might come across a mention of one, you know, of such figures. So there's one, for instance, in Tacitus, he's describing the era of the four emperors. There's the Vitalius, commander of the armies on the Rhine. He's, marching down towards Rome and he goes through Lugdunum, what's now Lyon. And while he's there, there is this Gaul called, I think, Maricus, who has been going around saying that he is, he is a god. He's, he's preaching the end of the Rome, of Roman rule, and the people believe in him. And the local Gallic authorities have sent out soldiers to seize him. He's brought before the Roman authorities. The Roman authorities condemn him to death. He's put into the arena to be devoured by, by wild beasts and the wild beasts refuse to eat him. And so he is hailed, you know, this is the proof that he's a god. And then Tacitus tells us he's removed and silently executed. But you can see there's the outline there in Gaul of a story that is not entirely dissimilar to the story that you get in, in, in, in the New Testament. And it suggests that the life of Jesus is recognizably, I think, a product of tensions within the Roman empire that presumably are not exclusive to Judea. I mean, it's, it's often cast as being exclusive to Judea. I don't, I think these are tensions that you find across the empire. So, so in that context where there are figures presumably like this, basically everywhere, the fact that we have mentions of Jesus in a large number of classical texts, relatively speaking. So he, Jesus is, is, is attested to by Pliny the Younger, by Tacitus, possibly by Suetonius, and possibly by Josephus, who is a crucial source for this period. He is a Judean who takes up arms against Rome as part of the revolt against Roman rule. He then switches sides. He, he meets Vespasian, who's leading the Roman repression of the revolt, tells Vespasian he's going to become emperor. Vespasian then does become emperor. And so Josephus, you know, he's back to Rome and he writes this history of the Judean revolt and of the buildup to it. And in that, there is a possible mention of Jesus. And it is highly contested whether this is a complete fake, whether it's an adaptation of something that Josephus wrote, whether exactly what it is. I'm sure people have a much more informed view on that than I do. But essentially, it's often said, we know very little about Jesus. This is therefore evidence that he may not even have existed. It's absolutely not the case. Considering who he is, relative to, and relative to the range and variety of sources that we have for the entire history of the empire, the number of allusions to him, I think are really considerable. Right. That's, that's a helpful way of framing it
Speaker 6because in a sense, Peter, as I understand it, the very fact we have any evidence for someone who was essentially a wandering preacher, teacher, miracle worker from a backwater of the Roman empire is somewhat remarkable, given that most people who you ever have captured in history, are the great powerful ones who leave behind statues and coins and, and so on.
Speaker 4Sure. So, so, so normally biographies are written of people who've been either long dead or are upper class in some way, and Jesus isn't any, any of those. And, and so having these four, let's call them biographies, the gospels, maybe get onto that later is interesting. I'll get to the non-Christian sources, but just really quickly with the Christian sources. If you've got 27 books, say in the New Testament, they all at least presuppose that Jesus has some ongoing existence and is alive in some way. Most of them will also talk about the resurrection. That's quite an interesting thing if they're all within a hundred years of, of, of, of the events. The sources Tom's mentioned, Tastus, Pliny, Josephus, those are the big ones I would go for as well. I would observe with Tastus that he is a very highly regarded historian. And he, he's talking about the great fire in Rome. He calls Jesus Christ, so he doesn't use the word, Jesus, but the word Christ and talks about a large number of, uh, of his followers in Rome at the time. He connects his death with Judea and the time of Pontius Pilate. He gets Pilate's title wrong, but that's a, that's a relatively minor thing. So that confirms some of the basic outline. Pliny doesn't talk about Christ directly, but about Christians, which presupposes Christ. But the title Christ is interesting because it's like, by the time it's in, in Pliny and Tastus, it's a Latin word transcribing a Greek word, which is transcribing a sort of Hebrew idea, which is the Messiah, the anointed one has come. So if, if people are calling themselves, um, in a sense, messianic, that's, that, that presupposes some ideas behind that. And what I like in Pliny's account is he is talking about, he's writing to the emperor. He's saying, uh, dear emperor, you're, you're, you know, everything. Um, how would you advise that? I deal with the, the, these locals, this is what I've been doing. And, um, talking about very large numbers of people becoming Christians in that the area of Northern Turkey he's been, uh, handling and, um, actually describing what goes on in, in, in one of their meetings, which is them singing to, to Christ as to a God. And the interesting thing there is one of the tests he's using that people aren't Christians is they're not prepared to worship the Roman emperor. They're not prepared to worship Roman gods. So it seems that they've sort of kept on the Jewish idea of there's only one God and they're identifying Christ as that God. And that's happening within, let's say 80 years of the start of Christianity. So that's to me, a really interesting thing quickly on Josephus. There are a couple of different passages where he mentions Jesus. I mentioned the less well-known one in my book, come and trust the gospels. It's, it's about the death of Jesus's brother in some way. Um, but, um, there's this longer passage, which seems to say too much about Jesus. It seems to say he is the Messiah and so on. Well, there's been a recent study of it out free online there with Oxford university press by Tom Schmidt, um, arguing it really does throughout have the stylistic traits of Josephus. And that's a really interesting, um, argument that I found somewhat persuasive. It's still only a year out in terms of getting, uh, feedback there, but he, he feels that you can read it in a more, um, Josephus isn't fully on, on board. He, he, he accepts that this Jesus does some wondrous things and that he has a number of people who believe that he appeared to them. Um, but he's a Christ in the sense that there are other Christ as well. That that's I'm paraphrasing a bit, but I think, um, at least we can establish clearly he, he, he existed. And had lots of followers, uh, within a relatively brief time.
Speaker 3Yeah. I mean, that that's a helpful sketch of some of the source material that exists outside of the four gospels and the
Speaker 6new Testament documents themselves, but perhaps maybe just to turn very quickly to a brief Rydych chi wedi ei ddisgrifio fel biograffiaid ac roedd hwnnw'n rhan o'r genred, os ydych chi'n hoffi, sydd wedi bod yn y byd hanes, nid oedd?
Speaker 4Ie. Felly mae pobl, ac mae Tom yn gwybod mwy am hyn, yn ysgrifennu llawer o, rwy'n gofyn, Plutarch, rhywun sy'n ysgrifennu llawer a llawer o fywydau o bobl, Cornelius Nepos, Suetonius, 'The Lives of the Caesars', mewn trafodaeth newydd gwych sydd wedi'i gynhyrchu. Diolch yn fawr iawn. Felly ie, mae hynny'n rhywbeth sy'n digwydd, mae'r Gosboedd yn wahanol ychydig, ond maen nhw'n ymddangos yn fawr ynghylch y caesabriaeth hwnnw. Mae hynny'n rhywbeth sy'n cael ei drafod ac mae hynny'n ymddangos yn gweithio. Yn amlwg, mae'r Gosboedd yn canolbwyntio rhwng cwrtau a thair o'u llengydd ar ddigwyddiadau o ran y passion o Jesus, yn unig. Felly mae'n siŵr bod cydweithrediad yno, mae llawer o stres ar ei ddysgu. Ie. Ie. Ond, ie, rwy'n hapus â'r caesabriaeth hwnnw.
