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What's up everybody? It's the super sleuth here coming at

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See you there guys My

0:41

name is Eddie

0:43

and I Was

0:46

in a call Planet Earth

0:48

about to be recycled your

0:50

only chance to survive

0:53

or evacuate Is to leave

0:56

with us Started as an effort by

0:58

a charismatic creature to build a new society

1:00

But it ended of course with the tragic deaths

1:03

of more than 900 people Please

1:05

for God's sake let's get on with it. We've lived

1:08

we've lived as no other people have lived and loved

1:10

We've had as much of this world as

1:12

you're gonna get let's just be done with

1:14

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

1:16

is a revolutionary suicide. This is

1:19

not a self-destructive suicide. So

1:21

they'll pay for this. They brought this upon us

1:28

You're in a cult

1:29

I love you and I want you out of it and

1:31

with Christ but you

1:39

All right, welcome back ladies and gentlemen to

1:41

cultish entering the kingdom of the cults My name

1:44

is Jeremiah Roberts one of the co-hosts here

1:46

I am joined once again by Andrew the super

1:48

sleuth of the show. Good to have you back as

1:51

we are Following a very interesting

1:53

linear Indiana Jones timeline

1:55

with a little red line going across from Egypt

1:58

to the Roman Empire and

1:59

and all that we got papyrus, we got Roman

2:02

empires, we got a little bit of everything

2:04

going on this episode. What have you

2:06

enjoyed this episode so far, Andrew?

2:08

Oh man, I'm loving it. Just right after we finished the

2:11

first episode, I told Wes before a little break,

2:13

I was like, dude, I'm gonna go back and listen

2:15

to that episode like four or five times for

2:17

myself and just try to memorize a bunch

2:19

of stuff. There are so many gold nuggets

2:21

in there and I'm just very thankful

2:23

for Wes and his time to help us out, to help us think

2:25

through some of these issues that are very important for

2:28

us to be well versed on. Awesome, well Wes,

2:30

appreciate you joining us again, man. It's

2:32

good to have you back on. Yeah, I appreciate

2:35

that. I wish that academia

2:37

and archeology was actually like Indiana Jones.

2:39

It's a lot more boring and staring

2:42

at dead languages than it

2:44

is running through ancient caves with

2:46

giant boulders chasing you. At

2:49

least hopefully like the first three movies, not the last

2:51

two.

2:52

Because there's only three in canon. Speaking

2:55

of canon, there's only three Indiana Jones

2:57

movies. Let's be particular about that. That

3:00

being said, and just probably

3:02

laughing here because it's always my movie, something comes up.

3:04

But yeah, let's jump in. So

3:07

we were kind of talking about Constantine and

3:10

talking about the political thing. We were kind of really talking

3:12

about Diocletius Constantine,

3:15

his conversion, like becoming

3:17

a Christian, take us into that. Like what's the

3:19

story behind that? Because according

3:22

to the narrative that gets pushed, he

3:24

was a Christian by the time he

3:27

made this political decision. What's the real,

3:30

what do we know? From sources and everything,

3:32

what's the real story of Constantine's conversion

3:34

to Christianity?

3:36

Yeah, you know what's interesting? Here in my office I

3:38

have, and if you're just listening to this on audio, you

3:41

might not be able to see it, but I have an actual

3:43

coin from 307 to 337 AD that

3:48

has Constantine on it. And

3:50

it's a Constantine Roman coin, which

3:53

was gifted to me by a mentor of mine,

3:56

Jim Parker, who taught at

3:59

Southern Evangelical Temple.

3:59

for a long time.

4:02

And it has the Sun

4:04

God's soul on the back. So

4:07

this is clearly before his conversion

4:10

because the coinage changes. It

4:12

has Constantine's face on one

4:14

side and then it has Sol Invictus,

4:18

the conquering son on the other side. So

4:20

there obviously was a time when

4:22

Constantine was not a Christian

4:25

when he was a son worshiper.

4:28

And there's evidence that up

4:30

until about 323, Constantine

4:33

did appear to have a level of allegiance

4:35

to the Sun God. And Eusebius'

4:38

writing, the

4:40

life of Constantine appears to make it clear

4:42

that there does come a dramatic

4:44

shift in Constantine's thinking away

4:47

from paganism and exclusively to

4:49

Christianity in around 323

4:51

AD. So

4:55

you have, it's here at

4:58

the famous Battle of Milvian Bridge that

5:01

the narrative Constantine's conversion takes place.

5:03

So the story goes that Constantine prayed for

5:05

divine intervention and

5:08

had seen some sort of vision

5:10

in the sky, which

5:12

he

5:14

or

5:16

he or his advisors had

5:18

interpreted as coming from the Christian

5:21

God. So Constantine's victory

5:23

appears to have been positively favored

5:26

towards him in the direction of Christianity.

5:29

So some stories say that he saw

5:31

the vision of the Cairo, those

5:34

first two letters of the word Christos, Christ

5:37

in Greek, what looks like a PX. And

5:42

then he heard the words in this

5:44

conquer. Others

5:46

have him just having

5:49

a vision of Christ and

5:51

being moved by that. But either

5:53

way, it's at this point

5:56

that you have some sort of shift in

5:58

Constantine's perspective. Whether that

6:00

story is actually historical or not

6:03

is a separate situation, but either

6:05

way Constantine has this kind

6:07

of shift in his

6:09

orientation away from kind

6:12

of Sun worship, which is Sun

6:15

in as in SON in the sky

6:18

and and towards Christianity.

6:22

Now prior to Constantine's conversion Christianity

6:24

had been an illegal religion, which we talked about last

6:26

time and Christians weren't

6:29

allowed legal rights or rights to

6:31

assembly and were pretty heavily

6:33

persecuted particularly as we mentioned under

6:35

Diocletian and in this time period

6:37

the Constantine as I mentioned

6:40

in last time meets with Lysanias who

6:42

is running things in the east and they meet

6:44

at Milan which

6:45

is in Italy and they issue the

6:48

Edict of Milan which decriminalizes Christianity

6:50

in 313 and

6:53

it did significantly affect Christians

6:55

as a decriminalized Christianity and allowed them

6:57

to worship in public

7:00

and also declared that any property

7:02

or possessions that had been confiscated

7:05

from Christians leading up to that time

7:07

would be returned. So there's a huge

7:10

shift within his perspective

7:12

towards being very very

7:19

you know, what's the word I'm looking for? He's

7:24

not anti-christian but very pro-christian,

7:27

but not in a way that sets Christianity up.

7:30

Constantine sometimes is referred to as the

7:32

Emperor who made Christianity

7:34

the official religion of Rome. He didn't

7:37

actually do that. That's under an Emperor

7:39

later but he did decriminalize

7:42

Christianity and appears to at some

7:44

degree whether you want to argue that he had

7:46

a conversion he

7:49

at least verbalizes

7:52

some sort of conversion.

7:54

Yeah, so why form a council then

7:56

in 325 AD? What

8:00

was the impetus behind that? Was he

8:02

the one that formalized the council? How

8:04

exactly did that work? Just –

8:07

sorry to add in, but because

8:09

Nicaea and Constantine,

8:11

those two things kind of go hand in hand

8:14

in the argumentation of this is how – how –

8:17

what – they decided what would be in the

8:19

canon, what would not be, according to how people

8:21

would articulate that narrative.

8:24

Yeah, yeah. So the Council of Nicaea is

8:26

kind of this easy – let's

8:28

put a pin in a geographical area

8:31

and on the time frame of history

8:33

as to when the books of the Bible were established. The

8:36

problem with that narrative is that there's no

8:38

historical evidence for it. I

8:40

mean, we actually have the documents

8:43

that come from the Council of Nicaea. We have

8:45

the Nicene

8:48

Creed,

8:48

which has been set at the center of

8:50

historical Christianity for the last however

8:53

many thousand plus years.

8:56

And then we have some writings that come out

8:58

from that. But this Council

9:01

had nothing to do with any

9:03

books of the Bible, not to mention

9:06

the Gnostic books that are sometimes ascribed

9:09

to it. The Bible – because

9:11

at this point in history, Gnosticism –

9:15

that we sort of alluded to last time, we talked a little

9:17

bit more about Gnosticism, but Gnosticism

9:19

in general, this idea of secret knowledge, the

9:22

Gnostic gospel of Thomas, Gnostic gospel

9:24

of Philip, those types of things,

9:27

it had almost completely died out by

9:30

this time in the fourth century. Gnosticism had

9:32

its heyday between the middle of the second and

9:34

middle of the third centuries. And by

9:37

the fourth century, it had almost completely

9:39

lost traction. So it wasn't

9:42

like Constantine was

9:45

kind of vying

9:47

for the Matthew, Mark,

9:49

Luke, and John over and above Peter, Thomas,

9:51

Philip, and Mary. The Gnostic

9:54

gospels were really,

9:56

if not out of favor, they

9:58

were completely…

9:59

completely ignored because they weren't even on

10:02

the table. In fact, if you read anything

10:04

that comes out of the Gospel or the Council

10:06

of Nicaea, what you find is

10:08

that they're quoting the New Testament

10:11

documents as if they have authority already.

