Let There Be Answers! Episode 3, Transcript

Let There Be Answers! Episode 3 - Centre Place

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boz-QrDCYZo

Transcript:

(00:04) good evening Welcome to our Let There Be answers podcast this is the third time we've done this um as always I'm John HR I'm live streaming to you from Toronto Center place and I'm here with Leandro Palos who is getting everything ready on the Mac end as he is following your chat conversations on Facebook and YouTube and elsewhere so that we can uh collect questions that happen uh in this uh live event as always we appreciate all of the support that um you give to Center place to make our various content possible and so we really appreciate the support you

(00:50) give to lectures and then when we don't have time to research and present an entirely new lecture like I did not have time this week then we'd to be able to uh catch up on some of the questions that you've been answering in the comments uh sections uh in the various platforms for recent lectures that we've had uh and also questions that you might have uh if you're here with us in the live chat and so to start out with um we want to announce what some of the upcoming lectures are going to be and so next Tuesday on February 25th we're

(01:29) going to look at the question how zoroastrian is judeo-christianity so we're aware of Zoroastrianism as one of the um early and great world religions the religion of the Persian Empire um and the Persian Empire of course uh was the entity that conquered the Babylonians the uh Judean Exiles in Babylon and the Babylonian captivity were then uh allowed to leave from Babylon and return to Jerusalem and rebuild their Temple but in doing so they're just moving from one part of the Persian Empire to the other and so the

(02:13) overall um influence then uh Persian influence over the next couple hundred years the early part of the first temple sorry second temple period is enormous and so um many components that exist Within or asianism ideas uh for example of an end of times an apocalypse an end of the world the destruction of this world the creation of a new world the idea of a of a savior uh that will uh be part of that um the idea of um a an evil force a cosmic devil um a lot of these then the idea of Resurrection a lot of

(02:58) these uh are not present in first temple Judaism and obviously they become very important during second temple Judaism and early Christianity and Christianity thereafter and so what we're going to look at is kind of little history of Zoroastrianism history of of the influence and try to track down um what components maybe uh come from Zoroastrianism in Judaism and Christianity the next Tuesday on March 4th we're going to go back and look at our um one of our favorite early uh heniz Jewish thinkers Pho of Alexandria

(03:41) we did a lecture um kind of a basic lecture on Pho but it was actually a long time ago now back pre pandemic uh and as we've gone back and looked at it a lot of uh there's a lot of complaints about how we used to have um allow questions during the lecture itself and so we want to go back and uh talk about pho again but also um we want to look a little bit more in depth at some of his early ideas for example what his propositioning ideas about uh God's word the logos and how uh in some ways this is a precursor of the Christian understanding of the logos the second person what

(04:28) ultimately becomes the second person of the Christian Trinity the Tuesday after that we're going to look at female Apostles in the early church so um although fairly early on in um in some components of early Christianity and then ultimately in the um the official state religion that emerged out of the nyine church the Proto Orthodox line uh women's roles in leadership in Christianity were curtailed in the very earliest components um of Christianity uh from there's we have a lot of sense that some of the communities women were in very very important leadership positions including S pro being a prophets being

(05:16) uh Apostles and also being uh deacons which is important early uh role and so we'll look at the evidence for that and what happened and then finally the next week we're going to actually try to take on what is the Trinity so a lot of people are not fans of the Trinity but nevertheless have have goed me into doing a lecture on what is the Trinity so that I can uh uh commit heresy by explaining it wrong so that's what we hopefully those are all good one of the things we want to do in this whole um Let There Be answers is throughout of

(05:53) course we want to have your questions but also if you have um ideas for future lectures also put those in and we'll be sharing what some of those those answers are and so um I know maybe landro have you set up and ready to join me there he is hey John thank you hello everyone and welcome to this third episode of Let There Be answers and we are really excited we have collected uh questions primarily from the last few lectures that John offered here on our Channel I want to start uh by reminding you how we

(06:31) count on you to continue to grow the channel so if you haven't please subscribe to our Channel and just hit the like button so that we can get noticed by the algorithm I'm going to also thank those of you who have already helped the Channel with your super chats thank you JM uh Dave Anderson darthur and fire ever living for your support I don't think am I missing somebody and Bo the wolf also thank you Bo the wolf and we got your questions so we will be collecting your questions in the chat we'll we'll do our best we do have quite a few lectures already um uh lined up so

(07:13) why don't we get started John I have uh let's go back to a question uh that we received on the what is the Arc of the Covenant lecture all right uh from Gordon Macintosh 2655 uh Gordon says if if the ark contained such power how could it be destroyed so Gordon you're um you're mixing the um stories about the ark that are literary that are written into the text with then the history um which is not part of the text so the arc is not destroyed in the text ever it's it simply falls out of the text and it doesn't exist anymore and so

(07:58) and so literarily the ark has all kinds of power as people are writing stories about an object that are primarily Mythic and then um there's a possibility that there was some sort of an object that existed at the end of the first temple period it wouldn't have dated back to the Exodus Exodus which is or to Moses and Aaron because those are again Mythic times but if there was an actual object in the Jerusalem Temple towards the end um then it would have gotten destroyed because the the temple got destroyed and you know why would the

(08:32) temple get destroyed because it's a historical object then and historical objects can get destroyed uh thank you we have another one on the uh on the same lecture from the almighty Aku 4153 um so they say I wish you had gone into the similarity of the Ark and Idol caskets like the one found in King Toot's tomb which almost exactly matches the description of the Arc of the Covenant except for a big um old Anubis Jackal statue on top of it yeah that's interesting so um the we did talk about in in that lecture that

(09:19) actually portable shrines Are Not Unusual at all in history so it's not like the Ark of the Covenant is the only time that anybody will have done that sort of thing there are ones that where people had portable shrines where we can say for sure those actually did exist and one of the ones that you mention is an artifact that was discovered by archaeologists when they Unearthed uh the the tomb and all of the um items within uh Pharaoh Tuton Common's uh tomb and so that um Shrine in the portable Shrine in from the Egyptian version here is a wooden box that was covered with gold so just like the ark is supposed to

(09:59) be with two long rods that are covered with gold that you use as handles so they could be so that you could carry it around just like um one is supposed to do with the ark and the difference is unlike the Arc of the Covenant which is described as having two cherubim on top with the wings and instead has a uh a nubis a jackal-headed uh the god um of the Dead in ancient Egypt um and so there's a similar idea between those that they're portable shrines however they are um would have been used very differently so the port the reason why this this Shrine is portable is is because of part of the funerary or

(10:32) burial uh Goods for the Pharaoh and so they would had a big funeral possession and you needed the shrine and it to have handles so you could carry it along in the funeral and then they left it in the in the Tomb whereas the description we have for how the ark would have been used one of the descriptions is the idea of it is that it would have been used as a kind of a war totem as they're taking it out into battle in order to um rally all of their uh their the Israelites and as they're fighting their enemies

(11:03) uh thanks John for that uh more questions on what is the Ark of the Covenant uh and this one comes from from several viewers um actually quite a few so I'm not going to I'm not going to say all the all the handles um so basically the story about tumors and keeping 2,000 Cubit uh distance sounds like radioactivity ionizing radiation also shielding it in gold would have prevented Alpha and beta radiation to get out and so there's a lot of questions about like I I would say um thinking or speculating about radiation

(11:40) and and in the ark yeah yeah so this is multiple multiple people had this idea because when we hear in the in the biblical account after the Philistines have um captured the ark um and it it h they take it to different Philistine cities and everyone in the cities get to tors and so then people I think that that made us in our um Atomic era uh immediately start to make that connection you know with radiation and poisoning those kind of things and um and as you guys were all uh you know coming up with that idea it reminded me of the Star Trek the Next Generation episode thine own self where data uh

(12:22) loses his memory and he's living among a sort of a Renaissance era people and he's got these radioactive metal that uh is causing everybody to have radiation poisoning and things so it's it's a fun idea this has nothing to do you know again we don't need to this is the wrong um this is the kind of the wrong kind of ancient way of rationalizing historical stories you know words where we're getting a story that is not historical so we take a Mythic account and then we and then trying to rationalize it and say if it were this it would actually be

(12:54) historical we don't need it to um we don't need to come up with a a naturalis explanation for the story because the story um the story is not like a has a historical witness this is a literary creation it's a Mythic story uh thank you and uh more questions on the AR of the Covenant from Anthony Arena why would God need a box for the presence of God to dwell in was their concept of God something like a Genie in a lamp kind of thing so so ancient people did think that um Gods needed things that would be similar

(13:37) to things that humans needed so naturally humans uh anthropomorphize we um you know we we imagine uh when we think of forces we think of forces as having humanlike intent and being like humans this is why ultimately um um in paganism the gods are all you know take kind of human or or picturable form and so the hurler of lightning bolts is is Zeus or Jupiter or or Thor and so on we we um assign kind of a a human quality to those kind of forces so in the same way um um you know you're talking about like needing a portable Shrine it was very common throughout all

(14:22) of antiquity to have to have a temple a temple is a house for the God so humans want to e a house uh you envision a God or a force and you envision that anthropomorphically and so you want that um God that Force to have a house so you build an actual house for the God and there's both they can dwell in it then uh and then you also are doing things like providing food so you're briding sacrifice this is the basic um idea of you sort of the pre-World religion stage of of uh polytheism you know you need to

(14:55) continually offer sacrifices and food in order to maintain um um the God's capacity to make all the things happen in the world you want the sun to come back up again so that's why um that's why this earlier conception that people had of the Gods and and ultimately as they're envisioning the god of Israel as God then they no longer see a need for God to be in any one place so it even though it emerges out of that tradition it's reflecting a more primitive uh conception of the Divine thank you Ron for uh your Super Chat and I just want to let uh let's see where am

(15:38) I looking at uh to Boda wolf to fire ever living to Andreas to Tbone and to Wayne's World of Science and Technology we did get your questions uh that you posted in the chat we'll get there in a minute if you have questions please uh just make sure you tag at at Center Place uh with your question in the chat otherwise I'm most likely I will miss it uh so let's go to the next question now uh from this is also from no I think we read this one from the what is the Arc of the cabinet as well why would God no that's what I just this one is from the myth of David's Kingdom you

(16:20) mentioned uh John the discovery of the book of law during the temple Renovations that was either an early copy or uh an early copy of or inspiration for the book of Deuteronomy so the discovery just seems very suspect and so John what is your opinion of the authenticity or let's say like the the the truthness of this discovery of This Book of the law right so so there's a very similarities within the book of Deuteronomy which um which describes itself what it you know it's described in a Sim very similar way as in the deuteronomic history in the book of

(17:05) kings of the discovery so that there's to put it to put it in uh the the mobile Shrine you know next to the ark and then later uh the uh the pries that that the scribes and Priests at the time of Hezekiah find it in the temple uh and it's also um supposed to be then uh the book that they find is is a book of the law and so Scholars very very much uh identify this with either Deuteronomy or an early uh component of Deuteronomy so I think your question is you know is that doesn't it's that sounds fishy

(17:42) right so you know and of course the answer to that is we okay yes in some ways so the scholars often describe this as as a fraud that has a Pious intent so a Pious fraud is one way you describe it or um another possibility is you fraud understands that is a clear understanding that when they are writing this book they know that they are not Moses so even though Deuteronomy suggests that Moses is the author of this the person who's writing this is not Moses it's being written centuries after um the figure of Moses would have