Speaker 3Rwy'n credu hefyd bod gwahaniaeth fawr. Dydw i ddim yn gwybod a ydych chi'n cytuno â hyn, ond mae hynny'n rhywbeth sy'n fy mwynhau wrth i mi rannu'r Gosboedd i'r bywydau o'r Caesabriaid, neu i bywydau Pluton, lle mae llawer o gyfathrebu. Felly byddwch chi'n cael, dwi ddim yn gwybod, Julius Caesar neu Alexander yn bywydau Pluton, a byddwch chi'n cael pob adborth o'r bywydau. Felly byddwch chi'n cael pob adborth o'r bywydau neu'r Gaesabriaid neu beth bynnag. Mae'r Gosboedd yn bennaf yn canolbwyntio ar Jesus. Yn ymwneud â hynny, nid yw pobl yn digwydd yn y Gosboedd gan nad ydyn nhw'n siarad â Jesus neu'n cael ei gyflwyno. Ac yn wir, yr unig arwain yw'r naratif John the Baptist. Ac hyd yn oed hynny, rydych chi'n gwybod, mae rôl John the Baptist yn cyfathrebu Christus a'i ffaith. Ond y cyfnod monofocus hynny ar y ffigur o Jesus. Dwi'n credu ei fod yn rhywbeth nad ydych chi'n ei gael mewn unrhyw biograff ddiwethaf sy'n gallu i mi feddwl amdano. Byddai llawer o bobl yn ystyried, wel, mae'r Gosboedd yn y Biblau, felly mae'n rhyw fath o beth o feddwl ysbrydolol i bobl. Nawr, yn amlwg, maen nhw'n cael y ffaith honno. Ond ydych chi hefyd, beth ydych chi'n ei wneud o'r hyfforddiant hanesyddol i ddod o hyd i'r era hynny, ac yn enwedig Jesus? Wel, rwy'n gofyn, Petrus yw'r. Byddwn i'n ddiddorol am hynny. Dyma lle rydych chi'n cadw arno yn gyntaf. Wel, dwi'n dod yn ôl iddyn nhw o edrych ar "The Lives of Muhammad". A'r "The Lives of Muhammad", fel y dywedais, mae'r un cyntaf yr ydym ni'n ei gael yn y ffordd y mae'n cael ei gael nawr ynghylch 800AD. Ac mae Muhammad yn arfer wedi marw yn 622AD. Felly mae hynny'n ffwrdd mawr, ffwrdd mawr. Ac yn ymwneud â chrwstiannau, byddai hynny'n ymwneud â gofod ysgrifennu o ran y blwyddyn 200. Ac mae'r gofodau hynny yn ffwrdd mawr. Felly, o'r safbwynt hwn, mae'r gofodau canonol yn ymddangos i mi i ddatblygu'r cyfleoedd a fyddai wedi cael eu llwyddo yn y cenhedlaeth cyntaf. Yn ystod y cyntaf, yn y cyntaf cyntaf cyntaf, ym mis Ynys, mae'r aparatus o reolwyr Rhym, y tansioddau mewn cymdeithasol ydyn nhw, y bywyd dyddol, yn ymddangos i gyd-dweud yr hyn rydyn ni'n ei wybod. Mae'r math o gynrychiadau yn ymddangos i mi yn eithaf cywir. Felly mae yna meysydd lle rwy'n teimlo y bydd y bywydau o Jesus yn y Gwasgwyr hynny. Felly mae yna meysydd lle rwy'n teimlo y bywydau o Jesus yn y Gwasgwyr hynny. Mae yna meysydd lle rwy'n teimlo y bywydau o Jesus yn y Gwasgwyr hynny. gyda chyfreswm llyfrgell, ond dwi ddim yn credu bod chyfreswm llyfrgell yw'r hyn y mae'r Gwasgolion amdano. Maen nhw'n ymddangos, mae gwahaniaeth llyfrgell i nhw, ond nid yw hynny'n ymwneud â'r hyn y mae'r ysgrifennwyr ysgrifennwyr ysgrifennu'n ei wneud. Nid yw'n ymwneud â Boswell yn ysgrifennu'r bywyd o Johnson i'w wneud. Nid yw'r cyfreswm ysgrifennu'n ymwneud â'r cyfrifiad prym. O ran hynny, mae'r angen yw dangos bod Jesus yn yr hyn y mae'r ysgrifennwyr ysgrifennwyr yn ei ddweud. Mae hynny'n ddefnyddiol. Fe wnaethoch chi ysgrifennu llyfr 'Can We Trust The Gospels', Peter, a,
Speaker 6wel, mae'r clw yn y enw, ond rydych chi'n dod i'r canlyniad bod hynny'n set o adnoddau hyderus iawn o'r hanes. A allech chi osgoi rhai o'r penodolwyr sylfaenol o'r achos y byddwch chi'n meddwl y gallwch chi ddod o hyd i waith hanesol?
Speaker 4Ie, rwy'n debyg y byddaf yn cymryd y ddwy adnoddau, sydd, yn fy marn i, ar y lefel mawr. Maen nhw'n cael yr ymddiriedaeth y mae Tom yn siarad amdanyn nhw yn ddiwylliannus. Maen nhw'n gwybod geograffaeth, maen nhw'n gwybod beth mae pobl yn ei alw, maen nhw'n gwybod y math o swyddi mae pobl yn ei wneud, maen nhw'n gwybod ble ddylai'r casglu cyllid fod, a'r math hwnnw o bethau.
Speaker 3Ac hefyd, mae'r set-up gwleidyddol yn ddifrifol iawn yn yr ardal hwnnw, mae'r holl bethau'n cael eu ffragmentio i ffyrdd gwahanol, mewn ffyrdd o
Speaker 4reoli, a chynllunio. Ie, felly maen nhw'n gwybod hynny. Felly, dwi ddim yn meddwl eu bod nhw'n cael eu hysgrifennu gan bobl sy'n byw ar unrhyw eilad annibynnol. Felly,
Speaker 6nid yw hyn yn rhywbeth sy'n cael ei
Speaker 4hysgrifennu am amser hir ac mewn lle gwahanol o ran y digwyddiadau fel hynny. Ond mae elfen ychwanegol ar gyfer fy astudiaethau, a dwi'n meddwl eu bod nhw'n mewn gwirionedd eithaf gyffredinol, yn enwedig pan fyddai'n ymwneud â chyflwyno'r hyn a ddywedodd Christ. Oherwydd gallwch edrych ar ffyrdd ysgrifennu sy'n digwydd ar draws yr ysgrifennu gwahanol nad ydyn nhw i gyd yn dod o'i gilydd, ac maen nhw'n ymddangos i ddod o un meddwl creadig. Ac hefyd, rwy'n credu bod y ffordd y mae Jesus yn ei alw'n farn o'r dyn dyn sydd heb unrhyw un arall yn ei alw, mae'r bobl yn y naratif yn ei alw'n Jesus plus rhywbeth arall, oherwydd mae Jesus yn enw cyffredinol, y ddwy enw cyffredinol mwyaf cyffredinol, fel rydyn ni'n gallu ei ddweud ar hyn o bryd, felly mae'n rhaid i nhw ychwanegu rhywbeth arall, ac yna mae'r narator yn ei alw rhywbeth gwahanol. Felly mae'r ddwy fath o lawer sy'n digwydd ar draws wahanol fathau o'r Gwasgfod sy'n ddiddorol. Ac yna, gyda llawer o siarad yn y Gwasgfod, llawer o ffocws ar Jesus, mae gennych chi y gallu i analisio ffyrdd o siarad rydw i ddim yn meddwl ein bod ni'n cael, i lawer o bobl eraill, yr un ffordd cyffredinol sydd gennym gyda Christ. Felly rwy'n credu bod llawer o ffyrdd o ganolbwyntio data, ac mae'n dod yn dda iawn, ond byddwn i'n hoffi sôn amdanyn nhw. A fyddwn i'n siarad â Tom am rai o'r amgylchiadau y mae'n canolbwyntio yma?
