Atheist Bible Expert On Why God Doesn’t Exist, Wes Huff, & If Jesus Was The Real Messiah

Summary

Flagrant with Andrew Schulz & Akaash Singh

Episode: Oxford Atheist: “Jesus Christ Never Claimed He Was God” (Feat. Alex O'Connor)

Date: August 25, 2025

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Overview

This episode dives into the historical and theological claims about Jesus Christ's divinity, led by atheist philosopher and New Testament enthusiast Alex O’Connor (Cosmic Skeptic). The crew explores the earliest sources on Jesus, differences in gospel narratives, the role of John the Baptist, Mormonism, religious mythmaking, worship semantics, and the evolution of Christology—all with Flagrant’s trademark comedic irreverence. The central debate: Did Jesus himself ever claim to be God?

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Societal Utility of Religion

[00:25–03:00]

• Alex O’Connor shares anecdotes illustrating both harmful and beneficial aspects of faith.
  • Story of a sociopath who found a moral framework in Christianity after a violent act.
  • Reminisces about meeting an elderly churchgoer, recognizing the comfort faith provides.
• Alex: “I don’t want her to become an atheist… I just think it would be soul-crushing… So how do I grapple with that? By being violently agnostic.” (02:33)

Agnosticism & Honest Intellectual Exchange

• Alex asserts he feels no duty to “deconvert” others, highlighting the humility and utility of agnosticism.
  • Alex: “I will die on this fence. I will say, I think that’s bullshit... but I can’t say the conclusion is true or false.” (03:06)

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How the New Testament Was Written

[04:35–08:30]

• Explanation of the four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John)—their authorship order, dates, and relationships.
  • Mark: earliest, ~70 AD.
  • Matthew/Luke: draw heavily from Mark, add new material.
  • John: latest, unique style and content.
• Bible = “library” of books; gospel stories sometimes corroborate but often differ.

Alex on Synoptic Gospels:

• “Mark’s gospel is the shortest...most people think it came first. Around 95% of Mark is in Matthew and Luke... Matthew and Luke add extra stuff.” (06:32)

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John the Baptist: The Overlooked Messiah?

[07:53–13:20]

• All gospels describe Jesus’s baptism by John; the “criterion of embarrassment” suggests this happened historically.
  • “If you’re trying to present [Jesus] as the Son of God...it makes little sense for him to be baptized by another preacher. That’s why they wouldn’t make it up.” (08:01)
• John was a massively influential Jewish preacher performing mass baptisms "for forgiveness of sins."
• Some gospels emphasize John the Baptist is not the Messiah—indicating rival claims existed.

Was Jesus a Disciple of John?

• Alex argues the historical Jesus likely started as a follower of John, later inheriting—and transforming—John’s movement (“baton passing”).
  • Jesus refers to John as "the greatest man ever born of a woman." (12:02)
• Parallels between Jesus receiving the Spirit at baptism and later bestowing it upon his disciples.

Memorable moment:

• Host (re: John’s popularity): “Is there a historical account? Hundreds? Thousands?”
  • Alex: “The Gospels say all Judea was coming… that’s obviously an exaggeration, but lots and lots of people.” (17:41)

Weird Mormon Parallels

• Conversation detours to Mormon history (golden plates, persecutions, Joseph Smith’s assassination).
  • Alex observes that Mormon growth rates rivaled early Christianity and both were subject to serious persecution.

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Did Jesus Actually Claim to Be God?

[35:46–50:23]

The Scriptural Argument

• Alex: “There’s no instance in the Gospels where I think Jesus is claiming to be God. Christians think they have examples, but all of them don’t actually apply.” (35:47)

Key Passages Discussed:

• John 10: “I and the Father are one.” (explained as spiritual unity, not ontological identity; extended to believers)
  • “If that’s [Jesus] claiming to be identical to Yahweh… he must think that’s something available to the disciples. That doesn’t make sense.” (37:17)
• John 8: “Before Abraham was, I am.”
  • Possible wordplay: in Greek (“ego eimi”), can mean simply “It’s me”; only in John.
  • Alex speculates Jesus is referencing "God's redemptive plan" rather than claiming divine identity.
  • “I think what he might be getting at… is that from the very beginning, God knew... before Abraham was, I am.” (43:18)
• Blasphemy Accusation:
  • Specifically addresses a passage where Jesus is accused of claiming to be God. Jesus quotes Psalm 82 (“you are gods, sons of the Most High”), deflecting outright divinity.
  • “One point where Jesus is explicitly accused of claiming to be God, he didn’t stand [by it]. In my view, he goes, ‘I’m not.’” (49:33)

Worship and Ancient Semantics

[50:39–59:52]

• Discussion of the words proskuneo (“to bow down” / show respect) vs latreuo (“cultic/religious worship”).
  • Only proskuneo is used for Jesus in the gospels, not latreuo—which is reserved for God.
  • “Not once does latreuo worship occur being given to Jesus in the gospels. So we’re just left with proskuneo worship.” (51:21)

Memorable Quote:

• Alex: “If proskuneo worship is the kind of worship that’s given to God and only God, then why is it that after Jesus ascends, nobody offers proskuneo worship anymore?” (59:41)

Comparing with Islam and Other Views

• Alex notes his interpretation is closer to the Muslim view of Jesus: not God, not divine, but a major prophet.
• “Muslims ... don't believe he claimed to be God ... and they take a lot of the same lines I do here." (62:41)

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The Transmission Problem: Oral to Written

[67:03–68:53]

• Jesus spoke Aramaic; Gospels are written in Greek, quoting Hebrew ideas.

• Heavy discussion about how precisely Jesus’s words could've been transmitted, remembered, translated, and altered—sometimes decades after the events.

  • Alex: “You can't remember the words I said 20 seconds ago, but I'm expected to believe that the gospel authors ... remembered his exact words decades later in a language he wasn't speaking?” (67:45)

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Birth Myths, Miracles, Missing Years, and Christology

[73:46–78:00]

• Birth stories and miracles surrounding both Jesus and John the Baptist viewed as mythological embellishments.
• Some debate about the “missing years” of Jesus—possibly explained by a lack of historical importance before his ministry.
• On miracles: “He definitely had a reputation for doing something...something extraordinary was going on...But whether [miracles] happened? I probably don’t think they did.” (94:21)

Christ's Divinity: Was It Developed Later?

• Council of Nicaea (325 AD) codifies the doctrine of the Trinity and explicit divinity of Jesus.
• Early Christian diversity: “There are communities who believed most wacky and incredible things about Jesus fairly early on.” (79:41)

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Gnostic Gospels, Non-Canonical Early Christianities

[79:41–92:42]

• Elaine Pagels’ Gnostic Gospels and texts such as the Gospel of Judas and Gospel of Thomas illustrate radical alternative Christianities.
• Gospel of Thomas: "These are the secret teachings of Jesus … some similar to canonical teachings, some incredibly weird.”
• Thomas called “the twin” (Didymus), possible rumors he was Jesus’s literal twin, challenging the virgin birth dogma.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Alex (on agnosticism): "I will die on this fence." (03:06)
• Alex: “So the [biblical] library means when somebody says, 'Because the Bible says so' ... it’s a collection of texts.” (05:35)
• Alex on John the Baptist: “He’s my favorite character – we just don’t have very much information at all.” (71:32)
• Host: "So he's like the Christian Jews?" (26:23; on Mormon persecution)
• Host (on ancient sarcasm): “Ebonics in the old. He’s just going, ‘I’m him.’” (39:46)
• Alex on worship: “If proskuneo worship is the kind for God and only God, why is it that after Jesus ascends, nobody offers proskuneo worship anymore?” (59:41)
• Alex on Christology: "I'm not as concerned that the gospels present Jesus as God – I just don't think Jesus claimed it for himself." (97:39)

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Timeline of Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment Title / Content | |-------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:25-03:06 | The social utility of religion; Alex’s take on personal faith | | 04:35-07:53 | Gospel authorship, sources, & synoptic problem | | 07:53-14:48 | John the Baptist’s historical role and the “criterion of embarrassment” | | 22:23-26:23 | Mormon history compared with Christian origins | | 35:46-50:01 | Biblical passages cited for/against Jesus’s divine self-claims | | 50:39-59:52 | Semantic debate: worship terms ‘proskuneo’ vs. ‘latreuo’ | | 67:03-68:53 | Oral tradition, memory, and translation issues | | 73:46-78:00 | Myths of Jesus' and John's origin, miracle claims, missing years | | 79:41-92:42 | Gnostic gospels, council of Nicaea, noncanonical traditions | | 97:09 | Bible beef: Alex on apologist Wes Huff, Mark’s method |

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Final Notes & Tone

• Tone: Inquisitive, irreverent, playful, but rooted in scholarship—classic Flagrant. Comedians remain agnostic but push on areas of public controversy/fascination. Alex bridges rigorous academic skepticism with story-driven engagement.
• Flow: Episode moves from the personal and societal role of faith to granular scriptural debates, then explodes outward into comparative religion and canon history, ultimately rounding back to interpretations and modern disputes.

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Interested in More?

Next-up wish list: Alex O’Connor in conversation with apologist Wes Huff on air, deeper dives into Gnostic Christianity, non-canonical gospels, and even more wild “scholarly beef.”

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This summary omits ad sections and non-content banter, focusing on the intellectual and comedic main course.

Transcript

[Alex]

As promised, here is part two of our episode of Alex o'.

[Host 1]

Connor.

[Alex O'Connor]

It's a big one.

[Alex]

We're going to talk about Jesus and whether he even claimed to be the Messiah and maybe it was John the Baptist. We're also going to talk about Mormons. You guys think they're weird? They might be right. Alex o' Connor is going to tell us why. And last and probably least, but the most fun, he's going to talk shit about our boy Wes Huff. There's some Bible beef going on. Let's see what's happening.

[Alex O'Connor]

Religion is my real thing. Yeah.

[Host 1]

That's why I'm specifically asking. So I'm aware that you must have had tons of conversations with people and they've broken down, like, what they feel their personal benefit from it is.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah.

[Host 1]

Have you, in your studies, like, have you read any stories that warmed your heart to be cliche and made you go, oh, I understand the societal utility for this? Yes, there are things that hurt people and ostracize people and that is bad. But is there like a version where you're like, there is a net good for the individual?

[Alex O'Connor]

I had a debate the other day with a Christian who tried to kill his dad with a hammer. He just, like, attacked his daddy, caved in his dad's skull with a hammer. What?

[Host 1]

Wow.

[Alex O'Connor]

And now he's a Christian and he's totally fine.

[Host 1]

So he's like, what was his dad doing?

[Alex O'Connor]

I can't remember, but I think. I think. So this guy, he's. He's like a sociopath or a psychopath, one or the other. Like, he's like an actual sociopath or psychopath. So I don't know if, like, there was anything particular or if he just did it for, you know, good times sake or whatever, but for some reason he, like, he did that and then he became a Christian. And he still is, like, he still, like, has that. That same brain. But Christianity, as far as I know this is his understanding, is that Christianity has given him, like, this framework to abide by, so that even though he's a sociopath, he just. He doesn't engage in that kind of stuff anymore.

[Host 1]

Right.

[Alex O'Connor]

So. So, yeah, I mean, those kinds of people exist. There are also people who, like. I just. I remember distinctly when I was. When I was younger, when I first started thinking about religion, the first time I tried to write a book, I wanted to open it with this little story just because it happened fairly recently. At the time, I was like a teenager. I just moved into a new, new sort of area and we went to our local Catholic church and it was like Easter Sunday or something. And it was. There weren't very many people there. And I just remember sitting down and there was this old woman on her own just sat on this pew and she just, like, came up to me and went like, crap. I was like, I hope that you and your family have a very, very happy Easter. And I thought, man, that's so. I don't want her to become an atheist.

[Host 1]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Alex O'Connor]

You know what I mean? She's on her own. She's here in church. She's probably here every single week. She's got the. And I don't think she'd become unkind or something, but I just think it would be soul crushing. And so. Of course.

[Host 1]

So how do you grapple with that?

[Alex O'Connor]

By being violently agnostic.

[Host 1]

Agnostic, meaning you don't know. So atheist is like, religion is dumb. There is no God.

[Alex O'Connor]

There is no God. You don't need to think the religion. You can be an atheist who doesn't believe it's true, but still think that.

[Host 1]

It'S beneficial, there's societal utility to religion. Got it, Got it. So the agnosticism allows you to what?

[Alex O'Connor]

Allows me to not feel a duty in being honest. To tell that old lady that I think she's wrong. Because she might not be wrong. She might be totally right. You know, as I like to say, I will die on this fence. I will happily just say that, like, look, if you think that God exists because of this reason or that reason, I'll say I think that's bullshit. And I don't think that works. But I can't say that the conclusion itself is true or false. Right. Like, if you think that the Gospels are 100% historically reliable, I'll say I think you're wrong. I think that's just not true.

[Host 1]

Right.

[Alex O'Connor]

If you say you think Christianity is true, I'd be like, okay, then maybe it is, you know, but tell me why you think that and we'll get.

[Host 1]

Into the weeds and does it matter why it does?

[Alex O'Connor]

Because, I mean, well, it doesn't on the level of, like, society or whatever. Like, if you're a Christian because your parents were Christian and.

[Host 1]

Or what about us being emotivists?

[Alex O'Connor]

Well, emotivism is about ethics, so it's about what you think is right or wrong.

