Latest / Gil I Am / Historical Take on The Death and Resurrection of Jesus... Wesley Huff

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Historical Take on The Death and Resurrection of Jesus... Wesley Huff · Gil I Am

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  Speaker 1: The general gun experience because of this claim that they
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  Speaker 1: say they saw Jesus resurrected, Like there's something different that
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  Speaker 1: goes on there that they're like, this is a miracle. Right,
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  Speaker 1: dead people don't usually rise from the dead.
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  Speaker 2: So what is your personal belief when it comes to
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  Speaker 2: the resurrection. What do you think? Do you have a
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  Speaker 2: belief or do you just try to interpret the text
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  Speaker 2: and try to see what is the message?
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  Speaker 1: Well, I think so as a historian, I do think
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  Speaker 1: it is a historical question. You have a guy who
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  Speaker 1: objectively lived, he objectively died, and then individuals close to
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  Speaker 1: his inner circle claimed that they see him not dead.
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  Speaker 1: Right again, this is.
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  Speaker 2: A highly unusual activity, highly unusual, right. So, but it's
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  Speaker 2: hard when you're dealing with illiterate populations, You're dealing with
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  Speaker 2: thousands of years of time, you're dealing with an oral tradition,
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  Speaker 2: and then you have us sitting here talking about it
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  Speaker 2: in twenty twenty four trying to figure it at the
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  Speaker 2: end of twenty twenty four, trying to figure this out
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  Speaker 2: literally the end, Yeah, the last couple of days. It's
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  Speaker 2: it's very difficult for anybody who thinks of themselves as
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  Speaker 2: an intelligent person who's secular to even entertain the possibility
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  Speaker 2: that someone died and come back to life.
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  Speaker 1: And I get that, But we've already talked about the
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  Speaker 1: fact that we don't think that the only thing that
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  Speaker 1: exists is matter in motion. We as in you and
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  Speaker 1: I right, like, we believe that there's something else going
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  Speaker 1: on in this world that's a little bit crazy. There's
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  Speaker 1: something there, and that to I think exclude that, I
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  Speaker 1: think excludes something that you're kind of putting blinders on for.
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  Speaker 1: And you do have, I mean, you're right in terms
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  Speaker 1: of all of these ancient conventions and the ways that
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  Speaker 1: things were spread around, and but the Gospels are written
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  Speaker 1: in the lifetime of the eyewitnesses, and they're written in
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  Speaker 1: this period of time where you have groups of individuals
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  Speaker 1: who could have fact checked those things.
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  Speaker 2: So you fact check someone coming back from the dead, Well,
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  Speaker 2: if you how many people saw his body, right.
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  Speaker 1: Well, Paul says that four hundred people saw him all
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  Speaker 1: at once.
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  Speaker 2: How people saw the crucifixion.
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  Speaker 1: No saw the resurrects resurrected Jesus, Yeah, First Corinthians fifteen.
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  Speaker 1: Paul says that Jesus appeared to the disciples and then
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  Speaker 1: he appeared to four hundred people all at once. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: if we read the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel
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  Speaker 1: of or the Gospel of Luke and Acts, so same
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  Speaker 1: author wrote these both documents. He says that Jesus was
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  Speaker 1: walking around teaching them for forty days after he was
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  Speaker 1: resurrected from the dead, And so these are written within
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  Speaker 1: a time period when you have people who would have
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  Speaker 1: seen Jesus's ministry, who were there say it's something like
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  Speaker 1: the feeding of the five thousand, who could have been
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  Speaker 1: able to verify or debunk some of these things that
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  Speaker 1: are being said. And you go from a bunch of
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  Speaker 1: scared guys who because Jesus wasn't the only messianic figure
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  Speaker 1: who arose and claimed to be the Messiah. There were
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  Speaker 1: a number of individuals both prior to and after Jesus.
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  Speaker 1: But they die and the movement dies with them.
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  Speaker 2: Do you think it's possible that he didn't die, And
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  Speaker 2: do you think it's possible that they thought he was dead,
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  Speaker 2: because that does happen. There was actually a case very
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  Speaker 2: recently where a guy was about to be harvested for organs.
