Danny Jones Podcast #363

Title: Explosive Bible Debate: Exiled Language Expert vs Ancient Religion PhD | Ammon Hillman & Luke Gorton
Date: January 12, 2026
Host: Danny Jones
Guests: Ammon Hillman (Lady Babylon), Dr. Luke Gorton

Overview

This high-intensity, three-hour episode features a rigorous and sometimes combative debate between two classicists: Ammon Hillman, an exiled language expert with controversial views on ancient drug use and the origins of biblical texts, and Dr. Luke Gorton, a university professor and linguist specializing in ancient languages, religious texts, and ancient magic. Danny moderates as the guests argue explosively about the origins and interpretations of key biblical and classical terms, the reliability of source languages, the context behind words like “Christ,” and the intersection of ancient pharmacology and early religion.

The episode is a deep dive into the world of classics, linguistics, and biblical scholarship—and is especially notable for its sharp disagreements, bold hypotheses, and (occasionally) heated exchanges.

Meet the Guests & Opening Banter

[00:37–08:17]

Dr. Luke Gorton

• PhD in classics, Master’s in Linguistics (historical linguistics).
• University professor, specialist in ancient languages (Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Avestan, Old Irish, Gothic, Hebrew, Egyptian, Akkadian, Hittite).
• Taught at University of New Mexico, focuses on Greek.
• Works on ancient magic, sex/gender in religion, and classic texts [00:48–04:27].

Ammon Hillman

• PhD in classics (focus on medicine/pharmacology), Master’s in bacteriology.
• Studied under John Scarborough (ancient medicine) and worked with magic scholars Fritz Graf and Sarah Iles Johnston.
• Formerly taught at University of Wisconsin Madison and St. Mary's; left academia amid controversy after a historically accurate (and highly phallic) performance of Medea led to accusations of “opening portals” and impropriety at a Catholic college [05:38–12:22].
• Author of The Chemical Muse, focusing on drug use in antiquity (material universities allegedly pressured him to censor from his dissertation).

Notable Quotes

• “My heart always remained with Greek and Latin. And between Greek and Latin, my heart is more on the Greek side.” —Luke [03:34]
• “The ancient world was a very different place. … Phalluses were not considered lewd ... and today, it’s still going to be [taboo].” —Luke [12:26]
• “You can see how this would lead to problems.” —Ammon on his Medea production [12:18]

The Silo Problem: Academia, Bible Scholars & Classicists

[20:56–31:15]

• Classicists, linguists, and Bible scholars often work in isolated “silos,” rarely collaborating or understanding context outside their specialties.
• Luke describes himself as a “neutral, textual, historical, linguistic perspective” reader—neither grinding a religious nor anti-religious axe [21:35].
• Key insight: Most biblical scholars lack deep training in Greek (or focus only on the New Testament flavor of Greek and ignore surrounding classical sources) [09:10–11:00; 22:33–35:47].
• Classicists must master Greek and Latin because almost all the primary evidence from the relevant civilizations is in these languages, and real philological rigor demands it.

Memorable Exchange

• Danny: “You were eventually ejected by the university … some controversy with a play … right?”
• Ammon: “Opening portals … accused of demon possession and opening portals … [I] marched down an eight-foot phallus … Which was normal for Roman times!” [08:36–11:00]

Barriers & Methodologies: How (and Why) Different Disciplines Disagree

[27:26–39:48]

• Not only are classics and modern linguistics often isolated from archaeology, forensics, and even each other, but their methodologies vary widely.
• Ammon critiques a prominent negative peer review of his book by a forensic pathologist with little ancient language knowledge [27:14].
• Classicists/linguists argue about how you should approach context, translation, and meaning—most importantly, to avoid cherry-picking or “pulling a verse out of context.”

Memorable Quote

• “We do the Bible a disservice if we try to bury those arguments instead of bringing them to light and trying to understand what the original authors were living through, like what that cultural context was.” —Luke [39:24]

When Were the Gospels Written?

[39:48–45:07]

• Luke: The scholarly “consensus” (cautioning this is always tentative) is:
  • Mark: Earliest, ca. 65 CE, contains unique and “weird” features (ex: Mark 14).
  • Matthew/Luke: 70s–80s, draw from Mark and earlier sources.
  • John: Latest, late 1st century.
• Ammon: Based on vocabulary and style, he sees Gospel literature as aligning more with 2nd-century Greek/Christian apocrypha, suggesting even later composition.
• Both agree debates hinge on method and available evidence; Luke presses for humility about the “unknowability” of certainty in ancient chronology.
• Paul’s epistles have clear connections to classical Greek texts and reveal a highly educated author, familiar with wide-ranging pagan literature.