[Host 1]

Oh, okay.

[Alex O'Connor]

We're talking here about, like, what's just true and false.

[Host 1]

Oh, I. Yeah, some people.

[Alex O'Connor]

I've tried to apply motivism to that in the past, but it gets a bit Complicated. But there's ethical emotivism, which is just a linguistic claim about what good and bad mean, which is like, expression of emotion. And this is just about what you think is true and false, you know? And most of my interest at the moment lies in New Testament studies and digging into the New Testament. And a lot of people just don't know what's in there. They've just got no clue.

[Host 1]

Can you talk to us like we've never heard a single thing about Christianity?

[Alex O'Connor]

Sure.

[Host 1]

So the Gospels.

[Alex O'Connor]

So there are four Gospels. Gospels, you. Galeon in Greek just means good news.

[Host 1]

Okay.

[Alex O'Connor]

So the beginning of the Gospel of Mark says the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ.

[Host 1]

So these are the stories of Jesus Christ, and it's good news.

[Alex O'Connor]

It's just people saying, like, good news. I've got some good news to share with you.

[Host 1]

Yeah.

[Alex O'Connor]

And there are four gospels in the Bible. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The Mark is probably the earliest written around 70 AD, so 40 years after Jesus died. And you've got Matthew and Luke, which are written 10, 15 years after that, and John's gospel, which is written 10 to maybe like 10, 15 years after that. Still, all of that is disputed. You know, dating is a very, very difficult thing to do. And they all tell stories about the things that Jesus said and did. Three of those gospels rely heavily on each other. They're all interconnected. They're called the Synoptic Gospels. Matthew, Mark, and Luke. John's Gospel is, like, on its own. It seems to have its own sources, its own individual.

[Host 1]

Godfather three. Yeah, got it.

[Alex O'Connor]

That one's a little fuzzy. So what you've actually got is the Bible. But Bible just means, like, library. That's where we get, like, biblio. Anything, you know, bibliotech or whatever. It means like, book or library or something like that. And so it's a library of books. It's lots of books. So when somebody says, oh, that's just because the Bible says that. The Bible is a collection of texts.

[Host 1]

So you have to refer to which text is saying that.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah. But also it means that if you've got four different texts which all say the same thing, you haven't just got. Oh, it's just the Bible that says that. It's like. No, you've got four independent accounts which all say the same thing. So there's a lot more, like, evidence of history in the Gospels, and people give them credit for. There are some stories that only appear in one of the Gospels, and none of the others, they might have happened, we don't know. But if you've got stories that are independently attested in every single one of them, especially if you've got other reasons to think that they wouldn't be made up, it's a good reason to think that they're historically true.

[Host 1]

Now, you said real quick, the synaptic.

[Alex O'Connor]

Synoptic.

[Host 1]

So synoptic gospels rely on each other.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yep.

[Host 1]

So does that mean that, like, one thing could have been written in one and then kind of paraphrase another?

[Alex O'Connor]

So Mark's Gospel is the shortest and it. Most people think it came first. Around 95% or so of Mark's Gospel is also in Matthew and Luke, like word for word. And Matthew and Luke add extra stuff.

[Host 1]

But do you work off of marks, for example?

[Alex O'Connor]

I prefer to work off marks when I'm looking at the historical Jesus because it's the earliest report. The earliest thing in the New Testament is actually Paul's letters. You've heard about, like, 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, and these kinds of things. These are letters that Paul writes to various churches, and these are actually the earliest sources. And what year is that again? It's disputed, but probably around like, 50 A.D. something like that.

[Host 1]

So 50 years after the death of Christ.

[Alex O'Connor]

20 years after Christ.

[Host 1]

Yeah, right, right. Because it's 33. Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. Got it. So he's like, listen, these things happened. I'm going to tell you exactly.

[Alex O'Connor]

But Paul is not writing a biography of Jesus. Paul is writing letters to churches telling them, like, how to organize themselves, what the theology should be, all of this kind of stuff. It's only later that you get these biographies. So you've also got different genres in the New Testament. The Gospels are biographies that tell the life and times of Jesus. Paul is writing letters to people. You've got Revelation, which is this apocalyptic vision that John of Patmos has, and writes all about it. But the Gospels are most interesting to me because you've got these four different accounts, and sometimes they subtly differ from each other, and you figure out what you can learn about these different things. So, like, you know who John the Baptist is?

[Host 1]

I've heard the name, but what is he?

[Alex O'Connor]

So a lot of people have heard of him but don't know anything about him. John the Baptist baptizes Jesus, and it's at the beginning of all four of the Gospels. This is something that they wouldn't make up, because if you're writing a story about Jesus and you're trying to present this man as The Son of God, maybe God himself. It makes very little sense for him to be baptized by another known preacher. And so the fact that they all included it means that it must be something that actually happened.

[Host 1]

Right.

[Alex O'Connor]

So we have this historical fact about John the Baptist, which is kind of.

[Host 1]

Interesting because you're saying people at the time would refute it because this is written at a time where John the Baptist could potentially still be.

[Alex O'Connor]

Have. Still would have been around, but also like, they wouldn't have made it up if it didn't happen. They wouldn't make it up. It's called the. Sometimes called like the criterion of embarrassment. If you include something that's kind of embarrassing or doesn't look good for you.

[Host 1]

Right off the entire.

[Alex O'Connor]

It's like in Matthew's Gospel at the end of when Jesus appears to his disciples. Matthew's gospel says that the twelve disciples saw him and they worshipped, but some of them doubted, which is like not something that the author would make up.

[Host 1]

That's even more believable.

[Alex O'Connor]

Exactly.

[Host 1]

That's really sophisticated storytelling. If I was to lie, I would write that in.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah, that's the thing. But you wouldn't want people to think if you're trying to present Jesus as the son of God, this is him. You wouldn't make up a story that some of his closest disciples doubted that Entering Jerusalem on a donkey, like having.

[Host 1]

This sort of, I guess, like low.

[Alex O'Connor]

Status entrance for a messiah. The gospels do actually want to paint Jesus as like, as like this humble servant. And the entering in on the donkey is a callback to an Old Testament prophecy about, like about riding in on a donkey.

[Alex]

So that could be made up.

[Alex O'Connor]

You could read that as like it's either made up to try and fit Jesus within, like the Old Testament. The Old Testament and it's made up. Sorry for that reason. Or you could say that Jesus did actually do it, but that he did it knowing that he was.

[Host 1]

He's doing a callback, but they're calling.

[Alex O'Connor]

Him the son of David. There are also other reasons why people might dispute things. So for example, riding into town, into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, and there's people lining the streets. Hosanna in the highest. A lot of people think that if this event actually occurred, Jesus would have just been arrested, like in an instant. A lot of people just are just like, there's no way this could have happened historically. Just because Jesus would have been arrested, like the Romans would have been like, what on earth is going on here? This man is like being worshipped. He needs to Be arrested. So there are all kinds of ways you can try and figure out whether these stories actually happened or whether they didn't. And I find them all extremely interesting. And they can also tell us about the communities at the time. So John's gospel.

[Host 1]

Sorry to interrupt real quick about coming back in on donkey. Isn't that like the least attention seeking version of coming back in? Like if you roll back in on like a white horse, then maybe people go, yo, Jesus is back. But if you come back in humbly on the donkey, maybe nobody even notices.

[Alex]

All the celebrations, I think is what he's saying.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yes.

[Host 1]

Celebrating him as he was coming back in.

[Alex O'Connor]

As he's coming in, like people are lining the streets. And the fact that it means something to the high priest of Jerusalem.

[Host 1]

Yeah, they'll got it.

[Alex O'Connor]

Okay. And he's doing it on a feast day, I'm sure.

[Host 1]

So he's making a celebration. This is like the Yankees win the World Series. This is the parade.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yes. This is around the time of the parcel.

[Host 1]

And your observation on that is that that would not be smart given how much hysteria would cause. And it would put him in a particular.

[Alex O'Connor]

But Jesus was no stranger to doing things which aren't smart. Like he was happy to put himself in danger, but it's more like it probably didn't happen because that's probably when he would have been arrested.

[Host 1]

Got it. And he doesn't get arrested.

[Alex O'Connor]

He doesn't get arrested. Don't know.

[Host 1]

Therefore that might not have happened.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah, that's one reason to think that it might not have happened.

[Host 1]

But you were saying something, I think, about Mark. And then we got.

[Alex O'Connor]

So John the Baptist is mentioned at the beginning of all of the gospels and John's Gospel in particular. It opens by really emphasizing that John the Baptist is not the Messiah. It opens saying, like, there was a man called John and he was not himself. The light. He was making way for the light. And then people come up to John the Baptist and they say, are you the Messiah? And he says, no, I'm not the Messiah. And he's saying, and there's this real emphasis, like the author of John's Gospel is telling us, John the Baptist is not the Messiah. What does that mean? It gives us a clue that there were people at the time of the writing of John's Gospel who thought that John the Baptist was the Messiah. And John the Baptist is a really important figure in Christianity. Jesus in the gospels calls him the greatest man ever born of a woman is John the Baptist.

[Host 1]

He had to leave a little Jordan for him, that's fire.

[Alex O'Connor]

But a lot of Christians say like, oh, well, obviously Jesus was excluding himself. And you would say that as a Christian. But for me, I'm reading that, I'm like, are you sure about that? Because I think Jesus was a disciple of John the Baptist. I think that's who Jesus historically was. John the Baptist is preaching all the gospels. Say if you read like Mark's gospel, which is the earliest. Let's look at the earliest source. It will say right there in the very earliest source that John the Baptist is in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. What does that mean? No one really knows. But we know that he's doing some kind of water ritual for people of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. That's obviously something that Jesus picks up with the whole forgiveness of sins things. Right. But Christians will say, well, yeah, I mean, he wasn't. He didn't have the authority to forgive people's sins. He was just like announcing the forgiveness of sins. Like, priests would often do this. They would say to people, your sins are forgiven. They're not forgiven.

[Host 1]

Was John the Baptist a rabbi at the time?

[Alex O'Connor]

He was. He was like a preacher in the wilderness. He was probably. He was like the son of a priest.

[Host 1]

Was he religious?

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah, so he would have been Jewish.

[Host 1]

So he's. Okay, got it.

[Alex O'Connor]

But there's some, like, we don't actually know very much about him is the thing. But we know from Luke's gospel.

[Host 1]

Although when I hear priests, I think Christianity rather.

[Alex O'Connor]

But this is pre Christianity. That's what I'm saying.

[Host 1]

So he would be a rabbi or some form of religious scholar.

[Alex O'Connor]

Like a spirit? No, as in the father would have been like a spirit.

[Host 1]

John the Baptist.

[Alex O'Connor]

John the Baptist would have. Yeah, just. Yeah, just a spiritual guru. Yeah, a guru.

[Host 1]

A rebel to the synagogue.

[Alex O'Connor]

This is what often people think.

[Alex]

GU Tour dates. This weekend I'm going to be in Cincinnati, Ohio. Liberty Township specifically. I'm going to be there Thursday through Friday at the funny bone. Then September 11th through the 13th, I'm going to be in Dania Beach, Florida. That is far from any. Who wants to blow up Florida? What kind of person would do such a thing? So it's a safe show to come through. Be there September 25th and 27th. I'm rounding out my Ohio tour in Cleveland. October 5th, Dubai. Hurry up and buy those tickets. They're selling out. We might have to move to a bigger venue or figure something out. But right now we're about to sell out and then all those dates and more. Akash Singh.com we got big things getting announced soon, guys.

[Alex O'Connor]

Big things.

[Alex]

Also, Mark has tour dates you can suck his dick in Montreal, Toronto or Detroit. Those dates respectively are August 22, August 23 and December 6. Why is there such a big gap? I don't know. Tour bookers, get your shit together. Comedy clubs, get your shit together. This guy got three open months. What is that? September, October, November. Book the man markagnon live.com so John.

[Alex O'Connor]

The Baptist is described as wearing camel skin and eating locusts and honey, and he lives in the wilderness like he's this ascetic outcast. And there are all kinds of reasons why that could be the case. There's a book by a scholar called John McGrath who talks about John the Baptist and he thinks it might have something to do with some conflict with his priestly father and ending up like running out into the wilderness. But John is preaching this, this, this philosophy and it says that all of Judea were coming to him. He's this extremely popular Jewish preacher, and people are coming to him and he's baptizing them for the repentance of sins. And then Jesus comes along and John is saying, there's one coming who's greater than I and I'm not worthy to untie his sandal strap. And then Jesus shows up and he's like, oh, here he is. This is the guy. And then he baptizes Jesus and the heavens open up and God says, this is my son with whom I'm well pleased. And that's the start of Jesus ministry. So that's the Christian version that you get in the Gospels. That's going to be history mixed with myth. In my view, Jesus was a follower of John the Baptist because all the gospels report that he was baptized by him, which they wouldn't make up. And you've constantly got these ideas of Jesus saying, like Jesus talks about how the greatest students will one day come to surpass their teachers. And Jesus is talking about, Jesus is saying this to his disciples. And he also at one point says that to his disciples that they will do greater things than I, so you will do even greater things than I. So of implying that there's some kind of baton to be passed on. Now, Christians will dispute this. They won't like this at all, because Jesus is the guy. But I'm thinking, historically, it seems like anything that Jesus does which he seems to get from the father, he is willing to give to his disciples. So in John 20:21 onwards, Jesus says to his disciples after he's risen from the dead, as the Father has sent me, I'm sending you. And he breathes on them, says, receive the Holy Spirit. If you go and forgive anyone's sins, they're forgiven. If you do not forgive them, then their sins are retained. So Jesus seems to give the disciples the ability to forgive sins, and he does it by breathing the Spirit on them at the baptism. John the Baptist, who's preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, baptizes Jesus. And what happens? The Spirit comes into Jesus at the baptism. And so it seems like there is this analogue between what's happening to Jesus and what Jesus is then giving to his disciples.