Speaker 3Ie, rwy'n
Speaker 6credu bod ymgysylltiad rhagorol
Speaker 3yma, bod yr ysgrifennwyr Gwasgfod yn ymddangos i gael swydd gwych o ran y pethau cyffredinol, o'r amser, y lle, y bobl, y cyffrediniaeth, y iaith ac ati. Ond yna, fel rydych chi'n ei ddweud, Tom, mae gennych chi rhai penderfyniadau am, rydych chi'n gwybod, rhai pethau lle rydych chi'n teimlo bod yna, yn amlwg, rhyw fath o. Wel. fabricaeth neu. Wel, dwi'n gofyn, dwi'n gofyn, yn gyntaf, i ddweud, mae'r math hwnnw o snaffiwyr yn hollol gyffredinol mewn llythyr agored. Dwi'n gofyn, felly rydw i'n parhau i greu cerddoriaeth am yr ysgrifennwyr ar hyn o bryd ar Hannibal. Ac mae gennym adroddiad sylweddol iawn o'r warnau y gafodd Hannibal gyda'r Rhymau, o'r ddyn hon, Polybius, a oedd yn ysgrifennu efallai 40 neu 50 mlynedd yn ôl, felly dyna efallai'r gwahaniaeth rhwng Jesus a'r ysgrifennwyr ysgrifennu, ac mae'n cael llawer o bethau'n iawn, ond mae'n amlwg, mae'n cael pethau'n anghywir hefyd, ac mae hynny'n yr hyn y byddwch chi'n ei ddisgwyl. Dwi'n gofyn, mae llythyrwyr wedi cael pethau'n anghywir ac maen nhw'n adrodd pethau ar y dydd. Felly dwi'n meddwl nad yw'n anhygoel i llythyrwyr yn yr antygoedd, gadewch i ni siarad am y pethau'n iawn.
Speaker 5Y peth arbennig rydych chi'n ei ddweud, sy'n y naratif oed, y stori o'r Pristmas, yr ydych chi'n ei chael mewn.
Speaker 3Rwy'n teimlo'n hyderus iawn.
Speaker 5Dwi'n gwybod, dwi'n cofio gwrando ar yr fesodd rydych chi'n
Speaker 3ei wneud gyda Dominic dri mlynedd yn ôl am y bywyd o Jesus, ac yn benodol rydych chi'n dweud, "Rydw i'n teimlo'n debyg bod y Grinch a'r Scrooge wedi cael eu roi i mewn i un wrth i'r Pristmas ddod o hyd yn oed a ddod o hyd yn oed. Felly, dwi'n meddwl, os allwch chi ddweud, rydych chi'n meddwl am rhai o'r penderfyniadau sydd gennych chi o ran pam dydyn nhw ddim yn ymddangos i gael yr un math o ddealltwriaeth hanesol mae'r rhannau eraill yn eu gwneud. Felly, mae'r stori rydych chi'n ei gael yn chwaraeon Natifidae wedi'i ysgrifennu'n gilydd o'r Gwasanaethau o Matthew a Luke. Dydyn nhw a Mark ddim yn cael narratif Natifidae yn yr un ffordd. Felly rydych chi'n cael yn Luke, rydych chi'n cael y stori o Saesur Augustus yn nodi bod y byd i gyd ddod o hyd. Ac rwy'n cofio fel bach bwysig o'r Rhom, roedd hynny bob amser yn fy mhrofiad mwyaf o'r gwasanaeth Natifidae, ond mae'n rhaid i Saesur Augustus sôn amdanyn nhw a'r aparatus crwll o'r rhaid i'r rhoman ddod o hyd. Ac mae'n dweud bod y byd i gyd ddod o hyd a dyna beth mae'n ei ddweud, felly mae'n golygu bod Joseph yn Nazareth, mae'n rhaid iddo fynd i Bethlehem oherwydd dyna lle oedd ei haneswyr yn dod o hyd ac felly maen nhw'n mynd ac maen nhw'n gwybod eu bod ganddyn nhw'r beibio mewn yr un neu'n ystafell neu beth bynnag. Mae cyfathrebu ar hynny bob amser yn ymwneud â newid. Fodd bynnag, yn Matthew mae'n ymddangos bod Joseph, mae'n ymddangos, fel y gallaf ddweud, fod Joseph o'r Bethlehem, yw hynny? Fodd bynnag, mae'n dweud nad yw'n ymwneud â'i bod wedi dod o Nazareth ac yna mae gennych chi'r magi a'r dynion gwydnwyr ac mae gennych chi'r ffwrdd o'r unigrwydd ac mae gennych chi'r teulu sanctaidd yn mynd i Egip. Mae yna ryw fath o ddewis sylweddol rhwng y ddau sy'n problematic, which is that Herod dies in 4 BC, around then. So the massacre of the innocents, if it happened, and it's not mentioned by Josephus, should, I mean, must have happened before that. And Quirinius, the governor of Syria, who is administering this tax, it's in 88, I think. So there's basically a decade gap. And it seems to me very difficult to square that. There's also the additional issue that if Joseph is coming from Galilee, Galilee is not ruled by Rome. He's a subject of Herod Antipas. And therefore, he's not going to be taxed by the Romans. And there is no evidence that there is a universal tax. There is no evidence that even if there was a tax, that they would have had to go to the place that their forefathers came from. And Joseph is going there because he's a descendant from David. I mean, David lived a thousand years before. The whole thing seems highly, implausible. And as I say, no evidence for the massacre of the innocents. Why do you think it is there, then? Do you think someone has decided we need a backstory? What's the kind of motivation, do you think? I think that, as I say, I don't think that getting the granular documentary detail 100% accurate is the prime concern of either Matthew or Luke. Their prime concern is to demonstrate that Jesus is what Christians say he is. And occasionally, their attempt to convey that leads them into thinking in terms of poetry, I think. And I think that there is a poetry about the angel appearing to the shepherds, or the wise men coming, or even the massacre of the innocents in all its horror, that is, for the writers of the Gospels, profounder. I think also, specifically with Luke, he's, I suspect he's read Josephus, because Josephus is very interested in this tax that Quirinius inspires. And Josephus associates it with a rebellion that then appears in the Acts of the Apostles. So, I mean, it's, it's odd that that tax and the rebellion that happened, that's mentioned in Acts of the Apostles, inspired by this tax, it suggests to me that Luke is working from Josephus, and his chronology may not be entirely accurate. On top of that, I think that particularly in Luke's Gospel, there is a sense of the cult of Augustus, and that there is a degree to which the life of Jesus is a counterpoint to the life of Augustus. And I think that that's a very, very important point. And that's what Augustus, you know, Augustus is there at the beginning. It has to be Augustus. That's why it's a global tax, because it's the global sweep of Caesar, and the birth of Jesus in poverty and obscurity is a deliberate counterpoint to the birth narratives of Augustus, which have an eerie parallel to those of Jesus. So there is a kind of proposed massacre of the innocents, for instance, in Suetonius's life of Augustus. So I think there are kind of all kinds of complicated things going on there.
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Speaker 6Quite a lot to potentially respond to there.
Speaker 4Yeah, I won't try and respond to it all because I don't think time would allow, but there's so much I could say. I suppose I would start from saying, say with Luke, I'm finding it to be accurate in a granular way in Luke 15, which I've studied a lot, this story, of the two sons and various things where it really seems that almost every word has to come from Jesus because of the artistic whole and the way it patterns with other things that are across his teaching. So I'm also thinking Luke seems to say in the first four verses of his gospel, I've taken a lot of care over things. And he's writing for people who know about Roman tax from their own personal experience. And he's got to sound, I think, plausible to them. So I think those would be some sort of things I would frame. And I suppose, I suppose when we do history, how do you put everything together? And I would say I'd want the gospels, Matthew and Luke, to stand there, along with Josephus, as things that we use to try and work out what happened. Going to Matthew, there's a little detail in the end of Matthew 2, which is really interesting, which is that the Holy Family has gone down into Egypt, escaping Herod, who does have a reputation for killing quite a few people. And I'm not sure Josephus necessarily has to mention, let's say, 20 children or more, you know, killed in Bethlehem area. I mean, he tells you generally that. That would have not necessarily made the news, given his general. Yeah, he had enough children to kill and quite busy with that. But the, of his own children, sorry, is that the, what you do get though, is that an angel appears to Joseph, say, go back now. And he goes back. And then it says, then he learned that Archelaus was governor. And so he went up to Nazareth. And that's really interesting, because, was tetra, because he, the way Herod kept on changing his will towards the end of his life meant they all had to go off and be decided by Caesar. And everyone didn't know at the point when he died, who was going to take over from Herod the Great. And so there's just that piece of historical knowledge there at the end of chapter two, that there was that surprise knowledge that came out after Herod's death. And that to me is an interesting sort of feature to have in the narrative. Both Matthew and Luke placed Jesus' birth in the time of Herod, who's normally thought to die in 4 BC. There's then this issue in Luke chapter two, verse two, where it says, this census first took place when Corinthians was the governor of Syria. And the interesting thing there is it doesn't just say this census took place. It says this census first took place. And it seems that Luke's pointing to something more complicated than you'd necessarily know. So I think there are various possibilities. And once you allow Luke to stand there, along with Josephus, who is absolutely our main source for what's going on with the census, then there's a lot of possibilities. And so I think that's interesting. And then you can have a more fruitful dialogue. Luke, Josephus has a compelling account because he has the rebellion that goes on at the time when this bit of Judea gets transferred from independence as a kingdom to actual Roman rule. That is a very compelling story. And I want to keep the integrity of that, not mess around with the dates. But I think that Luke, is not denying that. He's pointing to something more complicated than there are various
Speaker 6possibilities. I mean, it sounds, I mean, we've always got into the weeds of the very specifics of this, this issue of the dating of Corinthians' death versus the, when this census took place under Quirinius. But the general thing I suppose I'm hearing from you, Peter, here is Luke does a pretty good job elsewhere. We can, are you kind of
Speaker 3willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, as it were, that something may be going on here that we don't fully understand?