10:14

So it's not like they're

10:16

voting on anything or they're

10:18

making some kind of list.

10:20

The argument of Nicaea

10:23

was concerning the place

10:26

of the deity of Christ, not even that Jesus

10:29

was God or not. Everybody at the Council

10:31

of Nicaea believed Jesus was God. The

10:33

argument was whether this bishop

10:36

from North Africa named Arius,

10:38

who argued that there was a time when the

10:40

Son was not, who believed

10:42

that Jesus was God, just believed that

10:45

he was a lesser positioned God

10:48

in the Godhead because he was created by

10:50

the Father, everyone

10:52

at the Council of Nicaea believed Jesus was God. So

10:55

in that sense,

10:57

the argument was

10:59

about how do we understand

11:01

the position of Christ within the Godhead.

11:04

So

11:05

does that make sense so far? Yeah. Yeah.

11:09

Maybe in contrast to that, I'm going to read another just

11:11

a segment from Medium just so

11:13

you can kind of get an idea of where the

11:15

narrative would differ in contrast

11:17

to what you're saying. So this is from the article from

11:19

Medium.com. He's talking

11:22

about the first ecumenical council

11:24

of Nicaea, and he talks about

11:26

all the different people that converged

11:28

together what you talked about. But

11:30

he says, quote, Constantine was given

11:33

absolute power to wield a state faith,

11:36

carefully selecting Christian thinkers who

11:38

represented a particular point of

11:41

view. Constantine, along with

11:43

Hoshes of Corduba,

11:47

a confident who had planned to support

11:49

the in defining a state religion

11:52

along with the Bishop Alexander

11:54

of Alexandria, who was

11:57

driving force in incorporating many texts

11:59

from ancient Egypt. Egyptian scripts which

12:01

have been translated into Greek for the Roman

12:03

Empire, sealing the basic tenets of Christian

12:05

ideology. Constantine became

12:07

solely responsible for the content of

12:10

the newly formed Nicene canon

12:13

of Christianity with this new Christian

12:15

Bible, its contents were to be used

12:18

for further political agendas that had little

12:21

to do with religion. So his argument is

12:23

that this is a huge political thing

12:25

and that Constantine would have had a lot of power

12:29

or political motivation with

12:32

making this move at Nicaea. So that's

12:34

what he articulates. This

12:36

brings back so many memories of

12:38

Dan Brown and Da Vinci Code a little bit, but

12:41

that's what he's saying. So in contrast

12:43

to that, how would you bounce

12:45

back off of that or push back on that?

12:48

Yeah, it's interesting. I remember when

12:50

Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code came out

12:52

and how much it affected the church. And I

12:54

think later on when I started studying church

12:56

history, I realized that if even Christians

12:59

knew a little bit about church history, the

13:01

Da Vinci Code would never have made the splash that it

13:03

made because the

13:07

testimony of church history is so different

13:10

than what's communicated in the Da Vinci Code that

13:13

the red flags would have gone up immediately.

13:16

And this is one of those, right? We

13:19

have no surviving minutes or recordings

13:21

from the Council of Nicaea while it was

13:24

happening. There are, however, some primary

13:26

sources.

13:27

So we have the creed

13:29

and the list of church leaders who signed

13:32

it. We have 20 canon rules.

13:35

So nothing to do with the canon of the New Testament,

13:37

but an official list of rules that

13:40

were passed, none of which, by

13:42

the way, have anything remotely to do with the

13:44

contents of the books of the Bible or which books of

13:46

scripture are in or not. We

13:48

also have a synodal letter that was

13:50

released by telling churches

13:53

that the council was going to be held.

13:56

And we have a letter, a later

13:58

letter.

13:59

written

14:00

by Eusebius, who is the Bishop of Caesarea,

14:04

and Athanasius, who was at the time

14:06

just a secretary, who was present. He

14:08

later becomes a

14:10

bishop in North Africa.

14:13

But we have

14:15

those documents. So we actually have

14:18

primary source documents written

14:20

in the original languages, of which I've

14:22

looked at, that we can look

14:24

at. That we can translate,

14:27

that we can say, okay, what was going on here? And none

14:29

of that has any hint or indication

14:31

that it has anything to do with the

14:34

canon of Scripture. What books are

14:36

in Scripture? What books are considered inspired?

14:39

So who was there? Well, this is where actually

14:42

the article

14:45

that you just read, Jeremiah, actually

14:47

gets some facts right.

14:48

Or at least

14:50

in terms of the quote-unquote official facts.

14:53

We're not actually sure who was there, but

14:55

numbers range from 200 to 318. Now

14:59

what we can say is it's somewhere in the

15:01

range of that. Now

15:04

we get the official number. What

15:07

was the number that was used in

15:09

that article? I think it was 318, wasn't it? I

15:12

believe so. I think so. I had to pull

15:14

it back up. Because

15:17

I think that's what's affinacious. That's

15:19

the number of the individuals who

15:21

he says were there. Now it's

15:23

probably somewhere in the range of 250

15:25

to 300. Now Constantine's

15:28

involvement, as far as we can tell,

15:30

was in an opening statement he

15:32

gave where he pleaded with the church leaders to

15:34

establish peace and truth among themselves. But

15:37

the extent of Constantine's participation

15:39

within the council is completely unknown. Anyone

15:43

ascribing sort of a central or pivotal

15:45

role is basically making

15:47

an argument from silence. We have no

15:49

evidence that Constantine played

15:51

any pivotal role. We just know

15:53

that he pleaded with them to establish

15:56

peace because he was sick

15:58

of them arguing, right?

15:59

want the Christians arguing because if there's

16:02

Christians on one end of the empire and the other end of the empire,

16:04

you want them to be peaceable. And

16:08

Eusebius in a later writing seems to put

16:10

some emphasis on Constantine's oversight,

16:13

but Constantine himself doesn't

16:15

seem to do that at all,

16:16

which is if you're an emperor

16:19

and you actually did have a lot of power

16:21

at

16:22

this thing, you'd think you would emphasize

16:24

that in some sort of later writing, but he

16:26

doesn't do any of that.

16:28

So no,

16:30

I just think that's good. I mean,

16:32

just to think about that, and

16:34

that's where political

16:37

with where Constantine is at, him just wanting

16:39

to seek the peace and even like his direct involvement.

16:41

You think about, you know,

16:43

right now we in the United States here, obviously we have the

16:45

Biden administration and you know,

16:47

you go to every other week, you know, there's

16:50

probably some highlight footage of somebody on

16:52

some sort of committee, you know, Ted Cruz is

16:54

interrogating some lady about something and

16:57

she's given some sort of wishy washy, like how much

16:59

could a woodchuck check if a woodchuck would answer?

17:03

But it's like, yeah, Biden's the

17:05

president, but he's probably not in that room

17:08

when whatever that hearing is going on. Like

17:10

when you look at CSPAN, there's always some sort of meeting

17:12

going on with something of all these different government agencies.

17:15

And just because you have one person who's the president, doesn't

17:17

mean he's intimately involved in all of them. But

17:20

that's really interesting because usually what's articulated

17:22

is that, you know, Constantine's just

17:25

like sitting there, like in the middle of this, kind of like George

17:27

Montgomery Burns, like, yes, it's all coming

17:29

to plan. But according to primary

17:32

sources, he's, there's no really

17:34

record of him just being there. I'm like,

17:36

he, he, he wanted it to happen to have

17:38

this piece happen, but he wasn't, there's

17:41

no evidence that he was actually even directly there, like at

17:43

NACIA?

17:44

Well, we know he was there

17:46

at least at the beginning. Okay. And

17:49

I mean, if we could say one thing about politicians

17:51

is they want to take credit for things, right? Yep.

17:55

You know, whether we're talking about Biden, where you guys

17:57

are, or Trudeau, where I am. Politicians

18:00

love to take credit. And yet we

18:02

have no evidence of any sort

18:05

of direct influence

18:07

or coercive

18:10

involvement of Constantine

18:14

at Nicaea whatsoever. And so I think

18:16

that does speak volumes because if

18:18

this was a power grab, if this was a power

18:20

move, why not situate yourself

18:23

advantageously? I mean, when I was

18:25

in Egypt, one of the things that stood out to me

18:27

is that there are lots of inscriptions

18:30

that we know of pharaohs

18:33

who say that they won certain

18:35

battles where we know they did not win battles,

18:38

but they were draws. But they portray themselves

18:40

as if they did win the battles because nobody

18:43

likes to make a giant megalithic structure

18:45

that says it was a draw. You

18:48

know, that's not great. And

18:50

so what you do is you say, well, I actually

18:53

won and I established peace.