[Host 1]

Like vampires now?

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah, why not? If you speak to a Christian, they're going to come up and they're going to be like, alex doesn't know what he's talking about. Like, this is all not. But, like, I understand that that's not the Christian interpretation, but this is how I'm reading these.

[Host 1]

You're analyzing it from historical record.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah, but also, like, even, like, if you're looking at the historical Jesus, this is a particular viewpoint. It's not like a given. This is just my understanding. But it is worth pointing out that this is something that people need to sort of realize. There are lots of different views on.

[Host 1]

Even within the Gospels.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah, yeah. Because the Gospels were saying all kinds of different stuff, and they give us all kinds of different clues into interesting facts about Jesus.

[Host 1]

Can I ask one question about John the Baptist real quick? You said he was popular at the time.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah, extremely.

[Host 1]

Is there, like, writings about him specifically? Is there a historical account? How popular? Hundreds of people. Thousands of people.

[Alex O'Connor]

Well, the Gospels say all of Judea was coming to him, which is obviously an exaggeration, but it means, like, lots and lots of people. Also, when Herod Antipas, King of Judea, like, first hears about Jesus, this is again, in the Gospels, he hears about this guy, Jesus, who's going around causing a ruckus, and he says, this is John the Baptist resurrected. Because John the Baptist gets beheaded in the Gospels, by the way. And so who must John the Baptist have been that when he hears about Jesus, he goes, oh, that's another John the Baptist. John the Baptist must have been doing something.

[Host 1]

It must have been a nuisance.

[Alex O'Connor]

Are there any texts about John the Baptist? Kind of. There is a. There is a gnostic group called the Mandaeans who still exist today in small numbers, and they believe that John the Baptist is their last and most important Prophet. They think Jesus is a false prophet, and John the Baptist is, like, their central figure. They historically claim to be part of the original following of John the Baptist. Anthropologically, that's probably not the case. Most of them were living in Iraq until the Iraq War, and now their numbers have completely dwindled. These guys have their own literature. You can read it online. It's the Mandaean Book of John. And they retell the story of the baptism. So Jesus comes to John the Baptist, and they have a bit of an argument. And John the Baptist doesn't want to baptize Jesus, not because he's unworthy, but because he knows that Jesus is going to be trouble. He's like, no. And they have an argument about it, and he has a go at him. He starts saying that you've loosened the Sabbath and you've brought disgrace to these people and you've upset the Jews or disgraced the Jews or something like this and have essentially a bit of a debate. He doesn't want to baptize him. Now, is this a historical source? Like, probably not, but it tells us something that people believe, which is this view of who John the Baptist was and that Jesus was a false preacher and sort of one of his followers gone awry. I find that really interesting. Right. Because the most interesting things for me.

[Host 1]

John's a rebel, and then the next dude is even more of a rebel.

[Alex O'Connor]

We know that Jesus is definitely a rebel. Right? I mean, why wouldn't John the Baptist have apostles or people that would be.

[Host 1]

Martyred in that way?

[Alex O'Connor]

Because. So firstly, he did have, like, followers. He does have disciples. I think Jesus was one of them. But also, even in the gospels, two of Jesus's disciples are sort of poached from John the Baptist.

[Host 1]

So two of Jesus disciples were originally John the Baptist?

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah. In fact, it's at the baptism that John says, look, this is the man. Go and follow him. Then they go and follow Jesus.

[Host 1]

Isn't this. I don't want to say this is every religion, but, like, isn't the same thing happened kind of with Mormonism, where you got. Who's the main guy?

[Alex O'Connor]

Joseph Smith.

[Host 1]

Joseph goes, hey, we got to do this. And then he even dies before they get to Salt Lake City. But the next guy.

[Alex O'Connor]

That's right.

[Host 1]

Takes it. By the way, Scientology is, you know.

[Alex O'Connor]

Do you know who the first ever US Presidential candidate to be assassinated while running for office was? While running for office? While running for office was Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon religion. He was running for president at the time.

[Host 1]

While he was traveling out to Salt Lake City.

[Alex O'Connor]

That's right. So they were. They were sort of Mormonism.

[Host 1]

Mormons might be on or something.

[Alex O'Connor]

Mormonism is.

[Host 1]

I don't want to get us distracted.

[Alex O'Connor]

No, it's absolutely fascinating, man. Because it's such a wacky story, like the history and because it's relatively recent, it's like 1800s. There's more records. We know certain things happen. So we know that Joseph Smith claims to receive these golden plates. He's told by the angel Moroni, go and dig up these golden plates. The golden plates exist because in ancient Israel, just before the Babylonian captivity, some Jews, some Israelites were warned. And so they fled and they built boats and they sailed to America, Jersey. And they had entire civilizations. The Garden of Eden was in Jackson County, Missouri. They have an entire. They have an entire civilization. They were like. I'm talking like Lord of the Rings, like battles and wars and societies and all this kind of stuff. And then the very last person, the very last. The very last Nephite, I think, might be getting some of this wrong. I think this is actually the Son of Mormon, but Mormon's the one who, like, puts it all together. So sort of writes down the record of his people on these golden plates and buries them because he's the last of his kind. And then Joseph Smith is in upstate New York, and God says to him, hey, man, go and find these plates. So Joseph Smith has these plates, and they're written in something which is called reformed hieroglyphics. So they look a bit like Egyptian hieroglyphics. And Joseph Smith can miraculously translate them. And the way that he does it is not by looking at the plates. Puts the plates aside. He takes his hat. He takes a special kind of stone called a seer stone. He puts the seer stone in the hat. He puts his head into the hat, and the stone starts glowing and translating what's on the golden plates. And he starts dictating. He starts saying it out loud. Someone starts writing it.

[Host 1]

Fire.

[Alex]

And he's the only one who can see it.

[Alex O'Connor]

He's the only one that can see the translation. There are.

[Alex]

He's the only one who can see it glowing?

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah. He's got his head in the hat, right? Yeah.

[Host 1]

And you can see they never showed anyone the golden plates.

[Alex O'Connor]

There are something like 11, maybe 13 witnesses to the golden plates. Oh, there actually, if you read the Book of Mormon, it opens with the testimony of the 13 witnesses to the golden plates. Apart from that, nobody saw them. But the funny thing is it sounds really wacky, but what I love about what Mormons can do is they go to Christians and Christians are like, this is the most ridiculous false prophet nonsense, whatever. And they're like, oh, really? So how many eyewitness testimony, written accounts you have to the resurrection? Oh, oh, you've got none. You've just got a few secondhand accounts. Oh, because we've got, we've got 13 eyewitnesses signed, like affidavit, like, written down, testimonies of people who were still alive and were questioned by like, the press about it.

[Host 1]

Yeah.

[Alex O'Connor]

And like one of the guys who, like one of the guys who swore that he saw the golden plates later falls out with Joseph Smith is kicked out of the Mormon Church. Now, there's some debate about this because one of them sort of says, well, he saw them with his spiritual eyes, which kind of means it might have been a vision. But then there are. He's asked about that and he says, look, gentlemen, look at your hands as truly as you see your hands. I saw those plates. Right. So there's all of this going on. Right. So Joseph Smith then like founds this, this religion off the. Of the basis of it. And they don't like being called Mormons because Mormon is the name of one of their. I think he's. I guess he's a prophet, but he's like the guy that collates the Book of Mormon. They are members of the church. Jesus Christ.

[Alex]

Islamist or something.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah, yeah. Or like calling them a Mohammedan, probably. It's more similar, which is what they used to call Muslims because they sort of misunderstood what they were all about. And. But yeah, like, they sort of flip and flop about whether it's okay to call them Mormons because it's a bit clunky to say member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Life Saint or Latter Day Saint. Right. So Joseph Smith, they're sort of, they're setting up communities and they're trying to find somewhere to set up their community. So they're traveling around the United States and when they get to Missouri, they cause such a problem. In Missouri, there is something called, I think it's called the Missouri Executive Order 45 or something, otherwise known as, like, the Mormon Extermination Order, which is where the governor of Missouri, based on some, like, inflated reports about what the Mormons were doing, gets so, like, worried and paranoid about them that he start that he issues an order to exterminate Mormons to drive them out of the land by force, which basically means that you could just like, kill Mormons. You just, like, go Mormon hunting because he wanted them gone. They were causing such a problem in the United States. There was a law passed, an executive order that said we're just going to kill Mormons and drive them out of our land. Kill white people. Which is like.

[Host 1]

Yeah, that's not shocking for me. That's lightweight right there. It's just like, the worst thing America did. You would say 1800.

[Alex O'Connor]

You wouldn't believe. It's just wild.

[Host 1]

Don't take us too far away from Jesus. I want to.

[Alex O'Connor]

Oh, sure, okay. But, yeah, we can definitely get back to Jesus. But Joseph Smith, eventually. So part of the. When he decides to run for president, part of his running campaign is that he wants to annex Texas because he wants to make Texas, like the. The land for the Mormon people. So that's part of his. That's part of his thing. And eventually. So, you know, Mormons are into, like, polygamy. Yeah, they were. Now, if you're. If you're a polygamist, you can't be a Mormon. Like, it's. It's anathema to them. In, like, the 1980s or something, they finally said it's not right. But they got. One of the problem reasons they got in so much trouble with the US Government was because they had multiple wives. And that was. That was seen as totally wrong. And so Joseph Smith is now. I can't remember which state he's in when he actually. When he actually dies. I think it. It might be. It might be Illinois, but I'm not sure about that. I think he dies in Illinois. He dies in Illinois. I think that's Missouri's, like, the third spot they end up. Correct. Yeah, they've sort of been all over the place. And I think Illinois is where. Is where he gets. Is where he gets killed. You just Google it and. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, maybe. Okay, great.

[Alex]

They just kept getting kicked out of places.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah, they keep getting kicked out of.

[Alex]

Like, the Christian Jews.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah, seriously. But this is the thing. So Mormons will point out that they have a history of, like, persecution, and people sort of don't know about this. You know, it's quite amazing because I debate Christians quite a lot, and they talk about how amazing it was that Christianity grew from just a small group of people to taking over the Roman Empire. And I'm like, the sociologist Rodney Stark calculated that in the first, like, two or 300 years, I think after the birth of Christianity, the growth rate that they experience is exactly the same as the Mormon Church. And then people Say, yeah, but they would be impersonal, executed by the Roman Empire. I'm like, have you heard of the Missouri Extermination?

[Host 1]

All right, guys, we're taking a break for a second. Okay? If you are a renter, you need to listen up right now. If you have not already joined bilt, you need to, okay, this is why most of us rack up points on groceries, travel, nearly everything else. Why are you not earning points on your biggest monthly expense with might, which might be your rent? I'm about to tell you about the best hack that you can start taking advantage of today. Okay? Paying rent with BILT unlocks flexible points that can be redeemed towards hundreds of hotels, airlines, future rent payments, your next lift ride, student loan balances, more. But here's where it gets even better. BILT isn't just about the points. They're actually helping you build credit. Yes, you can build your credit by reporting your rent payments to credit bureaus. They're going to do that for free. That's huge. If you're trying to buy a house or you just want to improve your credit score. And when you're ready to buy a home, you can redeem the bill points that you've been paying your rent religiously and you can apply those to the down payment of that home I mentioned. The bill points can be converted to your favorite airline miles and hotel points from around the world. And I really mean some of the biggest players in the industry. United, Southwest, Hyatt, Marriott, and more. Your rank can literally help you pay for your next vacation. So if you're paying rent, BILL can reward you for it no matter where you live or who your landlord is. So start paying rent through bill today by going to joinbill.com flagrant that is J-O-I-N B-I-L-T.com flagrant. Now let's get back to the show. All right, guys, let's take a break for a second because we just got some great news. First of all, today's sponsor is Kraken, your go to for everything investing across crypto and ST. I just want to point that out, okay? Over 11,000 US stocks and ETFs and over 350 different cryptocurrencies that you can choose to invest in. They are a company that has weathered the storm. They are still around here. They were not struggling when crypto fell off a cliff. Okay? They held all your money, they protected all your money and now you're making crazy money. Just stepped in. I think Grok Jamil just told us that Grok said yes, that bitcoin could be hitting $150,000.

[Alex O'Connor]

And Grok's never been wrong. Yeah.

[Host 1]

Never.

[Alex]

By the end of the summer.

[Host 1]

Yes.

[Alex]

All of you.

[Host 1]

Oh, by the end of the summer.

[Alex]

That's what you said, right?

[Alex O'Connor]

End of the year. End of the year.

[Host 1]

Damn. Damn.

[Alex O'Connor]

It's a different calendar.

[Alex]

150K.

[Host 1]

All right, so you're taking. You're taking your money out of ETFs, and you're dumping into Bitcoin. No.

[Alex]

This guy. 7% cuck over here.

