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What's up everybody? It's the Super Sleuth here coming at

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See you there, guys.

0:41

My name is Eddie

0:43

and I

0:45

was in a call. Planet Earth

0:48

about to be recycled. Your only chance

0:51

to survive or evacuate

0:54

is to leave with us. Started

0:57

as an effort by a charismatic creature to build a

0:59

new society, but it ended of course

1:01

with the tragic deaths of more than 900 people.

1:04

Please for God's sake, let's

1:06

get on with it. We've lived, we've lived as

1:08

no other people have lived and loved.

1:10

We've had as much of this world as you're

1:12

going to get. Let's just be done with it.

1:14

Let's be done with the agony of it. It's

1:16

the revolutionary suicide. It is

1:18

not as destructive suicide. So

1:21

they'll pay for this. They brought

1:22

this upon us. You're

1:28

in a cult. I love

1:29

you and I want you out of it and

1:31

with Christ, but you're, you're, you're,

1:37

you're, you're, you're, an

1:41

old Testament guy or a new Testament guy? Well,

1:43

I thought new Testament. Now the new Testament

1:46

was made by Constantine, who was a Roman

1:49

emperor who wasn't even Christian.

1:51

He didn't even believe it. He was, he was, he was,

1:53

he was, he became a Christian

1:56

on his death bed. Like that's when

1:58

he became a Christian. I go, these people that are, really

2:00

into the New Testament. And I'll talk about Old

2:02

Testament and people get mad at me on Twitter.

2:05

They'll send me this hate text. You understand

2:07

mother what the difference is between the Old Testament

2:10

and the New Testament because the New Testament is utter

2:12

horror. It's created by a bishop

2:14

and a emperor. That's a fact

2:17

that's like established religious

2:19

fact. Like everyone knows where it came

2:21

from. And not only that was written hundreds

2:23

of years after the death of Jesus.

2:26

All right. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to

2:28

cultish entering the kingdom of the cults. My

2:30

name is Jeremiah Roberts. I'm one of

2:32

the co-host here. I am always

2:34

joined by my trusted co-host,

2:37

Super Sleuth, and all around

2:40

Jack of all trades. Feel like I should add something else to the

2:42

resume. Is there anything else I did add? Did I give you all the

2:44

titles, Andrew?

2:45

No, those are good, man. I'm happy that you

2:47

gave me even those. OK, well, I'm glad you

2:49

could join alongside of me. It should

2:51

be a fun

2:53

topic to tackle. Almost tongue

2:55

twisted that. But yeah, what you just heard

2:57

was a compilation from

3:00

Joe Rogan and a couple of other cults, online

3:03

cults of personality, per se, talking

3:05

about what always sort of seems

3:08

to come up Constantine.

3:10

I mean, it's interesting. Like we're

3:13

we are shows cultish. We're a podcast

3:15

on cults. We deal with it definitively from a Christian

3:17

perspective.

3:19

But people who try and discredit us saying

3:22

we shouldn't go from that perspective will say, well, Christianity

3:25

is a cult because all

3:26

we're doing is this Roman

3:29

emperor. He cherry picked all this for us. And that's

3:31

a good question, honestly. It's like, well, if

3:33

that's if that's really what's going on,

3:35

well, I should figure it out and maybe

3:38

I should take a look at it, go back to the drawing board.

3:40

But yeah, we're excited to tackle this head

3:42

on. So we are here with a good

3:44

friend of ours. Wes Huff, how you doing, man?

3:48

I'm doing great. It's a good day up

3:50

here in Toronto, Canada. So can't

3:52

complain. Awesome. Awesome. It's

3:55

always good. It's always good to be connected with another Canadian

3:57

homie. We've had we've had some previous guests from Canada on

3:59

the show.

3:59

and we had a couple other guys, some former

4:02

UPC ministers back in the day. So it's always

4:04

good, good, always reconnect up there. But

4:07

yeah, just so that we're gonna jump in talking

4:09

about Constantine, you

4:11

know, it always goes around that he is the

4:14

one, he is the notorious person who

4:16

decided what books

4:18

would be in the Bible. And so I

4:20

wanna just tell everyone just to Cliff Notes, LinkedIn

4:23

bio about who you are. And you know, you

4:25

kind of know a thing or two about this stuff. So we're excited

4:27

to hear from you.

4:29

Yeah, I appreciate that. I think it's always funny that

4:32

if we were to go back in time and tell Constantine how

4:34

much he is credited for, I think he would

4:36

be a little bit surprised. Yeah. He

4:39

gets a lot of credit for a

4:41

lot of things that I don't think he ever intended

4:43

to be responsible for. But yeah, my name is Wes.

4:46

I live up here in Toronto, Canada. I'm

4:48

an elder at a Baptist church up here. So

4:51

I'm very involved in my local church community.

4:54

In fact, my office here is in our

4:56

church here at West Toronto Baptist Church.

4:59

And I'm also the director of Central

5:01

Canada for an apologetics ministry

5:03

called Apologetics Canada, aptly named.

5:06

So we're situated actually on the West Coast, but

5:08

I'm responsible here in Ontario for

5:11

Ontario and Quebec. We

5:13

do a lot of teaching, reaching

5:15

and equipping to the church community here in Canada.

5:18

I'm also a PhD candidate at the

5:20

University of Toronto where I study New

5:23

Testament and early Christian origins.

5:25

So in terms of this topic, why

5:28

would you want to listen to this random guy from Canada?

5:30

Well, my area of expertise

5:33

kind of falls into this. It falls into,

5:35

I study early Christian manuscripts,

5:38

but a big component of that has to do with

5:40

topics related to the canon of scripture,

5:43

early church history. And so like

5:45

you said, Jeremiah, over and over and again,

5:47

people keep telling me, despite my

5:50

own field of study, that Constantine

5:53

has something to do

5:55

with that whole process. So I'm

5:57

always interested to learn those things.

6:00

because it certainly isn't being

6:03

communicated through the historical documents. But

6:06

Constantine gets a lot of credit

6:09

from a lot of different groups, whether

6:11

they're, you know, New Age or Muslim,

6:14

or I've even heard of from Jehovah's Witnesses

6:16

and Mormons. There's a lot of people who want to give

6:19

these

6:19

sort of arguments

6:22

about where the

6:24

canon of scripture came from and why the books

6:26

of the Bible were chosen. And they want to ascribe

6:29

that to an easy point

6:31

in time. And thanks to

6:33

things like the Da Vinci Code, that's kind of fallen

6:35

on

6:36

Constantine. Yes. Yes. I was doing a little

6:38

preliminary research for this episode and I was going

6:41

through, man, some of the old clips thing about that came

6:43

out 20 years ago. And man, it

6:45

was so interesting, seeing the like Tom Hanks with

6:47

like the long hair playing

6:49

Robert Langdon. I remember that book came out and I

6:51

remember like reading the book and of course, you know, the claim

6:54

is fiction, but at the very beginning,

6:56

it was Dan Brown who said like, this

6:58

is based off stuff that's historically accurate.

7:01

Like what I'm depicting the book, it's fiction,

7:04

but I'm using elements that are true to depict

7:06

this

7:06

narrative. Before we

7:08

kind of jump into it, you recently

7:10

went to Egypt, right? And

7:12

you're kind of studying some things in relation to this.

7:14

Tell us about that. Yeah,

7:17

I had the unique opportunity with a co-worker

7:19

and a filmmaker to head out to Egypt.