Speaker 4So although it is, there are problems fitting all the sources together. A top Roman historian, let's say in the 19th century, like Theodore Momsen can say, I think I've got a solution. A current Swiss professor, Sabina Hübner, can think she's got a solution, whether she does or not. You know, it's not that this is an insolvable problem, even though it would be, I would say, the biggest problem historically in the New Testament, that particular. And any cluster of thoughts, Tom?
Speaker 3Well, my feeling about the attempts to explain it, which involve kind of, you know, looking into the Greek at the most granular level. ac i gyflawni datau sylfaenol, ac i ffynnu hyn neu hynny, yw bod pobl yn ei wneud dim ond oherwydd maen nhw eisiau iddo fod yn iawn. Maen nhw'n rhaid i Luke fod yn iawn. Mae llawer o ddyluniau yn hanes hanes, lle mae gennych bach sylfaenol lle mae pobl wedi cael pethau'n anghywir, pobl yn ffermio a fyddai wedi marw 6 mlynedd yn gynharach, neu rywbeth fel hynny. Ac mae'n amlwg ei fod yn ysgrifennu yn y dyfodol. Mae'n amlwg yn y dyfodol nad ydych chi'n cael y ddyfodol. Mae'n amlwg nad ydych chi'n cael mynediad at yr ysgrifennu sydd ei angen. Mae'n hawdd iawn cael pethau'n anghywir. Ac rwy'n credu bod yna sylfaen o ddylunio arbennig mewn yr achos hwn. Mae'n amlwg fod ymddiriedolwyr eisiau iddo fod yn wir ac felly maen nhw'n mynd i geisio. Rwy'n deall hynny, ond sut rydych chi'n cymryd hynny yn benodol?
Speaker 4Gadewch i ni ddweud ein bod wedi cael drosglwydder. Gadewch i ni ddweud eu bod wedi cael drosglwydder rhwng Luke a Josephus. Nid wyf yn teimlo ei fod wedi cael. Ond gadewch i ni ddweud ei fod wedi cael, yna mae'n 50/50. Rwy'n cymryd ei fod Josephus wedi cael gyfranogiaeth sydd wedi cael llawer mwy am y census ynddo. Mae'n ddrwg i ddweud hynny. Ond rwy'n credu, i mi, ei fod yn un o'r pethau y gallai un gallu eu dychmygu'n haws. yn archwilio'r artyclau drosglwydder Cymru. yn llyfr adroddiadol Rhomain, yn dweud, 'Rydyn ni wedi cael wybodaeth newydd, bydd y cysylltiadau'n cyffwrdd. Felly, dydw i ddim yn teimlo fy mod i'n rhaid cymryd un ateb penodol. Oherwydd mae llawer o'r pethau rydyn ni'n delio â'r ffaithau. a allai fod wedi cael eu gwella ychydig o 90% o gyfnod hyderus neu 99% i ffaith. Ac mae hynny'n wahanol. A'r hyn rydyn ni'n ei drafod gyda hanes hanes yw ceisio cynnal pethau gyda'r gilydd. a gwneud hynny mewn ffordd cyfrifol. Ac rwy'n hapus iawn â'r ffaith bod pethau'n gysylltiedig yn y gwasanaethau. a'r ffaith eu bod wedi'u cymryd yn gysylltiad. Efallai y byddwch yn dweud, 'Mae hynny'n debygol, mae hynny'n iawn.'
Speaker 3Rwy'n credu hefyd, mae'n glir bod yn yr holl gwasanaethau ac yn llythyrau Paul hefyd. mae syniad yw bod y byw a'r diwethaf a'r ddiwethaf. yn gyflawniadau ysgrifennol. Ac rwy'n credu. dwi'n credu ei fod yn gyffredinol bod Paul, sy'n gwybod nad oedd yn credu. ac yn meddwl y byddai Jesus yn gwasanaeth ac yn gwasanaeth. mae hwnnw'n gyflawni'r hyn sydd wedi'i wneud yn fawr. Ac rwy'n credu, mae'n glir, mae'n mynd i ffwrdd ac mae'n darllen drwy'r Sgrifennu. Ac mae'n debyg, mae'n debyg, mae'n debyg, mae'n debyg, ac mae'n debyg, ac mae'n debyg, ac mae'n debyg, ac mae'n deby sy'n cynnig bod pobl sy'n credu bod Jesus yw'r Mesiaidd sydd wedi cael ei adnabod, yn amlwg yn mynd drwy'r Sgrifter i geisio cael canlyniad am hyn, ac mewn eu bywydau, eu broclamadau o wybodaeth da, eu Gospodau. Yn dealltwriaeth, maen nhw'n gweithio hynny i mewn, a dydyn nhw ddim yn gweld hyn fel fforddol. Maen nhw'n gweld hyn fel ganlyniad gyflawniol o'r hyn maen nhw'n credu, ond efallai yw'n rhoi cynydd i traddoddiadau nad yw'n hollol adroddiadol. Rwy'n credu fy mod wedi clywed chi dweud, Tom, yn yr adroddiad rydych chi wedi'i wneud ar "The Rest Is History" ychydig o flynyddoedd yn ôl, nad yw'n bwysig p'un a ydych chi'n cael gwartheg yn y ffaith o ran y rhan o'r ffaith hwn. Mae Jesus yn berson eithaf anhygoel. Mae'n berson eithaf anhygoel o ran y dywedau, y bywydau, y dyddiadau rydyn ni'n dal i ddarparu arno heddiw ac yn amlwg wedi nodi ein diwylliant mewn llawer o ffyrdd. Mae Peter wedi ysgrifennu llyfr 'The Surprising Genius of Jesus'. A ydych chi'n credu bod rhywbeth unigol o'r ffordd hwnnw am Jesus wrth i'w ddod trwyddo yn y Gwasgflau? Felly, gobeithio bod y Gwasgflau wedi cael eu cysylltu â'r hanes hanesol. A gobeithio bod yr hanes hanesol wedi cael ei ddod trwyddo i'r Gwasgflau hanesol neu gobeithio nad yw'r Gwasgflau wedi digwydd, a fydd yn cael eu darparu. Rwy'n credu bod y bwriad i ddweud nad yw'r Gwasgflau wedi digwydd yw'r eithiad ateistol o geisio ddweud nad oes rhywbeth o gwahaniaeth rhwng Herod yn mynd i ffwrdd yn y 4a b.c. a Corinneus sy'n cael ei ffwrdd yn y 80au. Mae gennych chi ffyrdd ffaith ac rydych chi'n ceisio ei ddweud. Ond mae'n debyg i mi bod y stori y mae ysgrifennwyr y Gwasgflau yn ei ddweud yn mor anhygoel ac mae'r ddweudau yn mor anhygoel, mae'r storïau yn mor anhygoel, mae'r arch o'r passion yn mor anhygoel. Ond mae'n debyg bod 4 o'r bobl, nid yw'r holl un ohonyn nhw'n artistau llythyrol gwych, yn gallu gwneud hynny. I mean, where is this stuff coming from if it is? Because if you're saying, Jesus, you know, that these are not drawing on authentic traditions, in a sense, you're just kicking the can down the road. It seems much more plausible on the principle of Occam's razor, but the gospels tell you extraordinary things about this man and all the extraordinary things that he said and the extraordinary way that he behaved in the build up to his death, because that's what he was. And he was so extraordinary that the details of his life and of things that he said were remembered and that they were passed down. And we know that they're being passed down long before the gospels are being written, because, for instance, there are echoes of the Sermon on the Mount in Paul's letters. And then they appear in the gospels, which are later than Paul's letters. So that seems to me the likeliest explanation for why the gospels are such extraordinary works of literature, is that they are accurate accounts of an extraordinary man. Rather than, you know, they're just making him up.
Speaker 6This is very much in line with where you go in your book.
Speaker 4Yeah, absolutely. I agree with that. And I suppose I want to build on that and just sort of state how extraordinary. So leaving aside what you call the most memorable stories ever told. Yeah, absolutely. I agree with that. Just looking at his sayings. First person we know in history ever to say, "Love your enemies." Turn the other cheek. Do unto others what you'd have them do to you. And you just go on, render to Caesar things that are Caesar's. Judge not what you'd be not judged. It's like a bonanza, and particularly Matthew 5 through to 7, the Sermon on the Mount. You just get these. It's 12 minutes long. You get so many of these things, one after the other, but you also get this in different gospels. "The truth will set you free" is only in John. So who comes up with all of these really insightful sayings on life? "A prophet is not without honour except in his own country." There it is in Mark. So this is extraordinary, but you have more than that with Jesus, because he also. It's perfectly true. One could imagine that they're writing bits of the gospel. But you have more than that with Jesus, because he also. It's perfectly true. So imagine that they're writing bits of the gospel details to fit with the Old Testament. But some bits that won't work with. He does die near Jerusalem on the eve of Passover. That's in the Jewish sources as well, in the Talmud. Of all the times in the year to sweep up symbolism, that's pretty good. He does have a name that is to do with saving, unlike those who are called his brothers. And then you've got this Old Testament, which is just dripping with the gospel. Dripping with material, ready to be applied to the sort of message that comes out of his life. But perhaps most obviously is your first sort of sad scene in the Old Testament is in the third chapter of Genesis, where you've got people, a couple of humans at a tree and death coming along. And then your climactic scene in the New Testament is Jesus on a tree, according to the narrative, dying and thereby bringing life. Or he's had a meal with his disciples saying, "Take, eat," which is a bit of a reference to what went on in Genesis 3. So there's all sorts of ways in which the Old Testament is just really, really ready to fit onto his life. Some of that will, you can say, yes, the gospel writers back-engineer it, but that won't quite explain the way it's all just ready for him.
Speaker 3And I think also you can see in Paul's letters, you can see that he's got a lot of information about the gospel. yn llythyrau Paul, gallwch weld ac yn teimlo Paul yn rhwstio gyda'r amlygiadau o'r hyn a'r ysgyfaint y mae'n ei teimlo mewn ei hun. Felly, y llythyr yn y Garddain o Eden a'r llythyr ar gyfer yr unigolion y mae'r Eglwys wedi'i chriwsefio, ac mae Paul yn rhyffio amdano. Mae'n dechrau ei ddysgu, ac mae'n y peth mwyaf gyffrous yn y byd, ond mae'n ei ddysgu. Ac mae'n amlwg nad yw'n ffabricafio hynny. Mae'r ymddygiad o gyffrous y mae wedi mynd drwy'r Sgripturau ac wedi datblygu'r holl gyfadreoliadau a'r cyfadreoliadau. Rwy'n credu bod yno yn Paul, sy'n ysgrifennu, beth, dwy, tri, chwe deced yn ôl ysgrifennwyr yr Eglwys, ac rydych chi'n gwybod, rydych chi'n cael y stori o'r in Paul. And you were getting echoes of material that predates Paul. So maybe within, you know, single figure years since the death of Jesus. I mean, I suppose that the question that it raises for me, Tom, is given all of that, you know, this extraordinary character, these extraordinary sayings, the way in which history seems to almost, you know, centre on him in so many extraordinary ways. Is there enough evidence even historically to say this was not just a regular human being?
Speaker 5Perhaps there was something divine about this man. Or can a historian not make those kinds of conclusions from the historical fact?
Speaker 3I mean, I think it's clear from Paul's letters and from the Gospels that the evidence is not conclusive, because otherwise there wouldn't need to be faith. I mean, Paul is endless. He's all about faith. And he is staring down the barrel of the possibility of faith. And he's staring down the barrel of the possibility of faith. And he's what about? Because if Christ wasn't crucified and rose from the dead, then everything he's preaching is wrong. And he can see through the eyes of the Judeans. And he can see through the eyes of the Greeks and the Romans. And he can see that to them it must be folly. And famously in the Gospels, you have my namesake refusing to believe that Christ has risen until he's actually put his fingers on the ground. And he's not going to believe that Christ has risen until he's in the holes. And Jesus is saying, well, not everyone is going to have this opportunity. And so the whole point of that story is that doubt is as possible as faith. But in that context of the whole question of doubt, I suppose as a historian, you can say, actually, we have really good evidence that Jesus really did die by Roman crucifixion. It's something that's attested to in all four Gospels. But of course, all four Gospels also claim he rose again. So is that the point at which you say, you don't know what to do with those historical claims? Or is that the point at which you say, you don't know what to do with those historical or we just have to put them to one side? I think you say it's clear that they believed that he had risen from the dead and that it took them time to work out what that meant. In fact, I mean, as far as I can tell from the allusions, they're still trying to work out what that meant. And they clearly believe that something extraordinary had happened. And I think to doubt that makes a But, you know, the Gospels are not the only texts describing someone who lived in the early first century AD, for instance, who goes on to become a god. So in his life of Augustus, Suetonius goes into great details about, you know, the food he liked and the kind of his sexual tastes and the kind of hat he wore and all this kind of thing. And then he says, yeah, then he rose up, you know, he went to heaven and he, you know, he's seated at the right hand of his divine father. You know, Augustus' divine father, of course, is Julius Caesar, who's also a god. And you go, yeah, whatever. I mean, just because you have the life of an extraordinary person who the person who's writing that life says becomes a god, I don't think serves as evidence that that person did become a god.
Speaker 4OK. Shouldn't we make a distinction between. say a Roman or a Greek context in which you don't have a bound set of numbers of gods and a Jewish context in which there's only one God? And it seems that Christians kept on the monotheism of Judaism and then identified Jesus as that God. And that's the really extraordinary thing to be having something like in Philippians where a bit of Isaiah is quoted where it says, you know, every knee will bow, that he'd be given the name above every name. Where it's quoting the Old Testament where God says to me, every knee will bow. And I think it's that sort of thing which is going on, which is so different. And I think you've talked about this thing where isn't it extraordinary that Jesus tells stories in which he is the king and he is the judge of the world. And that's a really weird thing. He's not just somebody who comes out with really amazing sayings. He also has this, I think you call it a high view of himself.
Speaker 3Yeah. Yeah. I suppose you could say he's not a modest man, although in many ways, of course, he is the humblest. He is the servant of servants. I mean, I think you can sense in the Gospels a very coherent sense of what Jesus thinks is going on and what his role is. And his role is to proclaim the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God. And what the kingdom of God exactly is, is kind of mysterious in the Gospels. But clearly, what if he's not? is something that has any track with the temple cult of the Judeans or the temple cult of the Romans. Jesus is equally silent before the Sanhedrin and before Pilate, and he rejects the claim of both of them to be the representatives of a divine order that is manifest in earthly power. And I think it's that sense of a kind of division between the world of God, the world of Caesar, the world of the temple, that is so radical and so full of potential for the future. And I think that in that sense, he is properly proclaiming a radical sea shift in the way that certainly people in the Christian world will come to conceptualize pretty much everything. And that is a really. really profound sense that you don't have to believe that he's the son of God to recognize that he is preaching something that is seismic in its implications. But I mean, just to go back to Augustus, Augustus also, you know, the idea of his divinity and the divinity of Caesar, I mean, that is also kind of quite radical in the context of the Roman world because it's making manifest in a way that people can perhaps instinctively, instinctively understand the process of change from a Republican system of government to an autocratic imperial system of government. And so, again, you can see how at exactly the same time that the Gospels and Paul's letters and so on are preaching a recalibration of how believers in Christ should understand society, humanity, and the relationship of the earthly to the divine. In the Roman imperial context, the stories of the divinization of Julius Caesar and of Augustus, and in due course of Claudius, are likewise channeling profound changes in the way that the Roman world functions and how people understand the society in which Romans live. Another Peter who asks this question, doesn't this entire discussion hang upon whether or not there's a supernatural realm? Peter, how do you defend it? Tom, what's your view on it? I'll start with you.
Speaker 4I'll start with you, Peter. Well, obviously, your prior beliefs, what you believe about the world, is going to have a big effect on what you believe is possible. So when you are open to the supernatural, particularly if you believe that God's already done amazing things, say in the Old Testament, the idea that he might raise his son from the dead in the New Testament, isn't asking you to believe something qualitatively different. So I think, yes, a lot depends on your overall view on things like that. I think it is possible to have your foot in two camps and to be comparing two very contrasting approaches to making sense of everything simultaneously and to look inside and out of them.
Speaker 5Do you ever feel like you have a foot in both camps, Tom?
Speaker 3I feel like I have, well, I've only got two feet. But if I, I mean, I feel I've got multiple feet in multiple camps. The kind of the dream of writing history is to be objective and neutral, I guess. I mean, that's, that's been the, since the Enlightenment, that's been the, the model. And when I came to write the book I wrote about Islam, which was also about religion and monotheism in late antiquity, so it was also about Talmudic Judaism and Christianity and Zoroastrianism and all kinds of things as well. I did it as someone who was, who didn't believe in God, who didn't think that, God, for instance, had spoken to Muhammad, didn't think the Quran came from God. And I felt that that made me, therefore, more objective than, say, Muslim scholars who did think that that was an explanation for the Quran. But I realized, of course, while writing it, just how arrogant a perspective that was, that my, my, my presuppositions and assumptions were just as much a faith position as they were a faith position. And that, and that of a believing Muslim. And I remember doing an event and there was a Muslim woman in the audience and she asked me about, why have you, why have you written this book about Islam, which essentially, you know, you're, you're questioning all kinds of things that are incredibly important to me, that's central to, to, to my understanding of how the universe functions and my place within it. And you would never do this to your own belief system. And I really felt the sting and force of that belief system and the force of that. And actually I was at that process in the, you know, starting to question my own belief system, which I was coming to realize was essentially a kind of very milky tea form of Christianity that that what I had thought was uh you know that I'd emancipated myself from superstition um and that I just had to look into my heart and I would know what was right that actually I was just doing what Paul was doing and that's how I came to right dominion was was to was it kind of acknowledgement of the fact that my soggy humanist agnosticism was itself contingent was itself a faith position um and I guess that the realization of that has made me worry that to cling too dogmatically to a kind of skepticism about the dimension of the supernatural is to cut yourself off as as a as a you know materialist in the 21st century from how the vast majority of human beings across the world and through the sweep of time have thought because we are the ones in 21st century you know the 21st century west who are unusual and so now whenever I look at different periods of time in different places I try and imagine that I I'm trying to imagine myself into not just believing in the supernatural because that makes it sound like the supernatural is something distinct from the material that the supernatural is kind of it's like the milk in the tea you can't separate it out so whether that's ancient Athens or whether it's 15th century France or whatever that's that's what I'm trying I guess to to think myself into and because I recognize that culturally in in all kinds of ways my gut assumption as a Christian I am interested in dare I say sacralizing them in um in kind of breathing the life of the supernatural back into them and seeing what happens and it's it just makes things more interesting Hank joined BJ's Wholesale Club the day he
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Speaker 3I mean it's interesting because inevitably you know at the core of this conversation I think there is this back and forth between the sort of objective historical inquiry with your historian hat on Tom and the fact that you've spoken openly about the fact you you do have you know an increasing draw towards well faith in in some sense it's it's either all or nothing for me okay it's either the Nietzschean abyss or the experience of Marian visitations okay I'm not interested in being a soggy centrist anymore no all or nothing um well in in that vein coming again to this question of history versus faith and so on um someone asks is there enough evidence to say Jesus rose from the dead and there's other similar questions asking you know to what extent can we use historical methods to point towards an obviously
Speaker 4supernatural event like that um I'll start with you Peter so I would say there there is evidence uh strong evidence that Jesus rose from the dead I don't think it's coercive evidence and uh we have even within um the gospel accounts the way things are often not coercive I mean the story in Luke of Christ being on the cross two um criminals either side of him seeing exactly the same thing and having two different reactions so I think uh what I'd say is for me the fact that there are clearly lots of people believe they saw Jesus risen from the dead early on um first Corinthians 15 Galatians other parts of Paul clearly show belief in the resurrection is an early thing then you have a missing body and it's not just a missing body of any old person it's the fact that this same person also has the most genius sayings the story is is believed to uh yeah comes from a remarkable people group and uh dies at a remarkable time has a remarkable day and you just list all of these things and so it's the fact that it just doesn't happen to someone random from Huddersfield if you excuse me anyone nothing against Huddersfield so so that's that's what I'd say those things come together and and they they make a a pattern and so when I would argue for the resurrection I'm not asking for people to believe in a weird paranormal thing I'm asking for people to embrace the fact that as I see it miracles around Jesus make a pattern there's actually a a new pattern emerging rather than it's just an anomaly to the normally uh pattern-formed Crystal of life and what's your
Speaker 5perspective on this idea that history could be used at some sense to to at least suggest that something supernatural was actually at the core of that or do you feel that's just ruled out to some extent
Speaker 3by the historical method well it's it's I mean it's ruled out by the evidence of the Gospels themselves which um clearly integrate within their narratives the possibility of disbelief and and miscomprehension um Mary sees there isn't Christ and mistakes him for the gardener um the guards are there because um the possibility that people might come and steal the body is something that that um the authorities are worried about so the explanations that um people subsequently have made to explain away what happened to the body or um who Jesus the risen Jesus was um are there in the Gospels the possibility that you know Mary and the disciples mistook Jesus for someone else or the fact that perhaps the body was taken by interested parties is there in the Gospels um and again it's part of this this um this message that in a sense there are dramatic in the opinion of the Gospel writers and and of the early Christians you you will feel it in your heart um you know if you don't witness the risen Christ yourself maybe he'll appear to you on the road to Damascus um but there are lots of people obviously who don't think that Jesus rose from the dead because otherwise the world would have become Christian within a year well and it doesn't but you because there are all kinds of people who think it's nonsense and who continue to think it's nonsense but centuries and centuries right the way up to the present day but nonetheless you also said earlier that you do think that those first followers who did claim to have seen absolutely were telling the truth they really did believe they had yes seen but there's Paul for instance he's preaching the knee you know you need to feel it in your heart right any thoughts on that yeah
Speaker 4and so I take it that Paul believes in a bodily resurrection because his argument in Romans is this has an effect for your mortal bodies and it's your physically going to be resurrected so I I take it that's he doesn't just believe in a sort of yeah spiritual uh resurrection but Tom's quite right the the there's a lot of doubts going on in the resurrection narratives not just in John's Gospel we've got doubting Thomas but also in Luke where Jesus says don't doubt to the disciples and Matthew he's building up to his Climax the Great Commission four verses from finishing his Gospel and he says they saw him and when they saw some doubted and it's like dude that's not how you build up to a Climax that's really anti-climactic and so the fact that you've got this as part of uh the Gospel narratives means there's no embarrassment there about the idea that there's no doubt but there is this constant theme in all the early Christian writings and since of Christians using evidence not necessarily saying we're doing the discipline of history but using uh rational arguments that are related to how we evidently evidentially approach the past and saying that is relevant and and it comes together and it does point to something remarkable going on that you can respond to
Speaker 3well this leads us nicely into another question here someone points out that Tom said earlier if it were clear that Jesus was God or Jesus was raised from the dead there wouldn't be any need for faith and so they asked Peter well what is faith is it some sort of alternative to
Speaker 4knowledge or historical evidence so I would say I like the word trust because I think that faith coming latin fridays uh was more like that so now faith in the last couple hundred years can be a belief without any evidence and i don't think that's what's going on in the bible when when in the early past years with abraham uh having faith in god god is actually appearing to him at the time so there's a sort of relational contact and then um god's asking for more so i think it's this relational uh future trust uh in god and i would just say that i think humans are built very relationally uh you know in our mother's womb we are getting fed nutrients and information simultaneously and the idea that we can then at some later stage become a brain in a vat you know disregard all the human relationships through which we receive information and testimony i don't think is right so i think um faith is a um rational uh response uh uh to our maker it it's future trust but based on things that already been shown to us does
Speaker 5that make sense to you son i mean i i think
Speaker 3i would frame it slightly differently for what it's worth which is that um seen from the most objective materialist um skeptical perspective it is clear that there is a sense of the supernatural and that we are the brain chemicals that make us as human beings experience a sense of the supernatural kind of yearn for a sense of of of the divine um and we as a society are probably the first that has kind of conditioned ourselves not to do that and and perhaps to kind of feel to mistrust it and and and and to regard it with suspicion but i think that it is um it is clear that it is um it is clear that it is um it is clearly seen in the broad context of history um something that is instinctive to us as a species and again to be kind of darwinian about it um survival fitness though i know he didn't coin that phrase but let's use that as shorthand um i mean of all the ways to to all the ways that have emerged um over the course of human history to satisfy that urge christianity is the most successful so it does suggest purely in base darwinian terms that it has you know basically it's it's it's beaten the competitors although obviously islam may have something to say about that it's you know that race isn't over by any means um but studied purely objectively christianity is is the most successful way that humans have devised explain what their purpose is right i suppose that then raises the question though naturally of of is it just really successful because it's evolutionarily useful um versus it being you know right i mean it's it's kind of like those drawings where it's either a rabbit or a duck you know it's difficult to hold them both in your in your head at the same time is is christianity successful because it's true or is christianity successful because it's you know it's hit on some yeah some it does it's jails with there's a question here that basically reflects this so we can continue the conversation it someone says is it possible to separate the supernatural elements of christianity from its cultural and moral influences does just being a cultural christian make sense i don't know if you've
Speaker 4got thoughts on that uh so the very very best thing about christianity is jesus okay so if you're missing out on that you're missing out on a lot but obviously i think it would be far better to be a cultural christian um acknowledging that there's a lot of wisdom in the teachings of christianity than uh not to be but the very best thing would be actually to uh partake of a relationship with jesus that is the best well i i mean i think
Speaker 3basically that most of us in this country are cultural christians just instinctively and i think there is no one who's more culturally christian than the atheist who says i don't need some you know bronze age sky fairy telling me how to behave because i just know how to behave i'm a good person i don't need the bible to tell me to care for the weak and the poor and the refugee manifesting the fact that they are the result of centuries worth of biblical weathering so in a sense in a sense to be a cultural christian is still to believe stuff it's still to believe stuff that to say a roman a pre-christian roman would have seen mad and not at all self-evident let's move to some specifically historical questions because a lot of those are here as well we've been talking about the gospels a lot this evening um someone asked can christians actually trust the people who decided which books should be in the bible and should christians read books that were not chosen um
Speaker 4peter do you want to start well the second question is easy yeah read loads of books um but in terms of the history of christianity i think it's important to understand that christians were chosen because of the four gospels are the four earliest and uh qualitatively best in terms of their knowledge base and so on but also say that this idea that a group later decides on what ones to have in doesn't quite acknowledge what the gospels claim about themselves so john's gospel begins in the beginning was the word that opening has been used in the bible before in the very first book in genesis in the beginning god created so it's sort of saying i'm the same sort of book as genesis matthew's doing likewise when it begins with a whole load of begot begot begot like in in genesis um five and it's the book of the um well actually book of genesis the first two greek words in matthew luke's beginning like first samuel with a barren couple a righteous couple and there's going to be some poetry coming up soon and mark saying elijah's back and last time elijah was around those scriptures so i think that actually he's the four gospels are presenting us early on with this binary choice of either they are um over claiming in a bad way uh or um you know you should accept them i i don't think they offer you um the idea that john's gospel just gradually creeps up in authority when it's claiming that sort of authority uh up front now there's more that can be said about that but but so i don't put a big emphasis on say what happened in the fourth century i'd also say in the second century you get by the the second half of the second century you get across a fairly wide area the idea that there are four gospels uh and and that that i i think is in egypt and and france and uh syria so you know across different areas without a centralized christian place uh power that those four are way out ahead of anything else
Speaker 5what what's your sense of why these four gospels made it in versus the many other contenders well i
Speaker 3mean when i was a teenager and reading the holy blood and the holy grail uh which is the inspiration for the da vinci code i was all over the idea that you know the boring stiffs who'd frozen out all the groovy gospels with you know jesus marrying mary magdalene and taking taking mushrooms and all that kind of stuff and and obviously the reason that they'd been frozen out is because the boring squares had organized it but i feel that's not an entirely accurate perspective of what happened um so essentially the reason that we have the four canonical gospels is because it was a response to um a guy called marcian who was a shipping magnate from the black sea who felt something that i'm sure lots of people who are christians have have often felt i mean it seems to me that it's a very important thing to do and i think it's a very important thing to do and it seems to me that um the contemporary church is quite marcionite in that it doesn't really know what to do with the the old testament and marcion's feeling was that the god of the old testament and the god of the new testament were clearly so different that they couldn't be the same god um and so he was it he what he luke's gospel actually the apostles and three of his letters or something he has some of paul some of paul's letters and he says this is basically all we need everything else is rubbish and this is a massive challenge because nobody had thought to con because a canonist means a measuring stick in greek um so you you know you measure out which are the the correct things to have and no one had really thought of compiling a canon before but there's a sense of of panic on the part of what i think you can call what the the great church the catholic church the orthodox church i mean the sense that there there are there is a mass body of christians who feel the challenge that marcion is presenting to them and who essentially get to say well what are we going to do about this and the crucial the first crucial decision they take is that there is an old testament and there is a new testament and that's where the idea you know that you you pair the two they're not jettisoning the idea that the god of the old testament is somehow different from the god of the new testament which is obviously fundamental to the development of christian orthodoxy but they also say okay um what are the earliest the best the most authenticated gospels and in a sense biblical The New Testament scholarship is beginning with this. they're deliberately stress testing which are the most authentic accounts. And all these kind of, you know, all the Gnostic Gospels that then start to emerge, they're basically very snobbish. They're intellectually snobbish. They're essentially saying, you know, you have to have, you know, you have to have an equivalent of a PhD to understand what God's purpose is, which is why intellectuals love them so much. But the key thing about the four Gospels is that they contain all these potential theological riches. I mean, you know, they have been the great motor for Christian theology as it's evolved, but it is also incredibly comprehensible. That's the power of the parables. It's the power of the nativity. And you get it in Oregon, this, you know, this great Christian scholar in Alexandria in the early third century who is steeped in Greek philosophy. He speaks Hebrew. You know, he's incredibly intellectual. But he says, you know, sometimes I contemplate, you know, the Christ child drinking his mother's milk. And I fall down and I'm struck dumb with wonder that this could be such a thing. And he's feeling wonder at exactly something that, you know, an illiterate scullery maid or a peasant out in the fields might also feel wonder at. And that, I think, is the genius of those Gospels, is that they're not just about the Gospels. They make sense in terms of story. And again, to say that is to realize how culturally determined our sense of the sacred is. Because there are Muslim scholars, very few of them, because most Muslim scholars regard the Gospels as kind of they've been tampered with by Christians who want to disguise the fact that Jesus was actually a Muslim and wasn't crucified. But those who do read it, they say, what is going on here? You know, it's just a load of stories. You don't get that in the Koran. The Koran has kind of almost banished narrative from its fabric. And then they're reading all this stuff about, you know, people being mugged on roads and virgins who are misbehaving and, you know, what the hell is going on here? But in terms of how the Gospels have manifested themselves over the course of 2,000 years, it's the fact that those narratives are so potent and powerful that does so much to explain. The parable. It's the parable of Christianity, I think. Whereas in the Gnostic Gospels, it's all blah.