[Host 1]

7%, dude. Nah. You divert.

[Alex O'Connor]

Diversify.

[Host 1]

You get a bunch of different things.

[Alex]

My only regret is I didn't know about cracking earlier, and I lost a lot of bitcoin. Shittier platforms.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Alex]

But I'm back up, baby.

[Alex O'Connor]

Went back up.

[Alex]

Even with all that I lost, I lost, like, 30 of my Bitcoin. I'm back up. That's crazy. What an investment.

[Host 1]

This is crazy.

[Alex]

You. You on me all the time.

[Host 1]

I know bitcoin. I know. I was so. You know what it's been like. I've been right and wrong. You got to have it both ways.

[Alex]

You got to shit on me, and you got to make money.

[Host 1]

Oh, so I should be happy about that? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Alex]

You got to have your cake and eat it, too.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah.

[Host 1]

I remember after that first Pomp episode, I remember coming back. We're in Miami. I went back home, I woke my wife up, and I said, babe, we got to take all of our money and we gotta dump it. I swear to God in my life, I said that My wife will confirm that if you guys want. I said, we gotta put it all into bitcoin. And you know what?

[Alex O'Connor]

We should.

[Host 1]

If it's so rich. It would have been rough. Yeah, it would've been rough for a little bit. But then I would have multiple times of saying, I told you so. She would also have, I told you so.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah.

[Host 1]

So this is, like, everybody's happy. Bitcoin really is the best thing for a relationship. It's the great equalizer. It really is. Yeah. So shout out Shytoshi, Nagamaki or whatever.

[Alex]

Whoever stole my bitcoin, if you'd like to give it back, that'd be awesome.

[Host 1]

Was it a. Oh, it was a steal.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah. I lost both.

[Alex]

I lost in every way possible.

[Host 1]

You have too much confidence in your knowledge of, like, technology and just my.

[Alex]

Ability to do anything correctly.

[Host 1]

Yeah, yeah. You have to do what I do. I outsource. Source every text message I get where they're like, your Twitter has been hacked. I send it to Tanya and then I let Tanya look at it, and then her Twitter gets hacked. You know, like, I just go, what is this? I don't trust anything.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah, yeah.

[Host 1]

You know what I mean?

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah, yeah.

[Host 1]

You got too much trust. We're old. We don't know how to use technology.

[Alex]

I can't do it anyway.

[Host 1]

Kraken has a special offer going on for the Flagrant fan. You sign up at Kraken mobile [e-mail] flagrant use the code flagrant25. You're going to get free bitcoin crack and invest in everything all in one app. Let's get it. Remember, this is not investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss and is offered to U.S. customers, excluding Washington, New York and Maine through PayWord Interactive, Inc. Now, let's get back to the show.

[Alex O'Connor]

There is a newspaper in Illinois that criticizes Joseph Smith for his polygamous practices. I think at this point, Joseph Smith is the governor of some kind of province of Illinois. And so he decides to shut down the newspaper because he doesn't like the criticism. So he bans it. Then there's a riot because he's suppressed this newspaper. Then Joseph Smith institutes martial law because of the riots, and then he flees. And then I think the governor of Illinois says, okay, Joseph Smith, you've got to come back. You're going to face trial. You keep you fine, but you got to come back. So Joseph Smith goes back, he gets put in prison. And then this big angry mob descend on the prison, and they break into the prison, they shoot his brother in the face. His brother says, I'm a dead man. And then he dies. And then Joseph Smith tries to escape out of a window. They shoot him. He falls out of the window onto the floor, and they shoot him dead again. So he dies in what is essentially a prison shootout. And for the Mormons, this is a site of religious martyrdom. So you can now go to that prison. It's now owned by the Latter Day Saints, and it's the site that they go to as the point of martyrs and for their prophet. There it is. There's the house. So Joseph Smith was killed falling out of that window. There's a wow, there he is. A big mob show up and kill him. So Joseph Smith becomes like a martyr, and that's that. And then there's your typical religious, like, succession crisis. Who's going to take over? I think there's a point where, like, I think it's Brigham Young who's giving a speech saying, I should be the leader. And, like, multiple people report seeing him, like, transfigure into the likeness of Joseph Smith. There's all kinds of wacky stuff going on. And. Yeah, like, it sounds kind of insane, but is that any more insane than some of the Christian stories that we hear?

[Host 1]

But it was farther ago.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah, exactly.

[Host 1]

We have this feeling. So much better.

[Alex O'Connor]

Of course, people sort of go like, oh, but that's ridiculous. As if God would appear to someone in upstate New York. That's ridiculous. It's like. Well, that's how it sounded. Like God being born in Nazareth.

[Host 1]

Yeah.

[Alex O'Connor]

People saying in the Gospels, like, is this not Joseph's son? Is this not the guy from Nazareth? Does anything good come from Nazareth? They're saying the same thing.

[Host 1]

They're talking about it like Staten Island.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah, they actually are. Yeah. Seriously, though, that's what's going on.

[Host 1]

Why is. Did Nazareth have a reputation of just.

[Alex O'Connor]

Like, a nowhere town, Fentanyl town? Like, the Jews are expecting a messiah and the Messiah. Like, there are different views on what the Messiah was going to be. But the sort of general line on this is that they were expecting people because at the time, they're being persecuted by Rome, so they are awaiting their Messiah to liberate them from who will come and liberate. So they're expecting, like, this military leader who's gonna lead them into battle against Rome and they're gonna win.

[Host 1]

They got a hippie.

[Alex O'Connor]

They got a hippie. Exactly.

[Host 1]

So was he really a hippie, or is that kind of the way.

[Alex O'Connor]

That depends what you mean by a hippie. Like, he was pretty. Like, he wasn't just like a sort of. Yeah. Peace and love man.

[Host 1]

Kind of badass a little bit.

[Alex O'Connor]

He said some pretty serious stuff and did some serious things.

[Host 1]

Political, revolutionary. Flipping the table.

[Alex O'Connor]

But, yeah, flipping the table. He goes into the temple and he. In John's gospel, he makes a cord. He, like, puts some cords together and, like. And, like, turns it into a whip and goes around like. Like, with a whip, driving people out of the temple because they're trading in his father's house. He also says some pretty serious stuff. He says, like, if anybody does not hate their mother and their father and their brother and sister, they cannot be my disciple.

[Host 1]

If anyone does not hate them.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah. Because hatred can kind of mean in this context, like, preference. Like, it's used as a.

[Host 1]

If you prefer them.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah. So it's one of these slightly mystifying passages, but a lot of it has to do with, like, how These words are understood and used at the time, so it means something. So to say that you hate someone can mean that, like, comparatively, you prefer me. So he's saying that you have to put me above your friends and family, which is very sort of cult y. But the problem with cults is that they're wrong. That's the problem with the cult is that they're not actually true. If the cult is true, then that probably is what you should do. Right? So, yeah, Jesus is a complicated figure who does all kinds of different stuff, but his main message is one of love. You make the claim in the Jubilee video that Christ doesn't claim to ever be God. That's what I think. And that's controversial too, amongst Christians. If you say Jesus, Jesus never even claimed to be God, even in the Gospels, they'll look at you like, you've said, a triangle has four sides in biblical scholarship. This has been a very mainstream opinion for the past few hundred years.

[Host 1]

And why do you believe that?

[Alex O'Connor]

Because there's no instance in the Gospels where I think Jesus is claiming to be God. Christians think that they have examples, but I think that all of them don't actually apply.

[Host 1]

What are your examples and what are theirs?

[Alex O'Connor]

So there are constantly examples of Jesus seeming to separate himself from the Father, where he says, the Father is greater than I am, and stuff like this. And people rattle these off. The problem, devoid of any context, it's difficult to know what they even mean. So Christians will point to verses like when Jesus says In John, chapter 10, he says, the Father and I are one. And when his disciple Philip asks him, when do we get to see the Father? He says to Philip, anyone who's seen me has seen the Father. And Christians point to that, and they say, see, he's claiming to be God. But you just got to keep reading. He says to Philip, anyone has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, show us the Father? Don't you know that the Father is in me and I'm in the Father? Interesting skip to John, chapter 17, where Jesus is praying for his disciples and then for all of his Christian believers. And he prays. He's praying to the Father, and he says, I hope that they will all one day be in us, just as I am in you and you are in me. I hope that they will be in us and we'll all sort of be one together, I hope. Yeah, like he prays like that. Yeah, like he's sort of praying for that to happen in the future. Right. So whatever relationship Jesus has With the Father there and being in him and him and him in him, it's something that he at least wants the disciples to one day achieve. So if that's Jesus claiming to be identical to Yahweh, the God Yahweh, then he must think that that's something that's.

[Host 1]

Available to the church, to the rest of us.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah, that doesn't make sense. So we've got to reinterpret that first. Okay, like this is in John's Gospel as well. Like, and the interesting thing is that most of these important Christological claims only appear in John's gospel.

[Host 1]

And John's is the latest. John's is the latest, which you said has potential.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah, so there's already reason to think it's, that's less historically reliable because also the fact that Jesus is making these claims in front of all of his disciples. And if in John's Gospel he makes explicit claims to be God, like in John chapter eight, he says to his Jewish opponents before Abraham was I am. And I am is supposed to be like a callback to the name of God in the Old Testament. And he's claimed to be pre existent because he exists before Abraham. And a lot of Christians say this is claiming to be God. And the first question that you should ask is, okay, if Jesus actually said this and he did actually mean that by it, did the other Gospel authors just not think it was an important detail if Jesus like said in the full view of his opponents and his disciples, I am God?

[Host 1]

Yeah, you'd think.

[Alex O'Connor]

And the other authors like, and people say to me, well I think that the, the other Gospel authors were sort of focusing on different things. Well, it's. So they just neglected to mention the point where Jesus said I'm God. So I don't think he historically said this, but I also don't think that means what Christians think it means for some quite interesting techy reasons. So there are two elements of the I am statement here. Like In John chapter 8, Jesus is speaking to his Jewish opponents and they say, and he's talking about eternal life. And they say, well, our father Abraham, he died. Are you saying you're greater than him? And he says, Jesus says, Abraham rejoiced to see my day. And the Jews say, you're not even 80 years old and Abraham has seen you, you've seen Abraham. And he goes, truly I tell you before Abraham was I am. At which point they pick up stones to stone him to death. So the Christians say they knew he was committing blasphem. They knew he was claiming to be God. That's why they tried to stone him to death. There are a few interesting things that need to be pulled out of this. Right. The New Testament is written in Greek. So what Jesus actually says there is before Abraham was ego ami, which means I am. That is also a phrase that can just mean like, it's me. It's a very normal phrase that is used in Greek. So in the next chapter, Jesus heals a blind man. The blind man runs into town and they say, isn't this the man who was born blind? And the man says, ego, Amy, it's me. Yeah, so sometimes it can mean that, but in this context, it's a little bit weird because he uses it in the present tense. He says, before Abraham was I am, or it's me or something like that. People think that. What's going on here?

[Host 1]

Ebonics in the old Ebonics. No, no, he's just going, I'm him.

[Alex O'Connor]

Oh, right.

[Host 1]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Alex O'Connor]

I actually kind of think that's basically what is going on, actually.

[Host 1]

Like, uneducated.

[Alex O'Connor]

No, no, I mean, like when. You know, that sort of like I' him kind of. I think some of the, like, son of man statements kind of approximate, but whatever. In the Old Testament, in the book of Exodus, which is written in Hebrew, Moses is talking to God and God says to. And God, like, is. Is speaking to him through the burning bush and all this kind of stuff. And Moses says, when I go back to my people, who shall I tell them sent me? Like, what's your name? And God says a, I am that I am, or I am who I am. So go and tell them that I am has sent you, you Ayesha Asher Ayesha, go and tell them that Ayesha has sent you. And so when Jesus says, before Abraham was I am, he is invoking the name that God gave himself in Exodus, which is I am. So that. That's the line. That's why they think that's the case. I'm suspicious of this for a few reasons. Firstly, it can also just be a normal statement. So let's figure out which one's going on here. The Old Testament is written in Hebrew mostly. And this passage, Ersha Asher, Ersha means something like I am that I am. But the New Testament's written in Greek. So the people who wrote the New Testament were using a Greek translation of the Old Testament, right?

[Host 1]

Oh, got it. They're writing, consuming the Hebrew, they're consuming the Greek.

[Alex O'Connor]

And it's well known. We have good evidence that the New Testament authors are using a translation of the Old Testament called the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament. So we know that that is their Old Testament.

[Host 1]

So asia asha asia translates to in.

[Alex O'Connor]

Greek, ego ami ho on is so. So this is where it gets really interesting. In the Greek version, if you read the Septuagint, God doesn't say the same thing twice. So in Hebrew he says, I am that I am. It's the same thing twice. And then he says, go and tell them that I am has sent you. So he says it three times. In the Greek version, he says, he says, you know, what shall I call them? And God says in response, ego ami ho on. Which means something like, I am the one who is. I am ego ami the one who is ho on. So go and tell them ho on has sent you. I is. It doesn't say go and tell them ego Amy has sent you. It says, go and tell them hohn has sent you. So the version that the New Testament authors were using, I think if they were trying to invoke this, this passage, they would have had him say something like hot on. But he just said ego amy. So in the Greek Septuagint, when God says this to Moses, the function of the phrase ego amy is just introducing yourself. You're just saying, I am the one who is. It's like saying, I am Alex. My name is Alex. And the I am bit there is just me introducing, like the phrase. So I think in the Greek version, ego amy ho, go and tell them that hot on has sent you. And so when Jesus says, before Abraham was ego ami, it's not obvious to me that he's making a callback to the. Because firstly, I don't think Jesus said these words. I think that it's an invention of John's gospel. We know that John was using the Septuagint. And so I don't think that that adds up. But there is still a mystery there. Why does Jesus say that he existed before Abraham? And why does he speak in the present tense? Why does he say I am? Why does he say, before Abraham existed I did. Why does he say I am?

[Host 1]

Sorry, do you have an answer for this? Because I've.

[Alex O'Connor]

I've got some speculation.

[Host 1]

Please tell me.

[Alex O'Connor]

So I think that what might be going on here is an allusion to the fact that Jesus, as the redemptive solution to mankind's problems, was planned by God from the very beginning of time. So in the book of Revelation, there's a reference to the Lamb who was slain from the beginning of time. Speaking about Jesus, Jesus was not slain at the beginning of time. Time. So why does it say he was slain from the beginning of time? What it's clearly getting at is that from the very beginning of time, God knew. So I think that Jesus is doing something similar here in saying before Abraham was I am, Before Abraham was this plan. The thing that I'm embodied is here. And there's some really interesting indications that that might be what's going on. Because there's a first century text called the Apocalypse of Abraham, which is a Jewish text. It's not in any many Christian canons, but it was a Jewish text that existed and you can read it online today and it tells the story of Abraham. And importantly, this isn't canon, but it does tell us what some people believed. It tells us what some stories that people were familiar with. This is written around the same time as the gospels, probably around 70 AD, 70 to 100 AD and it tells the story of Abraham. And Abraham hears the voice of God and he leaves his home and he's terrified and he hits the floor and then an angel appears to him. And God says to the angel who's called Yahoel, who has the name of God in him, which again, you know, Yahooel, Yah and El, like same root as like Yahweh and Elohim. So he's got the name of God in him too. And he says to Abraham like, get up. And Abraham gets up and he's terrified and the angel says to him, rejoice and be glad. Because I'm like promising for you that someone who will like the generations that will spring from you will like bring some kind of redemption or something like this. He basically says, be, rejoice, be glad and rejoice because like redemption is coming, salvation is coming, and from your generations. So interesting then that In John chapter 8, the context of this divine claim is Abraham. Jesus is talking about Abraham. And what does he say to them? He says, abraham rejoiced to see my day. And they get confused. They're like, you're not even 80 years old. How have you seen Abraham? And he says, before Abraham was, I am. I think what he might be getting at there is saying Abraham rejoiced to see my day in the sense that Abraham was promised like he's the patriarch of the Jewish faith and he was promised what I am now bringing to fulfill before Abraham was, I am. I think that's what's going on now, to be clear.

[Host 1]

And Christians give pushback on this.

[Alex O'Connor]

Of course. Yeah, Christians will listen to this and they'll be like, that is complete and utter nonsense. Jesus is very clearly invoking the I am statement that, like, it's so clunky that he would word it like that. He's very. And why would they pick up stones to stone him for death if they didn't think he was committing blasphemy? That doesn't make any sense. The key point, I want to point out is that the thing about the.

[Host 1]

Jewish prophecy is upheld.

[Alex O'Connor]

No, the thing about the Jewish opponents is that they're constantly misunderstanding Jesus. And so people put a lot of weight on the idea that they stoned him to death and they accused him of blasphemy. And it's like, yeah, but throughout the Gospels, they're constantly getting him wrong. You think in this instance, they suddenly were absolutely correct in their interpretation of what Jesus was saying? I don't think so. So, in fact, there's one point in the Gospels, it's the only time this happens where Jesus is explicitly accused of claiming to be God. It happens. They say, you're claiming to be God and Jesus downplays it. It's semi complicated in that. There's a psalm in the Old Testament, this is Psalm 82, which opens by saying that Yahweh presides among the council of the gods. Gods, Elohim, Gods. It's a bit weird. Like, how is Yahweh the only God? Like, presiding over a council of gods? That doesn't make any sense. And then later in the psalm, it says, I have said that you are gods. You shall be sons of the Most High. So in the psalm, what's clearly happening here is the word gods here. And some translation puts in scare quotes. The word gods here doesn't mean God is in like Yahweh. It means God is in, like, a divine member of this council. Right? And God clarifies in the psalmist, clarifies in Psalm 82, he says, I shall call you gods. You shall be called God's sons of the Most High. So clarifying that, what I mean is that you are not the Most High, you are sons of the Most High. Right? Okay, park that. And bear in mind that most Jews are familiar with Jewish scripture, right? Jesus is talking to his Jewish opponents, and this time he says, I and the Father are one. One, because they're asking about his identity. They say, if you're the Messiah, tell us plainly. And he says, I and the Father are one. And the Jewish opponents say to him, they pick up stones again. They go to stone him to death. And he goes, like, I'm just telling you the works of my Father. What are you stoning me for? I've been telling you things of my Father. For which of those do you stone me? And they say, we're not stoning you for any good works. We're stoning you because you, a mere human, claim to be God. God. So they accuse him. Here it is, the most dramatic, most important moment of the gospels for Christology. You're claiming to be God. What does Jesus say? Does he go, yeah, you're right. No. He says to them, have you not read your scriptures? Have you not? Is it not written that you shall become gods or you shall be called gods? So he quotes the psalm that I've just mentioned, which expressly calls non gods, like non Yahweh beings gods. And when asked about his identity, he chooses to quote that psalm, Psalm. And he says to them, is it not written you shall be called gods? If God was willing to give those people that title and the scripture can't be set aside, then why wouldn't he give that title to me? He then says, so why are you then accusing me of blasphemy for claiming to be the Son of God? So he clarifies. They say, you're claiming to be God. And he says, have you not read your scriptures? This is just a title that was given to the divine council. If he'd give it to them, why wouldn't he give it to me? Why are you accusing me of blasphemy for claiming to be the Son of God? Because they're the sons of the Most High. And so the one point where Jesus is explicitly accused of claiming to be God, he didn't stand, in my view.

[Host 1]

In my view, he goes, I'm not.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah, yeah.

[Host 1]

Is that what you're saying?

[Alex O'Connor]

I think he's saying he's not. So Christians, again, will interpret this and say, like, okay, he's answering in a very clever way, which sort of doesn't deny his divinity.

[Host 1]

I think we all are.

[Alex O'Connor]

But they don't want to say he's the world divine. They want to say that he is claiming to be God here, but he's doing it. He's probably answering in this way because he's being intentionally unclear because it's not his time to die yet. Whatever. I read this as him denying that he's identical to the.

[Host 1]

I see their argument, too. I think it's a really clever argument because he's basically going, you can't say that I'm blaspheming if I am upholding Scripture. So if you're going to kill me for that and you are going to uphold your law, point out in the book where I'm blaspheming.

[Alex O'Connor]

And the key thing to notice is that in this case, they pick up stones to stone him, and he goes, why are you accusing me of blasphemy? I'm not doing what you think I'm doing. Doing. And so when it comes to John.

[Host 1]

Got it, got it, got it, got it.

[Alex O'Connor]

When it comes to John, chapter 8, and Christians often say, well, why would they. Why would they, like, throw stones at him and try to kill him if he wasn't claiming to be God? It's like, well, because somewhere else in the Gospels they tried to stone him for claiming to be God, and they were wrong. So I don't think that they got it right, you know? And what about the worship of Christ.

[Host 1]

Like the people at the time worshiping him?

[Alex O'Connor]

This is another big thing like worship. Worship is something that's only given to God. In fact, when in. In the Gospels of Luke and Matthew, Jesus is in the desert being tempted by Satan, and Satan says, if you just bow down and worship me, I will give you all of this land. And Jesus says, worship God and serve him only. And yet throughout the Gospels, Jesus is worshipped and he accepts worship. So he must be God, right? Few things to note. First, how many times in. Well, actually, the first important thing to know is what the word worship means. It's difficult to define even in English, but in Greek, there are two words that are typically translated as worship in the New Testament. One is proskineo and one is latruo. Proskineo just means to sort of bow down or prostrate yourself before a higher authority. La truo tends to refer to, like, cultic religious worship of the kind that you might give to God. In no instance is la truo worship given to Jesus in the Gospels. There is arguably an ambiguous case in Revelation. We can get into that, but it's not a historical source anyway. And also, it's not clear if Jesus is actually being worshipped there. But in the Gospels, not once does lashrua worship occur being given to Jesus. So we're just left with proscaneo worship. Now, proskineo, like I say, just means to bow down or prostrate yourself before somebody else. So if only God is supposed to accept worship, then let's look again at that Greek, Old Testament, the Septuagint. Remember I mentioned it earlier? Mm. Throughout the Septuagint, the word proscaneo comes up all the time. Lot worships two angels, Jacob worships Esau. The whole assembly of Israel worship King David. Proscaneo King David, like this. Throughout the Gospel, throughout the Old Testament, there are tons of instances of proscaneo worship being given to other people.

[Host 1]

So it's a different type of.

[Alex O'Connor]

In the New Testament. In the New Testament, Jesus tells a parable, the unmerciful servant who comes back to his master, and he proscaneos before him. He just falls at his feet. And so in some instances, it is just translated as falling down at someone's feet. Because that is what proscaneo literally means. Right. And so proscaneo as occurring to Jesus doesn't mean it's worship of the kind that we would say is only due to God. It's just literally bowing down in front of somebody. Another thing to notice. This is really important. Important. How many times does Jesus accept worship in Luke's Gospel? Zero. It doesn't happen once. The word only shows up three times, twice in the temptation, in the desert, and then once after Jesus ascends, his disciples worship him, but that's after he's gone, so he can't say anything about it. And crucially, that is a verse. That particular verse of them worshiping him is contested in our manuscript tradition. There are some manuscripts we have that don't have that verse. Mark's Gospel, the earliest Gospel, how many times Jesus accepts worship? Twice happens twice. Okay, so it does happen twice. But one of those is a demon legion who, if you read most translations, he sees Jesus and the man runs at Jesus and throws himself down at his feet. And it doesn't say he worshipped him. Some translations will say that, but usually it's like he fell down at his feet because that's what it means. The only other instance of proskaneo in the Gospel, in the Gospel of Mark, is Jesus being worshipped when he's being mocked by the Roman soldiers.

[Host 1]

Oh, so they're pretending they put a.

[Alex O'Connor]

Crown of thorns on his head and then they worship him. Why? Because he's the king of the Jews. Because kings are people that you worship. You bow down before them. So they're making fun of him. They're like, oh, King of the Jews, King of the Jews. You know, they don't think he's God. They think he's claiming to be the king of the Jews and they're making fun of him. So even in Mark's got. In Mark's Gospel, the earliest gospel, there are Only two instances of proscaneo. One of them is a demon and one of them. Them is sarcastic. In John's Gospel, there's only one instance of Jesus accepting worship. This is after the blind man who I mentioned earlier. He's healed. Sorry. No, this is the, this is the. The deaf and a mute man, I think. And Jesus finds him again and he says, lord, I believe, and he worships him. First thing to note is again, this can just mean bowing down in front of somebody. But also that particular verse, the verse where it says he worshipped him is not in our earliest manuscript. Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Washingtonianus. It's not in there. It's not in the early manuscripts. Implying that it's something that was added into the gospels after the fact.

[Alex]

It's like what Florida is doing with textbooks.

[Alex O'Connor]

Exactly, exactly. It's kind of interesting.

[Alex]

Right, Sorry. I have a question. This won't jibe with the prascanao stuff that you were saying, but when you said God said you are also God to the group of people. Have you read the autobiography of a yogi?

[Alex O'Connor]

No.

[Alex]

It's a Hindu guy who becomes a yogi and he says essentially yogi is a man who achieves godlike, not status. But God is within you and you've realized it, you've reached that place. He says Jesus is a yogi, Muhammad is a yogi. These guys are people who have achieved that and they would have a following and they would have. And it kind of proves that we can all do this thing. Y does that jive with what I'm hearing from you?

[Alex O'Connor]

So that jives very heavily with what I think Jesus is doing. Christians will deny that interpretation because they think Jesus is the guy. He's like a very unique kind of person. God himself in the flesh. I'm much more in line with this that Jesus is, is. Is somebody who is essentially the idyllic example of what a faithful person should be. And there are lots of reasons why I think that, but I do think it's important. On the proskanea point, I'll. I'll wrap that up just because I know I banged on about worship, but it's important because remember how we started where I pointed out that in Luke and Matthew Jesus is speaking to Satan and Satan says worship me and Jesus says worship God and serve him only. So why does Jesus say that? If worship is something you can give to other people.

[Host 1]

People.

[Alex O'Connor]

This is where I think this is something I think is really interesting. If your interpretation is Jesus is saying there that you should only offer proscana worship to God himself. Then all of those people that I've just mentioned sinned, you know, lot sinned. Jacob sins. The whole assembly of Israel sinned when they bowed down towards David. So that can't be it. So what's going on there? Well, notice how that's how that's phrased. And he's quoting Deuteronomy chapter 6, which actually doesn't say the same thing. It's kind of weird. But Jesus says, worship God and serve him only. He doesn't say only worship God. He says worship God and serve him only. Let's look at the Greek, the word proskineo, worship God and then serve him only. So the word only is affixed to the word serve, not worship. Can you guess what the word in Greek for serve is there? That's translated into serve. Observe latrueau, which is the other. Which is the other one, which is the cultic religious worship that's usually only given to God or some kind of divine figure at the very least.

[Host 1]

So even in the language of the gospels, there is a division in the idea of worship.

[Alex O'Connor]

So it seems in that instance, my interpretation is Jesus is saying worship God because he is a higher authority and he's rejecting Satan's worship. He's saying, I'm not going to bow down to you because you're not a higher authority over me. And it's written I like worship God also. That's not written. It's really weird. He's quoting Deuteronomy 6. 5, but Deuteronomy 6. 5 says something like fear God and serve him only. He doesn't say worship, which is an interesting implication. If he's rendered the word fear as worship, it can't mean the kind of worship that we're talking about. Right? And Jesus says so it's a bit mystifying for some people. Well, why did Jesus say that to Satan in the desert? The reason is because he's saying you should worship God, but you serve him only. Because if you think that Jesus was saying there you should only offer proscenaire worship to God, then all of these people sinned. Including, by the way, people that Jesus mentions himself. Jesus himself tells the parable of the unmerciful servant who proschino worships. Proskineo worships before his master. In the book of Revelation, Jesus promises to his faithful believers that all of the other evil nations will one day proskineo before them. Jesus says, all of these people will worship you. That's out of the mouth of Jesus in the book of Revelation. So it cannot be be that proscanea worship is something that's only due to God. So in the book of Matthew, there are lots of instances of Jesus being worshipped. Mark, Luke and John are totally unconcerned with worship. Matthew, it happens a lot. But I think you need to understand the context, which is that worshipping someone in the sense of proscaneo is something that people just did to a higher authority, someone who was of a higher status than you, like, I don't know, maybe being the Messiah, you know, like. So it's no mystery to me, in other words, that Jesus would be worshipped in the sense of proscaneo. Today, when we say the word worship, we mean something a bit different. Also, here's an interesting, you know, question. Riddle me this. If proskaneo worship is the kind of worship that's given to God and only God, then why is it that after Jesus ascends into heaven, nobody offers prosecano worship anymore? There's no instance of like. Like, there's the. There's the word proscaneo shows up. But Jesus is not given proscanea worship, like in the book of Acts, for example, the disciples are going around and they're not going around offering proscaneo to Jesus up in heaven. Why? Why not? In my view, it's because proscaneo is just a physical action. It describes a physical behavior of bowing down and prostrating before someone who's of a higher authority.

[Host 1]

If someone's not there, you can't do it.

[Alex O'Connor]

If it were to mean like cultic religious worship due to God, then they would keep doing it after he ascended into heaven. But they don't, and there are instances. So Christians will dispute this again because they'll say, like in the book of Acts, Acts, somebody bows down before Peter, they proskineo before Peter the apostle. And Peter says, get up because I'm just a human like you. And they say, see? So Peter's saying that you don't worship other humans, you only worship God. But I don't think that's what Peter was saying. I think he was saying get up. He says, I am also just a man, as in, I'm the same status as you. I'm not your authority. Like worship God. He's our authority.

[Host 1]

The other type of worship for or someone.

[Alex O'Connor]

Latruh. Yeah.

[Host 1]

How many times is that mentioned in the New Testament?

[Alex O'Connor]

It's mentioned a few times.

[Host 1]

And in referring to.

[Alex O'Connor]

So the most interesting case for me is Revelation. So Revelation is a wacky, wacky book. And So I want to clarify by saying that even if Revelation just said Jesus is God, I wouldn't trust it as a historical source. It does seem to present Jesus as a very exalted being, probably God himself. At one point, Jesus seems to claim to be the Alpha and the Omega, which is a title of God. One instance, it's not entirely clear who's speaking, but in another instance, it's like Jesus saying, I am the Alpha and the Omega. That's something only God says. It seems like he's claiming to be God in the Book of Revelation, which is a vision that a guy called John has on an island called Patmos. And there is an instance. There are two instances of latru in Revelation where it's a bit unclear. What happens is you've got the Lamb, who sort of sits on or in the center of or nearby the throne. So there's the throne of God God and there's this throne of the Lamb. And it's not entirely clear what the organizational structure is. So there's like the throne of God and then the Lamb is like either on the throne or in the middle of the throne. And then it says that Latru worship was given to him. So the only two times it occurs is when we're talking about Almighty God, the Father and Jesus, and they're sort of together in a very ambiguous sense. And then it always uses the. The singular pronoun of him. It never says them, it always says Him. So those instances of Latru, I think it's defensible that the person actually being worshipped there is God. The Father is the Almighty God. But it does seem a little bit weird that Jesus or the Lamb is like on the throne or near the throne. So maybe Jesus is being given la truo there. But it seems weird that it would say that they worshiped him rather than they worshiped. Then you've got God and the Son, and they worshiped him.

[Host 1]

Never in the four Gospels.

[Alex O'Connor]

Never in the Gospels is the true worship given to Jesus.

[Host 1]

This idea of Jesus being not once isn't that fun.

[Alex O'Connor]

That is. Isn't that cool? Does not happen at all. The key text here, by the way, is, did the early Christians worship Jesus? By Jesus.

[Alex]

Look at Mark's face.

[Host 1]

He's having a melting. Is this interpretation that you have of Jesus similar to the Muslim interpretation of Jesus?

[Alex O'Connor]

It is in the sense of not thinking he claimed to be God. So, yeah, this is an interesting thing. So Muslims don't believe that Jesus died on a cross. They don't believe that he was God. They don't believe he claimed to be God, they believe he was a prophet. And so they take a lot of the same lines I do here. But of course they're motivated for different reasons. I'm just interested in the historical figure of Jesus. But yeah, a lot of these arguments, like if you. And the annoying thing is that a lot of the time this debate only seems to happen in the context of Christians versus Muslims because atheists don't care. Oh, Jesus said, oh I in the Father and whatever, man, who cares? I'm gonna go and eat lunch, but I'm interested. But it means that like when Christians are debating with Muslims. So for example, when Jesus says I am the alpha and the Omega, I'm the first and the last, you know, a Christian could say, but in the Quran, that's a title that God gives to himself, you know, in the Quran.

[Host 1]

Ah, so they're using one of the.

[Alex O'Connor]

Names of God in the Quran is Al Haq, which means the truth. I am the truth. And Jesus says I am the way, the truth and the life.

[Host 1]

Right.

[Alex O'Connor]

And so if your God says that the truth is one of his titles, here's Jesus claiming to be God. So they have these kinds of debates. That doesn't do anything for me, right? So when Muslims are on the offensive on this point, they will use some of the same arguments. They will point out that like firstly, they'll be suspicious of John's historicity. They'll point out that when he says I and the Father are one, he seems to be saying that we can all be one altogether, all of this kind of stuff.

[Host 1]

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[Alex O'Connor]

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[Host 1]

You try to be in control of.

[Alex O'Connor]

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[Host 1]

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[Host 1]

Is it possible that the early language.

[Alex O'Connor]

Of Christ had different, like, oral tradition that then when it was translated into Greek, some of those things got lost? Yeah. So that's really important too, is that Jesus spoke Aramaic. So this is something I always find incredibly interesting when people are really hanging on every word that Jesus said. Okay, you guys are listening very carefully to what I'm saying, right? You're paying attention? Yeah. Can any of you recite. No, excluding this one. The last sentence I just said. Just tell me the last sentence.

[Host 1]

I'm still trying to pronounce that depression medication you were telling us. Yeah, okay. Wow.

[Alex]

So side effects include visions of God.

[Host 1]

So, okay. Wow. Yes, yes, yes. So obviously there's going to be some.

[Alex O'Connor]

You can't remember the words that I said to you 20 seconds ago, but I'm expected to believe that the New Testament authors who were writing at best, best, decades after the death of Jesus, could remember his exact words and write them down accurately in a language that he wasn't speaking.

[Host 1]

In a language that he wasn't speaking.

[Alex O'Connor]

Now, what's important to note there though, is that, like, if I said something really particular, like if I was talking to you, if I were talking to you and then I suddenly said, you know, I'm a famous songwriter or something, that might stick in your memory such that in like a month or two, you could remember that I said that because it was important. So if Jesus said before Abraham was, I am, that's the kind of thing that people remember. This is my body. Exactly. But like the I am thing, like, oh, well, he was quoting. He was quoting the Old Testament. Okay, so we've got a Greek rendition. Well, actually, when we say it in English, we're using an English translation of a Greek text quoting an Aramaic speaking man allegedly quoting a Hebrew scripture. Yeah, There are a lot of chains of transmission that we have to investigate and see and see what's.

[Alex]

And I might have misunderstood you, but 40 years later at the earliest, I don't.

[Alex O'Connor]

Is when it's written down.

[Alex]

If I'm quoting something you said last week, I don't know.

[Alex O'Connor]

Some people think that John's gospel is earlier. So John's gospel tends to be dated to 90 to 100 AD. Some people date it earlier because there's one verse in John's Gospel, John chapter 5. It opens up by saying, now there is a pool by the sheepsgate. And it says at this pool, this is what happened. John says there is a pool. The temple was destroyed by the Romans in 78 AD. And so if John's writing his gospel and this isn't like Jesus, he's writing.

[Host 1]

It in real time.

[Alex O'Connor]

He says, now there is a sheepsgate near the pool. If that sheep gate had been destroyed, then why would he have written it like that? So some people for that reason put John Pre 70 kind of interesting. But the important thing to note is that it's all speculative, but at the very least, yeah, we're talking. That's why I say at best, you know, decades after, some decades after to write it. That's a good question. I mean, why were the gospels written in the first place? Right? Like Jesus is going around saying his stuff and he's got disciples and stuff. And there are different philosophies on this one is that some people think that Mark's gospel, which is the first one, was written in order to deal with the destruction of the temple. The temple is the most important site for Jews even today. Right. But the temple at the time, like part of being a Jew, involved, like practices that you have to do at the temple temple. So for them, this is like God's house. This is where it happens. And so when that temple is destroyed, how. What do you do? Yeah, you like, how are you going to interpret this? And in many respects, Jesus is presenting himself as the new temple, you know, and so some people think that Mark's Gospel is written as a sort of way to respond to the, to the temple's destruction. Because he talks about the temple being, being destroyed a fair bit going back.

[Host 1]

Back, you know, what is it, 60 years? What was happening at the time that allowed John the Baptist to rise in popularity? Like what was happening culturally? Is there any conversation about that? Why, like, forgiveness could have been so important?

[Alex O'Connor]

Well, forgiveness has always been important in religious traditions, but it's seen as the prerogative of God.

[Host 1]

Right.

[Alex O'Connor]

And so it's unlikely that the Christians won't think that John the Baptist was actually forgiving so sins. They will think that he was like, announcing the forgiveness of sins or helping people participate in a ritual whereby God would forgive them.

[Host 1]

But why was this so popular then? Were there other people throughout history at that time that were also implementing this? What was the societal utility that rose that made him rise to superstardom, as you said? Everybody from Judea is going there.

[Alex O'Connor]

We don't know because we don't have a lot of details about John the Baptist in particular.

[Host 1]

But it's fascinating, from what you're telling.

[Alex O'Connor]

Me, he's my favorite character.

[Host 1]

Yeah. Why is there so, I mean, obviously you're right next to the J man, so it's going to be tough to live in that shadow. But like, to me, you start something that seems to be a break off from Judaism. I don't know how many other of these religions are existing at the time, but he seems to be the one that's the most popular. And then his descendant becomes. Or his disciple becomes God. So, like, what is happening with him?

[Alex O'Connor]

I'm fascinated by him. And the thing is, we just don't have very much information at all because the Gospels are so dense and there is so much in them. You'd be amazed at some of the things that you can pull out and things that people are still noticing today that they haven't noticed before about the Gospels. And yet for some of our most famous figures like John the Baptist or like Mary Magdalene, these people are like, hardly mentioned. We have like no information about them. We don't know where they get their names. We don't know why she's called Mary Magdalene. Was there a place called Magdalene? Maybe there's a place called Magdalene like in Israel, but it's unclear whether there's a connection there. Judas Iscariot. Why is he called Jesus Iscariot? No one knows. There are theories about this. It could be because he was a member of a particular sect that used to murder Roman officials with a dagger. And the word for dagger is something like ikarii or something. And there was a group of people called the Ikarii and maybe Iscariot kind of sounds like that.

[Host 1]

So this is very terrific.

[Alex O'Connor]

No one knows. John the Baptist is someone that we just don't have that much information about.

[Host 1]

John the Baptist was residing in the woods around Nazareth.

[Alex O'Connor]

In the wilderness.

[Host 1]

Yeah, but around Nazareth.

[Alex O'Connor]

Around, like, around. Like Jerusalem, I think.

[Host 1]

So then how does Jesus even come to meet?

[Alex O'Connor]

Sorry. No, he would be. Yeah, I don't. I actually.

[Host 1]

Where's that connect?

[Alex O'Connor]

I don't know. Whereabouts? I don't know where that's. He's probably not Jerusalem. They're cousins.

[Host 1]

Oh, they're related.

[Alex O'Connor]

Six months. Yeah.

[Host 1]

So John the Baptist is six months older than Jesus. Oh, so we know each other their whole life. And he's watching this guy come up and he's like, hey, this.