18:56

And that's far better than saying, you

18:58

know, I there were

19:00

an equal amount of people destroyed and

19:03

killed on my side as there was on the other side. And we just

19:05

we just stopped the battle there. And

19:08

so we have a situation where Constantine

19:11

has an opportunity to

19:14

have to communicate a direct

19:16

involvement at this thing. And

19:18

he doesn't. And so was

19:21

Constantine involved in Nicaea? So

19:23

we're not actually sure what the level he was

19:25

involved. He was involved.

19:28

But everything we know about Nicaea or

19:30

Constantine's involvement, it

19:32

has nothing to do with the books of the Bible.

19:36

And the council was called to establish

19:39

what was the majority view of Jesus

19:42

and the way that scripture was used,

19:44

pointed unanimously to the recognition

19:46

of books that had already been

19:49

recognized and established as scripture.

19:51

So Nicaea quotes the scripture. It

19:53

doesn't argue

19:55

what is and isn't scripture.

19:56

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

19:59

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20:01

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funded by you, our listener. That's

20:45

good. Let's flesh that out just a little bit too. So

20:47

thinking as someone goes, okay I concede

20:49

Wes that they did

20:51

not formalize the canon at Nicaea but what

20:53

they did do is they actually as people

20:55

were the ones who chose what Christian doctrine

20:58

was. It's them. They created

21:00

the Christian doctrine. There was no agreement of Christian

21:02

doctrine before then. They even had

21:04

varying forms of scripture let's say

21:07

in their interpretations but it was here men

21:10

determined what the doctrine was and

21:12

it has pagan influences. How would

21:14

we respond or think theologically about that?

21:17

Well I think that what that does

21:19

is it ignores the previous 300 years

21:22

of church history where Christians

21:25

who are showing up at Nicaea,

21:27

some of them very well may

21:29

have had a few

21:32

less limbs

21:33

due to persecution because

21:36

of the faith that they held onto.

21:39

You know one of the issues immediately

21:41

before the Council of Nicaea was an

21:44

issue related to the persecution

21:46

that we've been talking about over these last two episodes

21:50

where Christians were asked

21:53

to call

21:55

Caesar Lord and those who

21:58

wouldn't do that were either through in

22:00

prison or were faced

22:03

physical harm to do so.

22:06

And so you had what was

22:08

called the Donatist controversy,

22:11

where there was, when Christianity was

22:14

decriminalized and Christians were let

22:16

out of prison and were coming into

22:18

the woodwork of the church, there

22:20

was a big discussion as to do

22:23

we allow within the context

22:25

of church discipline these Christians to be part

22:27

of our church community? Those who literally

22:32

said that Caesar was Lord over

22:35

and above Jesus being Lord, are they

22:38

allowed to be within the church? And there

22:41

was a legitimate question as to if

22:43

you were baptized by someone

22:46

who

22:48

gave

22:49

the pinch of incense on the altar of Caesar,

22:52

is your baptism legitimate? These were questions

22:54

that the early church had because this

22:56

was a big issue. And so the Donatist

22:59

controversy was a big

23:01

issue within the early church. And this

23:03

is leading up into the context of the Council of Nicaea.

23:06

So there's been persecution for

23:09

their profession of the

23:11

Father, the Son and the Holy

23:13

Spirit being co-equally and co-eternally

23:16

God. Now that language comes

23:18

out of Nicaea, so they wouldn't have necessarily

23:21

used the Trinitarian formulaic language

23:24

that we use today, but they would have believed

23:26

it in some form or another because it's

23:28

scriptural, it's biblical, it comes from the pages

23:31

of scripture.

23:32

And so they're

23:35

leading up to Nicaea, they already

23:37

understand who they believe Jesus is, they

23:40

already understand how

23:42

they understand that fitting within

23:44

the context of the Godhead and

23:46

within the understanding of

23:48

the revelation of God. And

23:51

so

23:52

to then

23:53

say that, okay, well, Constantine

23:56

calls this committee, he calls

23:58

this council, and he's going to... to tell

24:00

them what to believe. Well, there are people showing

24:02

up at the Council of Nicaea who

24:05

had family members who had died in prison,

24:08

who maybe had lost limbs because

24:10

of persecution.

24:12

Are you really telling me that

24:15

Constantine is just going to say, actually, you

24:17

believe this now? And they're going to be like, well, I guess, I

24:19

guess if Constantine said it, we're going

24:21

to believe it. Is that really

24:24

truly realistic to

24:26

what we see happening in history? I don't think

24:28

it is. I think the Christians were

24:30

willing to go to their deaths for their

24:33

profession of faith. And so

24:35

if we hypothesize

24:38

the Da Vinci Godesque argument that then

24:40

Constantine, the Roman emperor who

24:43

Christians have already been willing to die

24:45

under, is going to say, these

24:47

are the books and this is the doctrine

24:51

that they're just going to roll over. I don't

24:54

think that's a pretty silly

24:56

narrative given the previous 200 years

24:59

of church history. Hmm.

25:01

So the question I have then, and just

25:05

continuing off of what you're just saying here,

25:07

is that so in this article, he talks about

25:10

make some emphasis on some things post Nicaea.

25:14

And this is what some things that he says

25:16

is, I said, so some roughly 760 books,

25:20

many of which were first hand gospels

25:22

of the life of Jesus did not make it into the first

25:24

Nicene Creed, which is the foundation

25:26

of every Christian church to this day, all

25:29

decided by one man, Emperor Constantine, an absolute

25:31

ruler of the world's greatest empire and

25:33

the world's largest faith. He

25:35

goes on to say, although the Nicene Creed

25:38

did not officially decide upon the

25:40

content of the Christian Bible, Constantine made it

25:42

very clear which gospels he considered

25:44

acceptable. He commissioned

25:47

a creation of 50 copies of the first

25:49

Christian Bible, which contained only the gospels

25:52

of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. So what happened

25:54

to the other gospels of the other seven

25:56

councils recognized in whole or in

25:59

part by both the Roman Catholic and

26:01

the Eastern Orthodox Churches at Echumenical

26:03

all were called by the Roman Emperor who

26:06

gave them legal status across the entire Roman

26:08

Empire. And then it continues

26:10

and says that there were additional councils

26:13

and one in 382 AD, a

26:15

church council banned all of the gospels

26:17

from being read anywhere. All of the

26:19

books, many which were cherished by

26:21

true Christians for generations, these

26:24

scriptures have been relinquished for fear of

26:26

persecution and imminent death.

26:28

And then he basically goes on to say back

26:31

when we talked at the very beginning of the episode, this

26:33

was the case up until these

26:36

gospels were rediscovered in the 1800s. So

26:39

maybe my question would be how would you respond

26:41

to that? But also one thing I maybe

26:44

we only kind of touched on a little bit, the relationship

26:46

of actual like Gnostics and

26:48

the Gnostic gospel, because there is a narrative

26:50

sometimes that is perpetuated that

26:53

it's actually the Gnostics

26:55

who were under immense persecution

26:58

because of their belief in these Gnostic

27:00

gospel that seems to be what he's implying.

27:03

So what's your take on all

27:05

that?

27:06

I would love to see his primary

27:08

sources because

27:11

they're non-existent.

27:16

I think,

27:18

you know, I don't fault people

27:20

who espouse these types of narratives

27:23

because I think they're just going

27:25

on what they are told. I

27:27

think this is a lot of parroting

27:30

of I've heard these things said over

27:33

and over and over they're in the Da Vinci code,

27:35

they're in TikTok and YouTube videos,

27:38

Joe Rogan is espousing them,

27:40

this person is communicating them and

27:42

that person is repeating them.

27:44

And so I think it's unfortunately

27:47

a product of our time of

27:49

the internet age where we

27:52

don't have people who are questioning

27:55

things enough to go to the primary

27:57

first hand sources. Now,

28:01

this person, I believe,

28:03

has a PhD, right? So

28:06

they have doctor on the front of their name, at least.

28:10

So they should know better, I guess.

28:13

I don't know what their PhD is in. If it's in,

28:15

I don't know, mathematics, then

28:17

that's irrelevant to the

28:19

topic. But

28:23

I mean, this is a combination

28:26

of me feeling a little bit

28:28

of empathy and having a

28:31

little bit of

28:33

a headache. Because you hear

28:36

these things so often, but like

28:38

I said at the beginning, the fact is there are just no

28:40

primary sources for it. And

28:43

it's often portrayed as if the early

28:45

Christians are just given a pile

28:48

of books and they have to choose. Like

28:51

I said before, it's not a matter

28:53

of choosing. The early church

28:55

recognized the books that had

28:58

been given to them by the apostles, right?