7:22

We did a ridiculous

7:24

couple of week journey where we covered

7:27

more than 2000 kilometers. I'd have

7:29

to do the calculation as

7:31

to how many miles that is, but it's

7:33

a lot either way, where we covered

7:36

the basis of

7:39

where the earliest manuscripts

7:42

of both Christian documents and

7:44

apocryphal documents come from. So we're

7:47

coming out with a three-part series. We're calling, why

7:49

can I trust

7:52

the Bible? That's the title. Can I trust

7:54

the Bible? And we're covering the

7:56

stories of where the earliest

7:58

biblical manuscripts come. from. So we

8:01

got a lot of questions when we're heading out to Egypt

8:03

as to why we would go to Egypt to talk

8:06

about the Bible as opposed to

8:08

somewhere like Israel. But I think a lot

8:10

of people are surprised to know that the earliest

8:13

copies and really the vast majority

8:15

of our earliest copies come from

8:17

Egypt. And that has to do

8:20

with the production of papyrus,

8:22

which grew along the Nile River. But

8:24

it also has to do with the fact that the climate of

8:26

Egypt is just so arid that it preserves

8:29

these things. The same reason museums

8:32

around the world and in Egypt itself are chock

8:34

full of ancient mummies is the same

8:36

reason why we have ancient manuscripts

8:39

preserved coming out of the sands of Egypt. And so

8:41

what we did is we went to some key

8:43

sites, villages

8:45

like the ancient site of Oxerinkus, where

8:48

the majority of our biblical manuscripts from the

8:50

second and third centuries come. But we also headed out

8:52

into the Nag Hammadi desert and told

8:54

the story of the discovery of the Nag Hammadi

8:56

library. We went to the village where it

8:58

was brought back to and told the story of the Gospel

9:00

of Thomas. But it's really

9:03

interesting when you go down the list of

9:05

the gospels, the books that

9:07

weren't

9:08

included in the Bible, if you

9:10

want to put it that way, the

9:13

Gospel of Judas, Gospel of Mary, Gospel of Thomas,

9:15

Gospel of Philip, Gospel of Peter, they're all

9:17

coming

9:18

from Egypt, at least the copies that we have

9:20

that are surviving today. They're coming from places

9:23

like Alminia and Cairo

9:25

and Oxerinkus and Jabal Al-Tareef and

9:27

Nag Hammadi. And so we went there. We

9:30

went to those places and to on

9:32

the ground communicate, you

9:35

know, here's where these things come

9:37

from. And here's where our

9:39

earliest biblical manuscripts come from. And

9:41

let's tell those stories. Let's really get

9:43

into that, you know, 113 degree heat and communicate in a very

9:46

sweaty way to the audience

9:48

why we can have confidence

9:56

that we can trust the books that we have

9:58

in our Bible that they are.

9:59

They're what should be in our Bible,

10:02

that they haven't been changed over time and that

10:04

they're in fact true as opposed to some of these

10:07

other gospels. Wow. 113 degrees,

10:09

that sounds like Arizona. But Andrew, what excites

10:11

you about this conversation, what Wes is saying so far?

10:14

Yeah, what excites me is that

10:16

people, though

10:19

some of the assertations that

10:21

are made like the Bible was constructed

10:23

at the Council of Nicaea, that's when the

10:25

books were determined to be in there or that people

10:28

are the ones who have the authority to

10:30

determine what canon is. I mean,

10:32

underlying all of that is the principle

10:35

that supposedly God has spoken. Therefore,

10:38

if these things are coming

10:40

indeed from God, then they're true and it's

10:42

important. So underlying all of the

10:45

conspiracy in a sense,

10:47

there's a good question is how did we get our

10:49

Bible, the one that we have today,

10:52

and what is the canon and who has the authority

10:54

to determine what canon is, Wes?

10:58

Yeah, that's a great question. I usually

11:00

highlight that answer by talking

11:02

about the theological

11:04

question of canon, which is why would

11:07

the early Christians put together a Bible to begin with?

11:10

And then there's the historical question of canon.

11:12

Because I think if you were to hop in

11:14

your time machine, Andrew, and go back

11:17

in time to the second century and ask

11:19

those early Christians why they chose Matthew,

11:21

Mark, Luke, and John, I think they would look

11:23

at you and they would say, what are you talking

11:26

about with using the word choose?

11:28

Because

11:31

it's been pointed out by a number of scholars even

11:33

recently that the equivalent

11:35

of asking an early Christian why they chose Matthew,

11:37

Mark, Luke, and John is like asking you, why did

11:40

you choose your parents? You

11:42

didn't choose your parents. You recognize

11:45

that your parents are the ones that

11:47

you ended up with. And the early

11:49

church, I think, would, to a certain degree, look

11:51

at you and say, hey, these were the books that were handed

11:53

down to us by the apostles. These

11:55

are the ones that have the direct

11:58

communication and direct line. from

12:00

Jesus himself. And so

12:03

the question of canon theologically is

12:05

one that has to do with its connection to

12:08

the individual who established

12:11

the new covenant. God

12:13

made flesh and dwelling among us. And

12:16

so because the early Christians were Jews

12:19

and the Jews had this fundamental

12:21

understanding of covenants

12:23

being followed up by written documents, I

12:25

think it would have been very organic for

12:28

the early Christians to say, okay, we have

12:30

the new covenant from Jeremiah 31, 31. Now,

12:33

where are the written books? You know, where

12:35

are those? You know, Moses made a covenant and

12:37

we got the Torah. Yeah. You know,

12:39

the prophets were given the words

12:42

of God and we have these statements, you know,

12:44

write it on a scroll and scribe it on a tablet.

12:46

They understood

12:48

and were fundamentally a written

12:51

scriptural religion that

12:53

God communicates to his people. And so the early

12:55

Christians, that

12:57

would have been very natural for them. And then there's the historical

13:00

question as to, well, for the early

13:02

Christians, what are the closest books that get us to

13:04

the timeframe of Jesus by either someone who

13:06

knew an apostle or someone who knew someone who knew an apostle?

13:09

And unanimously, as someone

13:11

who studies this, I would say the only

13:14

books that get you into that timeframe

13:16

are the 27 books of the New Testament, specifically

13:18

those four gospel biographical

13:21

accounts, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

13:23

What's up, everybody? If you are blessed by this content

13:25

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13:27

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Come, be one of us.

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over to thecultistshow.com or follow

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the work of this ministry as the mission is completely

14:08

funded by you,

14:09

our listener. Yeah, no, that's

14:12

good. I appreciate that. And so what

14:14

I want to do here, and I think we've

14:16

set some good foundations here, is that so there's a, I was

14:19

trying to find just an outline that would

14:21

really compartmentalize the general

14:23

consensus or the general arena of ideas

14:25

or pulls of thought when it comes

14:28

to people who sort of have their,

14:29

their, the general narrative that is

14:31

told about Constantine, which you mentioned

14:34

before, I guess if we went back in time and got to talk with

14:36

him, he'd be saying like, what,

14:38

what are you saying about me? I didn't know I did that. But

14:40

anyways, so you mentioned that you went to Egypt.

14:42

So this is very interesting. I want to maybe have

14:45

you unpack and commentate this. This is an article

14:48

called the Lost Gospels by Dr. Roy

14:50

Murphy. This article, it's on medium.com. This

14:52

article came out in like 2018 of October

14:55

and says this,

14:57

in the winter of 1866, archaeologists were

14:59

searching for ancient artifacts

15:01

in a newly discovered area of an old

15:04

Christian cemetery, which was underway in the upper

15:06

regions of Egypt. At this newly

15:08

uncovered site, an amazing discovery was

15:11

unearthed during a French sanctioned

15:13

archaeological dig. What was discovered

15:15

would forever shake the history of Christianity

15:18

to its very core. What they

15:20

uncover is a long forgotten grave

15:23

of a monk buried there in the eighth century.

15:25

This is a great historical

15:27

find in of itself, yet the real

15:29

find of historical importance is what

15:31

the monk was taking over with him to the

15:33

next world. Carefully, under

15:36

the crossed armed embrace

15:38

of eternal slumber, laid a book that had

15:40

carefully been placed inside the monk's casket

15:43

in order that the monk could take the treasure book with

15:45

him into the afterlife.

15:48

This early Christian book of text

15:50

contained not only the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke,

15:53

and John, but the Gospel of Peter.

15:56

And then he goes and mentions several other Gospels, but

15:58

they're saying that the discoveries of this gospel…

15:59

in the 18th century,

16:02

this led to all of a sudden this

16:04

panic. The scholarship,

16:07

all of Christendom was shaken to its core because

16:09

he found these gospels in

16:12

the 18th century. So just kind of given your field

16:14

of expertise and what you heard from this article

16:16

so far, what comes

16:19

to mind so far? Is he on to something,

16:21

things that are accurate, or is he kind of taking his own prejudice

16:24

in here? What are your thoughts on those claims

16:26

being made about Egypt, the lost gospels

16:28

being found, Christianity being shaken to its core? What

16:30

are your thoughts?

16:32

Yeah, I always find it interesting that there's such kind

16:36

of flowery language being

16:39

used, right? Shaken to its core sounds

16:42

very, it sounds

16:44

almost like conspiratorial,

16:47

right? That Christians were totally caught

16:49

off guard by these things. Realistically,

16:51

the gospel of Peter, which was found in

16:53

Akmim, Egypt, which once

16:57

again, I passed through Akmim, Egypt, in

16:59

order to tell the stories of these things,

17:03

was that really, sometimes let

17:05

me back up. Sometimes you'll hear

17:07

these things being referred to as lost gospels.

17:11

And as someone who studies this, I find

17:13

that it's sensationalized

17:16

because they never really were lost. We've

17:19

known about the gospel of Peter since the

17:21

second century.

17:22

And we've known about the gospel of Peter since the second

17:25

century because Eusebius,

17:28

the early church historian, preserves for us a letter

17:30

from Serapion, the Bishop of Antioch in the late

17:32

second century, who had written

17:34

a conversation with the church in Rosas,

17:37

in Silica, where the gospel

17:39

of Peter

17:40

comes up

17:41

and after Serapion reads the gospel, so

17:43

basically this church community

17:46

writes a letter to the bishop, the

17:48

overseer of this area named Serapion,

17:51

and they say, we found this letter, it's

17:53

called the gospel of Peter. We know Peter

17:55

is, should we read it? And so he

17:58

says, well, continue reading.

17:59

I'm going to find a copy and look into it. He

18:02

finds a copy and he looks into it and he immediately

18:05

identifies it as containing the non-Christian

18:08

heretical teaching of Dostatism, and then writes

18:10

to them and says, hey,

18:12

don't read that. It's heretical.

18:14

And so when we discovered

18:16

the Gospel of Peter manuscript,

18:19

it wasn't like we didn't know about it. All

18:21

we found when we found, and this is

18:24

true really for the vast majority, the Gospel

18:26

of Thomas, Gospel of Peter, Gospel of Judas,

18:28

we've known about these because the early

18:31

church was very aware of

18:33

the literature being produced by these groups like

18:35

the Marcionites, like the

18:38

Dostatics, like the Gnostics,

18:40

and they condemn them. All we

18:42

do by discovering the Gospel of Peter

18:45

is confirm that the text

18:47

actually is heretical, that it

18:49

contains the things that individuals

18:52

like Serapion, when they read it in the

18:54

second century, knew

18:55

that was problematic.

18:58

And then we read those and we say, yes, those

19:01

are not historical Christian teachings. And

19:03

you said, is it Dostatism?

19:06

Yeah. So Dostatism

19:08

or Doketicism, depending on

19:10

which way you pronounce it. So Dokane

19:13

in Greek means to seem or to

19:15

appear. And so the

19:17

Doketic or Docytic heresy

19:21

is the idea that really played off

19:23

of a common theme that was prevalent in the ancient

19:25

world. So it's drawing from Greek

19:28

philosophy, which teaches that the physical

19:30

is bad and the spiritual is good. So

19:33

nowadays, sometimes we have a hard time

19:35

convincing people Jesus is God. In

19:37

the ancient world, they had no problem believing

19:40

Jesus is God, they had a problem believing he was

19:42

a man.

19:43

So if you say he's God,

19:45

because of this idea of

19:49

what's sometimes called substance dualism, although

19:51

there's a bigger conversation in that as well, it

19:53

essentially chalks down to the idea that the

19:56

physical world is being held

19:58

down and is evil. And

20:00

so you as a person are a spirit,

20:05

but you're stuck in this meat

20:07

prison of a body. We see this even

20:09

in the book of Acts. When

20:13

Paul is preaching at Mars Hill, that

20:16

his Jewish audience is actually tracking with him up

20:18

until the point where he uses the word

20:21

anesthetist, resurrection. And then they're

20:23

like, this guy's crazy. And one of the

20:25

reasons why they completely

20:27

leave him at that point is because they

20:30

hold this idea of substance dualism. And

20:33

so this idea of resurrection to come

20:35

back into a body that the Jews believed

20:37

at the time and the Christians also believed

20:40

inheriting that thinking from Judaism,

20:44

that didn't make any sense. You want

20:46

to get rid of your body. You're desiring

20:49

to get rid of your body. And the docetics

20:52

in their heresy and what really

20:54

set them apart is they have stories of Jesus

20:57

where Jesus does not have a physical body.

21:00

And the gospel of Peter is an example

21:02

of this because the gospel of Peter exemplifies

21:05

a Jesus who only appears

21:07

to have a physical presence, who

21:09

is not really being crucified, who

21:12

has no problem resurrecting because he

21:14

never died truly to begin with. And

21:17

so when these sorts of

21:19

ideas that fundamentally deny

21:21

the incarnation and that essential

21:23

teaching of Christianity, when they appear in this documentation,

21:26

you can almost always exclude

21:29

them from

21:29

being historical Christianity because

21:32

they deny an essential truth that goes

21:34

right back to the earliest writings

21:37

and teachings of Christianity. That

21:39

as the

21:41

gospels of Luke and Matthew

21:43

teach within sort of the Christmas story, but

21:45

also John chapter one, right? John 1.14,

21:48

and the word became flesh

21:51

and made his dwelling among us. That's essential to Christianity.

21:54

Dostatism denies it

21:56

as does the gospel of Peter.

21:57

Serapion recognized that in the second century.

22:00

Condemned it as heresy when we found the gospel of

22:02

Peter we found that that's exactly what it

22:04

taught Yeah So we likewise along

22:06

with you know the bishop in the second century

22:09

can say has nothing to do with historical

22:11

Christianity So in other words, they were really

22:13

uh, and you know, let's jump in here a second But so

22:16

in other words, there was commentary that was readily

22:18

available and accessible where people

22:20

were talking about

22:22

The gospel of Peter that they had adamantly

22:24

rejected it so that this there wasn't a super

22:27

conspiratorial thing It's already a matter of public

22:29

record not to have like there was

22:31

there so in other words if I was using another example, too Like

22:34

I said a little bit of a movie buff So if there

22:36

was a bunch of public records of where

22:39

Quentin Tarantino had said in interviews

22:41

where he did it Let's say he's I did a spin-off

22:43

I did the sequel to bolt fiction

22:45

like a pulp fiction short film that I never

22:47

released to the public But I've never

22:50

I just made it just because I wanted to but all

22:52

of a sudden all these years later say 50

22:54

years later somebody finds like a film a 70 millimeter

22:57

film reel with

22:58

With all of a sudden this pulp

23:01

fiction spin-off It's not all of a sudden we

23:03

should be shocked about it because there's a whole bunch

23:05

of transcripts of Tarantino saying yeah I

23:07

made this I'm giving a hypothetical So

23:09

it's basically the same thing with the

23:12

gospel of Peter or the somewhere that there's commentary

23:14

out there saying Oh and have these heretical

23:17

views people were have probably had their presuppositions

23:19

about who Jesus was just given the

23:22

time of the day They rejected it.

23:23

Is that is that similar? Is that is that? Is

23:26

that am I make putting two and two together there? Yeah,

23:29

and there are even books that are condemned by the early

23:31

church that we haven't discovered yet But

23:34

we know that

23:36

if and when we discover them, we're not going to be shocked

23:38

by them

23:39

and we're gonna find exactly the

23:41

the Confirmation

23:43

within the text of why the early

23:46

Christians condemned it

23:48

Gotcha. Here's my question trying to think like

23:50

like a skeptic here How

23:52

do we know that the gospel of Peter wasn't written

23:55

by Peter and if we can doubt that

23:57

Peter wrote the gospel of Peter? Then

23:59

why?

23:59

shouldn't we doubt that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John

24:02

didn't write Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John?

24:05

Yeah, I think that's a great question because

24:07

it has that name association with it, right? And

24:10

this is the way I sometimes put it. Andrew,

24:12

I know you're a smart guy. You're the super sleuth.

24:14

So I know that you're smart. So

24:17

plagiarism nowadays is I take

24:20

your stuff and I put my name on it because

24:22

I also want to be called the super sleuth. So

24:24

I put

24:26

it, take your content, I put my name on it, and

24:28

then that way I am viewed

24:30

as intelligent. However, in the ancient world,

24:32

sometimes that looked a little different. Sometimes

24:35

plagiarism was I take

24:38

someone else's name and I put my content

24:41

on it because let's be honest, nobody's going to read the

24:43

gospel of Wes because Wes

24:45

is a Canadian. He's just a generic

24:47

white guy. Nobody's going to read what he says. So

24:51

I then I take someone else's name

24:53

who has credibility and then I

24:55

tie my writing and document

24:57

to it. And so when you have

25:00

this, these groups

25:02

like the Gnostics, which by the way, when

25:04

we refer to Gnosticism, Christian

25:06

Gnosticism is a second century development.

25:09

So anytime we

25:11

see aspects of Christian

25:13

Gnosticism popping up, it's

25:15

automatically a red flag that it cannot

25:18

be first century. So that's just

25:20

an aside. But the Gnostics, what

25:22

they did is they appropriated Jesus. They

25:24

included him in their philosophical

25:27

and mystical system. And then

25:29

they wrote their documents, which

25:31

cast

25:31

Jesus

25:33

as a pagan mystic.

25:36

And then they included the names

25:38

of individuals who are already established

25:40

and recognized within the Christian community, like

25:43

Peter, like Philip, like Judas,

25:45

like Thomas,

25:47

and they would write those. And

25:50

then they would

25:53

propagate those as being from those

25:55

individuals. But the reality

25:57

of it is, is that even

25:59

So we can negate them from

26:02

a content aspect, because if

26:04

they have any of this

26:06

Gnostic kind of flavor to them,

26:08

they're already a second century development. But

26:11

even just from the compositional nature of the

26:13

manuscripts themselves, these were

26:15

not very popular documents. In fact,

26:18

I think they're,

26:20

when you talk to people who really love them,

26:23

they'll never talk about the fact that we really have very

26:25

few, if any manuscripts to begin with,

26:28

of these documents. In fact, we're dealing with only

26:30

really a handful. Whereas with

26:32

the biblical documents, especially for the gospel

26:35

of John and the gospel of Matthew, those

26:37

were quite prolific within the ancient

26:39

world, spread all over the place. The

26:41

most manuscripts we have of any ancient Christian

26:43

document by far are the gospel

26:45

of Matthew and the gospel of John. Those were a favorite

26:48

of the ancient world in the Christian communities.

26:50

But we only have a few

26:52

of these copies of these other documents.

26:55

The most we have is the gospel

26:57

of Thomas. We have three fragments in

27:00

Greek from the second century, and then one

27:02

from the fourth century. But that's

27:04

the rock star of

27:07

the apocryphal gospel world, four

27:09

fragments. Compare that with

27:11

about 12 of Matthew, and

27:15

you see really the stark difference. But

27:17

none of these other gospels, whether we're talking about

27:19

Peter, Thomas, Philip, Mary,

27:22

they are coming

27:24

from times. So you

27:27

mentioned the gospel of Peter, so I'll pick on that

27:29

one. The gospel of Peter can be dated no earlier than 150

27:32

and probably no later than 250.

27:35

So Peter

27:37

was long dead

27:38

when that gospel was written. In fact,

27:40

we know he was long dead because we have pretty

27:42

well-established evidence as to when his martyrdom

27:45

was in Rome. And so if he's

27:47

dead before 70 AD, then

27:49

if we're pushing even the most earliest

27:52

date of the gospel of Peter to 150, well,

27:55

it's still way,

27:56

way too late

27:59

to be connected. to Peter historically.

28:02

So we have a number of both internal

28:04

and external evidences that disqualify

28:07

the gospel of Peter

28:09

on the outset, both in content

28:11

and in terms of composition, when

28:13

it was actually written,

28:15

to being anywhere near the timeframe

28:17

of Jesus.

28:19

No, that's so interesting because

28:22

usually when this sort

28:24

of thing is happening, like you, to

28:26

be honest, most of the time

28:28

a

28:29

Christian probably is the very first time in them hearing

28:31

this is they go to college and use

28:33

it. For me, like I grew up in a homeschooled world

28:35

for the most part, and I kind of grew up in the homeschool

28:37

co-ops and really only people that

28:39

agree with me and kind of like my yes men

28:42

of sorts. So the majority of times,

28:45

I think for a lot of people, they start all of a sudden they have a friend

28:47

who's a skeptic or maybe someone challenges them.

28:49

And now it's just everywhere on TikTok.

28:51

I mean, there's so many stories that

28:54

get told and retold about all these

28:56

different gospels. So a lot of times it's like, wait,

28:58

what is this? So it's

28:59

good to have these claims cross

29:01

examined. So one of the things I want to maybe bring

29:03

up because I think it's good to

29:05

know like where did this actually come from?

29:07

Like how does this differentiate? Because usually

29:10

when we think of a cult, we think of

29:12

some weird leader out in the

29:14

middle of nowhere having a private revelation

29:17

and God talked to me or their authority is because

29:20

I said so. So a lot of people would take

29:22

that and say the same thing with the origins of Christianity,

29:25

this is just a spinoff of one of the many early

29:28

Roman religions. And let me just go ahead

29:30

and just read, continue from this article I mentioned

29:32

before.

29:33

And this is from the article

29:35

on Medium. He says, so the gospel

29:37

of Peter, that wasn't the only gospel.

29:40

And then he claims that

29:42

in the early days of the Christian faith,

29:45

there were literally no gospels and no

29:47

Christian Bible.

29:48

The followings and preachings of the earliest

29:50

Christian begins around the year 30 AD

29:52

by a small group of Jews who follow

29:54

the teachings, who follow the teachings of Jesus

29:56

now of Nazareth in the same way

29:58

that.

29:59

least 300 other religions

30:01

were being promoted and taught in the same

30:04

region.

30:04

I believe that's true. There's

30:07

a Roman emperor and there's a lot of syncretism there and

30:09

at the same time there was these

30:12

were spread by the telling of stories which

30:14

were certainly the case with with the

30:16

early followers of Jesus. Any

30:19

followers of Jesus would almost certainly

30:21

have not been able to read or write so

30:24

they relied on elaborate myths of storytelling

30:27

passed on from one generation

30:29

to the next.

30:30

Very similar stories akin

30:32

to other solar messiahs that arose

30:34

in the region for thousands of years prior to

30:36

the advent of Christianity. Stories

30:38

of Jesus were not written down for many decades

30:40

after his apparent death. Scholars

30:43

believe the earliest gospel, the

30:45

gospel of Mark, was written around 70 AD

30:48

some 40 years after the purported death

30:50

of Jesus. However

30:52

the earliest complete papyrus in existence

30:54

is a Greek transliteration some 220

30:57

years later and only small fragments

31:00

of the earliest text existing.

31:03

So from all that's a lot but you kind of

31:05

get his fundamental assertions. What given

31:07

your if your area of expertise

31:09

is he accurate in some areas? Is he kind of off

31:11

some areas? Like what's what's your what's your critique

31:13

if he was your student and he delivered that paper to you?

31:16

What would you grade him?

31:18

Oh boy what would I grade him? I'm not

31:20

sure he's got a lot of

31:23

he kind of scatter guns some

31:26

facts there some of which were I have

31:28

no problem with

31:30

and sometimes it's not what

31:33

he's saying but what he's not

31:35

saying. I mean

31:37

I would date the gospel of Mark much

31:39

earlier than than he just

31:42

professed in that. However

31:44

I think what's interesting is that

31:48

the vast majority of New Testament scholarship whether

31:50

it's believing or non-believing

31:52

goes with what's referred to as mark and priority

31:54

which you know there's this conversation as

31:56

to which gospel is earlier. I don't

31:58

claim to know.

31:59

There are lots of theories. In fact,

32:02

my dissertation supervisor

32:05

is one of the foremost world experts

32:08

on what's referred to as the synoptic problem. And

32:11

he focuses on that question. But

32:14

if we just go by the academic consensus

32:16

that Mark is the earliest, we

32:19

still argue

32:20

that Mark is the earliest despite it actually

32:23

being the

32:24

latest attested

32:26

gospel from the manuscript evidence. So

32:29

nobody argues that because we have

32:31

very few manuscripts of Mark and because

32:34

they're late

32:35

that that's a problem for the dating

32:37

of Mark. In fact, everybody argues that Mark

32:39

is the earliest written

32:41

even if it's the latest that's attested

32:43

in the manuscript tradition. And in

32:45

fact, the latest written that's

32:47

argued by the majority of scholars, the gospel

32:49

of John is the earliest

32:52

attested in the manuscript tradition. So

32:55

even if we're dating Mark

32:58

at 70 AD, which I think is a little

33:00

bit silly, it's

33:02

kind of late in my estimation, and

33:04

we're dating the gospel of John

33:06

at its latest, which is probably around 90

33:08

to 95 AD. Our

33:11

first fragments of the gospel of John are

33:13

coming in the second century and

33:15

our first fragments of the gospel of Mark are

33:17

coming in the third century. But

33:20

that doesn't seem to be that big of an issue.

33:23

And I always think it's interesting when individuals

33:26

throw out, you know, well, there were

33:28

these other gospels. Well, of course there were these

33:30

those other gospels. That's kind of the

33:32

wrong question. The question shouldn't be,

33:35

were there other gospels that talked about

33:37

Jesus and look different than the biblical gospels?

33:40

The question should be, what's the

33:42

earliest source material that gets us closest to Jesus?

33:46

Well, it's not those other gospels. So

33:48

in that sense, you can throw them out. Historically,

33:51

they have no early independent

33:54

eyewitness content.

33:57

The only sources that get us to an

33:59

early eyewitness. content perspective

34:01

are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And I think that that's

34:04

pretty well documented within,

34:06

uh, on design coincidences

34:09

within, um, unnecessary details

34:12

within, uh,

34:13

name correlation

34:15

and geographical information that's

34:17

found within the gospels and the

34:19

gospels, especially Luke and John go

34:21

to really extraneous lengths to justify

34:24

themselves historically. Whereas

34:26

the

34:26

other gospels don't really try

34:29

that hard.

34:30

In fact, they really do a terrible

34:32

job. Um, some of them

34:35

in fact, uh, show a

34:37

lot of, a lot

34:39

of, uh, evidence of

34:42

having familiarity with third

34:44

century Egypt

34:46

and use names that are popular

34:48

in third century Egypt, not in first century

34:51

Roman occupied Judea and Galilee. Whereas the

34:53

gospels and acts show a direct

34:56

causation correlation

34:58

with being familiar

35:00

with first century Judea

35:03

and Galilee. So why would the gospel

35:05

of Philip seem to be more familiar

35:07

with third century Egypt? Well, it's

35:10

because it's being written in third century Egypt. So,

35:12

um, those types of things are, they're almost

35:15

smokescreens. Uh,

35:16

when you throw out all that information and say,

35:18

you

35:19

know, there are these other gospels and, you

35:21

know, the gospels that are in

35:23

your Bible, they weren't even written until decades after.

35:25

Well, okay. But the

35:28

gospels that you're mentioning

35:30

as competitors aren't being written

35:32

for centuries later. So

35:35

why even mention them to begin

35:37

with if your argument is that the

35:39

biblical gospels are too late because

35:42

there is no Christian Bible, which I think

35:45

is a silly thing to say. There is a Christian Bible

35:47

it's called the old Testament. Yeah. And

35:49

we even have evidence. This is, I

35:51

guess this isn't a side, but it's one thing

35:53

that really frustrates me when people

35:56

say when even Christians say sometimes, well,

35:58

you know, there was no Bible within the earth.

35:59

early church? Well of course there was a Bible within

36:02

the early church. They had the

36:04

Old Testament and then they had

36:07

the Gospels. I mean the

36:09

Gospels are being

36:12

argued for by early Christians

36:14

within the second century as

36:17

scripture and then

36:20

you have even Peter mentioning

36:23

that Paul is

36:25

hard to understand

36:27

like the other scriptures

36:29

and so Peter seems to think

36:31

that Paul's letters are scripture. So

36:33

why would we argue that the Christians didn't

36:35

have an early Bible?

36:36

Well of course they had an early Bible.

36:38

It's just not what we think of a Bible today because

36:41

we picture a single

36:44

tome leather bound

36:46

you know document with nice

36:49

thumb indexing on the pages and everything is comfy

36:51

and we don't like the fact that these books

36:53

floated around as independent books for so long

36:56

because that's not how we understand

36:58

scripture but

37:00

the early Jews were fine with having

37:03

the Tanakh, the Torah, the Nevi'im and the Ketzebim,

37:05

what we call the Old Testament

37:07

existing in separate

37:09

scrolls and it was still scripture.

37:12

So I know

37:14

I missed something in there of what you

37:16

read out but I think there's a lot

37:18

of smoke-screening going on. There's a lot

37:20

of kind of

37:22

well I'm gonna throw this thing out there and

37:24

you're gonna feel preoccupied with that and

37:26

so by the time I really start

37:28

talking about the Bible and the Gospels

37:32

you're already thinking well I don't know

37:34

about the Gospel of Peter so maybe

37:37

that has some validity when in reality

37:40

it's really not related

37:44

to the subject of hey

37:46

I want to know about Jesus so how

37:49

do I find the earliest source material that gets me to

37:51

What's up everybody the SuperSleuth here letting you know that

37:54

you can go to ShopCultish.com and get

37:56

all of our exclusive cultish merch.

37:59

There's the bad... theology hurts people shirt. Jerry

38:02

wears it all the time. I wear it all the time. Sometimes we

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wear it at the same time without even trying

38:06

to have that happen on the show. And we're just like, Whoa,

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you're wearing the shirt. I'm wearing the shirt. You could wear the shirt

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get your exclusive cultish merch. Talk to you

38:16

later guys.

38:17

Andrew, if you're going to play a skeptic

38:19

so far, if you're going to play the skeptic

38:21

with everything that Wes has said so far, what's what

38:24

would be your best

38:25

reply or just question you have with everything we've we've

38:27

unpacked so far?

38:28

Yeah. Not to play the skeptic, but just to see if I'm tracking

38:31

correctly. So we may not have the original

38:33

copies, let's say of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and

38:35

John. Uh, help me think here, Wes.

38:38

Uh, what you're kind of saying is that even if we

38:40

have copies of Mark from what century is it?

38:42

You said the third century, the

38:44

third century. And John was from which century

38:47

second century.

38:48

Uh, it's the texts themselves that

38:50

show through the locations

38:52

that are being used, the specific names,

38:55

uh, their familiarity with Judeo,

38:58

uh, situations that are going on at the

39:00

timeframe. We can see through

39:02

the actual documents that they were written

39:04

much earlier

39:06

than the copies there are. Cause

39:08

I could see a skeptic going, well, you don't have the original

39:10

copies. How do you not know that someone

39:12

just wrote this within the second century? And of course

39:15

they're going to have familiarity within the first century, uh, Judaism

39:18

because it's already happened. Right. Uh,

39:21

am I tracking kind of correctly? Yeah.

39:24

I mean, um,

39:26

the fact is that we don't have any original

39:28

copies written by authors from anyone

39:30

within ancient antiquity. So it's not

39:32

like the Bible is alone in this

39:35

text test

39:37

case. Uh, Joe Rogan

39:39

is a big fan of Marcus

39:42

Aurelius.

39:43

Um, we don't have any originals

39:46

of Marcus Aurelius. In fact, I

39:48

think the earliest, and I could be wrong about this, but I think the

39:50

earliest copy of Marcus Aurelius comes from the 16th

39:52

century. Like we're, we're waiting

39:54

a really long time for a lot of these

39:57

documents. And so, uh, but

39:59

that, that does.

39:59

pose a problem for the original text

40:02

Marcus Aurelius because this

40:04

is just the issue of antiquity

40:07

and we're able because

40:09

of the careful scholarship whether that's with

40:11

the classical works of Marcus Aurelius

40:14

or someone like you know there were

40:16

four biographers of

40:20

Socrates. One

40:23

of them was Aristophanes,

40:26

one of them is Plato and another guy was Xenophon.

40:29

Xenophon, we don't have any

40:31

copies of Xenophon until 1800 years

40:34

after we know he wrote and

40:36

yet I have had colleagues

40:39

who have done text critical work that is

40:41

working with the text and tracing it

40:44

back to the original of Xenophon and

40:46

they'll say you know there are issues with the word or

40:48

two here or there but we can have confidence

40:50

that

40:50

we know what Xenophon wrote and

40:52

so this is an issue

40:55

that all of works of antiquity have

40:57

to deal with

40:58

but with the bible we have

41:01

an incredible amount of confidence that what we have

41:03

is what the original author wrote and this is one of

41:05

the things we really wanted to communicate when we

41:07

went out to Egypt and we devote a whole

41:10

episode of the three episodes that we were

41:12

producing on that subject is

41:15

because despite the fact

41:17

that we are 2,000 years out

41:19

from the text of the New Testament we're not

41:21

actually getting farther from the text we're getting closer

41:23

because we're continuing to find manuscripts we're

41:26

continuing to dig them out of the sands of places like Egypt

41:28

we're continuing

41:28

to investigate them

41:31

and transcribe them and the

41:34

the reason why you can

41:36

have assurance in the text of your

41:38

bible is often

41:41

because scribes did things

41:43

like made mistakes

41:44

and we're able to see that compare

41:47

it with

41:48

other copies that we have

41:50

and look at both the internal and external evidences

41:53

and we're able to trace the original

41:55

text back so that even the most skeptical

41:58

scholars out there are individuals like

41:59

the audience might know the name Bart

42:02

Ehrman. He's pretty prolific

42:04

in being a skeptic

42:07

of the biblical New Testament.

42:09

He'll say we have the original text. He'll

42:11

say what we have is what the original authors

42:14

wrote. There are some questions

42:16

about some words here and there,

42:19

but that what we have is what the original authors wrote 2,000

42:21

years ago. We can have confidence

42:24

in that despite the time frame. And

42:26

I would actually argue that, like I said

42:28

before, Andrew, we're not getting farther

42:31

from the text as time goes on. We're actually getting closer.

42:34

So another question as we're in

42:36

time goes by fast. There's so much information to

42:39

learn from and think and this has been great. So

42:42

you one of the areas of expertise, aside

42:44

from the textual criticism is

42:46

also just understanding really like first

42:48

century or very early Christian history.

42:51

So a lot of people talk about

42:53

Constantine. We're going to get there. We're going to talk about

42:55

Constantine, but I would like to maybe give

42:58

our audience maybe just a kind of a pre cliff

43:01

notes of like what happened before 325

43:04

AD,

43:04

which is sort of the pinpoint

43:06

of when they say Constantine decided what

43:09

what books would be and not be in

43:11

the Bible. But because

43:13

when I think of Roman history and the relationship

43:16

of the church, like I know that you've

43:18

got a lot of emperors, like a lot of emperors

43:20

rising emperors falling. There's also

43:22

seems like a lot of bloodshed. There's

43:25

emperors who get murdered, but you also

43:27

have Christians who are being persecuted. You think about

43:29

the story like Nero and how he

43:31

would make Roman candles out of Christians

43:33

and kill them and Christians being thrown to the lions.

43:36

But all of a sudden now you've got a Roman emperor

43:39

who

43:40

now seems to be this very powerful

43:42

political person will get there. But

43:44

what would you give like

43:46

prior to like the first 300 years? What

43:48

would be the relationship between

43:50

Christians but also Gnostics? Because

43:53

that's sort of brought up in the argumentation

43:55

to and the Roman Empire.

43:58

Like what's the relationship between.

43:59

all three of them, like leading up for the first couple

44:02

hundred years up until Constantine, just

44:04

so we can kind of give our audience context when we

44:06

get there.

44:08

Yeah. So it's a good question because Christians

44:10

were always at odds with the Roman Empire.

44:14

A lot of the earliest Christian apologists were

44:16

writing to Roman officials

44:18

or at least perceiving Roman

44:21

officials as part of their audience

44:23

and saying, here's why we have

44:25

validity and here's

44:28

why you shouldn't kill us. Because

44:31

they're giving evidences for the

44:33

faith, for what they're doing. You

44:36

know, the early church didn't say as much.

44:39

I think sometimes we have this perspective of, you know, what

44:42

has the world come to. I think the early church

44:44

kind of said, well, look at what has come into

44:46

the world. And so on that basis,

44:49

the early Christians had a

44:51

strong fervor to go out into

44:53

the Roman Empire because Christ was

44:55

sitting and ruling reigning at the right hand of the

44:58

father. And so their relationship

45:00

with the empire was not one of

45:03

power

45:04

and persuasion as much as it was

45:06

one of the fact that they

45:08

already thought they had won.

45:10

And so we see

45:12

the prolific view of the early Christians,

45:16

despite intense persecution,

45:19

like you said, literally being

45:21

set on fire. The story is as

45:23

torches in Nero's garden. And

45:26

then that really comes to a head immediately

45:28

before Constantine,

45:29

because persecution was kind of dispersed

45:33

and it wasn't unanimous under the

45:36

Roman, different Roman emperors

45:38

and officials. However, under Diocletian

45:41

right before Constantine, it was

45:43

really, really bad. And it

45:45

was a nationwide

45:48

Roman empire wide persecution. And

45:51

many Christians lost their lives. We

45:54

have records of Christian documents being

45:56

destroyed. And so there's

45:59

a very tense

45:59

relationship with the

46:02

state at that point. And

46:04

yet Christianity grew

46:06

and

46:07

it grew because of the fact that

46:10

Christians understood that

46:12

the gospel message would go

46:14

out to all nations and

46:17

it would profoundly overturn

46:19

the world's perspective of

46:21

what power looked like. Because

46:24

you had a, you know, the

46:26

God who

46:28

ruled the universe, stepping out of eternity

46:31

and into humanity, into a baby

46:33

and then ruling

46:37

through serving and

46:39

dying on a cross.

46:41

Yeah. Let me ask, and just,

46:43

no, that's good, man. I would definitely agree with that.

46:45

So when you think of like, in contrast,

46:48

the American, I mean, the Roman

46:50

empire, I said American empire, which technically that's true.

46:52

But you think about, you know, like all the different presidents,

46:54

you think of Bill Clinton, George W.

46:57

Bush, Ronald Reagan. And

46:59

you think of like Richard Nixon, all

47:02

of those presidents were the president of the

47:04

United States, but they also had different parties.

47:07

Their, their relationship,

47:08

for example, like whether the Republican or

47:10

the Democrat party would have been very different in

47:13

the 1980s versus the

47:14

1970s versus like the 1990s. Do you have different

47:17

things that are going on in the culture? And you said

47:19

it was emperor Diocletian, that was before Constantine

47:22

Diocletian. So you

47:25

have other emperors, like you have Nero and you have

47:27

other emperors who are kind of lenient.

47:29

Is there something about Diocletian specifically

47:32

that sort of

47:33

motivated him or kind of set him off? Like

47:35

I'm, I'm really going to go after the Christians

47:37

because it seems like before Diocletian, maybe

47:39

there was not as much cause

47:41

I'll, the only thing I really kind of know,

47:44

my history is a bit rusty. There's just that emphasis

47:47

of them not giving the pinch of incense on the altar

47:50

to Caesar cause Christians can do that under conscience

47:52

because they say that Christ is Lord. Was there

47:54

anything on top of that or what was the nature of

47:57

Diocletian motivation that anything you'd be aware of

47:59

of like why he he decided to

48:01

really go after the Christians, even though other emperors

48:03

had done it on some level.

48:06

Yeah, that's a very good question. I

48:08

think there are a few theories. I think within the ancient

48:10

world, Christians were viewed as very strange

48:13

because they were, and the literal accusation

48:16

against the Christians was that they were atheists,

48:19

that they denied the gods. They were referred

48:21

to as atheists and antisocial.

48:24

And the reason that those two words

48:27

were used is because, they denied that

48:29

the gods existed, which is a very strange

48:31

thing to do in the ancient world because the ancient world

48:33

wasn't polytheistic

48:36

as much as it was referred to as

48:38

henotheistic. So they

48:40

believe that almost all gods

48:43

exist simultaneously. And

48:45

that's why, it's part of the reason

48:47

why the Greek religion and the Roman religion

48:49

have the same gods with different names, but it's

48:52

why

48:54

when I was in Luxor in Egypt a

48:56

couple months ago, you

48:58

go into the temple at Luxor

49:00

and you actually find a shrine

49:02

that Alexander the Great put up for himself

49:05

where he depicts himself as a

49:07

Egyptian pharaoh being officialized

49:13

by the Egyptian gods.

49:16

And part of the reason for that was that they

49:18

didn't think that their gods existed

49:20

and the Egyptian gods didn't. They believed

49:23

that the Egyptian gods existed and actually the Egyptian

49:25

gods could be their gods under a different name.

49:28

And so this henotheistic perspective

49:30

was so widespread and religion

49:33

unlike today was directly tied

49:36

to your ethnicity. So the Jews

49:38

got away to some degree, although the

49:40

Romans clearly thought they were a strange bunch, they

49:43

got away with being monotheists because

49:45

it was their ethnicity. But then

49:47

Christianity comes along and

49:50

it's not

49:52

any one ethnicity, right? You have

49:54

Jews that believe in Jesus and the Jewish Messiah,

49:57

but very quickly you have Romans

49:59

Nabataeans and you have

50:01

Greeks and you have Gauls and

50:03

they're all being converted. And so

50:06

the ancient Romans did not understand

50:08

or know what to do with this because at least

50:10

those Jews were strange because they

50:13

were Israelites. But these Christians

50:15

are denying that the gods exist and it has

50:18

nothing to do with their ethnicity. And

50:20

so that is very confusing to

50:22

them. And so part of the

50:24

reason why they would get angry

50:26

and why they would blame the Christians for things

50:29

is because,

50:29

say you were in Athens

50:33

and there was a famine or a flood or

50:35

some type of natural disaster. Well,

50:37

it's very easy when you're trying to find a reason

50:40

for that natural disaster

50:42

to say, well,

50:44

these Christians are running around. They're saying Athena

50:46

doesn't even exist. Well, that

50:48

must be the problem. Right? So there was a

50:50

saying, I think comes from Eusebius, that

50:52

if the Tiber is too high or the Nile

50:55

is too low, that was the river in Rome and the river

50:57

in Egypt, the cry would ring out

50:59

the Christians, the lions. And

51:01

the idea behind that was that the Christians

51:04

are easy targets because they're confusing

51:06

because they're atheists, they deny the gods and

51:09

they're antisocial. They won't participate

51:11

in the public life that is inherently related

51:14

to the religious practice. And

51:16

so when Diocletian comes along,

51:18

you mentioned that pinch of incense. He

51:21

basically says, how do we weed out

51:23

the Christians? Well, they will not

51:26

say, they will not adhere to

51:28

the Roman religious cultic practices. So

51:30

the emperor wants you

51:32

to take a pinch of incense and

51:35

put it on the altar of Caesar and

51:37

say, Caesura chorios,

51:40

Caesar is Lord. Well, one

51:42

of the earliest confessions of the faith is, jesus

51:45

echorios, Jesus is Lord. And

51:48

so the Christians are not going to do that. And

51:51

they would make this a requirement

51:53

to buy or to sell within

51:55

the markets. So if you took a pinch

51:57

of incense and you put it on the altar of Caesar,

51:59

they would give you a piece of paper that was called

52:02

a Libelus. And if you did not

52:04

have a Libelus, you were not allowed

52:06

to be a legal business within

52:09

a large portion of the Roman Empire.

52:11

Now you can make

52:12

connections and illustrations to the Mark

52:15

of the Beast, right? They did within the early church.

52:17

I just did my head. Yeah, exactly.

52:20

And so Christians became very

52:23

early and easy targets because

52:25

they were just seen as strange within the

52:27

ancient world. And so by the time

52:29

you get to Diocletian, he's really

52:32

doubling down on the Christians

52:34

being the odd ones out and

52:37

they're preventing temple

52:39

worship with their conversions, their threatening

52:42

society and the social order.

52:46

And so Diocletian

52:48

really cracks down on Christians prior

52:51

to Constantine's conversion to Christianity, where

52:54

Christianity is actually an illicit

52:57

religion. It's an illegal religion. And

53:00

then Constantine comes along

53:02

and he decriminalizes

53:05

Christianity. And that makes a big difference

53:08

in the history of Christianity. And how

53:10

did, you have emperors, some of the emperors were

53:12

murdered, obviously,

53:14

but in the case of Diocletian,

53:17

Diocletian versus Constantine, was

53:20

there sort of a system in place for

53:22

how

53:23

emperors replaced one another? Was

53:26

it something that was like

53:27

you think about a king having his

53:29

specific descendants when you think of like more

53:32

like in Europe and like when France

53:34

where somebody has their descendant and they become a king

53:37

or how

53:37

did how did that work when

53:39

it came to Rome? Like how they replace

53:42

one

53:42

with the other. They have a system in place with that or how

53:45

that work? Yeah,

53:46

so there's actually a division between the east and the west.

53:49

By the time Constantine comes around, there's Constantine

53:52

and then there's Lysinius and

53:54

they end up actually battling it out and Constantine

53:56

wins. And it's in this

53:59

time period where Constantine wins.

53:59

Constantine meets with Licinius, who's

54:02

running things in the East, and they meet in

54:04

Milan, and they issue what's now known as

54:06

the Edict of Milan. And the Edict of Milan,

54:09

which was initiated in 313, was not

54:11

just aimed at Christians, but was more broadly

54:13

a policy of religious tolerance. So they decriminalize

54:16

a whole bunch of religions, but you

54:18

have Constantine in the West, you have

54:20

Licinius in the East, and eventually Constantine

54:23

supersedes Licinius. The empire

54:26

is not divided, it's brought together, and then

54:28

Constantine

54:29

succeeds the throne

54:32

as emperor. But

54:34

the history of Roman emperors,

54:37

and who succeeds who, is kind of a messy

54:40

and bloody one. Because

54:43

politics is always so simple, isn't it?

54:46

Yeah, so what's the benefit

54:49

for Constantine to

54:51

decriminalize Christianity? Did he see

54:54

that it could be used to position himself

54:56

in such a way to gain power? Was he actually

54:59

somebody who was converted? I know

55:01

there's stories about him seeing a cross in the

55:03

battlefield. Because I know a

55:05

lot of people, especially one of the articles that we've

55:07

been citing,

55:09

kind of use the, they're

55:11

kind of saying that Constantine just saw

55:13

that this new religion was becoming powerful,

55:15

so he was just

55:16

decriminalizing it in a sense to get

55:19

a foothold in the nation.

55:22

Yeah, I think there's a lot of debate

55:24

surrounding Constantine's conversion. But

55:27

ultimately, I

55:29

think it's overplayed when we talk about

55:31

the Edith of Milan and saying

55:33

that it was specifically aimed at Christianity.

55:36

It certainly benefited Christianity, but

55:38

it decriminalized a lot of other

55:40

religions that were also illegal at the

55:42

time. So I think to

55:46

just say that this was some

55:48

sort of political ploy, really doesn't

55:51

make sense in the grand scheme of things. It also

55:53

benefited other religious perspectives and

55:56

Constantine really didn't have anything to

55:58

gain from adopting.

55:59

Christianity personally. Christianity

56:02

was, with all the respect

56:04

to some historians who argue that Christianity was

56:06

actually quite prevalent at this time, it

56:08

was still a minor player in terms of the religious

56:11

practice and sphere of

56:13

Roman antiquity.

56:15

And so I think

56:18

Constantine actually takes a gamble when

56:20

he converts to Christianity, because

56:22

I don't think it actually would

56:25

have benefited him more to

56:27

continue worshipping the sun and

56:29

continue worshipping and establishing religions

56:32

that

56:34

put him in a place of kind

56:36

of military rulership.

56:40

Because the gospels and

56:42

the Bible and biblical Christianity

56:45

is one of servant leadership.

56:48

And there are far more advantageous

56:50

narratives to take hold

56:53

of and ascribe to yourself if

56:55

you're looking for power. A

56:57

lot of the people who, and I hear this

56:59

from podcasts like the Jurgen

57:01

podcast of saying that Constantine was,

57:04

this was a power grab.

57:06

I don't think he gained any power

57:08

from doing this. There's this ragtag

57:11

group of bishops who have been persecuted

57:13

for the last over a century.

57:17

What would it benefit him from

57:20

aligning himself with them? Even

57:23

the calling of the Council of Nicaea

57:25

is something that he does, because

57:28

I think he just wants the early Christians

57:31

to not fight amongst themselves.

57:33

He wants more of a sense of peace

57:35

across the Roman Empire, and he recognizes that they're

57:38

Christians, very spread out

57:40

through the Roman Empire. But I don't

57:42

think his conversion, and it's

57:44

argued whether his conversion was legitimate or not.

57:46

I think if you read Eusebius when he talks about

57:49

Constantine, I think Eusebius communicates

57:52

that at least Eusebius thinks his conversion

57:54

was legitimate.

57:58

I think to say that was a

57:59

power grab is really to misunderstand

58:03

what is going on religiously and politically

58:05

at the time because there are literal

58:08

war gods who he

58:10

could have aligned himself with who would give him a

58:13

lot more of a strategic

58:16

position to be able to

58:18

take unanimous control of the Roman

58:20

Empire. Yeah. Well, let's do

58:22

this because people are really curious to find

58:24

out. I feel like we're just kind of getting the Constantine.

58:27

We're going to leave everyone on a cliffhanger. So

58:29

everyone, but we're going to go ahead and kind

58:31

of jump into that because this is where everyone

58:33

likes everyone likes to start. But

58:36

we did we sort of laid a precursor and foundation

58:38

things about the biblical texts, things about the history of

58:40

the Roman Empire, and

58:42

just really a lot of cliff notes stuff and Wes, you have

58:44

other content as well to where you go a lot more deeper. So

58:47

these are your bullet points. Do you have the whole

58:48

videos on? So just real quickly,

58:50

in case people hearing you for the first time, where

58:52

can people go to find you at? Yeah,

58:55

well, the easiest place. The one stop shop is

58:57

Wesley Huff dot com

58:59

or apologetics, Canada dot com,

59:01

the organization I work for. So if you go to

59:03

Wesley Huff dot com, you can find

59:06

my my social media

59:08

handles there. You can find the infographics that

59:10

I put. In fact, I have an infographic on

59:13

the infographics tab. That's the history of gospels

59:15

from canonical to apocryphal, where I

59:18

put the timeline of, you know, OK, when

59:20

when does the Gospel of Philip come

59:22

up? When does the Gospel of Peter? When was it written

59:25

compared to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? I have

59:27

that categorized there. So Wesley Huff

59:29

dot com. Otherwise,

59:32

you can go to my

59:36

Instagram, I believe, is Wesley underscore

59:38

Huff. Yeah,

59:41

that's right. Wesley underscore

59:43

Huff. But you can find that social media

59:46

handle on Wesley Huff dot com. So

59:48

if you're interested in any more of my content, that's

59:50

where to go. Awesome. Sounds

59:52

good. We're going to leave it out. We're going to

59:54

leave it a cliffhanger. We'll have links to your socials and all that, too,

59:57

when we drop this episode. Thank you all for listening

59:59

in.

59:59

We will talk to you next week in part 2

1:00:02

where we talk about Constantine

1:00:04

and the Lost Gospels on Cultish where he entered into.

1:00:07

They came in the cult to talk to you all next week.