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  Speaker 2: They thought he was dead, and this guy started moving
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  Speaker 2: again and came back to life. It's very, very bizarre
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  Speaker 2: case because his family had been told that he was
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  Speaker 2: going to be harvested for organs. They were prep preparing
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  Speaker 2: for that. This guy comes back.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, we know a lot about Roman crucifixion,
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  Speaker 1: and we know that, and we know that they did
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  Speaker 1: their job well. And so in fact, if you look
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  Speaker 1: at say very skeptical biblical scholars, like non believing atheist
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  Speaker 1: agnostic Christian scholars, they will say, if we can know
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  Speaker 1: anything about Jesus, like they'll cast a doubt on a
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  Speaker 1: lot of the things that we read about in the Gospels.
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  Speaker 1: In terms of the actual historical Jesus of Nazareth. They'll say,
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  Speaker 1: one thing we can be sure of is that he
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  Speaker 1: died by crucifixion under Ponchus pilot, because we have not
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  Speaker 1: just multiple detested documents that we refer to as the
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  Speaker 1: New Testament, but Roman and Greek and Jewish writers refer
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  Speaker 1: to that claim afterwards and talk about the fact that
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  Speaker 1: you have this guy and it's mocked within earliest Christianity.
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  Speaker 1: So one of our earliest, in fact not one of
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  Speaker 1: the earliest depiction of Jesus on the cross is called
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  Speaker 1: the Alexamnos Grfedo, and it's probably from the end of
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  Speaker 1: the first century, and it depicts an individual with their
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  Speaker 1: arms raised in an act of worship, worshiping a man
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  Speaker 1: with a donkey's head who's being crucified, and right beside
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  Speaker 1: it says alexe Menos worships his God in Greek. And
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  Speaker 1: it's mocking right, because crucifixion was for the lowest of
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  Speaker 1: the low It was for like slaves. In fact, if
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  Speaker 1: you were a Roman citizen, you were banned from being crucified.
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  Speaker 2: Who wasn't they going to crucified upside down?
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  Speaker 1: Peter?
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  Speaker 2: What was it? Because like regular crucifixion wasn't good enough
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  Speaker 2: for him or what was He didn't deserve it because
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  Speaker 2: Christ had gone through it.
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  Speaker 1: Well, so the story is that they say we're going
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  Speaker 1: to crucify you, and he says it's like too big
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  Speaker 1: of an honor to die like my lord, and they say,
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  Speaker 1: well we can fix that.
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  Speaker 2: Oh Jesus, shut your mouth, buddy.
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  Speaker 1: Listen. The Romans were pretty brutal. Oh yeah, but this
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  Speaker 1: is why we know like we have. It's interesting we
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  Speaker 1: know a lot about crucifixion, but crucifixion was seen as
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  Speaker 1: so disgusting. I believe it was Cicero who said that,
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  Speaker 1: like the word crucifixion shouldn't even be on a Roman
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  Speaker 1: man's lips. I mean, the word excruciating x is off
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  Speaker 1: of in Latin and cruse off the cross. So that's
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  Speaker 1: where we get that word is because this was designed
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  Speaker 1: to humiliate, and it was designed to be as painful
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  Speaker 1: as possible. There was actually really a good article done
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  Speaker 1: by JAMMA, the journal of the American Medical Association, which
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  Speaker 1: was done by a number of I think it was
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  Speaker 1: in the seventies the early eighties. It was done by
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  Speaker 1: a group of biblical scholars and then medical professionals, and
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  Speaker 1: so they looked at the conventions of what we do
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  Speaker 1: know about Roman crucifixion, and then they looked at the
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  Speaker 1: descriptions in the Gospel to try to figure out, okay,
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  Speaker 1: if we could diagnose how Jesus died, how would he
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  Speaker 1: have died. And so they basically came up with this
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  Speaker 1: idea that he probably asphyxiated to death. You kind of
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  Speaker 1: drown in your own blood. But the chances of Jesus
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  Speaker 1: surviving the crucifixion I think are narrow to none, and
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  Speaker 1: the chance of him appearing three days later. Completely fine.
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  Speaker 1: I mean you don't if the first thing you do,
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  Speaker 1: if you survive a crucifixion and then you go and
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  Speaker 1: you find your disciples, the first thing you say is
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  Speaker 1: not you know, peace be with you. It get me
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  Speaker 1: to a hospital. Right.
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  Speaker 2: Do they have them back? Then are we entirely certain
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  Speaker 2: of their measurement of days?