29:00

The church was a product of Scripture. Scripture

29:03

was not a product of the church. And I get a lot

29:05

of pushback on that from both

29:08

my conspiratorial

29:10

friends and my Roman Catholic friends because

29:12

they want to also see the

29:15

Scripture as being established by the

29:17

Roman Catholic church. But I don't think

29:19

that history bears that out. I think that what

29:22

the unanimous communication

29:25

of the early church is that they knew

29:27

the books that had been handed down to

29:29

them. And the conversation of canon

29:32

was one of clarifying

29:35

what are the books that come from either

29:37

an apostle or someone who knew an

29:39

apostle, someone who knew Jesus

29:41

or someone who knew someone who knew Jesus. So

29:44

are there questions about some of the books that end up in

29:46

our Bibles? But it's

29:48

books like 2nd and 3rd John and 2nd Peter

29:52

because there are a lot of

29:54

letters that are

29:59

being purported to be written by

30:01

Peter and a lot of letters that are being written, purported

30:05

to be written by John, we got to make sure we're doing

30:07

our homework on this. And so any

30:09

of the question of the books is

30:12

one of the church doing due diligence

30:14

to let the dust settle on the

30:16

canon. But by the time you get to Nicaea

30:18

in the fourth century, that conversation,

30:20

as far as I'm concerned, is over. And

30:23

so even the canons after that are saying,

30:25

here's what scripture is, they're

30:27

not putting a pronouncement on that. They're

30:29

just establishing what was already

30:32

held at that point.

30:34

Nicaea understands what is scripture.

30:38

And we we know that because

30:40

we have conversations

30:42

leading up to that. We have canon lists

30:45

that are leading up to that. Do canon lists differ?

30:47

Yes, they do. But by

30:50

the time you get to Nicaea, you have

30:52

the established, you know, 66 books

30:55

of the Protestant canon. And there's a conversation

30:58

about what we refer to as the Apocrypha or

31:01

the Deuterocanonical books that are in the Catholic

31:03

Bible. I think that's almost a separate

31:05

conversation. But I think

31:07

if we're retrieving the earliest

31:10

books that get us the time from Jesus, we're talking

31:12

about the 27 books of the New Testament. And

31:15

if we're talking about the Jewish canon, we're talking about

31:17

the 39 books of the Old

31:19

Testament to knock the Torah, the Naveem and the Ketavim.

31:22

And so the

31:25

the Gnostic gospels, these other

31:28

writings, did they exist? Yes.

31:30

But like I said, they've almost completely

31:33

fell out of fashion and

31:35

belief by the time the fourth century happens.

31:37

The Gnostics were a dying group.

31:41

They were a dying group by the time that

31:43

the Council of Nicaea is called. They're

31:46

fragmented, even calling the

31:48

Gnostics, the Gnostics, I think, does a disservice

31:51

because the Gnostics aren't one group.

31:54

It's kind of like, I don't know, have either of you guys

31:56

been to India? No,

31:58

I've no. Considered at one

32:01

time potentially on a mission trip, but that was eons

32:03

ago.

32:04

Yeah, because Hinduism

32:07

is a very confusing

32:09

religion because I've

32:11

been to India. In fact, this

32:13

is an entirely different conversation. I actually had a

32:16

short-lived Bollywood career.

32:19

But I went to India

32:21

in 2012 to be a special skilled

32:23

extra in a Bollywood movie. You

32:29

talk to Hindus, and

32:32

one Hindu is telling you that Hinduism

32:35

is polytheistic. You walk

32:37

down the street and you talk to another Hindu, and they're saying, no, Hinduism

32:40

is monotheistic. They're just all

32:42

different representations of the same God. Then

32:44

you walk further and you talk to another

32:46

Hindu, and they're telling you that actually no Hinduism

32:49

is non-theistic. There is no

32:51

God. The universe just has

32:53

different avatars

32:56

and representations of the universe who

32:59

is an impersonal force itself. That's

33:01

kind of what you're dealing with in Gnosticism.

33:04

We have this overarching concept of Gnosticism,

33:07

but realistically, Gnosticism

33:09

is not one thing as much as

33:12

it's an umbrella term. The

33:15

Gnostics were not unified themselves. You

33:18

have differentiations throughout

33:20

the Gnostic Gospels of

33:23

what they're even communicating. The

33:25

single thread being that

33:27

Gnosticism is communicating what

33:31

is the antithesis of Biblical Christianity. The

33:36

Greek word Gnosis means knowledge, and

33:39

the Gnostics believed

33:41

that you

33:44

gained

33:46

salvation through understanding

33:49

secret knowledge.

33:53

How about I put it this way? In historical,

33:55

grounded Biblical Christianity, salvation is

33:57

something that's outside of your soul.

34:00

done on behalf by

34:02

the finished work of Christ's

34:04

work on the cross. So along the lines

34:06

of 2 Corinthians 5, 21, and Hebrews 10,

34:09

10, that for our sake the Father made Him

34:12

to be sin who knew no sin,

34:14

so that in Christ we might become

34:16

the righteousness of God. And by that,

34:19

will of the Father, we have

34:22

been made holy through the sacrifice

34:24

of the body of Jesus Christ once for

34:26

all. However, in the range

34:28

of diagnostic belief, salvation was

34:30

something inside of you that you

34:34

realize that you unlock via secret

34:36

knowledge. So it's not just

34:38

that Jesus is divine,

34:41

Jeremiah and Andrew are divine,

34:44

and you actually have

34:45

aspects of that divinity that

34:48

upon realization through understanding of secret

34:50

knowledge, you're able to attain salvation

34:53

and overcome the material world.

34:55

So that goes back to the the the

34:58

docketic, the docetic thing that I was

35:00

talking about. The material world is evil,

35:02

the spiritual world is good, you unlock

35:04

that by secret knowledge. That's completely

35:06

passé by the Council of Messia. So

35:09

any type of discussion about the Gospel

35:11

of Thomas, Gospel of Peter, Gospel of Mary, Gospel

35:13

of Judas being contention, that wouldn't

35:15

have even been on the table because the

35:18

Gnostics were a dying group

35:20

by that time. Hmm.

35:22

Yeah, Andrew, do you have any questions real quick? Because

35:24

I want to get a kind of a breakdown of some

35:26

of those Gospels. Just go

35:28

ahead, what's on your mind, Andrew?

35:30

Yeah, what are some of those early

35:32

primary sources we have of people

35:36

speaking of certain

35:38

books in the New Testament, like affirming sections,

35:41

not really affirming, but recognizing

35:44

books that we have today in the New Testament.

35:46

What are some of the earliest primary sources for that? And

35:49

I just want to comment real quick, it makes sense to that

35:51

people like Joe Rogan or some

35:53

of those other popular figures like to try to make

35:56

arguments in favor of Gnosticism because

35:58

they themselves think for... knowledge and

36:00

secret knowledge through drug use

36:02

and means of other things. So of

36:05

course you have to deny and try to reinvent

36:07

what happens historically, especially

36:09

with biblical Christianity, because if biblical Christianity

36:12

is true, then what you're doing is false and it's also

36:14

sinful. So there's got to be some way to try to justify

36:16

the actions that you're making. And one way to do it

36:18

is you have to deny who God is

36:20

and you got to deny his word in order to

36:23

feel justified or even righteous

36:25

in sinful decisions, which makes sense to me why

36:27

they would look to attack it. But historically,

36:30

as Wes has been showing, those arguments just do not

36:33

stand up. They don't stand up.

36:35

Yeah, you can understand why

36:36

it's palatable to the modern

36:39

audience who is sympathetic to these new

36:43

age ideas, that the divinity is

36:45

unlocked in you. And then you find

36:48

these ancient Gnostic Gospels and that's what

36:50

they're communicating. I mean, there's other things

36:52

that you probably don't realize that are

36:55

problematic within them. I mean, the last line of

36:57

the Gospel of Thomas communicates that

36:59

women are not worthy of salvation

37:02

and that every female

37:04

who makes herself male will enter

37:06

the kingdom of heaven. That's the last line of the Gospel of

37:08

Thomas. So transgenderism

37:11

aside, that's kind of

37:13

a message. And

37:17

that leads into a whole other conversation.

37:20

But you're exactly right. These ideas

37:23

are far more palatable. And I think we

37:26

want conspiracy. We like conspiracy.

37:31

The history of the canon of Scripture

37:33

in some ways is more complicated than we can

37:35

imagine, but in other ways is far more

37:37

simple. And we don't like simple. We

37:40

want there to be suppression. We

37:42

want there to be conspiracy. And

37:44

so to simply say, well, okay,

37:47

but what are the earliest books that get us the time

37:49

for Jesus? Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Oh, that's

37:51

boring.

37:52

What about these other ones that are more

37:54

exciting that portray Jesus as

37:58

a pagan mystic?

38:00

Well,

38:01

those are more interesting.

38:02

Well, okay, they might be more interesting,

38:05

but Jesus was a first century Jew. So

38:08

what's more likely? That Jesus

38:10

was a pagan mystic who

38:13

is more palatable to the pagan

38:16

audience?

38:17

Or that

38:18

Jesus was a Jewish

38:21

Messiah who made audacious

38:24

claims, claims to be God himself, predicted his

38:26

own death and resurrection, and then did

38:28

it? And I don't know about you guys,

38:30

but people who rise from the dead have more credibility

38:32

and authority than people who don't

38:35

rise from the dead. And so

38:37

that's not palatable for an ancient pagan audience.

38:41

And so I think it's far more realistic

38:43

to say that the pagan mystic

38:45

Jesus comes later and

38:49

is appropriated and written

38:51

back onto the lips of Jesus than

38:54

the actual first century Jewish Jesus

38:56

who was a Jew, who did live in the

38:58

first century, and is communicated

39:00

as such within Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and John.

39:04

So a lot of times, Wes, when I'm going

39:06

through the grocery store, I will see

39:09

some book by Time Life. You

39:11

know, it's every six months, there's always

39:14

some book with some

39:17

hidden books of Jesus and secret things

39:19

of Jesus. You always see it like every six months to a

39:21

year. There's something on Time Magazine,

39:24

Time Life, Life Magazine,

39:27

maybe I'll mix them all up together. But

39:29

there's always something on mentioning about particular

39:31

gospels. So I'll mention maybe a few

39:33

and kind of maybe summarize what they are

39:36

and what would be the main reasons why Christians

39:38

wouldn't accept them. So you mentioned before, the

39:41

first one is the Gospel of Thomas. If

39:43

you just reiterate where does

39:45

that come from, what's the dating of that? Why

39:48

wasn't that included within the canon? Like

39:50

was it a vast grand conspiracy

39:53

to suppress that?

39:56

What's it all about? And why wasn't that

39:58

chosen? Christians

40:00

back then say, this is a no-go. Yeah,

40:03

this is a great one because when I went to Egypt,

40:05

I actually got to go look at the actual

40:08

Gospel of Thomas. It's in the Coptic

40:10

library in Cairo. And it was

40:12

a really unique experience because

40:15

the travel guide who I was with,

40:18

I didn't know very much about it. And so I was actually

40:20

translating in front of him the Gospel of Thomas

40:24

in Coptic, which is ancient Egyptian

40:26

for him and giving

40:29

a lesson to some bystanders as to what

40:31

the Gospel of Thomas was. So that was a very unique

40:33

experience. And then we headed out into the Nag

40:35

Hammadi desert where it was discovered by these

40:38

Egyptian farmers in 1945 and

40:41

brought back to this little village

40:43

called Al-Qasr, which we also traveled to,

40:45

told that story in the 45 degree

40:48

heat where a sandstorm hit. It's

40:51

quite the narrative. We're going to have to

40:53

stay tuned to apologeticscanada.com

40:55

for the drop of all that story. But the Gospel

40:58

of Thomas exists in four manuscripts.

41:01

The earliest are three Greek fragments,

41:03

P1, which contains verses 26

41:06

to 31 and verses 77, and

41:08

then P oxy 654, which contains verses 1 to 7, and

41:11

then P oxy 655, which contains verses 36

41:18

to 40. And

41:20

then there's the famous fourth century

41:22

copy written in Coptic, which

41:25

was part of the Nag Hammadi Codex II, which is the one

41:27

that I had the unique opportunity to go see

41:29

and actually view myself

41:32

and translate through.

41:34

And

41:35

I think what we see there within

41:37

the Gospel of Thomas is, you

41:40

know, it can be dated to the second century. I

41:42

think it's probably the earliest of these Gnostic

41:44

Gospels. Some argue that

41:47

it's proto-Gnostic, that it actually

41:49

predates what we call Christian Gnosticism.

41:52

And there are hints of the Gnostic flavor

41:54

to it coming onto the scene, but

41:56

that is not full bread

41:59

Gnosticism. quite yet. And you

42:01

could argue that, but either way, there's

42:03

a Gnostic flavor to it. And

42:06

so it's popping up in

42:09

the second century, which is still, mind

42:11

you, Thomas is dead, because

42:13

the second century is long after the

42:16

disciple would have been living. But

42:19

it's not a gospel as we think of it.

42:21

So let me throw it out to you guys. When you think of when

42:23

I say, okay, what does a gospel look like?

42:25

What do you think of? What

42:29

Jesus did on the cross, the good news, the

42:31

news of the eternal God

42:33

taking on flesh and dying on the cross for my

42:35

sins. That's the gospel.

42:37

Yeah. Yeah. But also like for me, I remember

42:39

there's some books I had in

42:41

my assembly of just books

42:43

in my house growing up as a kid where

42:46

I kind of loved the historical

42:49

part of the bit of the

42:51

Bible. Like when you think of like the gospels that

42:54

it correlates to like real things

42:56

going on in the culture. So like, remember one of the things

42:58

that blew my mind as a kid is

43:01

the story of when Jesus

43:03

goes out and he says when he's about to do the

43:05

Last Supper. And I think he says like, look

43:07

for a man like carrying a pot

43:09

on his head, you know, and I

43:12

guess what was very interesting, if I remember, is

43:14

that the reason that would have stuck

43:16

out like a sore thumb, because usually it was

43:18

like the women who did that. So it's kind

43:20

of like one of those like cultural nods, you know, there's

43:23

mentions of coins, you know, like

43:25

Jesus mentioned the coin, and when you're holding up the coin,

43:27

I think, oh, Peter Caesar, what is Caesar's,

43:29

you know, that's actually something that was done.

43:31

So you kind of see there's things in

43:34

the gospel that coin side with real

43:37

physical low places,

43:39

they're holding, they're mentioning items

43:42

that are real and tangible.

43:45

They're just incongruent and in proximity

43:47

that would have been taking place in

43:49

the first century. So there's like a real gritty

43:52

historical tangibility when you read through

43:54

the Gospels that also coinsize with

43:56

the theology as well, too.

43:58

Yeah, amen. Yeah, I think we'll...

43:59

you're both communicating, Andrew and Jeremiah,

44:02

is that there's this narrative, right?

44:04

There's this narrative which communicates

44:06

something that's tangible, which you can

44:09

place on a timeline and actually represents

44:11

people and places and times that

44:13

exist in history. That's

44:16

not what you get in the Gospel of Thomas. So

44:18

unlike, say, the Gospel of Matthew,

44:20

Mark, Luke, and John, which have the

44:22

beginning, middle, and end of the story, you know, the

44:24

life

44:26

that—or arguably the birth, life, death,

44:28

and resurrection of Jesus,

44:29

the Gospel of Thomas is just a list of sayings.

44:32

It's 114 sayings of

44:34

Jesus between his disciples and

44:37

Jesus. So Peter says this,

44:40

Jesus responds. Mary says this, Jesus

44:42

responds. It's back and forth like

44:44

that, and that's where you have, I mentioned,

44:47

the last line of the Gospel of Thomas, where,

44:49

you know, they say, let

44:51

Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life,

44:54

you know, something that is always very good

44:57

to say in front of a group of people. And

44:59

Jesus says,

45:01

don't worry, because I'm going to make

45:04

her to resemble you, and then,

45:06

like I said before, every female who makes

45:08

herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven. But

45:10

it's that back and forth. It's just that

45:14

someone says this, someone else says this, someone

45:16

else says this, someone else says this. That's

45:18

all 114 verses, and that's

45:20

what we have fragmented in those early those

45:23

early Gospel fragments, but

45:27

collated in its entirety within

45:29

the fourth century Gospel of Thomas found

45:31

in the Nag Hammadi library. And

45:34

I think what you see there is

45:36

a development within the text. So

45:38

you see, and one of the things we can point

45:41

to, and I have an article on my website on WesleyHuff.com

45:44

about why I did the Gospel of Thomas late. One

45:46

of the reasons for that is I think we see a clear

45:48

development between our earliest Greek manuscripts

45:50

and our later Coptic manuscripts, Coptic

45:54

being the language, like I said before, of ancient

45:56

Egyptian. And what

45:58

they do is they portray Jesus once again.

45:59

again as a Greek pagan

46:02

mystic. And so I think

46:04

it's representing a later

46:06

development that's making Jesus more palatable

46:09

to that audience. But fundamentally

46:11

what we're dealing with is

46:14

a writing which is coming later, which

46:16

is ascribed to an early follower

46:18

of Jesus, but realistically

46:20

has no connection to the historical

46:23

Jesus who walked the dusty streets of first century

46:25

Galilee and Judea and

46:28

died and rose again.

46:30

What's up everybody, it's the Super Sleuth here letting you know that

46:32

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46:55

later guys.

46:56

And then also one

46:58

thing that's mentioned in the article is

47:00

the Gospel of Peter. You did mention earlier

47:02

how he mentioned things that are heretical and again, what

47:05

he implied and a lot of times would be implied

47:07

if you're walking down the shopping mall from going

47:10

to a Whole Foods, there's probably one right now.

47:12

I'll leave and I'll probably go to Sprouts and I'm gonna grab some food

47:14

on the way home and there's probably gonna be a magazine

47:16

and I pretty much put my money on that, right? Let's

47:19

just say they bring up the Gospel of Peter, it's probably

47:21

gonna be asserted in that magazine or article, oh,

47:24

well this is something that the same Peter

47:26

who denied Jesus, who was restored

47:29

at the end of the Gospel of John and

47:32

was crucified upside down, like, oh, he

47:34

actually kind of wrote, he has his own firsthand

47:36

account too but somehow that was lost

47:38

and that gives a different perspective but that was again,

47:41

that the Constantine narrative comes in that

47:44

somehow this was taken out. So all

47:46

that being said, Gospel of Peter, what

47:48

do we know about that? Why would this

47:51

be a no-go? Why

47:53

wasn't this picked as far

47:55

as it goes?

47:57

Yeah, well, the simple answer would be that

47:59

you can date the Gospel of Peter as 150

48:02

AD,

48:03

which is long after

48:05

Peter is dead. So if that

48:07

comes up, if you only have a couple

48:10

of minutes, all you need to say is,

48:12

I'm interested in the actual historical sources

48:14

that get me to Jesus and the Gospel of Peter and

48:16

in it.

48:17

The Gospel of Peter disqualifies itself

48:20

because we can date it no earlier

48:22

than 150, probably more between 150 and 250 AD.

48:28

So that's an outright disqualification.

48:31

Secondly, the Gospel of Peter not

48:33

only communicates this doestatic heresy,

48:35

which denies the physicality of Jesus,

48:38

but it also communicates a complete lack

48:40

of understanding of Jewish

48:44

practice at the time. And

48:46

one of the reasons for that is that, you

48:48

know, you read the resurrection stories in the Gospels

48:51

and they're actually rather matter a

48:53

fact. You know, it would have been really

48:55

great if the Gospels

48:58

in the Bible told you

49:00

exactly what happened at the resurrection. Wouldn't that have

49:02

been great? You could know what it looked

49:04

like for Jesus to come out of the tomb. The

49:06

Gospels don't tell us that. They actually

49:09

record what happens after the fact.

49:11

The Roman guards

49:13

run away and then you have the women coming to the tomb

49:15

and the tomb is empty. What

49:18

we have in the Gospel of Peter is actually the camera

49:20

rolling on the resurrection event. And this

49:22

was, this stands out to me pretty starkly

49:25

because when I did one of

49:27

my language exams for my doctoral

49:30

requirements, I was given

49:33

a section of the Gospel of Peter,

49:35

this section of the resurrection event

49:38

to site translate. So it

49:40

stands out really stark to me because it

49:42

was kind of like I was put in the moment and

49:45

I had to site translate a section of the

49:47

Gospel of Peter on the spot. But

49:50

what we see in that section of the Gospel

49:52

of Peter is the camera rolling

49:54

on the resurrection. The tomb opens

49:57

and Jesus comes out and his His

50:00

head is in the clouds. He's like a giant 90

50:02

foot tall Jesus. And

50:04

there are angels flanking him on either side.

50:07

And the cross comes out of the tomb,

50:10

and the cross comes out of the tomb, and the cross is prophesying.

50:13

But not only that, the thing that sticks

50:16

out that actually identifies the gospel of

50:18

Peter as not being first century, is

50:20

that the gospel of Peter, what I

50:22

think, is that it's actually an apologetic

50:25

against the bad testimony of

50:27

the women being the first eyewitnesses of the tomb.

50:30

So the women being the first eyewitnesses

50:32

of the tomb is actually quite embarrassing within a first

50:34

century context, because women are not good

50:37

eyewitnesses. The gospel of Peter

50:39

corrects that by having the Jewish and Roman

50:41

officials camping out in front of the tomb, which

50:44

is something that would never have happened. A

50:47

Jewish priest would never have camped out in front

50:49

of a tomb. A body, which

50:52

would have made him virtually unclean over

50:54

a path over a weekend, right? It's just,

50:56

it's not gonna happen. And yet that's exactly

50:58

what is portrayed in the gospel of Peter.

51:01

So whoever is writing the gospel of Peter has

51:03

no understanding of Jewish

51:06

custom and cultural practice

51:09

of religious purification. It just would

51:11

not have happened. But they're trying to correct

51:14

the fact that the biblical gospels

51:17

say that the women were the first eyewitnesses.

51:19

And that's obviously bad eyewitness

51:22

testimony. So who do we want

51:24

there? We want everybody who's a good

51:26

eyewitness testimony. We want Romans

51:28

and we want Jewish priests.

51:30

Okay, let's put them there. But this,

51:33

along with the dating, disqualifies

51:36

it by the content

51:38

that is included within the gospel. This

51:41

is just does not represent someone who

51:44

is in first century Judea. Nevermind

51:46

Peter, who's a first century

51:48

Jew, who

51:51

understands the cultural practice

51:53

of the day. Yeah. Andrew,

51:55

what's on your mind? I was thinking too, what's

51:58

interesting about...

51:59

The gospel, the gospels and the epistles

52:02

that we have is the uniformity of even

52:04

like the teaching of doctrine. Like it's all very

52:06

uniform. It's cohesive. It flows together.

52:09

The thoughts make sense. There's no contradictions

52:12

on who Christ is, what the gospel

52:14

is, what our salvation is. But

52:17

in terms of these lost quote-unquote gospels

52:19

like the gospel of Mary or the gospel of Peter,

52:21

gospel of Thomas, are they uniform?

52:24

Right? Are they actually cohesive in teaching

52:26

altogether the same thing? Or

52:29

is every single one of them contradicting

52:31

to the other one? Right? Because you would

52:33

think that the gospel of Thomas, unless

52:36

a woman makes herself a man, right? But

52:39

then we have the gospel of Mary. Well,

52:41

she probably shouldn't have a gospel unless Mary became

52:43

a man or something and then had

52:45

some, you know, something to

52:48

say about Jesus. So in these lost

52:50

gospels, is there uniformity between them

52:52

or are they all contradictory?

52:54

No, there's no uniformity between

52:57

them because the Gnostics were a very fragmented group.

53:00

And so that they're not

53:03

necessarily corroborating with one another, which

53:06

is something we don't see with the gospels either.

53:09

But one of the things

53:11

that have been highlighted by individuals

53:14

like there have been some scholars

53:17

recently, like Lydia McGrew, who's

53:19

done a good job of this in her

53:22

published books on

53:26

Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels,

53:28

which looks at the

53:30

background details of the gospels and

53:32

how they actually fit within one another

53:36

to confirm the evidences

53:40

of what's going on.

53:42

So let me back

53:44

up. So an Undesigned Coincidence

53:47

is an instance when you have one or more independent

53:50

historical account and

53:52

they interlock

53:56

in such a way that would be unexpected if

53:58

the story is not as simple as that. were simply fabricated

54:01

wholesale. So a good example of that

54:03

is the feeding of the 5,000, because the feeding

54:05

of the 5,000 is in all

54:07

four gospels. So if you

54:10

go to the feeding of the 5,000 story in John,

54:13

John says that a large

54:15

crowd was coming towards Jesus. And

54:17

so Jesus turns to Philip and asks

54:20

where they might buy bread. And

54:22

this might be a question, Andrew, you've never

54:24

asked yourself, but why did Philip

54:27

or why did Jesus ask Philip where to buy bread? Yeah,

54:31

that was a question, isn't it? Yes, it is. Yes. Yeah.

54:34

So, but but actually, Philip is

54:37

not the character who would

54:39

actually make sense to buy bread. Because

54:42

Matthew was a tax collector, he would have

54:44

had an understanding of

54:46

the economic situation of the area.

54:49

Judas said to have hold the money bag. So

54:51

he would have had the you know, know how

54:54

of what the group had so that when they went to Starbucks,

54:57

they would have been able to get their chilates

54:59

and spend the absorbent

55:01

amount of money, that cost

55:04

right.

55:04

But

55:06

if we if we go

55:10

from john to the Gospel of Luke,

55:12

it says that on their return, the apostles

55:15

told Jesus all they had done and he took

55:17

them and withdrew to a part of a town called Bethsaida.

55:20

So Luke doesn't tell us

55:23

that Jesus asked Philip,

55:26

but he tells us that actually the location

55:28

of the event happens in Bethsaida.

55:31

He tells us the not the who, but

55:33

the where of the situation.

55:36

Well, if we actually go back to the Gospel

55:38

of john, and we go to

55:41

a little later after the story of

55:43

the feeding of the 5000, it says

55:45

that a bunch of disciples came to Jesus,

55:47

or

55:48

they came to Philip rather, who

55:50

is and it says from

55:52

Bethsaida and Galilee, that's john 1221

55:54

and asked them, Sir, we

55:57

wish to see Jesus. So it's very

55:59

interesting. When we ask the question,

56:01

in the story of the Feeding of the 5000,

56:03

why would Jesus ask Philip

56:06

where to buy bread? Well, if you read

56:08

the Gospels in tandem, you

56:11

actually find out that Philip

56:14

was a local.

56:15

But you only find that out

56:18

when you put the pieces together and

56:20

figure out that

56:24

when you look at the details,

56:26

that the Gospels don't necessarily

56:28

tell you outright. So these

56:31

background details, what are called undesigned

56:33

coincidences, are something that say a

56:37

detective is looking in a case where they have multiple

56:39

eyewitnesses of a singular event. These

56:41

are found all throughout the Gospels, and

56:44

acts actually as well, where you have

56:46

background details that fill

56:48

in the gaps. Why would Jesus ask Philip? Well,

56:50

it's a question that you might not ask yourself, but actually

56:53

another Gospel tells you that Philip was a local,

56:55

and then John tells you that this

56:58

event is happening in Bethsaida. So when you actually

57:00

read them in tandem, you find out Philip

57:02

is actually the most... He's

57:07

the character that Jesus should be asking,

57:10

because

57:11

he's from that. That's his hometown.

57:13

So when Jesus asks, where should

57:15

we buy bread, Philip would have actually known. Well,

57:17

these are things you don't find in the Gospel of Judas,

57:19

the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Mary, because

57:22

they're not worried about these

57:24

kind of ancillary details that

57:27

fill out the story. They're

57:29

worried about the very bare bones,

57:32

and sometimes they actually get these details wrong,

57:34

because like I said before, they're not being

57:36

written in the places that they're purporting

57:38

to write in. So you

57:40

don't find undesigned coincidences in

57:43

the apocryphal and Gnostic Gospels.

57:46

So, wow, I feel I'm gonna have to

57:49

listen to this after post-production

57:51

a couple times, just because that's a lot of information.

57:53

It's just informative, because like

57:56

I said, the average person, even

57:58

Christian, don't really truly understand. Understand

58:00

this stuff sort of stuff and then when you don't understand

58:03

this and all of a sudden you get place of this objection It's

58:05

very easy to kind of go into fight-or-flight mode

58:08

and like oh no Like what is I never heard these

58:10

extra gospels like how do I deal with this? How would

58:12

I wrestle with this? but um Just

58:15

like two other gospels this came up

58:17

in the article and what were the first one was

58:19

the gospel of Mary Magdalene There's

58:22

that but then there's another one too It's called the gospel

58:24

of Judas and a wife never read

58:26

the gospel of Judas part means like well That

58:28

seems kind of dark that obviously that didn't

58:31

really have a happy ending so I wasn't really sure Well

58:33

that that sort of account would be but

58:35

what do we know about those two gospels?

58:38

Yeah, you'll find

58:40

that

58:40

these other gospels They

58:43

they don't choose the characters that are associated

58:46

with the inner circle of Jesus and one of the reasons

58:48

for that is they're kind Of working as the antithesis

58:51

to individuals like Matthew and John

58:54

and they're almost portraying

58:57

that

58:57

the Orthodox community is Wrong

59:01

and that they've kind of disparaged

59:03

the actual individuals within the early

59:06

Jesus community that you should center around Like

59:08

Judas right Judas was the

59:10

one who betrayed Jesus. Well, what if actually

59:13

Judas wasn't the bad guy

59:15

in the story What if he was actually one of the good

59:17

guys? So let's center

59:20

around that but the problem with

59:22

that is once again all

59:24

these gospels are laid

59:26

The gospel of Mary is coming around 400 AD

59:30

so, you know, the fifth century

59:32

is a long time after Mary

59:35

ever lived the gospel of

59:37

Judas is coming around no earlier

59:39

than the late second century probably 180

59:41

to 350 AD

59:44

so between the late second century and

59:46

the mid fourth century So

59:48

we're not dealing with something that actually gets

59:51

you to the historical time frame of Jesus. So

59:53

I Routinely say

59:55

when people bring these things up first,

59:58

you should ask them if they've actually read them Because

1:00:02

one, I think, more

1:00:05

than a necessary way

1:00:07

to deal with these issues is to say, okay,

1:00:10

you read them and you come back to me and

1:00:12

tell me why they're not in the Bible. Because

1:00:16

they're so crazy and they make absolutely

1:00:18

no sense. People think that because

1:00:21

the Gospels contain stories of miracles

1:00:23

that, well, that's obviously fabricated. But

1:00:25

then you go and you read these and you're like, I can't make

1:00:27

heads or tails of these. Well, that's on

1:00:30

purpose because they're designed to be

1:00:32

full of secret knowledge. They're designed

1:00:34

to be incomprehensible and actually if

1:00:36

you're enlightened, you understand them. And

1:00:39

that's kind of the crux of the

1:00:41

Gnostic Gospels, is that they're confusing

1:00:44

on purpose. And

1:00:46

so anybody who's actually read these,

1:00:48

who says they understand them is

1:00:50

probably a liar. But

1:00:53

giving them the benefit of the doubt,

1:00:55

if they've read them, which they probably haven't,

1:00:57

they probably realize, well, this isn't purporting

1:01:00

to communicate history to me. This

1:01:02

isn't like the Gospel of Luke who's saying that

1:01:05

he's writing an orderly account from

1:01:09

eyewitnesses who came before him.

1:01:11

That preface to the Gospel of Luke

1:01:13

is very clear in his purpose and

1:01:16

thesis statement that he was not an eyewitness,

1:01:18

so he's going to

1:01:20

interview and record

1:01:23

eyewitness accounts. But

1:01:25

that's not what we find in the Gospel of Mary

1:01:27

or the Gospel of Judas. What we're finding there

1:01:30

is secret knowledge

1:01:32

that's supposed to unlock your divinity,

1:01:35

but it's very, very confusing. The

1:01:37

Gospel of Mary isn't actually purported to be written

1:01:39

by Mary. It's about Mary,

1:01:41

which is where it gets its name from. But

1:01:44

it's not actually claiming to

1:01:46

be written by Mary, which actually the Gospel

1:01:48

of Judas and the Gospel of Thomas are. But

1:01:52

even though it's kind of divulged

1:01:55

that there's problems with it, because

1:01:57

the Gospel of Thomas, the first

1:02:00

The first line of the Gospel of Thomas says that

1:02:02

these were written by Thomas

1:02:06

Didymus,

1:02:08

and it uses those two

1:02:10

words as its title. Well,

1:02:14

Thomas in Greek means twin, and

1:02:17

Didymus in Coptic means

1:02:19

twin.

1:02:20

So whoever wrote the Gospel of Thomas

1:02:22

didn't realize that Thomas's name

1:02:24

already meant twin.

1:02:27

And so he's saying it twice. It's

1:02:30

like saying, I Wesley Wesley

1:02:32

wrote this. It doesn't really make any

1:02:34

sense. Twin twin. Yeah,

1:02:37

twin twin. So it

1:02:40

already red flags itself

1:02:43

as someone who doesn't understand

1:02:45

Greek, who doesn't understand

1:02:47

what that name means. And Thomas,

1:02:50

the actual Thomas, as a twin,

1:02:53

would almost certainly have known what his name

1:02:56

meant.

1:02:58

Andrew, do you have any

1:03:00

thoughts as well, too, as we're trying

1:03:02

to wrap up here?

1:03:04

No, just talking about this, I keep

1:03:06

thinking about, just because of the context

1:03:08

of where I live, I just keep thinking about Joseph Smith and

1:03:10

the book of Abraham. I know it's a little bit different,

1:03:13

but just how

1:03:16

there's red flags

1:03:18

that just stick out in terms of forgeries,

1:03:21

or when

1:03:23

there's something that's just blatantly untrue,

1:03:25

it usually will manifest in

1:03:27

some way in the writing itself

1:03:30

from supposedly translating

1:03:33

ancient papyri, but then finding out

1:03:35

that what was supposedly

1:03:37

translated

1:03:38

from an

1:03:39

account of Abraham was something totally

1:03:42

different. It just seems like this

1:03:44

is almost the same thing. It's not, of

1:03:47

course, a translation of a papyri,

1:03:49

but it's falsely ascribed

1:03:51

literature, in a sense, where it's just not...