Speaker 5One more question on the Gospels before we have to start wrapping this up. One person says, this was a popular question, 40 years after Jesus' death is still kind of a long time. Why didn't the authors write the Gospels five years after his death?
Speaker 4So I'd say the Gospels are close enough to the events to be right and far enough away to be wrong. Yeah, on timing, at Tom's point, you know, people couldn't, say the wrong thing about what happened today. I don't give dates to the Gospels, but they've got names on Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And because Mark and Luke are not said to be eyewitnesses, and wouldn't be famous if it weren't for the Gospels, there's no reason anyone to put those names on if they're not by them. Now, if Luke is someone who is a companion of Paul in the 50s of the first century, having been a doctor, then the time in which he may be writing, even if he lives quite a long time, is not a very long time away from the events. If Matthew is a tax collector in Capernaum around the time of Jesus' ministry, again, it can be a few decades later, but not that much. Obviously, people can live a long time. My granny is 105. It's amazing. And you get, you know, I still don't get old. I still don't get old information from her. But what I would say is that, for me, the key thing is, when you look at the quality of information, particularly when it comes to the words of Jesus' teaching, it seems that there is a consistent pattern of care in transmitting these.
Speaker 3I don't know. But, I mean, two possibilities. Perhaps I'd be interested in whether Peter just dismisses them completely. One might be the thing you get in Paul is a definite apocalyptic sense that Jesus might be returning at any minute. There's a mood of incredible apocalyptic excitement. And if that's the case, then you don't really need to, you know, write these lives. And the other, the Gospels are all written in Greek. We haven't discussed the question of whether Jesus might have spoken Greek, which I know is a big theme of your scholarship. But as Christianity spreads across the Roman Empire, you know, as churches are planted in Corinth and Rome and so on, there is probably a need for this very Judean, Galilean story to be put down in a way that someone who's never been there can comprehend in a language that he or she can readily read. And that might be a process that takes several decades. That will take some time. Let's finish with this question,
Speaker 6because I think it's an interesting way of perhaps bringing our conversation to a close.
Speaker 3Someone asks, if the Christian God exists, why should we need to rely on historical evidence?
Speaker 5Why not just reveal himself to us directly right now? Who wants to start on this one?
Speaker 4I mean, what I'd say is that as a Christian, I think there are many different arguments you can make for Christianity. Some of them are about the ethics and so much in Tom's dominion. We say, you know, this is a good thing for the world. I think you can make an argument from prophecy, from the person of Jesus. All these different things, or from personal transformation. You know, there are people who've lived life a particular way. They believe they've encountered Jesus and their life has changed for the better. I think all these things can come together. The thing about why shouldn't God show himself? Well, the argument of Christians is that he did. In the person of Jesus, God came and manifested himself. Of course, if God is infinite, then he cannot, reveal everything of himself to us, to our senses, because we're not able to take that in. The very best way to communicate with a human is through a human. And so that's what I'd say is God's done that, but he also wants us to respond to him. And we all live our lives trusting other humans. And so God comes to us in that way and invites us to trust him.
Speaker 5Do you want to have a final word, Tom?
Speaker 3I am not going to try and explain the motives of God. I feel that is a task that has defeated much mightier minds than mine, and I feel it is way beyond my pay grade. Well, I appreciate you coming in at your pay grade tonight
Speaker 5for this brilliant conversation on the history, on the way in which faith intersects with all of these issues. But for now, would you give a huge round of applause to our guests, Con Vollum and Dick Whelan. I hope you enjoyed that
Speaker 3conversation live from All Souls Church, London. And thanks again to Pillar and Step for hosting the event. It really was a tremendous evening. And it's also available to watch at our YouTube channel. Just search for my channel, Justin Briley. And if you want to let me know your thoughts on the conversation, why not email me? [email protected] is the address. By the way, if you've enjoyed today's live show, you might enjoy another event coming up before the end of the year in Oxford on Monday, the 23rd of November. Tom Holland will be in conversation with New Testament scholar N.T. Wright, and the event will be chaired by historian Molly Worthen. Well, I've had the pleasure of interviewing all three of them at various points. Molly Worthen, I think, will be a super third conversation partner, as she has her own story of conversion to Christian faith as a sceptical historian of North American religion at the University of North Carolina, in Chapel Hill. And she told that story in our first season of The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God. But Molly followed the evidence for Christ, which included some emailing back and forth with Tom Wright, in fact, and came to believe Jesus really was who he said he was and really did rise from the dead. So it'll be very interesting, won't it, to see what Tom Holland makes of her story. So that event is titled Who's Dominion? Making Sense of Jesus. Three historians wrestle with history's most influential figure. It's happening at the Sheldonian Theatre Oxford at 6:00 p.m. on Monday, the 23rd of November, hosted by the Veritas Forum and the Oxford Pastoret. If you want more information, just search Veritas Oxford. I'll put the link with the info with today's show as well. Also with the show info are the links to support this podcast, The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God. And when you support, you get all the perks, too. Early access to episodes, both this show and our sister show, Uncommon Ground, plus bonus content. In fact, this month, we've an exclusive piece of bonus content for you, a conversation with Kathy Keller, reflecting on her life married to renowned Christian thinker and New York pastor to skeptics, Tim Keller. He died three years ago, and we dive into how Kathy came to posthumously publish his book, What is Wrong with the World? You'll get access to that exclusive bonus interview when you become a Silver supporter. Step up to gold level support, and I'll send you signed copies of both my books and an invitation to a monthly support to catch up with me if you'd like it. In doing so, you support the to work a think faith making conversations like these happen if you'd like to support the link is with the show info here's what's Speaker 5coming up next time wes very nice to meet you you seem like you're just running from one major platform to another right now one of the fastest growing
Speaker 1christian creators you know him from bodying heretics on the internet bodaciously brolic bible expert you've ever seen christian great to
Speaker 7have you well wes i'm so excited to be talking with you wesley huff wesley huff welcome to my podcast
Speaker 3wesley what is going on in society if we zoom out have you been handling that i suppose in the last 12 months
Speaker 5yeah with fear and trepidation
Speaker 6christian thinker and historian wes huff has been on a whirlwind
Speaker 3journey for the past year or more i talked to him about why christian apologetics is breaking out into the mainstream and he even responds to today's show find out what he makes of tom holland's critiques of the birth narratives and his questions around the resurrection you don't have to wait if you're a supporter that conversation is available right now two weeks early just go to the link with the show info to start supporting and get that early access now and you'll get access to our exclusive supporter only interview with kathy keller on tim keller's response to the question what is wrong with the world bonus content just for supporters lots of reasons to support this month
Speaker 6you've been listening to the surprising rebirth of belief in god thanks to isaac simmons for editing assistance as usual and thank you for listening i'll see you next time hank joined bj's wholesale club the day he became a
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