[Alex O'Connor]

So. So they. Yeah. But then Again, like, so the story is in Luke's gospel. So you know, the birth story of Jesus born in a manger and all.

[Host 1]

This kind of stuff.

[Alex O'Connor]

That's only in two of the gospels. It's only in Matth, and it's in Luke. And they tell slightly different stories with emphasis on different things. Luke's gospel opens with the birth of. Or the pregnancy resulting in John the Baptist.

[Host 1]

Wait, what do you mean resulting in John the Baptist?

[Alex O'Connor]

So, like, his parents.

[Alex]

His parents.

[Alex O'Connor]

So the priests.

[Host 1]

Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. So John is born.

[Alex O'Connor]

So John before he's born, like, there's the pregnancy. And it's like a miraculous pregnancy for.

[Host 1]

John the Baptist as well.

[Alex O'Connor]

Well, yeah, in the sense that, like, I think Elizabeth was not supposed to be able to, like, conceive.

[Alex]

You should love this guy. He also wrote a special about.

[Host 1]

Yeah, this is my guy. Did ivf. Okay.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah, yeah.

[Host 1]

So she wasn't supposed to conceive. It was very difficult to conceive.

[Alex O'Connor]

And then she conceived. And here's John the Baptist, and it's all sort of. But the thing to note is. And so. And this is. Yeah, they're cousins because then Mary is pregnant with Jesus, and then. Then Mary meets Elizabeth, and John the Baptist does a backflip in his mother's womb when she approaches Mary, who's pregnant with Jesus. And John the Baptist does a little backflip. It's kind of wacky, man. But the thing is, these birth narratives, in my view, are basically completely mythological. I don't think there's any history in them. So I'm not sure if Jesus was actually related to John the Baptist. I certainly don't think that there was the backflip in the womb.

[Host 1]

But we can place them in the same city. At least there's a reason why they connect up.

[Alex O'Connor]

I mean, I mean, they clearly, historically were actually like. Like I say, I think Jesus is a follower of John the Baptist because, like, John is in the wilderness of Israel and Jesus comes and gets baptized by. By John the Baptist. I mean, Jesus is sort of all over the place in his. In his. In his childhood. Like, he's. There's like a census, and so he has to, like, travel and then he has to go here and has to go there, and then he goes to Egypt because he's scared that Herod's going to kill him.

[Host 1]

Yeah. How old than before Jesus started claiming to be like that dude?

[Alex O'Connor]

Well, depends which gospel you read. Because there is an indication that Jesus was, like, teaching in the temple when he was a teenager. So there's one story in the Gospels of like, I think his family are like going back from Jerusalem. I can't remember all the details. It might have been the Passover or something. And they're all leaving and they're going home and then they suddenly realize that Jesus isn't with them. So they go back and they find him like in the temple, like it's home alone. Arguing and talking. Yeah, literally. But he's arguing and talking with the Jewish teachers and they're all like, this kid knows so much. Like this is incredible. And he's like impressing everybody with his skills and with his knowledge. Outside of that. The so called missing years of Jesus, there's like no record of what. He just shows up when he's like 30. I thought he was just baptized by Jesus Zeus for 33 years. And then all of a sudden he's. So this is where you get conspiracy theories. While Jesus traveled to India. That's where he got like, we're always there.

[Alex]

Unbelievable how, right?

[Host 1]

Source?

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah, well, yeah, I mean it makes sense to think like, oh well, he was preaching kind of, he's the first appropriator, all of this. Yeah, like where's he getting these ideas? He's getting them from like the east and we don't know what Jesus was doing. I mean the reason why I think we have the missing years of Jesus is because there was no reason to write about this Jesus figure until he started his ministry. The birth narratives were made up later and tacked on as often happened with, with biographies of important figures. There were mythological origin stories, the miraculous birth of Alexander the Great or whatever. So I think we just didn't have any records of this guy because he was a nobody until he showed up.

[Alex]

It was an eat Pray love, dude, it was the first eat, pray love. This long haired white guy went to India, ate good food, got spiritual. It's exactly what happened.

[Alex O'Connor]

That's right. So I think basically they just show up and start and, and start doing that. And if he was so clear that he wasn't divine, why did Christology come after his death? That is a hell of a question. And in fact, Brant Petrae's recent it's called Jesus and Divine Christology, which is an attempt to show that Jesus did claim to be God. And he opens up with what he calls the paradox of how most scholars think that Jesus didn't make divine claims. But most scholars believe in what's called an early high Christology. So early on people had a high Christology. They believed that Jesus was God. So why is it that if he didn't make any claims to be God himself, why is it that so soon afterwards people started believing that he was God? John the Baptist was also martyred. Yeah, he was. Around the same time he was. And why do these beliefs develop around Jesus? That's a historical question. And obviously I don't know, like, the answer to it, but I think it's clear to me to see how. How myths can develop over time. But this is where it gets a little bit speculative for my view, because Brant Petrie's view is that, well, the logical answer to this is that he was making divine claims. There are so many ways that you could interpret what's happened here. Firstly, I'm not sure exactly when it is that people start believing this. So remember I said that Paul's letters are our earliest New Testament source. A lot of people read Paul's letters and they say Paul is clearly presenting Jesus as God. And if that's the case, then you're looking like 50 A.D. already got the belief that Jesus is God. I'm not so sure. Other people look at Paul and see him as not so obviously like high Christology in the way that people want him to be. He might be more of like a mystic. Some people think he's more of like a visionary. There's a lot of theories about what's going on in Paul. So it depends on what you think of Paul as to how early this actually develops. And yeah, yeah, it's probably within decades, certainly like 100 years or so that people start talking about Jesus as God. But then the nature of Jesus is also not entirely clear. Some people are like, well, was he God? And he just appeared to be a human. Was he sort of half God, half man? Did he become God at the baptism? Was he God as soon as he was born? Did he exist beforehand? Did he come down to earth and in somebody? Or did he begin to exist in Jesus? And none of this really gets sorted out until they start getting Christian councils together to decide on orthodoxy. And so you've got the Council of Nicaea in 325, which a lot of people think is where they developed the Christian canon. That's not the case, but they did develop the view on Jesus's relationship to the Father, which was quite important.

[Host 1]

So they just define it 325. That's when they lock it in.

[Alex O'Connor]

They have a big discussion. Yeah. And they bring all the bishops together. They bring all the bishops together. And specifically, I think, like, the relationship of the Son to the Father. And the idea that. So you get what's called the Nicene Creed, which Christians will recite today, which basically lays out, you know, we believe in one God, we believe in the Father, we believe, believe that, you know, Jesus is eternally begotten of the Father. All of this kind of stuff, they just lay it out, the relationship of the Trinity, that kind of stuff. But the question is, well, why is it that in the early church people started believing that Jesus was God regardless, when this finally got solidified, how does this get off the rails? An important thing to know is that not everybody thought that there were like all kinds of different Christian views. So I'm really big on the gnostic Christian history because I find it really interesting in that like. So Elaine Pagels writes a book in 1975 called the. Or the 1970s, I can't remember when, called the Gnostic Gospels. And her big thing is saying there is this idea that in the early Christian church, Jesus dies all of the, like, Peter is the first pope and you develop all of these churches and they all basically agree and then, and then there are a few disputes, so they iron them out and that's Christianity. And she's like, no. There are communities of people who believe the most wacky and incredible things about Jesus fairly early on. Like, if you've ever read the Gospel of Judas, it is a complete trip. Trip. It is a complete and utter trip. And it does present Jesus as like in the form of a human, but not really a human. He's God. He's sent from the realm of Barbello and he comes down to free people from their material prisons and bring them back up into the plethora to be there with all of the, all of the proper divine beings. Totally wacky, different view of Jesus. And we know that this text existed prior to 180ad. We know that for a fact. In that same text, doesn't he claim that Judas was will supersede all the other disciples because he is doing the will of the Father? So when the Gospel of Judas was first discovered, it seemed like Judas was the hero, because this is discovered in like the 1970s. We know that this text exists, but it's been lost for thousands of years. There's a guy called irenaeus who in 180 writes against heresies and he's like condemning all these different heresies and he talks about this Gospel of Judah. So we knew it existed, but we didn't have it. And in the 1970s, it's discovered people are Trying to sell it. It goes back and forth. It goes all over the place. It spends about 16 years in a safety deposit box in New York City, which almost destroys it. Finally, it gets bought by National Geographic, and they bring in some experts. Bart Ehrman is one of them, who I've had on my show to find out if this is really the Gospel of Judas. So they're looking at this text and they're reading it, and it opens up by saying that it tells a story that the disciples are praying over their food. They're performing a Eucharist. Jesus walks in and sees them praying over their food, and he laughs at them. And they say, why are you. Why are you laughing at us? We're doing what's right. And Jesus says, yeah, you're worshiping your God by doing that. You're worshiping your God by doing that. And they're like. And they start getting angry. They're like, what? And he's basically saying, you don't understand any of this. And he says to them, if any one of you is clever enough, then stand up and face me. And guess who stands up? It's Judas. Judas comes up to him and says, I know who you are. I know that you've come from the realm of Barbello, and I'm not fit to utter the name of the one who sent you. And then Jesus sort of explains the history of the cosmos to Judas, explains how the world was created, explains how there is an ineffable, invisible spirit who emanates divine beings. And one of those divine beings, beings, falls out of the plethora of divine beings and creates the material world. And the material world is the product of, like, an evil or incompetent demiurgic God called Beelzebul. Just, like, wacky, wacky stuff. And you can imagine when they read this, when they first discovered that they're just like, holy moly. This is absolutely insane. This is going to change everything. But the big thing is, Judas is the one who gets up. Like you say, Judas gets up and says, I know who you are. So a lot of people read this and thought, wow, this retells the story. Judas is the hero. That's kind of disputed because later in the text, Jesus seems to say to Judas that you also are not worthy of entering into this house. Judas is the best of the disciples, and he's sort of understanding it, but he's still not, like, the hero of the story. He's still not actually going to be one of the generation that get back to the Plethora. So it's kind of unclear what the treatment of Judas is in that gospel, but the way it ends is the. The authorities show up and Judas hands Jesus over to them and that's it. That's where it ends. It's incredible. It's an incredible gospel and we know that it's written in the second century at the latest. So Christians will look at this and they'll say, well, look, I mean, the difference between something being written in like, 70 A.D. and like, 150 A.D. is like, massive. Yeah, because you're talking about eyewitness testimony versus, like, you know, 100 years later. It's like the difference between. Right. Writing about Tupac like now versus, like, a hundred years from now or something, without any Internet. Totally. Exactly. Like, totally different. Right. So what it does tell us is that there existed communities who had completely different views of what Jesus was about.

[Host 1]

That's why the Council of Nicaea is important.

[Alex O'Connor]

Right? Yeah.

[Host 1]

But organize all these different opinions.

[Alex O'Connor]

Even within, like, orthodox Christianity, there were disputes about the nature of Jesus, and that's what's ironed out. But there are just communities that just have, like, completely, completely different views.

[Host 1]

Yeah.

[Alex O'Connor]

And these Gnostics, the reason they're called Gnostics is because it comes from the Greek word gnosis, which means Gnostic knowledge. And in orthodox Christianity, the way that people are saved is through the sacrifice of Jesus. That's how you're saved, because Jesus dies for you. The Gnostics, it's not about what Jesus did, it's about having the right knowledge. He brings the correct knowledge, and if you have the right knowledge, that's what will save you. So some of these Gnostic gospels don't even mention the crucifixion. Like, not important. It's not in the Gospel of Judas. It's not in the Gospel of Thomas. The Gospel of Thomas is a sayings gospel, though, so maybe that's not fair, but it's just got, like, weird and wacky stuff. Stuff in it. The Gospel of Thomas is discovered in Nakadi. The biggest treasure trove of Gnostic gospels was discovered in 1945 in the desert in Egypt, where this farmer, this teenage farmer, is digging in the desert and he accidentally hits upon a jar and he's scared to open it. At first he thinks it's got a djinn in it, like a demon. And eventually they open it. It's got all this ancient papyrus, and he takes it home, and his mother's using some of it to feed the fire. And then they discover that it's this treasure trove of ancient documents. But that story is wild, wacky man, because the way they tell it at first is like, oh yeah, we were out there digging for some materials and then we found this jar. And then the teenager is like, they go and they find him. Some researcher wants to find him and he mentions that there was like a corpse and then the older brother of the farmer was like, no, no, no, there was no corpse. It's like, what's going on? And it seems like what might have been happening is a grave robbing and they kind of didn't want it. And they've obviously discovered all this stuff and they want to sell it, so they've come up with this story. So it's actually kind of unclear how it was discovered. So the leading theory was the reason these are buried in the desert is because in the 4th century, Athanasius defines the 27 books of the New Testament and says all the other books are heretical, so they get buried in the desert. And that was the theory and that's what he discovered. But that changed into some people now thinking that it was normal to bury people with important things to them. So like with papyrus or documents. So somebody was probably just buried who had an extensive collection of gnostic literature and they were buried with it. There was a grave rock robbing and they found this thing and they're like, oh, it's worth some money. So they started trying to sell it. So this text, this, this collection of texts includes loads of important gnostic literature, including the Gospel of Thomas, which is probably the most famous. It's a so called sayings gospel. So just a list of sayings of Jesus. It says these are the secret teachings of Jesus of Nazareth which Judas, Didymus, Thomas wrote down. And some of it is similar to what we find in the New Testament canon, but some of it is incredibly weird. Don't some people claim that Thomas was Jesus's true twin? Yes. So the word Didymus means twin. And in the New Testament canon, Jesus had.