(18:16) lived if Moses is a historical figure at all um and so and so in that sense it is not um it is not uh what it claims to be so it's either let's say then a fraud that is being committed consciously with the purpose of uh of legitimizing a religious reform and so therefore a Pious fraud or um the scribes who are writing it believe they are writing down um what the actual words would have been had they survived in other words they're doing it with a uh an intent by recording Traditions that they think are

(18:57) authentic and are presenting nevertheless even there you might call it a little bit of a fraud or still so a Pious fraud and so but it's definitely not what it claims to be so so yes another question from the Ark of the Covenant uh this one there's a lot of questions uh that we received in this lecture from this one is from Barnes web 52 have you read the valediction of Moses by Iden davitz the Moses scroll by Ross Nichols or the origins of Judaism by Jonathan Adler I really believe we have all inherited faked and altered scriptures I have that that book here

(19:42) like the last one oh you do yeah the origins of Judaism so we have do look at that one um um the other two I haven't read but I have read a lengthy article in the New York Times about duritz's work so um in that particular case we're talking about um the discovery that a 19th century an Antiquities dealer made about uh and this guy was named Moses shapira and he announced uh that he had found 15 fragments of uh of a manuscript written in paleo Hebrew uh the manuscript was very similar to Deuteronomy but it was different and so for example it lacked

(20:19) some of the references to a law code and so very quickly uh in the 19th century it was you know uh dismissed as a modern forgery uh and then shapira later committed suicide and now the fragments had been lost nevertheless um what he had what he had has been published and so um some recent Scholars have gone back uh and reopened the question you know is is this you know is this maybe not a fraud and if so it would be the oldest of our Torah related manuscripts and would represent a version of Deuteronomy that's older than the version of Deuteronomy that we have and so um you know your point is that do

(20:59) that mean that scriptures are all faked this is sort of the same question that we had before so it really doesn't matter if um the shapira document is um you know represents an older version of Deuteronomy or if it's just a modern forgery because our conclusion about Deuteronomy itself would be the same Deuteronomy is a pseudepigraphic book it is not um it's not written by Moses it was written by someone centuries after the time period when Moses would have lived if Moses had been a historic figure um and so and so it's we don't I mean it would be cool if that if this um

(21:35) if everyone did start to agree that this uh this document um represented an earlier version of Deuteronomy that would be interesting for us and also our um quest to kind of uncover the documentary hypothesis or supplementary hypothesis theories of the Torah authorship um but anyway in any event it's the same in terms of you know in terms of deciding faked or altered this is um in part I think in expectations um depends on what people think scriptures are and I think people have thought of them recently as being um literal

(22:10) historical uh inherent in all kinds of ways and those ways that they imagine scripture are not turn out not to be the case thank you Anders and theis for your Super Chat also I'm going to read the message um Andre says John I'm donating because you have the patience of a saint in dealing with these silly questions about magic Arts I would have lost that it a long time ago thank you for that well thank you for your support Anders we also got Ian we got your your question is added to the que and let's continue with another question from what is the Arc of the Covenant from Mara

(22:54) 2767 um who says a wouldbe reformer discovers a new scripture where have I heard that before well it happens a lot so um I mean another place that you might have heard that I guess is uh uh with the origin of of Islam another place uh that is po where you might have heard a um a new scripture that is discovered that would be a reform would for example be Joseph Smith in the Book of Mormon so one of the um you know one of the components of uh of religion is the people prefer tradition that goes all the way back people when when it's a religion calling it a new religion like new age it comes off as very inauthentic

(23:44) to a huge proportion of people and so one of the better ways to actually get things to stick is to insist this is how um things always were and so that's at the heart of the deistic reforms the um reforms of Hezekiah and Josiah in the end of first temple Judaism is um this idea that monotheism is the way things have always been and it's only recently that we've begun having paganism and we're now fixing that and going back to the true way and in fact it's the opposite um the the monotheism was only beginning to develop out of uh a society

(24:21) that had always been um you know Pagan polytheist and had only recently started to become um hen atheist and and monolist uh thank you John and thanks to our Discord team who uh fastb Flakes and team helping helping me keep track of uh the questions that come from our Discord channel uh now we also got a lot of questions on the lecture is the Gospel of John anti-semitic uh so the first question uh says does it's from Robert gray says does every successive gospel put more and more blame on the Jews and absolves

(25:10) the Romans yeah Robert I do think that I read it that way yes so our earliest uh narrative gospel is Mark and so Mark is already exonerating uh pilate to an extent so pilate tries to release Jesus um and and says I'll I'll let somebody go according to to this custom but the crowd picks uh barabus to release and not Jesus and then in that gospel very clearly the Roman soldiers crucified Jesus um you know the next gospels use Mark as a source so Luke and Matthew um Luke's version greatly increases like the story of Pilot's hesitation he

(25:50) continually um doesn't want to be engaged in this and then it also Luke the author of Luke adds uh Herod the tetrarch into the narrative so Herod is also becomes part of the Judgment story and and so there's more taking away from the Romans alone doing it Matthew's version expands uh on Mark has pilate wash his hands in front of the crowd he says he's innocent of Jesus's blood and then in in Matthew's version we have this horrible um Edition where the people Sout you know his you know be a blood Beyond us and our children something that nobody's ever shouted in

(26:25) real life in it's not what you shout but in any event this is a um something that the gospel of Matthew has added which ends up um being a precedent for all kinds of anti-Semitism in Christian history afterwards John's version as we saw in that lecture has the Jews you know call so-called you know as a distinct group who are essentially the other as if Jesus and his disciples aren't Jews and those Jews form a conspiracy to kill Jesus after pilate's trial and he um I'm sorry and after after pilate has his trial he hands uh Jesus over to uh Jews

(27:03) who kill him and so it's not even necessarily the Romans who are crucifying him even though it was the Romans who would have crucified the historical Jesus later Christians even go further to try to rehabilitate uh pilate so there's lots of apocryphal pseudepigraphal texts the acts of pilate the letters of pilate uh and in these later documents the Christians right um they claim that pilate afterwards even converts to Christianity and is tried before tiberious and things like that so there's a real attempt to um to exonerate pilate and the Romans

(27:37) unfortunately okay another from the gospel um is the Gospel of John anti-semitic and one question that many many viewers had uh had to do with John or the author or authors of of John himself or themselves uh like for example wasn't John a Semite and if if he or they were uh then how can we say that John the the book The the gospel is anti-Semitic exactly so there's a valid question here so um the complication is um so when I think it was it ask wasn't John a SE Semite so so there is a historical disciple John and he's one of

(28:22) the um people that Paul actually met and so and so therefore we know there's a historical figure um however uh we don't know that that historical John has anything to do necessarily with the gospel that is now an anonymous gospel that now Bears his name we do know that the uh gospel that is called John uh had multiple authors um and so we don't know entirely who they all are so a lot of but but in some of them at some stages in the earliest stage maybe some of the earliest ones many of them probably did have um

(28:59) uh the earliest ones maybe had a Jewish background as they were become and it was even written while um Proto Christianity is still a sect of Judaism and so in that case um this is like the other gospels where this is still let's say intra religious um uh self self uh criticism so in other words you are able I'm I'm able as a Christian to say all kinds of things that Christians fall short of doing that Christians are hypocritical about that Christians have have been anti-semitic all these times because I'm I'm I'm

(29:37) criticizing my own my own tradition and and that's true for the earliest um you know some of the earliest uh Christian writers so Paul for example um grew up Jewish uh he was a phy probably and he um you know was very you know very studied and very committed to the tradition and by the time of his death the tradition hasn't fully diverged um in any sense from from the rest of Judaism so it's a sect within second temple Judaism um as we saw with the Gospel of John the complexity is is that by by the time the latest components of it are written and edited together the

(30:18) the community has uh been expelled from the synagogues they now are thinking of their former co-religionists as an an a group that does not them so they're thinking of the Jews as being not us and um the community is not fully it's not like it's fully all um where is it so it's a its foundation comes out of second temple Judaism but it's not as though all the members are ethnically uh Jewish so some of them would have had a Jewish background but we can tell from the text that many of them had a Samaritan background and then

(30:55) many others will have had a uh Pagan background where whether it's Canaanite Syrian you know or or Syrio phenician kind of thing as we would say or uh Anatolian possibly even Egyptian uh Greco Roman Pagan background and so at that point that's where it's starting to be you're criticizing your somebody who isn't you anymore as opposed to internal criticism we have a question from arianism versus the Trinity woohoo like a like your chance to to say something heretical yes uh and actually I'm going to throw in another question who that came from the chat I think okay uh so

(31:37) the question is is wisdom in the book of pro uh Proverbs something like the Holy Spirit I never understood the necessity to introduce this third part of the Trinity but maybe without the Holy Spirit the Trinity equation could not be put in a mystical self-explanatory looking diagram but would clearly fall apart in two odd components father equals God equals son and then two father is not equal to son right right uh but then I'm going to add one one more uh complexity question to this is a holy spirit female or like like a holy

(32:19) mother okay um be careful with what you're saying yeah so um so wisdom uh is you know in terms of like in terms of female so wisdom uh because of gendered language um uh Hebrew and Greek uh are have gender language right and so unlike in English where we don't know you know we don't assign gender to various nouns but uh wisdom in Hebrew and Greek is a feminine noun and so we say you know WIS you know in the Bible um um John the Baptist and Jesus are called sons of wisdom and it they're her sons because wisdom is uh takes female

(33:06) pronouns because of um uh it's a divine feminine because of wisdom that the word itself is feminine um so God in the understanding of the Trinity God is transcends gender so God is not you know uh he or she or you know or God is both he and she God is all so there is not a um you know it's not a single gendered where we we sometimes call God uh the father and uh the son and so those are the male uh names for that but we can also say the parent and the child or we can say God the mother you could say um we don't usually say the daughter but what we would say in in that case is we sometimes call the the

(33:55) second person of the Trinity you know the Messiah or the logos and usually um uh in most of Christian theology um the second person of the Trinity is uh is wisdom so holy wisdom is identified with Christ and again wisdom has takes female pronouns you know but again is not female but is described that way and certainly um there were Medieval theologians who t talk about um Christ and the second person of the Trinity as uh as as having female components and so thinking of Christ as our uh you know our heavenly mother kind of idea because of you know the the

(34:44) stereotypical uh female characteristics of nurturing and compassion um and so that's one way that the Christian theologians have related to God through um the prism and vision of the trinity that way um in terms of the Holy Spirit um we were having trouble deciding that we've had a whole lecture to in answer to both of these questions we did a whole lecture on the Holy Spirit trying to um to work out uh the holy spirit's role because for example when the Holy Spirit was first um mentioned for example in the nyine Creed it pretty much just says and

(35:22) we also believe in the Holy Spirit you know so so there was all of this controversy about christology up to NAA and it's uh and the Holy Spirit almost comes off like an afterthought um but I kind of agree with you uh Robert that it makes the equation better to have a um to have the you know the father is not the uh the Christ is not the spirit and but all individually are God um than just having Father and Son uh that might have been part of the one of the considerations but also possibly just trying to figure out how to understand and um Spirit does have a

(36:01) big role you know in the different uh biblical accounts in the New Testament accounts so trying to figure out how that relates to uh God and then in terms of is the spirit female you can I've heard people use you know uh different pronouns for the spirit I tend to fall back on on it which I think is probably a problem because of the way English works but but um so I think it's again my my answer to all of these is uh God transcends gender okay we have a question that came in the chat from um Bo the wolf with a

(36:45) super chat thanks again uh what are the most significant theop philosophical themes that differentiate third Enoch the third Book of Enoch from earlier en enochian texts so how has this theme influenced later religious text which came after it so we're talking about the third Enoch I know but Bo that is a that is in-depth for me right now it's been a little while since we did the Enoch books and so did we have a lecture on on I don't know if we did on this particular book third so we did on we did um you did second Enoch so we did we

(37:24) did the context of uh first Enoch then we did the content of first Enoch then we did the the second Enoch Enoch remember that we talked about the other ones and so and so I can't tell you the answer to that b offand for third Enoch but it's something that we can go back to those um the the the enochian community is one of the interesting ones that shows again this um interesting diversity within um second temple Judaism and so it's a rich set of texts to go back to and so we'll have to go back and do one on 30

(37:59) KN uh just a note to Aquarius bety JH zorex blackx thread ninja petran Mary ma Magnus uh Andreas and T-Bone we got your questions they're in the queue I will get to them in a minute uh and let's go first with another question that came with a super chat thank you fire ever living and thank you for keeping the the the chat civil we like to have a civil conversation thanks for your help with that what do you think John of the theory that Marian's gospel gospel came first and then Luke was a later uh red reaction or redaction of that yeah

(38:42) redaction of that right well that Luke would be a um that so the idea of it is when we had um um so marcian is an early leader uh marcian has a uh a very different um take on uh spe especially even especially the Old Testament uh from the his fellows in the in the emerging Proto Orthodox Community but he so early um that that his very different idea was um and he's a great thinker was was also becomes very popular and he um because he's rejected by the Proto Orthodox leaders he organizes his own um uh

(39:28) his own churches which maintain themselves for a couple centuries and so it's um you know his teaching is quite popular so part of his idea though is that the god of the Old Testament is um is is a false god and then there's a true uh spiritual God who uh that Christ represents or is a representative of and I think it's he's totic and all these things and so he creates the first idea of a of a Christian Canon which is a very limited Cannon and so we we don't have his Cannon because as always Whenever there is a group that is deemed

(40:06) uh heretical um the Proto Orthodox guys burn all their books you know and so unless somebody was uh fortunate and you know went off to the desert in Egypt and buried everything and then we can later you know dig it up and and have it like we have now with all the Gnostic texts um we don't have that for um all of Marian's Cannon but what we do know is that he rejected the whole Hebrew Bible uh and most of the uh what becomes the New Testament and instead picks certain set of Pauline letters and then he has a gospel that the Proto Orthodox uh

(40:40) writers say is a a a is an edited version of Luke so he's taken Luke and made it shorter but there's a recent Theory um as fire ever living is saying that uh that what happen what if actually um uh that Luke itself is uh that Marian's Luke was Marian's own book and then the version of Luke that we have is a uh is is that book plus additions so is did somebody then take Marian's text and then make it more Orthodox by adding things to it um and the way they've done this is interesting so there's been a bunch of studies where um you know we don't have what Marian's text was but we have all kinds of um uh

(41:27) Orthodox writers like our friend irenaeus who um just write at length about why marcian is wrong and so when that happens they're quoting him a lot and so and so they've been able to do try to do some textual analysis of all of the different quotations about what as theyve try to reconstruct what Marian's gospel what Marian's version of Luke would be and so I think it's an interesting thing I'm I'm uh have not it hasn't gotten anywhere near the persuasion point for me but I I find this very interesting as that's what I would

(42:01) say a note to uh Nick C and David NOA we got your questions they're in the queue uh we'll continue with the with the questions that uh we received prior to this live stream uh the next one is uh from once again is a Gospel of John anti-semitic from Joe blogs uh who says when will Academia acknowledge how widespread the two powers in heaven Messianic belief was in second temple Judaism nobody will understand anything unless they connect this to Jesus and how many people easily understood what he is thanks to this uh two powers in

(42:49) heaven in heaven belief the 2 Century ad rabbis had no had to ban uh the belief in the Messiah as God based on their own authority so this two powers in heaven so this two powers in heaven uh early rabic reports about Christianity and narcism is a book by uh Alan seagull and and he's taking um the writings of the rabbis which are later and he's mining them for to see how are the rabbis responding to gnosticism and early Christianity and and I I I don't know if I agree that that we that this isn't widespread knowledge I think there is a a widespread knowledge well there's a Maybe here's where it's not widespread

(43:31) so there's widespread knowledge I think of that there's a lot of diversity of thought and belief and even theology in second temple Judaism you know so we're talked about we're going to have another lecture on Philo who has um uh Incorporated the idea of multiple hypostases within God you know so that there is a possibility like you say of two powers in heaven and that there are echoes of that um that are philosophical like that in late or that are also dualistic because of the influence of Zoroastrianism so we're going to have electron oror asianism um and uh and then there's also

(44:10) Gnostic J Judaism too and so so I think I think that there are actually um a a pretty widespread understanding that second temple Judaism has uh a great diversity of thought um what what isn't as widespread I think what is that ends up happening is that people retroject um Rabbi Judaism back a lot further and assume for example that you they'll make all these assumptions the historical Jesus since he's a rabbi he would have had to have had done done all of these things based on what um how rabbis are

(44:44) operating or saying the Traditions are later we don't know that about a a teacher in in Galilee in the 30s um because again this is a very diverse movement at the time a question U from miguelangel also on the lecture is the Gospel of John anti-semitic uh are the signs of the break between Christian and Jewish communities present in the original version of uh the Gospel of John that that we know today or are these uh so I I think what miguelangel means there like you know that the the clues that give us modern readers that the the the

(45:32) let's say the Jewish Christians and and the the rest of the Christian Community was breaking apart right uh are they later additions to the the Gospel of John or are shared throughout all the versions of the of the Gospel of John that we have in the manuscript tradition so far right so so yeah that's a great question um so the the version that we have now where we where we um where we talked about there being 63 times where the text talks about the Jews um we um as a as a group that is like a other so this is reflecting the um experience of

(46:13) the authors who are putting together the final version of The Gospel in the '90s as opposed to anything like what would have been like in Jesus's day so there is a uh but we know that there are multiple authors in different stages and so the earliest part of the Gospel it's a hypothetical text um that Scholars call the signs Source or the signs gospel which is seven or eight uh different episodes where beginning with the uh the Jesus turning water into wine uh where where Jesus uh does a miracle and it is perceived as a sign that he is the Messiah uh and then in addition to that

(46:51) then that switches into another early source that might underly a passion source and it may be that the signs source and the passion Source were one original text that the later authors of John have expanded and so Robert Miller um biblical scholar who call for a second okay in the meantime I'm just gonna oh you're you're still with your question okay I'm not going to interrupt anymore I say Robert Miller uh who's a Biblical scholar who's reconstructed the science gospel and a science and passion Source uh text and it's published in a book called The Complete gospels um in

(47:38) his reconstruction all of that stuff where he talking about the Jews the Jews that's that's not part of the original source so those are all reflecting the later authors and their time and so and so it wouldn't have been part of that earliest layer and so the earliest layer might have even um you know again been written when uh before Christianity has emerged as its own religion has had this division where the janian community has been kicked out of the um synagogue and instead uh is reflective of this earlier time period when Proto Christianity is a sect of Judaism so yes that's good

(48:16) question all right we still have a lot of questions we have even um quite a few questions that come from this court but I will address two questions that just we just got in the in the live chat on YouTube one from Patty O'Reilly uh who says will you be doing a video on akatan and do you believe he influenced Abraham and we do have a lecture I think it's from 2018 about ainan and and and monotheism that I was thinking today John we should just do an a followup lecture on ainan yeah so that that that's a fascinating topic and there's aot there has been like more research since we did that

(49:00) lecture yeah and it also that lecture has all those interruptions that some of you don't don't really appreciate so it's it's probably a good time to to do it again um I don't know what do you think do you want an ainan lecture and uh also videos for Stuff uh asks would you ever do a lecture on Scientology the Nation of Islam or the Jehovah's Witnesses and I think John is it possible that the in 2018 or 2019 2019 we were about to do a lecture on Scientology and someone told us not to yeah was it um we no it wasn't

(49:41) us uh so I think that um so we have a relationship with the um uh you know our this congregation um 30 years ago founded a charity called The Encounter world religion Center and counterworld religions uh U employees as its director um Brian Carana who is a uh brilliant professor of religious studies who um whose goal really is to teach people about um all the different world religions and then the the goal of encounter is that then we we all come together to Toronto for this discovery week we learn the academic uh background

(50:21) of the religion but then we go to the place of worship and we meet them so we learn about zor arrianismo you know here in Toronto to the uh the zor asrian temple we meet the zor asrian they tell us about their traditions and so on we learn about dosm we go to the dawis temple we learn about Islam we go to uh the mosque and so forth so um so I think Brian was maybe going to do um anyway a lecture on it was it was Brian who was going to do here in person a lecture about scientology but turns out that the

(50:53) Scientologist had their Canadian headquarters like a block away from here well I don't remember anyway so and he told us no no he was he he was not he cancelled CU he was afraid of doing it okay maybe that was what it was um I I'm not I'm not an expert on on on that and actually any of those topics so unfortunately I probably won't do um one there might be um there's interesting ideas about modern modern religions but we are I guess my focus has been especially on um Antiquity which is where my area of expertise is and on the Middle Ages and so U and so the the point of either any of those is I would

(51:34) be probably just repeating totally repeating what other people know as opposed to any you know completely out of my depth so thank you we got uh thank you JH for your super chat for your super chats two of them and uh also we got we got a question just now got a question from the temple podcast and from L ncu that we added to the queue uh let's continue with a question from the Discord server did from Ghost machine did Jesus really prophesies the destruction of the temple in 7 that the temple would be destroyed

(52:16) in 70 AD or was that is that just made up that he he prophesies about that so so the the texts for that um are written after 70 so one of the one of the things that people you know modern people because of the ancient people too were interested in Magic but one of the things that people want Pro the idea of prophets is to be is to predicting the future the the role of of prophets um in Antiquity who you so there's two different types of prophets there are literary prophets and then there are prophets that you're experiencing in real life the um the prophets that you're experiencing in real life are

(52:59) warning people that if we continue to do these kinds of things that are unjust if we are Isaiah is going to be warning everybody if we're going to continue to um to do all of our uh our legal legally um ordained uh sacrifices and things like that that you know that are supposedly keeping the um the Divine on track and making the world maintained while ignoring all of the widows and orphans in Israel so that they are living in horrible poverty God is angry at us for that kind of a thing and so they are are are calling out Injustice

(53:39) they're calling for reforms that's what a um historical Prophet is doing then literary prophets um like we had a lecture on the Book of Daniel which is a suap pigal book that is written hundreds of years after when the literary figure of Daniel would have live lived and as a result it's predictive of the future because um the person who's writing it and pretending to be Daniel is writing about things that happened in his own past and so it's incredibly accurate all the way up until we get to the moment when the

(54:10) person is writing and then all of the predictions going forward go off the rails within a few months and so all the things that he doesn't have that aware so the future is Unwritten uh Prophet being a prophet is not about um predicting uh the future the uh prediction that Jesus makes in the gospels like the destruction of the temple are written down after the Temple's destroyed uh thank you Samuel Penrod for your Super Chat and Samuel proposes a lecture on the influence of of Greek religion and culture including the works of Homer Plato and so forth and Judaism

(54:50) and Christianity I mean we do have some lectures that are sort of like on that topic but we will do a on Pho so that's yeah yeah so one that we're doing in two two weeks was it it's is you know on Pho um of Alexandria so this is a um you know a a great Jewish intellectual who is completely committed to um uh to the pentat to reading the Torah but he reads it in Greek and he's completely committed to um synthesizing it with through uh he's a hellenized Jew so through the lens of Greek philosophy um and that was a that was Again part of

(55:33) the diversity of understanding of Judaism in the second temple period and indeed that's the that's the real foundational um component for what becomes Christianity uh which is to say the more heniz component of second temple Judaism and so as you're kind of pointing out here Samuel um there's a huge U influence and uh that all AG Greek culture ideas theology the theology especially um can't help but have influenced both uh rabic Judaism and Christianity because uh how foundational um Greek philosophical

(56:09) thought is so so yeah but we've done a lecture a couple lectures on that topic we're going to do the pho one but we may want to um to do a another update on on that again because I think that's a Evergreen topic all right and I'm I'm glad you guys like my glasses I I'm about to get new glasses but I'll I promise I'll keep this for the lectures okay another question this one from Joseph in St Francis Maine from in from the Discord server uh Sean have you read the book The Witches from Stacy schiffs I have not read that book okay because she gives an account uh Joseph

(56:49) says uh supported by letters from the time that depict the the Salem area the Salem area residents as being uh pretty drunk and Rowdy particularly the women when it came to the interactions with the preachers to the extent of having to pay men to sit in the back of the church to keep the women from throwing walnuts at the preacher oh I see why everyone was talking about the walnuts at at at the preacher on Discord was this something particular with that time and place or where all Christian Church is more Rowdy in general uh was this being

(57:27) overstated by the preachers um like C cotton matter being one of them yeah so we have a um you know we have this view of the past that everything was um like was more rigid more socially conservative that everybody was more prudish that everybody um uh that nobody was having you able to have sex outside of marriage other words there everything everything was everybody was more worried about being a new and all these things in other words that there has been this um this the reason why we have this idea is that in our own lifetimes and in the

(58:04) generations immediately preceding us let's say from the uh 1950s I guess especially in the 60s to the present there has been a loosening of all of those um uh cultural norms in the west where we have become you know incredibly less formal and less uh um prudish about a lot of these things although that could be reversing some of that you know in in the in the present we might and then we we won't always think that way but this this this trend is not like it's been going back that way for all time it oscillates throughout time all of these kind of social trends so there's you know

(58:45) component areas in the Middle Ages where um where they don't have anything like this kind of a nudity taboo so this is a thing that where things became way more conservative in the Victorian era on all of those fronts and our recent um oscillation away from that is um is a reaction to the direction everything went in the Victorian era and so we can't just extrapolate back and assume that everybody was more um I don't know more prudish and formal going all the way back in time and so one of the things we know about colonial America is that yeah until the whole reason why um like let's

(59:21) say in the the middle of the 19th century there was a huge temperance movement and beer was introduced as a as a way to um to have people not be drunk all the time is that people were drunk all the time you know you know there was a lot of uh consumption of of uh you know rum and whiskey and all this kind of thing in the in the colonial time period in the early America and so it may well be that as a result of that uh everybody was a lot more Rowdy and I can imagine um that that could also be true in even in church settings uh in a lot of cases they don't actually even

(59:59) have church buildings were pretty rare in the colonial period and so they probably had a church in Salem but there a lot of them um a lot of the a lot of churches would had have been done uh you know open air and so uh and so there was routin for sure at these big gatherings because this is the only time everybody got together when a preacher would come and they'd get a big platform and this would be the only Entertainment also that you'd have so so yeah um I haven't read that story but I don't think it's I I don't know in particular you have to look at the exact time and place but it

(1:00:30) the overall principle is things were not always more prudish and and conservative if you go back if you read the Canterbury Tales you'll find out things were pretty Rowdy and chers in medieval England more questions from Discord um I I forgot how to pronounce your name in this script that I cannot read so I'm just going to read the question what is John your personal conception of the scriptural Canon uh so for example which text do you consider scripture or scriptural and why and what does that mean to

(1:01:12) you well so there would be um so personal conception would be different from you know my my church conception so I'm I'm an ordained minister and so I'm a minister within a Christian tradition um and so we we have a you know a scriptural Canon you know that's associated with that in the church even though we also believe in uh in continuing Revelation and so our practice as a church is that uh we get together every 3 years and we have a World Conference and uh the World Conference can add or subtract from the Canon uh as as we want to in the same

(1:01:50) way that um the early uh the early ecumenical councils of the church Church would have had that capacity uh when they were meeting in the in Antiquity um I kind of struggle with the idea of let's say a personal Canon or personal things that I consider to be scriptural personally I am a um so on the one hand I have texts that are can be like say very meaningful to me but on the other hand um I have a real sense of of finding truth wherever it is found and that's also a motto in our church you know truth wherever it is found and so um and so I don't I think

(1:02:34) go back to any like like a core text and say this is the one that I always go back to um you know even even even books that are that changed my thinking at a certain point and and uh and got me you know to embrace all kinds of new ideas that you know were maybe a watershed for me in some ways that's a a tool or a ladder that I used and that I I don't necessarily always need to go back to so um so maybe I don't know if I think of I have a personal Canon there are certainly lots of um books that are meaningful to me and that have been important in my life and then there's books because of the uh tradition that we you know continually go back to so um

(1:03:18) one of the things because we have uh we study them and we have church every Sunday I've just spent a lot of time now more on on the gospels than I ever had before and it's um you know that allows me to to spend a lot of time with the text and think about uh the authors and their editorial choices and the underlying sources and the meaning in their context in history and so forth but I think John you say something very important which is um the the Canon doesn't really make sense as as something personal like the the Canon is really what defines the not defines the

(1:03:55) church but like are the books that the church considers like that that are part of this conversation that it's it's like it's a two-way um relationship that the the community that is the church has with this scripture yeah yeah and so there was so so one of part of the issue now that of there's this incredible um fragmentation of of media is that um you know back in the day you know you could make make references and we would all maybe you know if we all came from the same place we would all make them and so you know it is is difficult for me from someone

(1:04:34) who grew up in that earlier context um you know so for example in in culture and literature we would be able to you know we quote Shakespeare we quote the Bible everybody knows what we're talking about now you know biblical literacy Shakespeare literacy is pretty low probably um and you know I make all of these uh Simpsons references or Star Trek references and that kind of thing and and some people know those but there's a bunch of people who don't you know and so that's just the way it is now more uh lectures um uh we have one

(1:05:08) more lectures more questions this one from Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls from Joy B doesn't this discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls prove that Jewish groups Before jesus' Time used and preserved books that later became part of the Catholic Bible so the Protestant reformers idea that they were not part of the Hebrew Bible and were not recognized as scripture by all Jews is false right so you're referring to Joy you're talking about how uh there's the odd this odd Quirk U that um you know there's a different Bibles in terms of all the different books that made it into the Bible or not and so the

(1:05:54) Catholic church and the Orthodox Church Lar largely have um more or less the same Cannon which is larger than the Protestant Cannon and it's also larger than the rinic uh Jewish Canon um and it's because uh the Catholic and Orthodox Church more or less took the the text that had been accepted as the the Septuagint the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible including some texts that uh that were necessarily from Hebrew in the first place but nevertheless we're we're part of second temple Judaism Protestants when they wanted to U Break from from Rome they uh

(1:06:32) were also interested in new ideas of of textural criticism and they were interested I'm going to that um so they were also interested in um translation of biblical text into vernacular languages so they weren't going to be reading it in Latin anymore they wanted to read it in German and in English and so forth and so in doing that they they realized oh well this Old Testament was originally written in in Hebrew we're going to have a much better translation if we go to the Hebrew uh version of this and translate it from Hebrew directly into English rather than take this Latin text which was translated

(1:07:23) from Greek from Hebrew so in other words if it's translated that many times it's going to be a worse game of telephone to get to the English Bible um the problem with that theory was that um there's two different there's a couple different kinds of transmission going on and so the uh it turns out that the the Latin uh Vulgate was based on very good um early textual versions of the uh you know it's a very early transl from the subagent and so it's preserving you know it's copied very well and was preserving very accurately um a version of the text whereas when they just

(1:08:07) randomly went to um a synagogue in the Netherlands or something like that and grabbed uh a one of the Torah Scrolls that they' had they created the texus receptus which um which wasn't as good a copy it's not that there weren't good Hebrew copies that existed but the particular um manuscript that they had you know copying and copying it wasn't as good and so it is um and so there were there were some problems with that one and so the translations like the King James version that came and used that introduced errors um that wouldn't otherwise happen and then the other problem with it was is that yeah the um

(1:08:45) uh they they saw wait a second there's bunch of books that we have in our Bible that are missing here uh and if the Jews don't have them why would we but again the the rabic um reorganization happens later and so so so I agree with you it's a mistake that the Protestants had that they decided to to where we decided to rip out all those other books and so there's no reason to not um you know study the Apocrypha as Protestants call it okay we have a lot lot of questions that came start going faster yeah no that's fine that's fine but that just just to make sure that we acknowledge the questions

(1:09:23) that we have received on Discord and the YouTube chat uh from Brother John from Michel madwell madell from Mike Rogers from K Tempest from Michael lose from Scott from East L from zusy Campbell we got your questions in the queue uh we will continue first with these questions uh from before the live stream this one um I think this one is from um paganism in the Bible um does henotheism refer to people who only worship one God but acknowledge there's more than one God so henotheism yeah so both henotheism and

(1:10:05) monolatry are are forms of worship where you have a preference for one God while acknowledging the existence of other gods so while hus have a preferred God they sometimes can turn to other gods in a Pantheon for other various requests whereas with monolatry it's more exclusive and you're only to worship that one God alone and not worship any other gods but essentially yes is the answer a question from who wrote the Bible uh the documentary hypothesis uh from L 698 who says the high priest offered sacrifices isn't that very Pagan uh so in paganism I'm almost

(1:10:48) always involved uh offering sacrifice and so we were talking about that earlier about how um part of the idea of the religion was maintenance Divine maintenance of the cosmic system and you need to provide uh food to the Gods in order to make sure that's all in place but it isn't it isn't essential for a monotheist religion to not have sacrifices um it's something that that happened uh you know where the the abrahamic religions um in every case for their own reasons um don't involve uh offering animal sacrifices but but there could

(1:11:28) you could have a you can have a monotheist religion that that does do sacrifice because there's nothing um you know any there's nothing about monotheism that doesn't that doesn't mean you could do sacrifices just it's just the abrahamic religions abandoned the practice so what you're saying is like the the worship or the the practice that is um sacrifice that doesn't have anything to do with with what One Believes In with the dark terms you know like the gods so for example a monotheist religion to this day that

(1:12:00) where they offer sacrifice is Samaritan Israelite religion right so the Samaritans who who are an abrahamic religion um an A A an independent um you know uh expression of actually even first temple Israelite religion that has continued down um they they have they offer sacrifice as part of their U practice animal sacrifice and probably um grain sacrifice too I presume and they um and yet they are monotheists so and now okay now but now a follow-up question but like the fact that the temple was destroyed and there was no possibility of offering sacrifice did

(1:12:41) not necessarily trigger uh a change in belief did that trigger a change in belief right like once you you're not you're no longer able to sacrifice does that necessarily change NE so so that's Judaism right so in Judaism they don't offer sacrifices because the law forbids you to have a sacrifice anywhere but the Temple Mount and you and and they don't have the Temple Mount and there's no Temple there to do it right so in other words in Samaritans are able to because they have a they have their Temple Mount which is uh in in Samaria so you know

(1:13:20) they their own uh Mount gism but um but but that doesn't mean that not all not everybody uh not every Jewish person um thinks that they that sacrifices are are gone the way of the dodo they think that if their Temple was restored that sacrifices would return and so so what I'm saying is there's nothing um there's nothing intrinsic to monotheism that says we we won't do sacrifices anymore I mean every every one of the abrahamic religions other than the Samaritans have their own reasons why they don't do it so they um in in Christianity it was decided that