1:03:55

It just doesn't make sense in the

1:03:59

long scheme of things. where my brain just keeps thinking

1:04:01

about it. It's very interesting how a

1:04:03

lot of these accounts that are untrue,

1:04:07

they just can't really hold

1:04:09

any water. There's so many holes in

1:04:11

them. So that's just kind of what my brain is thinking

1:04:13

about. Yeah, I think as someone

1:04:15

who focuses on this area, time

1:04:18

and time again, the manuscript evidence,

1:04:20

the internal evidence, the external evidence is

1:04:23

constantly verifying for me

1:04:25

the reliability and

1:04:28

the verisimilitude, that's a big word,

1:04:30

but it just means the appearance of truth, the

1:04:33

verisimilitude of the biblical gospels

1:04:36

and the outing of these others.

1:04:38

And this

1:04:40

doesn't stop in the ancient

1:04:42

world. The gospel of Jesus's wife

1:04:45

is a 21st century forgery. The

1:04:47

secret gospel of Mark is a 20th century

1:04:49

forgery. The gospel of Barnabas is a

1:04:51

15th century forgery. So

1:04:54

it's not like the ancient world

1:04:56

is the stopping point for people

1:04:59

trying to put words on

1:05:01

the lips of Jesus. This goes right up

1:05:04

to the 21st century, to our own

1:05:06

day, where Harvard

1:05:08

academics are falling

1:05:11

for this stuff. The gospel

1:05:13

of Jesus's wife was a big embarrassment

1:05:16

for Karen King

1:05:18

and Harvard University, where she was fooled

1:05:21

by this fragment that was a

1:05:23

legitimate ancient fragment that someone had basically

1:05:27

forged a text on top of. And

1:05:30

so these things happen. But

1:05:33

the question that comes back in my mind

1:05:36

as a historian is, okay, I

1:05:38

want to know about Jesus. I'm

1:05:40

sticking my life on Jesus. What

1:05:43

are the sources that get me back to him?

1:05:45

And,

1:05:46

you know, whether we're dealing

1:05:48

with the ancient world or the modern

1:05:50

world, or, you know, every time we put a shovel

1:05:52

in the sands of Egypt, I

1:05:55

go to Egypt and I suffer

1:05:59

through that heat. And all I'm reminded

1:06:01

of is the confidence I have

1:06:04

in the text of the Bible and the fact

1:06:06

that these books get me back to

1:06:09

the time frame of Jesus and

1:06:11

the words of our Messiah

1:06:14

who was the Word

1:06:16

made flesh to dwell among

1:06:18

us. And I can have confidence in that.

1:06:21

Now, thank you for saying that, man.

1:06:23

And what's just, I was going to ask you this question,

1:06:25

but you already answered it, is that the

1:06:29

person in that article, you know, he mentioned

1:06:31

how the discovery of these papyrus

1:06:34

in Egypt that shook

1:06:36

the foundations of Christianity, the secret

1:06:38

political conspiracy that had been secretive

1:06:41

for centuries and all of a sudden has been exposed.

1:06:44

But in contrast to what he's, that

1:06:46

person was articulating as someone who

1:06:49

has actually been to Egypt

1:06:51

and is actually handled, like physically

1:06:54

handled like the original manuscript of the

1:06:56

Gospel of Thomas. Like you can just say with confidence,

1:06:58

no, this actually just confirms

1:07:00

my faith all the more, which goes to show

1:07:03

that this is truly,

1:07:05

like I said, we deal with this stuff from a Christian perspective

1:07:07

mainly because in contrast to

1:07:09

cults where it's, hey, you

1:07:11

can't question that. This is a dogma that can't

1:07:13

be questioned. It's like, no, actually,

1:07:15

when you take those, these questions,

1:07:18

objections, and you do have

1:07:20

to wrestle through it sometimes, and even sometimes

1:07:23

it can be like a little scary. I know like

1:07:25

times where I was in college and I got my

1:07:27

world religions professor brought objections

1:07:29

to me and I was like, oh no, like what's that? I got to

1:07:31

figure that out. But when you wrestle through

1:07:33

it and you come out the other end, there is

1:07:36

this like awesome confidence that comes out of it.

1:07:38

And so I'm hoping that's what people would take away that,

1:07:40

you know, these claims that get articulated

1:07:43

by people like Lex Friedman, like S&L Lex

1:07:46

Friedman podcast or Joe Rogan

1:07:48

or kind of the digital, all the big

1:07:51

talkers and the digital areopaguses

1:07:53

of different podcasts way larger

1:07:55

than ours, like when you actually dig

1:07:57

through these claims, they don't. Add

1:08:00

up to the just the basic

1:08:03

Fundamental level like how do you figure out

1:08:05

what? Reliable history is in regards

1:08:08

to primary sources and all this. I mean this has been

1:08:10

such an encouragement. I really appreciate it

1:08:12

Yeah, I mean you don't need to go to

1:08:14

Nagamata You don't need to go to Armenia or

1:08:17

Cairo or ox or ink us or Jabbar al-tarif

1:08:19

to discover that when When

1:08:22

you look at the gospel of Thomas and

1:08:24

you read these are the secret things

1:08:27

which the living Jesus spoke and

1:08:29

which did a Thomas Thomas Judas wrote down

1:08:32

you don't need to

1:08:34

be there to see that actual

1:08:36

document and and worry

1:08:39

about it because the

1:08:42

reality is

1:08:44

the biblical gospels are

1:08:46

the words of Christ they are

1:08:48

and

1:08:48

So it you don't need

1:08:50

to travel to Egypt Although I was you know

1:08:52

is a is an honor to do that

1:08:55

and stand in the places where these things were discovered

1:08:58

But it doesn't it doesn't take that

1:09:00

kind of trip It doesn't take that kind

1:09:03

of even seminary education the words

1:09:05

of Scripture have been handed

1:09:07

down faithfully to us by

1:09:11

individuals whether they're Christian

1:09:13

or not who are have

1:09:15

taken the time to do

1:09:18

that faithfully and so

1:09:20

we can have confidence in that as Christians

1:09:23

standing 2,000 years down the road and

1:09:26

so whether it's the New Age person

1:09:28

claiming that the Gnostic gospels

1:09:30

are that which holds secret truth

1:09:33

or whether it's the Muslim claiming

1:09:35

that the gospel of Barnabas actually holds

1:09:38

a Secret knowledge

1:09:40

that Jesus was never crucified Whatever

1:09:43

it is. I think you

1:09:45

don't have to deep dive Although

1:09:47

I would encourage you to I would simply

1:09:50

say you know the the crux that all this comes

1:09:52

down to is the Earliest

1:09:54

source material that gets us to Jesus

1:09:57

or someone who knew Jesus are

1:09:59

the 27 books of the New Testament

1:10:01

and specifically

1:10:03

the four-fold gospel

1:10:05

canon of biographical material on Jesus.

1:10:08

It is theonopstos, it is God-breathed,

1:10:11

it is communicated to the life of the believer

1:10:14

and has the message of

1:10:16

truth

1:10:17

that can save you from your sin. Amen,

1:10:19

I appreciate that man. And just real quickly,

1:10:22

where can people go and again find you if they want

1:10:24

to find out more about you and all your adventures

1:10:27

and adventures to come regarding Egypt

1:10:30

and everywhere else? Where can they find you,

1:10:35

all your whereabouts, where you are and what's

1:10:37

in store?

1:10:39

Yeah, I hope there are more adventures to come. But

1:10:42

yeah, WesleyHuff.com and ApologeticsCanada.com,

1:10:46

that's where we'll be dropping

1:10:48

all the information and the three

1:10:52

series that we're going to be releasing on Can

1:10:56

I Trust the Bible? where we show that

1:10:58

documentary of us heading out to Egypt, of looking

1:11:00

at these places and reading

1:11:02

these firsthand sources and telling those stories

1:11:05

and giving you confidence that you can

1:11:07

trust what you have when you hold

1:11:09

a modern English translation is a translation

1:11:12

of what was originally given by those authors. And

1:11:15

so WesleyHuff.com, I have

1:11:17

videos, I have infographics and

1:11:20

I appreciate so much you guys being willing to have me

1:11:23

on and let me platform

1:11:25

that. Your guys' ministry is also a big

1:11:28

encouragement

1:11:29

to me as a regular podcast

1:11:31

listener. Awesome, thank you so much man, we appreciate

1:11:34

that. We'd love to have you on again. So all that being

1:11:36

said, I preach to you all, all listening

1:11:38

and supporting us. All that being said, we will

1:11:41

talk to you all next time on Cultist where we enter into

1:11:43

the kingdom of the cults.

1:11:44

Talk to you guys soon.