Quote

• “I think one of the big things that I learned in grad school is methodology matters.” —Luke [37:03]

Linguistics Lesson: Context, Meaning, and the Problem of “Christ”

[70:29–79:01]

• The word “Christ” comes up repeatedly; Ammon’s central thesis is that it’s fundamentally a pharmaceutical/drug term, used in classical Greek to mean “anointed,” “smeared,” or “drugged.”
• Luke draws a parallel to the English word “bitten,” arguing that when ancient Jews needed to translate ‘Messiah’ (anointed one) into Greek for the Hellenistic world, “Christos” was the best available; in Greek, it did not have any deliberate drug connotations in the New Testament context [176:05–179:17].
• Methodological debate centers on whether you can draw a straight line from a broad Greek pharmaceutical context to the Jesus of the Gospels, or whether that’s faulty logic (what Luke calls “pulling a Dick Nixon”—overextending a word’s meaning based on ambiguous linguistic resemblance) [72:23–75:32].

Memorable Analogy

• “Let’s say ... you have a tradition where if you become the ruler... you have to get bitten by a snake. ... In this local Polynesian community, they refer to their kings as the bitten ones. ... Now, in the English-speaking world, that word ‘bitten’ has lots of other meanings ... but when missionaries spread their tradition and have to translate, confusion arises.” —Luke [183:00]

Big Biblical Etymology Debate:

Was the Septuagint (Greek Bible) a Translation from Hebrew, or Vice-Versa?
[41:41–131:00 and again 164:47–221:28]

Ammon’s Radical Thesis

• The Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament, is not a translation of Hebrew but the original, later back-converted into Hebrew.
• Hebrew is structurally and lexically less sophisticated and looks like a “constructed” language drawing on Greek technical, philosophical, and medical vocabulary.

Supporting Claims

• Hebrew OT has ~7,000 unique words; Greek has 1.5 million forms.
• Example: Genesis 1:2, “tohu wa-bohu” (”formless and void") in Hebrew, becomes two distinct technical and philosophical Greek terms in the Septuagint.
• Claims some contemporary Jewish scholars, e.g. Yehuda, support “Hebrew is Greek.”

Luke’s Rebuttal

• There is archaeological evidence of Hebrew texts and inscriptions centuries before the Septuagint (citing Paleo-Hebrew, the Numbers blessing on a silver scroll from 7th c. BCE) [121:13–121:56].
• Ancient Hebrew existed as a language and literary tradition, but much was destroyed in war (Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem), leaving fragmentary archaeological remains.
• All translation is inherently interpretive and context-sensitive. The Torah and Hebrew literary tradition predate the Greek version; the emergence of the Septuagint reflects cosmopolitan Jewish scholars in Alexandria translating into the Greek lingua franca of the time [134:51–135:02].
• Linguistic arguments about translation direction, sophistication, or technical precision are not proof in themselves; you need documentary evidence.

Quote

• “We are dealing with a lack of data. ... They just wrote so much stuff in all of those languages and almost all of it’s gone.” —Luke [47:35]

Drug Rituals, Magic, and Ancient Pharmacology in Religion

[51:09–61:58]

• Detailed discussion of the Greek Magical Papyri (PGM), pharmacology, magical rituals, and the intersection of cult practice — often involving drugs, bodily fluids, and mythic contexts.
• Discovery: Recent scientific analysis of ancient ritual vessels (e.g. the “Bess mug” in Tampa) contain psychotropic drug residues, blood, and vaginal fluid — pointing to the deep overlap of ritual, sexuality, and altered states in ancient practice [60:09–61:58].
• Ammon: These realities, found in medical and magical texts, are consistently ignored or downplayed in “Bible scholarship.”

Quote

• “They were very creative. Yeah. And they didn’t have a lot of boundaries, right?” —Luke [62:08]

Bible, Magic, Drugs, and Context: Debate Over Early Christian “Heresy”

[62:16–89:10]

• Analysis of the Greater Questions of Mary, a controversial “heretical” 4th-century Christian text referencing bizarre sexual rituals, Jesus offering “semen,” and eating “bodily essences.”
• Debate over whether this demonstrates core early Christian drug/sex rituals, or simply represents fringe beliefs catalogued by later church fathers as “heresy.”
• Luke presses the importance of methodology: “Just because something is written in a text, especially centuries later, doesn’t mean it reflects what happened”—context, sectarian variety and polemics matter [88:38–95:05].
• Ammon, by contrast, prefers a text-based approach, “presenting all the evidence” regardless of source reliability, and lets viewers “figure out whether or not they think it’s true” [95:05].

“Christing” and Early Christianity: Linguistics, Ritual Action, and (Possibly) Drugs

[165:23–215:43]

The Core Disagreement

Ammon’s View:

• The Greek word “Christos” (from kriō, to anoint or smear) is overwhelmingly a term of pharmacology and drug use in classical sources—well-attested in Homer, medical, magical, and ritual texts.
• “Christing” is ancient slang for dosing, smearing, or anointing people or things with drugs, sometimes in sexual or initiatory/mystery contexts.
• The application of this term to Jesus is deliberate, reflecting his status as a “drugged” figure or shamanic practitioner drawing on deep ancient traditions.

Luke’s Skeptical Linguistics:

• “Christos” means “the anointed one”—a standard translation of the Hebrew mashiach (”anointed”)—and is, in biblical context, a direct calque reflecting the Jewish anointing of kings/priests with oil.
• While the base verb krio can be used “pharmaceutically”, it much more broadly means “to smear, to anoint, to apply”, also used of ship pitch, dung, and more; context determines meaning.
• Analogizes the process to translating hypothetical “bitten one” Polynesian rulers into English—just because the target language (English/Greek) uses "bitten"/"anointed" broadly doesn’t retroactively mean the originator was a vampire/drug lord [183:19–185:52].

Key Linguistic Points

• “Christing” as a form, strictly speaking, is not even a proper Greek participle—it’s an English neologism [176:39–178:14].
• Grammar matters: Christos is a past participle (“one who has been anointed”), not an agent noun (“anointer”) or an act (“Christing”).
• Paul’s use of “in the Christ of Jesus" is often mistranslated as “in Jesus Christ” when the genitive is functionally different.

Quotes

• “It means to apply something, apply something to the surface of something else. So if you’re applying an ointment which is a medicine, which could be called a drug, then sure, if you want to call that a drug term, go for it.” —Luke [171:03]
• “If you search for all the compounds of Christing, you’re going to find thousands and thousands. This is not an unusual word.” —Ammon [166:56]

Closing Thoughts & Debrief

[221:21–224:41]

• Both guests express mutual respect for each other’s deep training and love for Greek.
• Danny highlights value for the audience: showcasing a real classicist-on-classicist debate, showing the gulf between academic classicists and “biblical studies” as often practiced in the U.S.
• Both guests will return for Part 2 for deeper dives into “Christing,” ancient magic, early Christian heresy/texts, and the tangled roots of classic and biblical literature.

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [00:37]: Introductions, backgrounds, expertise
• [08:36]: Ammon’s Medea controversy at Catholic college
• [13:13]: The censorship of Ammon’s dissertation on ancient drugs
• [21:35]: Differences between classicists, linguists, and Bible scholars
• [28:45]: Problems with peer review when reviewers lack ancient language skills
• [39:48]: Dating the Gospels: Mark, Matthew, Luke, John
• [41:41–131:00]: The Septuagint debate: translation direction, archaeological evidence, language sophistication
• [51:09]: Greek Magical Papyri, ancient ritual drugs and bodily fluids
• [62:16]: Early Christian heresy texts—“Greater Questions of Mary”
• [70:29–79:01]: "Christing" — how linguistic meaning gets (mis)applied across contexts
• [176:05–179:17]: “Christing” as English neologism vs. Greek participle
• [183:00]: The “bitten one” analogy—how translation between cultural contexts creates new meanings
• [165:23–215:43]: Deep dive into “Christing" (pharmaceutical, mystical, and ritual meaning)
• [221:21–224:41]: Wrap-up, mutual respect, and plans for part 2

Notable Quotes (Timestamped)

• “The ancient world was a very different place. They had very different morals, customs, standards … back then phalluses were not considered lewd … today, whether it’s a Catholic college or not—if you go walking out here, it’s still going to be—” —Luke [12:26]
• “Philologist comes from two Greek words—philo, which means love, and logos, which means word ... We are lovers of the Word.” —Luke [34:43]
• “If you really wanted to understand the Bible, you would read all the Greek from 200 years before until 200 years after.” —Amin [34:18]
• “Sometimes some of us, not us, but some classicists, might not want to talk to them, which is unfortunate. I want to be trying to build bridges.” —Luke [10:34]
• “Everything is speculation. The question is, when we go to Vegas, what odds are we going to get on that speculation?” —Luke [153:53]
• “I present evidence to the court, let the viewer figure out whether or not they think it’s true.” —Amin [95:05]

Episode Tone & Style

The conversation is rapid, combative, but rich with technical minutiae.

• Ammon is brash and provocative, offering radical hypotheses, drawing from technical philology, magical texts, and ancient pharmacology—and pushing boundaries on accepted academic consensus.
• Luke is cautious and methodical, emphasizing humility, context, source criticism, and the difference between language connection and cultural/religious meaning.
• Danny, the host, plays an active moderating role, sometimes expressing confusion, sometimes pushing both guests for clarity and accessibility.

Takeaways

• On Bible Interpretation: The importance of original languages and full cultural context is paramount to any serious claim about the Bible or classical texts.
• On “Christ”: The etymology is complex; while it can mean drug/anointment in Greek, its biblical context is rooted in the specific Jewish ritual of anointing kings, not in a general culture of drug use.
• On Lost Evidence: Much ancient literature is gone—sometimes forever—and the stories we tell about antiquity are, by necessity, speculative, reliant on the odds and quality of surviving evidence.
• On Academic Silos: The lack of interdisciplinary conversation (between classics, linguistics, biblical scholarship, archaeology, and science) produces major interpretive blind spots.
• On Controversy: Bringing radical views or reintroducing taboo ancient realities (drugs, sexuality, magic in religious origins) remains contentious—even within academia.

Where to Find the Guests

• Luke Gorton: Word Safari (YouTube channel on etymology and ancient languages)
• Ammon Hillman: Lady Babylon (YouTube, deep dives on biblical language arcana, classics and pharmacology)