(1:13:55) um that Jesus is an eternal sacrifice you know Christ is the sacrifice and so all of the sacrifices were simply um prefiguring Jesus's Eternal sacrifice and so that's why we that's not epistle to the Hebrews yeah next question is from who was John the Baptist from dorami or something like that uh if look is inventing all these uh stories um that we read uh in the Gospel of Luke um about John the Baptist and so on doesn't that make him a very bad man for lying for making things up about Jesus yeah so so we talked about this a little bit when we talked about Deuteronomy um and which is to say what

(1:14:44) is how do we understand um texts in the past and so what when a text is is is um claiming Authority or claiming things that the author doesn't know so they yeah and so um and so yes Luke probably when we can look at different uh stories in Luke and say this source of this is almost certainly um a passage in the subagent that is to say the Hebrew Bible the Old Testament there's a story about Elijah doing this and that serves as the inspiration for a similar narrative that happens in Luke's gospel and so um and

(1:15:27) so your interpretation here um uh what is it it's janami janami is that that makes them a bad person um you know another suggestion that we had for this is that you know some people have called this a a Pious fraud in other words that you have a Pious intent that you're trying to do and you even though you know that you're doing something that's a little fraudulent I would actually say with the Evangelist that's actually even not what they're doing though um what I would say is happening is that they want to tell um the they want to tell stories of

(1:16:03) Jesus as the Messiah they don't have all of the details of his life nobody was running around taking those down and they don't they didn't they are not eyewitnesses and so and so but they do have a belief that um uh Jesus lived according to the scriptures and that he died according to the scriptures and he was raised according to the scriptures and so what that means is if they want to find a detail of of how jesus' life was lived they can go to the Hebrew Bible they can go to the Christian Old Testament find a story that story prefigures jesus' life

(1:16:38) and so they have a belief that Jesus would have done that kind of a thing and so therefore that's um lit in their minds in in terms of writing now uh their own text which is telling that same theological truth so the earlier text is typologically prefiguring what Jesus will have done uh and and so therefore they are sharing the same truth in their view we have a question from the lday Saints history up to 1860 is a reorganization uh from Wayne's World sci-fi Tech John are you certain of that map this is a map that you were showing in that lecture um and so Wayne thinks

(1:17:27) that there was a problem there because Ohio in 1805 that what is now Ohio belong to Canada so um no I'm right that Wayne's Wayne's World of tech so that's actually a map that I drew some of the maps um I get from other other sources but in that case um this is a uh you know the study of my own our own movement and I've done a lot of mapping of that um so the answer to that is that actually um you so would be talking about British North America you're talking about British possessions in North America Great Britain has seeded Ohio to the US in

(1:18:05) 1783 not not 1805 so no question from the fall of the gnostics from geoplanet Jane if gnosticism was put down why was the Basilica in banum called Hagia sopia right you know so I think one of the reasons why um in modern times people are so excited about the gnostics is that they like the idea of a religion that is really focused on on wisdom and learning and so nosis means knowledge and so we think well if if that was if knowledge is bad according to the emerging Proto Orthodox Community why would the Orthodox main Orthodox

(1:18:53) Cathedral why would they dedicated it to Holy wisdom ha Sophia um and the answer is is that early Christians are not you know the Proto Orthodox Christians are not anti- wisdom they are very much in favor of wisdom um they just don't like the knowledge the nosis that The gnostics Have and so they are um they gnostics gnosticism includes um you know highly elaborated uh mythologies that talk about you know stages of creation ation and uh you know the Demi urge and all of the different aons and their p paradons and how uh the different

(1:19:32) essentially platonic Concepts all came into being uh coming down to to wisdom who is a character Sophia but wisdom is also a character in um the Hebrew Bible so in the Book of Proverbs wisdom personified is with God in creation and so is often viewed by Proto orthodo Christians Christian Christian theology proper as uh as another name for or uh the second person of the Trinity so for the logos um and likewise um sometimes also thought of as the Spirit by others and and indeed in the Gospel of Luke like I say the um John the Baptist and

(1:20:15) Jesus are called the Sons of wisdom and so wisdom is has a place in proto Orthodox Christianity too and and um certainly I I'm favor of wisdom you know you know having emerged from that tradition uh and so so just because um the particular type of knowledge nosis um was rejected by uh the Proto Orthodox community that doesn't mean that they were totally anti- wisdom now we have a question from the fallacy of biblical literalism from elod Salgado uh who says didn't even the Assyrians and Babylonian Ians write K

(1:20:56) form tablets explaining the cosmos and constellations and that the Earth was round didn't the Hebrews speak pick any of that up from them during the Captivity um so so you're right to remember that the uh that the Babylonians you know are were very famous astronomers uh and that they um that they were very influential on that and so the he Hebrews the Israelites the judeans who are in Exile when they are in captivity in Babylon they pick up a lot of things from the Babylonians including for example the calendar and

(1:21:34) so um they've abandoned the um the original calendar the original Jewish calendar and now the Jewish calendar today is a adaptation of the Babylonian calendar um but uh and the Babylonian worldview is almost identical to the worldview that we were describing as the biblical worldview so there is a a hemisphere uh of the sky a dome essentially that is uh where the Stars Are all uh the firmament and actually we're only seeing the half of it as it as it rotates so there's a sphere totally um as it goes under but the world itself is flat according to the Assyrians and the

(1:22:15) Babylonians so they they um that takes place in their mythology they describe a uh a world view that is very much in keeping with the the biblical worldview so they're um they're all part of one cultural Zone in terms of understanding that and it's only later when we get to um helenistic thinkers uh that um that where the idea you know perceiving that the world is a sphere um starts to really take hold and and be proved um by helenistic uh philosophers so it's after the Babylonian captivity a couple hundred years

(1:22:56) okay and we have darama we got your question uh quite a if quite a few questions in the queue this is the last question that we got that we uh collected from the comments that you leave after the live stream ends so yeah always do uh ask your questions there and we will uh I mean thanks to fast ball Flakes and the amazing job uh collecting questions I think we have enough maybe for like the episode four of Let There Be questions but let's see how how far we get uh tonight down the queue we have so another question from

(1:23:36) the fallacy of biblical literalism uh from weo dude who says hi John the bamal Mind Theory as proposed by Julian James suggests that early humans may have experienced Consciousness differently here hearing commands from one hemisphere of the brain as though they were from gods do you see any evidence of this psychological structure in the writing of the Bible particularly in prophetic experiences Divine Commandments or the way figures like Moses Samuel or Ezekiel describe hearing the voice of God probably I don't know if you Johnny if

(1:24:23) you ever heard about the bamal Mind Theory so I I I haven't read about this but I know that you've had some thoughts about it I had to look it up because I had like I I am very interested and I did research uh both for my uh theology uh studies and for my mindfulness studies at University of Toronto on things like neuroscience and cognitive um U theory of Mind evolutionary psychology and of all the models of the mind that we learned I never heard this one so I'm not sure how current that is how much it is used uh today uh so what I did learn uh about like doing a quick

(1:25:11) uh lookup on on this bamal mind Theory it's a theory from a psychologist from the' 70s okay and so so basically what what he is proposing is that around the time time of the Bronze Age collapse so that would be approximately the 12200 BCE so more than 3,000 years ago something changed in our mind so before this change and this is like at the at the level of how our mind operates and how we as humans uh perceive reality and especially how we perceive our own experience our own psyche so he proposes that before this change basically the

(1:25:58) mind was like having two Chambers and so one chamber was speaking the other chamber was listening and sometimes the other chamber would obey to those uh those commands uh uh and suggestions that came from the other the speaking uh chamber and so so he bases this so supposedly you um weple uh dude you ask about evidence and so James uh uses what he considers evidence but it's it's very problematic evidence so he he goes to ancient text and ancient literature and says well you know here um this uh this character in The Iliad is experiencing an emotion but it's described as Athena

(1:26:50) putting something in their mind or like it's it's usually uh this chamber that is speaking is interpreted yeah as a God as a as a nature um force of nature as a spirit maybe an uh the spirit of an ancestor telling the person something that they have to do so your basically your emotions your ideas your inspiration doesn't really come from your mind but you externalize that and you see an external agent putting something in your mind or actually speaking that inside your mind and so this is I believe this is one of those ways in which people try to reduce

(1:27:37) religious experience to one simple or the origin of religion to one simple cause right so in this case basically we're talking about the cause of religion of things like prophetic um um of what the prophetic um revelation propy areus by hallucinations by voices in your head right and you for one thing the dating would be would certainly the dating would be off biblically right so I mean I don't want to don't want even just probably that's not even half of this isue right because because if you're talking about it to the Bronze Age um none of the none of the prophetic texts

(1:28:21) but so what James proposes post he's he's dead already but and in this book uh is that yeah people like Isaiah um and actually he he probably got it wrong he he he thought some of these like Moses was a historical U figure of exactly 1200 BC uh but you know let's say Isaiah Ezekiel who are Iron Age people um these uh prophets are actually still have like remnants or vestiges of this old mind in them and that's why uh they were prophets because they're actually just basically hearing voices in their head because they have this

(1:29:05) this kind of mind um so this is what this author is proposing and that's why it's almost like it it reminds me of when when people try to say that you know like everything is about you know people having halogenic experiences with mushrooms and things like that um but yeah I I would say uh you know first of all as you say there's there's this correlation U uh problem and dating problem because you have things like um the Epic of gilgames for example there's definitely there's a self-reflection in this uh in this

(1:29:44) writing that predates the Bronze Age collapse for at least a thousand years right um and so there really if you want to look for evidence you can see that there's actually self-reflection people understanding that their emotions are their emotions and you know their ideas coming are coming from themselves that they experien their self-reflection about about life and death and the meaning of life and why we're here and all those things are already present in the Epic of gilgames so it's it's not true that right all of a sudden humans gain that capacity at and the Bronze Age

(1:30:20) collapse so I would say no yeah I agree with you okay we have now a ton of questions let's let me let me go back quickly oh my okay so I'm I'm all the way up to the top of the question list that came in the live chat and in the Discord just now um one here is from Aquarius gate why are we so focused on abrahamic religion when God's presence and Providence predated all by eons right um and so we're focused on it here because that's the inheritance of this community so in other words with this community that I'm a pastor of is a

(1:31:14) um is a Christian Church you know and this is part of our our basic inheritance and we talked about how for example um you know there there's so much Capac capacity for us to uh to talk about all kinds of things but uh by having a single Touchstone that we can uh use as a shared um a shared Legacy shared sacred stories that we can talk about um the meaning of that allows everybody who's in the community to be able to focus on on that and be on the same page um if I I'd love to uh we we've done lectures on it and i' love to

(1:31:52) find wisdom in things like the Epic of gilg mesh like Leandro was just talking about um but you know I have to introduce that to everybody you know and not everybody you know is uh is committed to that text and and and would draw from it so in some ways it's because of the I would say it's an inheritance as why um a question that from Betsy mcgn which I um yeah I did get her email so she asked she asked I got her email and she oh okay you did get the email okay yeah and so Betsy uh wrote me and said um she grew up Unitarian and so she didn't really understand some of the Christianity details um uh except from

(1:32:38) cartoons and friends and and so one of the things um that shocked her she said she went to lucif and friends to church and she was shocked to hear a song with a ly lyrics eat his body drink his blood and will sing a song of Love which sounded like cannibalism and made me me sick um and so uh the same thing during communion uh she said she saw that the Catholics had said when she experienced it said Jesus Took bread and broke it gave his followers and said do this and remember of me and it only occurred to me one day that he might have been saying you as you must eat and drink to