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  Speaker 1: So this is an interesting question because of the differences
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  Speaker 1: between when when the Gospel of John says Jesus died
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  Speaker 1: compared to the Synoptics, because John appears to be using
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  Speaker 1: the Roman convention of count counting time, and the other
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  Speaker 1: gospels when they describe the timing, appear to be using
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  Speaker 1: the Jewish ones. And actually if if you correlate between
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  Speaker 1: the two, they match up pretty well. So the thing
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  Speaker 1: is with Jews, any part of a day was considered
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  Speaker 1: a day, so three days and three nights becomes almost
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  Speaker 1: an idiom for any part of that day is the day.
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  Speaker 1: So if on if Jesus and because they count evening
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  Speaker 1: and morning evening to morning is the day, it's fair
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  Speaker 1: possible that it wasn't like how we would think of
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  Speaker 1: three twenty four hour days, especially if he dies on
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  Speaker 1: Friday and wakes up on Sunday.
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  Speaker 2: So that would actually make it less time than more time. Yeah. There,
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  Speaker 2: it's not like he had recovery time. Oh no, recover
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  Speaker 2: that's what I'm saying. It's not like it was three days.
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  Speaker 2: It was actually three months.
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  Speaker 1: Oh no, no, no no.
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  Speaker 2: So then four hundred people saw him afterwards.
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  Speaker 1: That's the claim that Paul makes.
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  Speaker 2: Paul makes yeah. Yeah, And how many different people have
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  Speaker 2: some sort of a recollection or a writing or something
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  Speaker 2: that's attribute to them of being witness to his resurrection.
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  Speaker 1: Way of Peter, Paul, Jude, James, and Matthew, Mark and Luke.
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  Speaker 1: The thing with Matthew, Mark and Luke is that Matthew
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  Speaker 1: and Luke or Matthew and John are attributed to direct
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  Speaker 1: disciples of Jesus. Luke and Mark are not, So they
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  Speaker 1: are not eyewitnesses within the Jesus community. In fact, Luke
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  Speaker 1: prefaces his gospel by saying that he's right up front
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  Speaker 1: about this. He's like, hey, am non eyewitness, don't confuse
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  Speaker 1: me with an eyewitness. But he actually uses conventional writing.
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  Speaker 1: What's the term I'm looking for? He uses writing conventions
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  Speaker 1: of the day that would fit within regular biography that
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  Speaker 1: was written within the Roman world. So you have a
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  Speaker 1: guy named Quintillian who is basically I mentioned it before
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  Speaker 1: with the he's teaching people how to write, and he
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  Speaker 1: says that if you're going to write biography, you need
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  Speaker 1: to be interviewing eyewitnesses, and you can't be too far
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  Speaker 1: away from the event to be able to write these things.
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  Speaker 1: And Quintillian, Lucian, and Josephus, who are all these very
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  Speaker 1: prominent ancient biographers and writers of history, have a lot
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  Speaker 1: of crossover in the way they describe how you should
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  Speaker 1: write history with the words that Luke uses at the
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  Speaker 1: beginning of his Gospel where he says, I'm interviewing eyewitnesses
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  Speaker 1: and I'm writing up an orderly account, And so he's saying,
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  Speaker 1: you know, I'm going to use these methods that are
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  Speaker 1: expected as good history of my day. I'm not an eyewitness,
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  Speaker 1: so I'm going to try to find the people who
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  Speaker 1: are eyewitnesses, and I'm going to try to encapsulate this
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  Speaker 1: within a document that communicates what is being written.
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  Speaker 2: So we have an account of the resurrection, Do we
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  Speaker 2: have an account of the denial of the resurrection? Is
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  Speaker 2: there an historical record of him just dying in this
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  Speaker 2: like a refutal or rebuttal, rather to what they're saying.
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  Speaker 1: No, the only ones from the ancient world that deny
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  Speaker 1: his resurrection are groups that come on afterwards that sometimes
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  Speaker 1: are sometimes are described as gnostics, and they're not necessarily
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  Speaker 1: just denying it for the reasons we might think they were.