[Host 1]

All right, keep going.

[Alex O'Connor]

Well, Jesus had. Jesus had brothers. We know that Jesus had brothers. And it's, it's kind of, it's actually a point of contention because, like disputed. Yeah. Have you heard of the perpetual virginity of Mary?

[Host 1]

No.

[Alex O'Connor]

So there's a dispute whether obviously the virgin Mary has a virgin birth of Jesus, but did she then remain a virgin virgin? And Catholics say yes, she did, and a lot of Protestants say no, she didn't. And part of the reason for that is because Jesus is described as having brothers. It could be that brother was just like a name that was given to them. It wasn't like a literal brother. Or maybe they were other sons of Joseph or something like this. But the most natural interpretation to me is that he did actually just have brothers. Especially because for me, remember, I think that the birth narratives are invented. So I think the people who originally write the stories, they're not concerned with the virgin birth, so they don't even know it exists. I don't think the virgin birth happened for many reasons, one of which is that, like, at one point in Mark's Gospel, Jesus is performing an exorcism and his family come out, says that his family come out and they say that they think he's lost his mind. They're like, what's going. What's he doing? Has he lost his mind? Because they don't understand. I'm like, if you've got this whole thing with like an angel coming down to you and telling you what's going to happen, and you shall call him Emmanuel and you have a virgin, miraculous birth, and then like, you. And then later on, you just like, what? You just forget all of that and you're like, oh, what's he doing? He's lost his mind. You know, it doesn't seem to line up for me. So I don't think the virgin birth happened at all. Of course, there's also some dispute over the translation. I mean, the, the. It says that there's an Old Testament prophecy that says a virgin shall conceive. The Hebrew word there is. Is Alma, which can just mean a young woman of marriageable age. But again, Greek, New Testament. So the Greek Septuagint translates the word as parthenos, which means virgin specifically. So some people think that the New Testament authors were reading a Greek version when the prophecy only said young woman. They read virgin. So they came up with the version that's disputed as well. Who knows? But, yeah, so Jesus has brothers. And Thomas isn't described as Jesus's brother, but he's called the twin. So even in the canonical literature, it's Thomas, also known as Didymus. And Thomas itself. The word that the name Thomas means twin, it's like a development of an Aramaic word which means twin, I think like Tomah or something means twin. So in the Aramaic language, his name's Thomas, which means twin, twin. But the Gospels take a lot of effort, like translating it into the Greek, given that Thomas already is a word that means twin. That's where the name comes from. The New Testament authors write down Thomas, also called Didymus. So in the Greek language, Didymus means. Means twin. So when the Greek authors are writing it, they're like, he was called Thomas, which means Didymus. So it's important to the Greek authors to tell the reader that his name, that he. That he was called the twin. Right. That's important to them. So why. Why is he called the twin? Nobody knows. Some people think it could be a nickname because he looked like Jesus and so they called him the twin. Some people think he might have been the twin brother of Jesus. Orthodox Christians will dispute that because that really puts a nail in the coffin for the virgin birth. Because if Jesus is born of a virgin and Thomas is his twin, then Thomas is also born of a virgin birth, and then who's that guy? Right. However, there is an apocryphal. It's called the Acts of Thomas, which is another apocryphal gospel, which, again, not canon, probably completely ahistorical, but this is where Thomas travels to India, because Thomas is historically, traditionally the person who brings Christianity to India. And if you go to India today, he goes there to trick him. Yeah, if you go to India today, you will find, like, really devout groups of Thomasites who really revere Thomas as an important guy because he. The guy that brings Christianity to India. And the Acts of Thomas is one book that recounts this. But at one point, I think they were at a wedding and somebody confuses Thomas for Jesus. They get them mixed up because they look so similar. Well, so that either. So that either. Yeah, all these. All these Judeans look the same to me.

[Alex]

Yeah, that was the word I was looking for.

[Alex O'Connor]

They either mix them up because they are actually twins and that's why they look similar, or maybe they just happen to look similar and that's where he got the nickname. But for some reason, reason, Thomas is called the twin. And so again, in the Gospel of Thomas, it's Judas, Didymus Thomas. So Judas is obviously some other name that he's somehow got attached to him, and then Didymus Thomas. So twin twin, which is a little bit weird. Some people are a bit speculative, a bit suspicious of the fact that it says that it words it like that. But I think twin could be a nickname. It could mean that he's his twin, whatever. But Thomas is allegedly the one who writes down all of these sayings of Jesus. And most scholars date this to the second century. So it's, you know, probably not actually written by Thomas. Some. Some scholars kind of think it's earlier, but that's a bit controversial. Again, Christians are going to watch this and they're going to be like, it's definitely late. Like, there's no way. It's ridiculous to suggest that it's early. But, like, you know, man, like, think what you want to think. It's got some weird stuff in there.

[Host 1]

How do you explain the miracles? Like water to wine and making a blind man see and all that stuff.

[Alex O'Connor]

So, yeah, that's a bit weird. The water to wine only happens in John's gospel. It's the first miracle that Jesus performs. And he doesn't want to at first. First, Mary, his mother, comes up to him and is like, get the party started. She's like, we've run out of wine. And he says to a woman, what has this got to do with me? Which sounds a bit clunky in the English. It sounds kind of rude. But it means something like saying like, you know, like, darling. Or she's like, you know, what's this got to do with me? Like, my time hasn't come yet. And she's basically like, please, Jesus, come on, we're out of wine. It's like, fine. So he goes and turns the water into wine. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, whether or not you think he performed miracles, especially healing and exorcism, it is like, beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was known for doing that. He was known as a healer. Brought Lazarus back in. Miracle worker. Yeah, he was known well for doing that. I don't know about Lazarus in particular, because Lazarus, the raising of Lazarus only happens in John's gospel. Also, by the way, one of my favorite indications that Jesus isn't God because he prays before he raises Lazarus from the dead. Just before he raises Lazarus from the dead, he looks up to the sky and he says, father, thank you for. For having heard me. And you know what he says? He says, I know that you always hear me, but right now I'm saying this for the benefit of everybody watching so they will know that you have sent me.

[Host 1]

Implying he's not God, right?

[Alex O'Connor]

No, it doesn't mean that he's not God. But what it means is that it implies. So a lot of people say that when Jesus performs miracles of his own authority, that shows that he's God. Because, you know, Old Testament prophets like Elijah and Elisha raised people from the dead, but they prayed to God first. They're like, God, you know, Right. Raised this person from the dead. But Jesus did it of his own accord. But Jesus before He raises Lazarus, prays to God, and doesn't just say like, oh, I'm praying to you first. But says, I know you always hear me, but right now I'm saying it for the sake of everybody else. Implying that in instances where it seems like he's acting his own accord, he is still praying to God. He's just not doing so publicly because he says in. In John's Gospel before he raises Lazarus. I know you always hear me, but I'm saying it right now. So they'll know that you've sent me, which is kind of interesting.

[Alex]

And that would jug. But I mean, you have sent me. Not necessarily, but the yogi.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah. So there's a constant, like, father has.

[Alex]

Sent yogis, perform miracles, this kind of thing.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah. And so you're a Hindu dude. It's not like. It's not like. It's not like Christians don't, like, aren't aware that Jesus was constantly saying that the Father has sent him. They have their interpretation of that. But I think a lot of it lines up and converges on the idea that Jesus didn't claim to be God in this sense. Whether he performed those miracles is, like, kind of out of my purview. Like, maybe miracles happen. I mean, I probably don't think they did, but he definitely had a reputation for doing something. Something extraordinary was going on with this guy who was walking around and doing stuff. Stuff. And all of these traditions develop around him. People want to write about him, and then people start writing all of these gospels and stuff. But people have different ideas about what Jesus did. The Gospel of Thomas, which, again I should clarify, is not canonical. Most Christians think it's, like, got no connection to history. But it says some weird stuff in there. Like at the very end, the last saying in the sayings Gospel of. The Gospel of Thomas is the most famous, where one of his, I think it's Simon Peter, says to Jesus, you know, mary Magdalene should depart apart from us because she's a woman, and women can't inherit eternal life. They're not worthy of life. Now, from what you know of Jesus, what would you expect him to say? What are you talking about?

[Host 1]

Everybody's worthy of it.

[Alex O'Connor]

What he says is, I will draw her to me to make her a man so that she will inherit eternal life. For any woman who makes herself into a man will inherit eternal life.

[Host 1]

Now, could that be a translation?

[Alex O'Connor]

It could. People say this. This is like this. This is like, the earliest indication of transgender, you know, man into woman.

[Host 1]

But is that, like, his way of Communicating to a bunch of dudes that don't think women are. That they should be. And he's to find a way to communicate. I've heard that the translation of the word man in that sense is like courage, like bravery.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah, that's what I'm assuming. I think a lot of that is going on, especially because so much less work has been done on the. On the. The thing about these gnostic gospels, like the Gospel of Thomas.

[Host 1]

We're getting Wesley Huff in here. Dude, we're going to have Wesley Huff here. He's going to refute all this shit.

[Alex O'Connor]

He will try. I. I've seen a lot of Wes's work. I like him. Seems like a really nice guy. I think he's made some blunders in various areas that are really important, and I've made as much known. There are some that I've spoken about and some that I haven't. She did a podcast yesterday where I spoke in detail about this massive blunder that Westhuff made. I think it was like a year or so ago, which kind of brought someone I know into a bit of disrepute, unfortunately. And he would just make this is like, really, really big blunder. But I don't like, just like throwing stuff like that out there because it sounds like you're just sort of taking a jab or whatever. I have always been happy to speak to Wes, and I think it'd be. I wouldn't want to debate him because I think you'd lose a lot of the interesting bits because you'd be too prideful and defensive because you're like, I'm going to defend my view. I'd love to have a conversation with him, though. But, yeah, I think he's made some mistakes.

[Host 1]

But you are admitting on air that you would not debate Wesley Huffman?

[Alex O'Connor]

No. I mean, I would.

[Host 1]

But you're saying to conversation might be more fruitful.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah, it would be way better.

[Host 1]

I mean, that'd be cool to listen to both of you. I would love to hear his perspective on it. It's so difficult to be in our position because I know. So anything you say to me is gospel.

[Alex O'Connor]

So West Huff thinks that Mark's gospel presents Jesus as God in every single chapter.

[Host 1]

Got it. And you guys dispute that he's got a video.

[Alex O'Connor]

Well, I don't have so much of a problem with saying that the Gospels present Jesus as God. I just don't think Jesus claimed it for. For himself.

[Host 1]

Got it.

[Alex O'Connor]

So Wes relies in Mark, Chapter two on the fact that Jesus forgives sins and says that this is quite an important moment. It's the story. Have you heard of when the paralyzed.

[Host 1]

Whereas John the Baptist doesn't forgive him, he says the Father forgives him.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah, that would probably be the interpretation. Right? And but it's like the thing that I think is that people often just miss important corollaries of what they're saying. So like, in short, Jesus forgives. Forgives someone sins in Mark chapter two. And the Jewish opponents accuse him of blasphemy. They do it in their hearts. They say, like, this man is blaspheming. Who can forgive sins but God alone? And the man's paralyzed. And Jesus says, why are you thinking these things? Which is easier to say your sins are forgiven or get up and walk so that you know that the son of man has the authority to forgive sins. I say to you, get up and walk. And the man gets up, up, and he walks off. So Jesus is saying, like, if you don't think I can forgive sins, watch me do this much harder thing and then you'll know that I have the authority to forgive sins.

[Host 1]

How stubborn are Jews to see that and be like, nah, he's not the one.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah, right.

[Host 1]

That is. We don't talk enough about the Jewish faith.

[Alex O'Connor]

But that is, that is.

[Host 1]

Imagine how much faith you have to have in your religion. You see a guy who's paralyzed, the dude goes, yo, check it, I'm God. Watch. Get up, walk.

[Alex O'Connor]

That is the message.

[Host 1]

And they still go, this guy's crazy.

[Alex O'Connor]

That is the message of the Gospels. As the gospels go on, they get more antiquity Jewish. And especially in John's Gospel, you have like, Jesus is describing at least his Jewish opponents and possibly the Jewish people as like. He says, they're like, we only have one father, and our father is Abraham, or our father is God. And he's like, no, your father is the devil. O He says that your father is the devil, you know, and so a lot of like, Christian anti Semitism has come, has come from this idea that the idea that the Jews are responsible for the death of Christ also develops throughout the Gospels.

[Host 1]

Was there any, like, conversation back in the day? There's got to be some Jews writing to each other with. They're like, this guy might be on or something. Like, he turned the water into wine.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah. Those are called the Gospels. Letters of Paul.

[Host 1]

Okay, fair enough. Fair enough.

[Alex O'Connor]

It's true.

[Host 1]

We could talk about this forever, man. We'd love to have you back on next time you're in town. Maybe talk some more. Maybe we get Wes on and have another little conversation? I would love you guys to talk. Sometimes I do think things are lost.

[Alex O'Connor]

If you managed to get the two of us in a room together, that really would be miraculous.

[Host 1]

That would be cool. But it would be miraculous, o'. Connor.