(1:33:12) sustain your body think of me as often as you sustain your soul and the spirit so thinking of his life several times a day would help you remember to be a good person several times a day and I've always been curious about the original language how did communion evolve who decided that it represented actual body and blood so um so Betsy it's very early in the tradition because we already have it in the writings of Paul so they very earliest Christian who survived whose writing survived and he says um I I give you this is uh as I learned from first

(1:33:47) important as it was passed on to me that uh that our Lord on the day he was turned over he took bread and broke and gave it and said this is my um my body and this is my blood so so the the um idea was there right from the start or very very early on as a central spiritual practice and and it's one that is though um very confusing like you say so Christians very early on are accused of cannibalism um when uh plenty the younger uh is a governor and he's and he's um trying to decide how to persecute the Christians he um he has to

(1:34:32) torture some of them in order to find out you know is this meal they're sharing a good meal or are they you know are they secretly cannibals and he finds out no no they're just they're just eating bread and and and wine or and sharing other kinds of food and so in other words they're not cannibals despite uh how how weird this sounds so ultimately this is um uh the the big difference the the the the crucial change here or understanding that is problematic and especially problematic again in modern times is

(1:35:03) that um that we're we are kind of radical materialists in order for something to be real it has to matter it has to be matter anything that is um is uh immaterial immaterial is even a def is a synonym nowadays for it doesn't doesn't matter you know because of matter materialism and so this isn't true in Antiquity um where a huge percentage of uh you know GRE or Roman thinkers are are are platonist for example and platonic realism is that uh that Concepts the spiritual concepts are actually more real than physical matter which is which is less important and so

(1:35:44) and so the so we can say that um in the symbolism here of communion of Christ body and blood that this real is real but it's not Material so in other words it's not actually flesh and blood in a material sense but it's meant to be in a real sense which is to say a meaningful sense and part of that also then is the symbolism that um the the Christ the second person of the Trinity is not simply is not simply Jesus Christ is um is uh we all become the body of Christ in the world uh when when we are participating in uh Christ's mission in

(1:36:26) the world and so and so the idea that that uh God that Christ is fully human and fully Divine includes the humanity of of the church and so um I think that that's I think that's the sense of it and so it's a a symbolic thing that is meant to have real spiritual meaning but it when you say real makes people think material and then that immediately like you naturally thought it is cannibalism and so did many um you know people at the time in early Christianity and and it's been the accusation has been there

(1:36:59) the whole time okay a clarification um back to the question of the by Camal mind because I see like the chat exploded about the topic of schizophrenia and um again I haven't read the book but what I know is that chains did make some connections between between that and schizophrenia um but he was not as someone said like basically it's like everyone was schizophrenic but that's that's not the case because that's a it's schizophrenia is a neurological disease and we're not James was not talking about like everyone was had a neurological disorder uh basically that

(1:37:45) our qualia how we experience uh our own psyche uh was very different and that somehow very rapidly it changed to how it is right now that we can think about our own thoughts and our own emotions and and just come up with narratives about that now um people who suffer schizophrenia today are totally capable of of of having you know self uh self-awareness and self-consciousness and create narratives about themselves and what happens to them no matter how bad or uh their their condition is so this is like two different things that I

(1:38:28) wanted to clarify uh let's go to our next question from Joseph um I think this one is related this came in the chat but I think it's related to the back to the anti-Semitism right in the Gospel of John then pilate have the authority to Pardon Jesus and Barabas right so so pilot had the pilot had the authority to not execute Jesus for sure this this already by the time we have a story of pilate uh talking about this custom of pardoning somebody and then we have the story of um of him uh pardoning barabus so bar Abus means in Aramaic uh son of the father and so

(1:39:14) it is a um it's already a symbolic name this is an apologetic um story that doesn't have his icity to it um that which where pilate is already being rehabilitated in the very earliest um text that we have which is Mark so um so so I would say yes of course he would have had the ability to do that but he pilot didn't um uh pardon Jesus and he probably didn't wasn't trying to uh instead uh it was under his authority anyway that the Romans executed Jesus historical Jesus um zor oh sorry zorex blackx uh says I wonder how much of the ancient

(1:40:03) Israelites cultural and religious beliefs were attributable to foreign influences and as opposed to things that were original to them so what do you think about that it's like so I guess what what zorex wants to know is that did they actually uh create this the religious beliefs any is there any is there anything original about the the religious beliefs and practices uh that is not something that they borrowed from older civilizations or their neighbors um so when there so Israelite religion I think in the in the first temple period is very similar to its

(1:40:51) neighbors as it emerged out of um the same it was emerging out of the same context of all of the related neor neighbors the other Canaanite peoples um but the uh the shift that happens um is when uh when they continue to maintain their identity in diaspora so the religion changes as a um as a religion of the diaspora which is actually what the religion is it's a diaspora religion as opposed to um really one that has ever successfully been in the land for any length of time and so by U being able to um maintain an

(1:41:34) identity while you are in the court in Babylon and continuing even when when the Exiles go back and rebuild Jerusalem you know the diaspora Community continues to be centers of thought so this community Alexandria is maybe the largest community um there's still a major community in Babylon as not everybody went back um there are all of these stories of uh of Jewish officials in the Persian Court as part of the as part of the second temple literature and so what's um what's sort of original is is creating a m identity that is able to be maintained um as a minority within um

(1:42:14) that is able to survive within a predominant or Cosmopolitan Empire or uh later mono um you know U a majority monoculture that also includes a a minority that is able to survive within it so I think that that's the um the original stuff but everybody's always open to I mean there's always influences from everywhere you're around you're always part of your context um certainly we're going to have a whole lectures about how um about um right right ahead of us in terms of Zoroastrianism ideas that uh influenced second temple Judaism and also uh

(1:42:56) helenismo lecture so both in both cases the religion was influenced by ideas that were in the time and I think that that tells us also that it's um these Traditions don't grow out and don't develop in silos they're constantly interacting with one another and that's also true uh you know whether and to what extent um what we consider ancient or let's say the second temple Judaism uh is original or borrowed is is that's the same can be said about the the neighbors you know what what is original originally Greek and how much did the

(1:43:40) Greeks borrowed to the people of of Canaan of the the Canaanites and to what extent are Israelites the same as Canaanites so that it is it's a it's a very complicated question when we start asking who uh owes what to whom right right we have two more questions and I'm just going to read them and then you you do whatever you want with them uh from now on um I think these two have to do these two came in in the chat when we were discussing the whether or not we can say that there is anti-Semitism in the Gospel of John uh so Petra uh says why does Judaism reject Christianity and

(1:44:23) then I think it's a related question what Mary Magnuson asks Christ was a Jew and the Jews wanted him dead is that anti-semitic um well well Petra in terms of um rejection or whatever of Christianity I would say the answer to that is like why do I don't know why do why do Christians reject Hinduism it's not um it's accepting something is the is a positive thing you don't have to you know you don't have to go around and reject everything around you you have your own um identity and uh it doesn't have to

(1:44:59) actively involve rejecting everybody else's identity to maintain your own identity so I think that that the emphasis on your your question is backwards in terms of um Mary um Christ was a Jew the Jews wanted him dead is that anti-semitic no it's not so we talked about uh Mary we also talked about that um which is to say when Christ was a Jew and um and so in that time period of the historical Jesus um uh all of Christ's followers were Jews and it and he his movement rep simply represented a sect of Judaism and so if

(1:45:34) he actually is critical of the Sadducees or the Pharisees um that is not anti-semitic it is an intra Jewish com uh criticism and so he he is saying um I don't agree with the way you are interpreting our common shared Heritage I interpret uh Torah differently I'm I am open to these ideas I don't think that we need to reject Tax Collectors I don't think that we you know the other kinds of things that are uh where Jesus is having a community that um is less worried about ritual Purity and is more open to um to people who might otherwise

(1:46:15) be excluded so that none of that is is anti-Semitic that is a um um that is criticism within the commity community and so the earliest gospels um before Christianity separates from Judaism are intra um you know within the Jewish diversity of second temple Judaism criticism of e each other's sects so it's sectarian but it's only then when Christianity starts to emerge as its own religion and rejects Jewish identity that in in a defining itself off against the former co-religionist and rejecting um the shared that component of the

(1:46:57) shared Heritage that's when the two groups are antagonistic to each other so yeah in a different way a question from Andreas luil Dr Gad Baria states that the Moses story and actually the entire pentat was only invented at the end of the 4th century BC and seems to be unknown to earlier authors um do you agree with that so this would be like the um you know there's there's a different ways to date the pentat and so including including the story of Moses and so there are you can call call for earlier dating some people want to go all the

(1:47:46) way back but I don't I don't find that legitimate so I think there's a range and I I am always kind of um I guess I'm kind of like uh one of the people who maybe has an earlier date which is that I think that components of it are dated to the very end of the first temple period but I agree with you that one of the interesting um points is how unknown a lot of these stories are to anybody so even if these early texts you know do have some components of them that date all the way back and so in other words that are not simply from the 4th Century which would be like the later possible dating of it um we had a

(1:48:24) whole lecture on when did the Torah become important and the answer was late and so in other words even if they even if some of these stories existed they would not have been you know particularly important to to second temple Judaism until much later and so we saw that in fact this became the central Focus for most of the um second temple Jewish Community only in the Hasan period so it would so no matter when exactly the earliest text are dated to um maybe part of the point is it wasn't that important until

(1:49:00) then and I think that also speaks to that within scholarship not not Fringe theories but within scholarship there's there's this um spectrum that goes from uh extreme what this this is what I would uh consider a a more of an extreme biblical minimalist position as opposed to the the maximalist position who are probably you know there's there's some Scholars out there who are still trying to prove um that these things actually happen and they do have phds and they are teaching that to their students today at some universities but that

(1:49:39) would be the opposite extreme of that would be the maximalist in that case we have a question from T-Bone why hasn't the temple in Jerusalem been rebuilt well um you were there right I was there I was at the at the uh you know the um the sacred precinct for the Muslims the Temple Mount um as it understand the the area on which um uh the whole Precinct is the platform uh which is the temple complex when we think about the temple we're usually talking about the the innermost part of it uh of herod's Temple and the reason why it hasn't been rebuilt is that the uh the traditional

(1:50:23) for that is where the Dome of the Rock is the Dome of the Rock is one of the most important um you a if you were to destroy the Dome of the Rock that would be a crime against humanity it is a um one of the most important preserved uh architectural buildings in the world is the first uh Muslim building that survives it's an amazing thing and so I mean it's not something that can be uh you know that that can anything can can or should should be done about um the reason why it hasn't been therefore rebuilt is there's no place to put it for most of

(1:51:01) um the people who might want to build it because they would like to put it there um if you in a lot of Judaism though there is no desire to rebuild a temple so for example um here in Toronto there's a very important um uh reform synagogue and a lot of reformed Judaism calls their synagogues temples because the temple is the is the community they don't they don't want to rebuild a physical Temple um because uh the religion has been lived as we say in diaspora and so anyway that's why it hasn't been rebuilt okay and uh oh 100 likes thanks

(1:51:46) everyone thank you for hitting the like button that really helps us just get notice in the algorithm so keep pushing that like button as we continue to answer these questions so we have one from David new is it possible Paul was subverting the Jerusalem Jesus movement to undermine it from the inside out so since he was a Sanhedrin and persecutor of Christians so it's like was he I guess like some kind of spy no I think that's not possible um and so he said he himself talks about how he was a persecutor of the Christians at a certain point but that he had a major change of heart and the

(1:52:30) reason why I would say it's not possible that he was trying to subvert the the Jerusalem Jesus movement is that he's um he's actually so he's actually the one that um they continue to be let's say um uh a movement that is within that is continues to keep observe Jewish law is what I'm trying to say they be Contin to be Jewish uh Christians a sect of Judaism whereas it's Paul by taking this kind of more Universal heniz uh Jewish Christian message uh to all of the god-fearers the the non-jews who believe in the god of Israel that the god of Israel is the universal god um Paul Paul

(1:53:11) is is doing the opposite you know I mean in other words he's not the one who is uh you know it's not a a Sanhedrin secret Jewish plot um because he's the one who actually is interested in in universalizing it so I think it would be cross cross U the opposite motivation someone on Facebook is asking if we would take the Canadian cold weather back and I said no we still have it here you got it have it here you got it from someone else buddy H not my fault okay um Loreno asks what did you think about the Jesus Dynasty hypothesis or book actually it's a it's a book of James

(1:53:57) Harbor I'm not familiar with that are you um I'm not sure I'm not sure what that is I'm sorry to say Loren you you have to look it up we have to look it up and get back to you on that okay next question is from Temple podcast in Mark 145152 uh there's a young uh boy Loosely dressed who escapes naked at nighttime um when the Jesus is being arrested yeah uh so what is this what is the meaning of that um so so it's not clear because that's that's simply a detail that is in the mark and narrative there and so it isn't clear why you know why that

(1:54:44) happens and so um and so people have speculated there is a um there is a passage in the controversy IAL um text called secret Mark um which uh may or may not be a an have an ancient source it may may have be a modern forgery um where the idea of that that passage that um uh that that young man is someone who uh Jesus has uh spent the night with and and shared the secret of eternal life with um so there's there so that character is further further described in um in secret Mark there is this idea of of wearing linen and being um people have tried to equate that with uh

(1:55:34) otherwise unknown in the gospel of Mark The Story of Lazarus so the um who is described in the Gospel of John is as um the one who you loved according to his his mother I'm sorry his sister uh Martha and so the idea of that is so people have tried to build that but um but it what all we can say is you know Mark doesn't talk about Lazarus Lazarus story is in is in John there's the linen you know I mean he's wrapped in Linens or whatever in in Lazarus but that's because he he's uh been in the Tomb and so anyway it's a detail that U that

(1:56:12) there could be any number of of symbolic uh reasons why the author of Mark um includes that detail but um but it's open to speculation by Scholars so a question from Brother John Gray do we know that marcian was in conflict with a Proto Orthodox group or is it just as likely that he was a church leader during his life and the movement that bore his name was only in Conflict later I think we do know I need to do a lecture on marcine but I think we do know that he was in contact I'm sorry in conflict with it's not necessarily he

(1:56:49) was part of the same group right so he was actually uh in comp comptition and vying with other leaders in Rome to be made their bishop and so when he is passed over by a rival um there it's that's when at a certain point he's separating and so and so he is a leader that is interacting with other Proto Orthodox leaders and it's only after his um after many of those react badly to his views uh presumably that that he himself is is causing a separation not because um not because they all have uh the separation doesn't exist until

(1:57:29) until now his views are becoming more defined and they're all reacting against his views so in other words he comes with up with the ideas first and they only coales later as being people that uh there's a lot of kinds of Opp opposition that he has they only col uh they only coales later as uh the Proto Orthodox in opposition to him so okay a question now from Michael madwell I just going to try to rephrase it uh so when when PE uh when Jesus in in the gospels uh speaks about rebuilding the destroyed Jerusalem Temple in 3 days isn't he speaking about

(1:58:15) himself in in the Gospel of John for example he says I'll I I will destroy this uh Temple and raise it in 3 days in and he's he's talking about himself yes so um in the other gospels I think it's just hearsay that that they use in his trial that that he said that he where people say that he said that the temple would be destroyed uh anyway so I try to think of what it is but yes he's talking about himself but before the person was asking um about this uh this prediction that exists in the gospel of Mark where

(1:58:45) Jesus says look around this Temple I I tell you that um not one stone will be left on another and so it's that pred icve um prophecy that the author of Mark has penned after the Temple's been destroyed that we were talking about in terms of predictive prop prophecy uh question I'm not sure I understand it very well from Mike Rogers is there any date or event which can serve as orientation point for the restorationist tradition of the end of the Christian Church soon after Christ was crucified right so in um so there's a tradition

(1:59:29) um Beyond protestantism so we often talk about you break up uh um Christianity into you know um the pre- nyine diversity then after the nyine church the um the proo the Orthodox and Catholic and then the churches of the East and then from the Latin Western tradition the Protestants then there's a further um there's a further diversity you know that mostly grows out of protestantism that includes U we've already talked to Unitarian today but you know also and we've talked about the Jehovah's Witnesses and uh and other kind of new religious Traditions that have emerged

(2:00:08) out of uh out of uh Christianity there's a tradition called the restoration tradition that includes uh the Disciples of Christ the Christian churches and also the Latter-Day Saint movement and what this uh group it's like Protestant takes to takeen to the next level which is um it's a it's a it's a claim that at a certain point um the true church was taken from the face of the Earth and so that you know when when Jesus and the disciples were running around um that is true Christianity then all the time in Antiquity in the Middle Ages um that has

(2:00:45) been an apostate Christianity that is now only restored in these modern times and now we have true Christianity again and so so there isn't I think Mike there isn't necessarily one date you know different U restorationists have decided that the great apostasy happened at different times obviously the um the conversion of Constantine and the the transformation of you know like independent diverse christianities into the state religion of the Roman Empire or it doesn't immediately it's under under Constantine's successors When It

(2:01:20) ultimately becomes a state religion but anyway patronized religion from the Imperial government uh with Constantine's time there's a huge transformation that occurs there and so I would say that most probably dated there but some of the restorationists will um say that essentially when the last um living Apostle of Jesus's original disciples um died and they usually think that John lived a whole long time but anyway may or may not be true but in any event so some some kind of a um some kind of a time there so sometime between the year 100 and the

(2:01:53) year 300 is when that would have happened according to that kind of theological understanding there's a question from Scott and I think this question would that that's a whole lecture okay or two um so you maybe you just can give us a a a little preview because we're going to have a lecture on Zoroastrianism right actually so this question is related to the question that we're going to have in three weeks from now or four how did Indo Iranian and Indo Arian Traditions influence the development of monotheism specifically Concepts like Atman Brahman

(2:02:32) in Hinduism and the dualistic monotheism of Sor arrianismo how does this contrast with the influence of Canaanite Jewish influences on the development of monotheism and I guess we would have to add like the platonic influence there as well right exactly yeah Scott so um so that's a really interesting question and an important question and in fact like like LeAndre was is saying this is going to be explored in a lot of depth and I think it's our next lecture is how zor asrian are is judeo-christianity and so

(2:03:05) we're going to look at the IND Arian um Traditions Indo Iranian Traditions that's next week next week yeah and so and so rather than I don't know I I rather than you know say anything about it in in like a shorthand I think we'll just get into it in depth next week and I think that's a great question a question from hisl ER early Mormons didn't really have churches besides the two temples in NAU and Kirtland is that right that's right so um so when when the early uh church members and the latterday saint movement when they built the Kirtland Temple um they hadn't actually had any much

(2:03:47) experience in building churches at all and so this is the um the first major you know they started with something really big they didn't really um have the skills for that and so um they had trouble to made the foundation wasn't sufficient for the building that they built and um you know they the first they started trying to build it with bricks they didn't know how to make bricks the first thing collapsed so it was a it was a lot of work more than they bit off more than they could chew at first but it was amazing that they were able to um complete those two first

(2:04:17) temples uh which were like you say the main the main they had built a bunch of other little churches either so yeah and his Lang also asked when was the first idea of a great apostasy developed so so we were just talking about the first apostasy in the restoration tradition or to the great apostasy this idea that there was a falling away and the true true church wasn't on the earth anymore so that um that idea develops out of protestantism so protestantism um involves a rejection of uh Christian tradition as as having the Protestants were deciding oh

(2:04:57) this is this has got a Christianity has been contaminated with paganism and these kinds of things so so I don't know the exact um the first person to propose that so it might have been one of the more radical Protestants in the in the Reformation had an ideas like that and we're talking about it becomes um you know it's it's really in the works in the Second Great Awakening and people like uh Alexander Campbell the Stone Campell movement I think you're talking about that kind of thing and and certainly it's also in the in the waters of the latterday St M so it's happening

(2:05:29) in the probably late 1700s early 1800s by then for sure here's another question that could be a whole lecture could you talk about speaking in tongues briefly John we still have more questions yeah so so speaking in tongues is a um there's two different ways it's understood and the and uh and that is exactly uh it's sort of like there's two different ways that um being a prophet is understood I talked about how there's a literary understanding of a prophet and then a lived understanding of a prophet so the lived Prophet that you're experiencing is is is talking

(2:06:07) about um how you know the social justice the the the literary Prophet predicts the future and it hasn't happened because because it's it's a person who is only literary and you already knew what happened and that's how they're able to make a literary prediction um in the same way speaking in tongues has a literary existence where um people are said to speak in this way and that everybody can understand it even though they all have different languages and that's described for example in the book of Acts and that's a um a literary miraculous thing that happens so nobody

(2:06:43) know all knows the same language somebody talks everybody understands it in their own language that's the literary understanding of speaking in tongues then there's the lived understanding of speaking in tongues which is called glossolalia it's a it's a spiritual practice and in that um people uh uh under the influence of the spirit have an ecstatic um moment where they they start speaking and it's not their language it's actually though not a language at all even though they often think it's maybe Hebrew it's Hebrew

(2:07:15) esque or whatever language they think they're they're speaking it's actually though just noises and then what happens is that uh someone else uh who is also speaking under the spirit stands up and has a sense of what they believe that means and translates for the person and so that is a spiritual practice of um a small community receiving direct Revelation as they understand it thank you John we have a question from Patty O'Reilly so where is The Gospel According To Jesus and Jesus writing as they would be considered

(2:07:58) holy so Patty there's no no writing of Jesus there's no un there's no even sense that um Jesus did any writing so uh it's not like there's a um an idea that you know somewhere in the Gospels it said and Jesus wrote all these things down and boy we wish we had the book he wrote uh there isn't anything like that there is a um the only thing that is like it there's a there's a I think a second century letter which somebody claims Jesus wrote to to them and that so this is an actual very brief letter but um that's not from Jesus it's a later uh

(2:08:35) thing uh so there is no writing of Jesus so in the same way we don't have um any writings from Socrates Socrates um didn't believe in writing actually he believed in having a spoken dialogue um I don't know if Jesus was philosophically opposed or right writing he may not um as described in the scriptures he's literate but we don't actually you know that's also a debatable position depending on um your understanding of the historical Jesus um he is from a community where he is as a marginalized community and they are not uh rich

(2:09:11) people um writing is a uh is something that was limited to the to the wealthy in that time period we have a question from Little scotchy I'm interested in economics in the economics of religion uh do you know how expensive it was to be an early Christian compared to being U you know at the time uh Jewish or you know I don't know any other U worshiping any other uh god of the pantheon so so in jesus' time it it was um not expensive to be Christian in a sense it was expensive in some ways because you're devoting your life to

(2:09:57) something um it's not expensive in terms of money because they um uh the disciples and Jesus were um uh you know swearing off poverty uh property and uh uh and and living as mendicants like Buddhist monks do so or like Christian monks do so they they are um the the community around them supported them as they um withdrew from the world and and and therefore uh were not focused on things like property and all those kind of things um by the time um Paul becomes a Christian which is not that long after um it's a little bit his operation has got to be a little

(2:10:43) bit more expensive he is actually um since he's actually writing and he has a staff and he's uh you know doing these kinds of things and so at that Point um he it's spread to an urban not necessarily Elite but people who have a little bit more money and so Paul talks about all of these um especially women who are patrons and who are supporting the kind of house churches and maybe hold Church in their houses and things like that um and so some of the people who are Christians have property uh but a lot of them uh don't have much and a lot of them are slaves and so forth so uh I would say

(2:11:22) there are people of different of economic conditions in all of those uh three groups so there's very poor Christians Christians who are slaves there are some very some wealthy Christians there's a whole spectrum of people who are Jewish and same thing of people who are polytheists so I want to thank miguelangel for your Super Chat and also to John E for your Super Chat that helps us continue to produce content like this and and the lectures that will resume next week uh John E also asks first Corinthians uh 15

(2:12:01) Verse 6 uh he asks in your opinion what is the possib probability that Paul may have encountered some of those uh of the 500 who are who were still alive supposedly during his travels I don't know John if you want me to read a Corinthians I know that that passage pretty well so that passage is where Paul is talking about experiences that um the the the brother Jesus brother and also the other Apostles and then 500 uh men and women had with um with the Risen Christ and so we know that Paul has met some of those people that he lists so he's met um Jesus's brother uh James

(2:12:48) he's met uh Peter and John and so I there's every reason to imagine that uh he's maybe met some of the other ones too and he just hasn't hasn't mentioned that so in other words there are people who've had Visions with the Risen Christ Paul also you know has had a a a spiritual experience a vision of the Risen Christ that um changed his uh his life and committed him to a whole new um understanding uh he devote his life thereafter to planting churches even if um even if he was his contribution wasn't always welcomed by the original

(2:13:25) Apostles and also Jesus family but yeah I think that um they will they will have had that the difference here is when Paul is talking about having experiences with the Risen Christ this is not the um these are not the experiences that are described in the gospel accounts where people are are thrusting um uh their their hand into Jesus's wounds and things like that and they're eating food with Jesus because those are all written later all of those kinds of stories so so Paul is not saying he's met somebody who's who touched Christ in the in the thigh or on

(2:13:59) you know I'm sorry the in the wounds um he is saying that Christ appeared to um these people and so it could be an entirely Visionary experience and we have a question from E vanam did I say it right in my quest ishan says in my quest to try and find what books constitute the loose scriptural Cannon of the Ethiopian Orthodox teaho Church I managed to identify more or less all of the ones on supposed lists circulating on the internet except for something called book of dominoes is this something that actually exists or maybe something you have heard of I'm starting to doubt of

(2:14:45) its existence yeah so the Ethiopian church has the more the most expansive of all of the of the Cannons of the um of the churches of the east of the early churches the and and because it was cut off U from uh other Christians earlier on as the rest of the cannon was taking shape I don't know about this book of dominoes or dominoes uh so I haven't I I don't know about it and so I haven't looked for that so that's interesting it makes me want to look up um some of the other books that uh that they have so

(2:15:17) we've looked before at at you know at Enoch which is one of the books that the Ethiopians have um I'm trying to think is also jubilees is one in there Canon maybe too yeah so we've had lectures on jubilees and on first Enoch which are in there um their Canon but I haven't done all the rest of them so I don't know I did a quick search and nothing comes up but yeah let's let's keep talking about it um if you find it do let us know uh okay now we are getting to some deep questions yeah um one from darama what do you believe is the Reon for more people today identifying as uh

(2:15:55) social Christians or Christian atheists well I think I think that this is because um in in modern times uh Christians have so when we get to the enlightenment um this the the mainstream of Western thought which had been Christian thought separated because um uh Christian clerics kept hold of um of the institution of the church while simultaneously like taking a path where they were ever more literalistic everever other more uh historicist and intent on all of those things and so therefore because they insisted on this kind of

(2:16:44) literalistic defined and frankly false picture of God the thinkers had to say okay well if you have hold of that and a monopoly on that then we'll say we don't believe in that um and so the problem has been by coming with this rigid uh picture and definition and frankly Idol that we called God has been called God by clerics and reacting against that and so this is actually um something that I'm kind of actually focused on this year I'm trying to um finish a book and I'm working on a book which is called undefining God and we've talked about it in a bunch of different lectures about

(2:17:27) why I think that um uh that the making an image or a limited image this anthropomorphic guy this uh Zeus Jupiter Sky daddy kind of God limiting God to that picture has made people say well I don't believe in that uh and that would have been fine in the past because uh because theology has always been about um how do we understand meaning how are we understanding this and not not saying well we have this whole list of um these kinds of anthropomorphic attributes or something like that that we have to latch on to this so so I think that that's why because I think that there

(2:18:05) it's a reaction uh to uh how clerics have boxed religion in in the U in since the enlightenment clergy not just cler okay and I'm going to ask you John a question from Jake D and that's going to be the last question for tonight because I'm looking at the sherban bus only has three buses running right now I don't want to miss I don't want to miss the bus I want to go I don't want to walk home well this has been a lot of great questions I really this has been a fun one so yeah we'll have one more question I guess yeah okay so Jake D and

(2:18:44) asks I recently enjoyed your lectures on biblical literalism and historicity of Easter my question to you John is If Heaven and Hell and the resurrection are not literal then what is the point of being Christian and this is a question I think that um a lot of the US who are Seminary graduates like we studied all this Theology and that's the kind of question that we always would be like oh my God that so I think that's why a lot of preachers often don't really say that from the pulpit um don't spell it out um but in our lectures we' we've often you

(2:19:30) know have you have mentioned how you know this is not something that even sometimes even the gospel the the scripture itself is telling you that this is symbolic this is a metaphor and yet sometimes preachers uh preach as if these things were not symbols or metaphors but actual things that really happen in history sometime somewhere to some real humans so if Heaven and Hell and the resurrection are not literal then what is the point of being Christian right well for some people um you know some there are um iterations of Christianity that are completely

(2:20:16) afterlife focused and there are a lot of people who are you know intensely worried about death and who for whom um you know some kind of you know you know being you know making believing in an afterlife that's going to be manifestly just the same as a life that we have now is is the whole point of religion um uh and certainly uh that's one of the um certainly one of the issues uh with the the classical idea of self that was developing when world religions were all developing that caused people to um this is when people

(2:20:55) started to be interested in and thinking about reincarnation and that enters into world religions and resurrection and or um uh the Eternal nature of the of the spirit which for example Plato and Greek philosophers were arguing in favor of um because you know we don't like the idea that um there will be let's say a time when you know we only experience the world through our own selves and so imagining non-existence is not something you know that is pleasant and so this is one of the reasons why we want to have that and have that be literal um and I'm not saying that that's a bad uh desire

(2:21:37) or or that you um or that you can be a member of my church and have very literal beliefs in in afterlife that's fine but you're asking it I think because of me that because I'm not uh focused on um afterlife and I also um certainly don't think there'll be any afterlife that is anything resembling uh this life anyway there would would be some other understanding of U of what of what being in Timeless or a nontemporal eternity what what and being one with uh with the source of meaning what that what that would mean which is not the same as as continuing to um live life as if we weren't hadn't

(2:22:19) died um so what is the point also though is there so I think the point is that um that in addition to afterlife there is all kinds of value to life so um if we put so I appreciate that it's very difficult if afterlife has been your major focus and if and if I say put that to a side for a second um there are things that you value about this life there are ways that you want to um make this life meaningful there are ways that you want um your life to be lived well and in that in in doing good maybe and good for your community for loved

(2:23:03) ones for family um and so so this is all something that is also part of the um the you know the Christian experience in addition to uh in in addition to other I'm not arguing in any sense and I never argue in a sense of that we that Christianity is the one and only true religion or that our uh congregation is the one and only true way to live rather what we say is that um um we're all you know on this exploration we find Value in in doing that exploration in community so I could go off and explore for myself in a in a tower an ivory Tower and just you know

(2:23:44) be in a feedback loop with myself but instead I have found value in in Sharing in community and also um having the feedback from and also having people who tell me that's crazy why you have you ever thought of this have you ever seen this you know and so I I find Value in in in exploring that in community and then and then in addition to that uh when you are um sharing uh and pooling resources especially resources that then exist over time uh you're able to do more than any one individual can do and towards those things that you find valuable so even tonight we've talked

(2:24:26) about how uh the congregation that I'm now serving as the pastor of the 40th pastor of um previously was able to create Charities like the encounter world religion Center which is doing incredible work I think promoting peace through education other Charities that we've created are the social housing charity that I'm able to serve as the president of that also um contribute to trying to reach more housing Justice in the city which is um a Perpetual concern we have in the city so there's all kinds of I think reasons why

(2:25:00) um um there's a point to still being a Christian or um doesn't have to be Christian you can be part uh you know you can be doing these things on your own in your own spiritual journey or part of any one of these other communities but this for me is a is a point for uh being Christian even without um having a special worry or um desire for a literal afterlife in in this kind of a heaven or hell and uh just going to since we just missed the bus oh okay um I'm just going to add that yeah you and I John last week

(2:25:32) visited an open house of a Mormon temple here in Bramton Ontario and um you one of the things that of course this is a an unusual opportunity for someone who is not a Mormon has never been a Mormon so had never been to an uh inside a Mormon temple and this tour this guided tour one of the things that called my attention was um there's a lot of talk about what happens in the afterlife which um in in other religions that like in Community of Christ or in my experience um as a Catholic as as a Buddhist as a Zen budhist um I really I

(2:26:18) never really encounter so much attention uh put on the afterlife what happens after death um and I thought I thought for a moment that yeah I mean it is comforting for someone who is at the end of life of of having a a loved one uh at the end of life thinking well you know there's you believe in the religion that guarantees that you're going to go somewhere else after death uh but then it's like I my impression was you that's the focal point of your faith is what happens after not what happens now yeah just to just to to comment on that so the the way that um uh in the

(2:27:03) Church of Jesus Christ of latterday saints when they when you've dedicated a temple only um members uh in particular members with temple recommends are able to go in the buildings in this case the uh the temple here in uh the Toronto area is has been deconsecrated for uh renovation purposes and so now that they've now that they've done the renovations you're able to go in on tours of that and we were uh you know it was very nice that uh the the mission president for Eastern Canada uh invited landro and myself to have a tour and they were very hospitable and you know there there is something there that

(2:27:39) I have to say um I I think in um as as a theologian now I all the the focal point of modern theology is U you know like you know these things that darama was commenting on like you know like being a social Christian a Christian of you know action like the the world the the the kingdom of God is right here so let's make this a better world but there's in modern theology not a lot of room at least of the modern theologians that I'm mostly most familiar with about okay what do we say to people about you know that are in those circumstances so that

(2:28:17) you know there's there's comfort you know we don't have to maybe give a guarantee so so that's why I thought there's a trade-off definitely uh about you know in in different um ways of approaching uh spirituality when you focus either on this world or on the other world and I wonder if there's there might be a way of just bridging that Gap like CU like there sometimes I think that that focal point on doing is also not very Christian like you know it's like works works works Luther would say uh-uh that's not

(2:28:54) good well very good okay so next week John yeah yeah so next week how zoroastrian is judeo-christianity and then we're going to have lectures after that are Pho of Alexandria and the logos female Apostles in the early church and then what is the Trinity so thank you all this was so much fun uh we've got a whole bunch more questions for next time thanks again e

(2:30:49) e e e e for