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  Speaker 1: They're denying it because they have incorporated ideas of pagan philosophy,
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  Speaker 1: where they believe that the spiritual is good and the
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  Speaker 1: physical is bad. So if Jesus was crucified, so let
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  Speaker 1: me back out. If Jesus is God, he cannot have
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  Speaker 1: a physical body, so they deny that he actually had
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  Speaker 1: a physicality to him. This is sometimes called docatism because
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  Speaker 1: docaine in Greek means to seem. So these groups that
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  Speaker 1: we describe as the Dosetics, they are denying that Jesus
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  Speaker 1: had a physical body. He only seemed to have a
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  Speaker 1: physical body, and they wrote documents later on. So the
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  Speaker 1: Gospel of Peter, which comes around in you know, second, third,
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  Speaker 1: fourth centuries, is being written, and it has Jesus kind
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  Speaker 1: of chilling on the cross because he's not really physical,
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  Speaker 1: because he's divine and physical entities don't have physical bodies,
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  Speaker 1: so we don't actually get like a concrete denial of
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  Speaker 1: his resurrection in that way, until you get things like
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  Speaker 1: the Gospel of Barnabas in the Middle Ages, which is
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  Speaker 1: a it's actually the document that Billy brought up to
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  Speaker 1: me in the conversation we had as the evidence that
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  Speaker 1: Jesus was never the Gospel of Barnabus Well, Gospel of
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  Speaker 1: Barnabas is fifteenth century. It paraphrases Dante's Inferno. It's not
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  Speaker 1: an ancient document. So but in the ancient world, Nope,
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  Speaker 1: nobody really had that big of a problem with these
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  Speaker 1: kind of supernatural claims. More, the more of the kind
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  Speaker 1: of skepticism was why you would worship a crucified individual
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  Speaker 1: to begin with?
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  Speaker 2: Wow, So they were less surprised that he was resurrected.
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  Speaker 1: Or or that you would you would worship a crucified
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  Speaker 1: like teacher was just seen as silly.
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  Speaker 2: Because it's so humiliating to be crucified.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and that like a God would let himself
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  Speaker 1: go through this, right, like what are you? What are
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  Speaker 1: you talking about? In fact, the ancient world didn't really
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  Speaker 1: have a problem with supernatural events. There is an ancient
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  Speaker 1: writer who mocks Christianity, and he particularly mocks Christianity in
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  Speaker 1: saying that, of course Jesus did miracles because Jesus had
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  Speaker 1: a childhood in Egypt, and he goes, all those Egyptians
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  Speaker 1: are magicians anyways, so he just learned the magic when
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  Speaker 1: he was a child. So he actually confirms, incidentally, two
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  Speaker 1: things that the narrative in the Gospels, where it says
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  Speaker 1: that the Holy Family fled to Egypt during the reign
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  Speaker 1: of Herod. He corroborates that he actually thinks that happened,
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  Speaker 1: and that Jesus did miracles. He just attributes to the
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  Speaker 1: miracles to Jesus being a traveling magician anyways. And you know,
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  Speaker 1: anybody who lived in Egypt knows some magic.
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  Speaker 2: That is what's really fascinating that the mindset of the
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  Speaker 2: people that lived back then was that whatever was going
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  Speaker 2: on in Egypt was so crazy that they had to
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  Speaker 2: be magicians.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, but everybody believed in supernatural events, like there's
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  Speaker 1: no such thing as like a secular work in the
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  Speaker 1: ancient world. Even Plutarch, who's one of the most famous
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  Speaker 1: biographers in the ancient world. He wrote ninety biographies, of
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  Speaker 1: which sixty still survived today. He was a priest of Apollo,
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  Speaker 1: so like he's already assuming that the gods exist, that
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  Speaker 1: crazy things are going to happen in the world, and
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  Speaker 1: so they didn't have a problem with people doing miracles
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  Speaker 1: or crazy things happening.
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  Speaker 2: Well, that's also why it's so interesting trying to put
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  Speaker 2: your mind into the context of people that live back then,
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  Speaker 2: when you try to interpret what these stories were all about.
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  Speaker 2: Because they did believe in things that weren't real. So
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  Speaker 2: when they talk about this thing that we're supposed to
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  Speaker 2: believe is real, when you have all this evidence that
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  Speaker 2: they believe things that aren't true, Yeah, it's interesting, right
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  Speaker 2: because you're now saying, yeah, but this one really was true, right, Well,
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  Speaker 2: there's so many different things that they thought of and
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  Speaker 2: believe that weren't true.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah,