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Dinesh D'Souza Reveals Breakthrough Evidence That the Bible is REAL · The Alex Marlow Show

0:06
Speaker 1: All right, in modern conservatism, one of the people who's
0:08
Speaker 1: had one of the most interesting careers is Dinesh D'Souza,
0:11
Speaker 1: and I've followed the whole thing. I've known Dinesh for
0:14
Speaker 1: almost 20 years now, and I started following him when
0:16
Speaker 1: he was writing Quaint little books about what's great about
0:19
Speaker 1: Christianity and what's great about America. And then he became,
0:22
Speaker 1: I would say, one of the most successful activist writers
0:25
Speaker 1: and thinkers that we had on politics, taking the wood
0:28
Speaker 1: to Obama on a pretty daily basis for years. And
0:31
Speaker 1: now he is in his spiritual architecture phase and anthropology,
0:37
Speaker 1: which has just been really interesting for to witness. And
0:41
Speaker 1: he's got a new book out called The Stones Cry Out.
0:43
Speaker 1: There's a companion documentary with our good friends at PragerU,
0:47
Speaker 1: whom I think the world of, as you probably know, Dinesh.
0:50
Speaker 1: And this is sort of a follow-up to The Dragon's Prophecy,
0:52
Speaker 1: which we spoke about, I think it was last year
0:54
Speaker 1: when this came out. But you are going down a
0:57
Speaker 1: really important and meaningful rabbit hole to try to prove
1:01
Speaker 1: that the what we know in the physical world, which
1:07
Speaker 1: is pretty amazing, but also a real career pivot.
1:11
Speaker 2: How did you find yourself with this interest?
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Speaker 3: Well, you know, when I was in college, this is
1:17
Speaker 3: back to the 1980s, I was exposed to a school
1:20
Speaker 3: of thought called the biblical higher criticism. And the basic
1:25
Speaker 3: idea here was really smart professors in Europe and America.
1:29
Speaker 3: I call them armchair critics because they'd sit in their
1:31
Speaker 3: armchair and they would say, you know, Sitting here at
1:36
Speaker 3: the University of Oxford or sitting here at Yale University,
1:40
Speaker 3: it doesn't look to me like Samson could have pulled
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Speaker 3: down a temple. That's absurd. Sitting here, I don't think
1:46
Speaker 3: that David could have defeated Goliath, who was a big,
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Speaker 3: giant Philistine soldier. How could a puny little Israelite take
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Speaker 3: care of him in a one-on-one battle?
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Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounds like a kid's story. It doesn't sound
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Speaker 1: like something that really would have happened.
1:59
Speaker 2: Exactly.
2:00
Speaker 3: And the Bible actually has a number of these parable-sounding,
2:08
Speaker 3: fairy-tale-sounding episodes. And yet, the Bible is also kind of
2:14
Speaker 3: thick with concrete historical detail. It begins with Abraham and
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Speaker 3: the patriarchs. It continues with the Israelites in Egypt, the
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Speaker 3: crossing into the Promised Land, King David, King Solomon, the
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Speaker 3: era of the prophets, all the way into the New
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Speaker 3: Testament with Jesus. There's just a lot of vivid details concrete,
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Speaker 3: and you would have to say theologically unnecessary details. So,
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Speaker 3: for example, early in the Bible, this guy Joseph, this
2:40
Speaker 3: is Joseph of the coat of many colors, he's sold
2:43
Speaker 3: by his brothers into slavery. Now, the Bible could have
2:45
Speaker 3: just said, you know, they sold him, but the Bible
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Speaker 3: gives you the actual price, 20 shekels.
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Speaker 2: Right, right.
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Speaker 3: Right? And we happen to know roughly when this was.
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Speaker 3: This is about 1900 BC. So, archaeologists have actually gone
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Speaker 3: back and checked what is the price of a slave
3:02
Speaker 3: in the Near East, The Near East here meaning Israel
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Speaker 3: or Canaan, Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia. What is the price of
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Speaker 3: a slave in about 1900 BC? As it turns out,
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Speaker 3: 20 shekels. That's what slaves were sold for in the
3:15
Speaker 3: entire region. And not only that, slaves cost less before
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Speaker 3: and they cost more later. Evidently, there was some inflation
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Speaker 3: in the price of a slave. So notice here how
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Speaker 3: the Bible drops a tiny detail that seems to have, again,
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Speaker 3: no theological significance, but it happens to be accurate. Now,
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Speaker 3: when I was exposed to these biblical higher critics, many
3:38
Speaker 3: of them, by the way, they came out of the
3:40
Speaker 3: 19th century, This was after Darwin, a movement of skepticism,
3:44
Speaker 3: you know, atheism. And their view was that the Bible
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Speaker 3: is written hundreds of years later than the events it describes.
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Speaker 3: And therefore, the critics said, The Bible is obviously full
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Speaker 3: of mistakes and embellishments and myths and legends, because how
4:02
Speaker 3: could you possibly narrate an accurate history of something that
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Speaker 3: happened hundreds of years before you lived without written records
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Speaker 3: to rely on? And I must say, I was kind
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Speaker 3: of contaminated with this school of thinking because I myself thought,
4:19
Speaker 3: even though I'm a Christian believer, I thought, well, you know,
4:21
Speaker 3: the Bible is solid theologically. But it was written by
4:25
Speaker 3: human beings, and you wouldn't be surprised to find a
4:27
Speaker 3: lot of error and mistakes and things like that creeping in.
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Speaker 3: So this is where the archaeology, which I was first
4:35
Speaker 3: exposed to about three years ago, came to me as
4:38
Speaker 3: a bit of a shock, because I saw artifacts that
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Speaker 3: related not even... necessarily to really large figures in the Bible,
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Speaker 3: like King David or Jesus, but sometimes to a very tiny,
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Speaker 3: minute characters. A guy might be in the Bible in
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Speaker 3: only one line. He's described as like a minor official of,
4:59
Speaker 3: let's say, the King of Babylon.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, you describe these, I really like as cameos. I
5:05
Speaker 1: like that, the biblical cameos.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, the cameo guys, the biblical extras, and yet, you know,
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Speaker 3: out of the ground comes a clay seal with that
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Speaker 3: guy's name on it. And so suddenly the historicity of
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Speaker 3: that guy is firmly established. And again, I ask you,
5:20
Speaker 3: if you're writing a history 500 years later, let's say,
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Speaker 3: you wouldn't know who the minor official was in the
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Speaker 3: court of, let's say, King Zedekiah. in the 6th century
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Speaker 3: BC or, you know, King Hezekiah in the 8th century BC.
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Speaker 3: There's no way for you to know that. It's like
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Speaker 3: asking you or me, name the officials in the White
5:39
Speaker 3: House of President Buchanan. We couldn't do it. So the
5:43
Speaker 3: point being here that I was kind of startled that
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Speaker 3: the Bible could be authenticated historically. I'm not trying to
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Speaker 3: prove the miracles or the supernatural aspect of the Bible
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Speaker 3: or even the theology. I'm just talking about the historicity
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Speaker 3: of it. And let's remember, Alex, that if you can
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Speaker 3: show the historicity of the Bible, that has enormous implications
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Speaker 3: for the legitimacy of the Jews in Israel. I mean,
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Speaker 3: it shows the presence of the Jews in their ancient
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Speaker 3: homeland going back 3,000, sometimes 3,500 years. And also, I
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Speaker 3: think that if you agree with the philosopher Leo Strauss,
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Speaker 3: who said that Western civilization is built on the two
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Speaker 3: pillars of Athens and Jerusalem, well, biblical archaeology strengthens the
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Speaker 3: Jerusalem pillar of Athens and Jerusalem.
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Speaker 1: And I think one of the strongest cases for Judeo-Christianity
6:36
Speaker 1: is something that does come, you point this out in
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Speaker 1: the Dragon's Prophecy, is that there's nothing that's been proven
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Speaker 1: false from the Bible. There's all these people countlessly trying
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Speaker 1: to make an industry out of it. And you bring
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Speaker 1: in that historical context in this book as well, where
6:52
Speaker 1: you're talking about that we've never had more information and
6:55
Speaker 1: we've had this surge of information over the last quarter
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Speaker 1: century that that could theoretically disprove parts of the Bible
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Speaker 1: and still goose-yag for all the haters.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, when biblical archaeology started, the skeptics were really excited.
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Speaker 3: They thought this is going to be a battering ram
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Speaker 3: to disprove the Bible. Now, it's important to know that
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Speaker 3: the Bible is different than, say, the Hindu scriptures or
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Speaker 3: the Buddhist scriptures. The Bible is dense with historical detail,
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Speaker 3: and therefore it is, in Karl Popper's sense of the term,
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Speaker 3: it's falsifiable.
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Speaker 2: Right, falsifiable, that's the word.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, falsifiable. We've had biblical archaeology going now for 150 years.
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Speaker 3: There are thousands upon thousands of artifacts. They've been collected.
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Speaker 3: in Israel, which is to say in Canaan, in Egypt,
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Speaker 3: in Assyria, in Babylonia, in Rome, in Greece. So, think
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Speaker 3: of it. You would think that if the Bible had
7:45
Speaker 3: all this error built into it, there would be a
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Speaker 3: number of cases where you could say the Bible says X,
7:51
Speaker 3: but clearly the evidence says Y. Now, I admit in
7:54
Speaker 3: archaeology to this day, there are plenty of debates about
7:58
Speaker 3: the accurate dating of an event. Is it in the
8:01
Speaker 3: early 9th century BC or the late 9th century BC?
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Speaker 3: Or sometimes about a location. When you talk about where
8:07
Speaker 3: Jesus walked with the cross, the so-called Via Dolorosa, was it,
8:11
Speaker 3: did he go this way in Jerusalem or did he
8:13
Speaker 3: go that way in Jerusalem? All right, well, people will
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Speaker 3: argue about that continually. But I'm talking about a significant
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Speaker 3: archaeological finding that clearly contradicts something that's in the Bible.
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Speaker 3: I'm not aware of a single one. There was an
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Speaker 3: archaeologist about 70 years ago who said, I can't find
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Speaker 3: a single artifact that contradicts the Bible. That was in
8:33
Speaker 3: the 1950s. But now, fast forward 70 years, I think
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Speaker 3: that claim still holds up perfectly well.
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Speaker 2: Have you ever heard of.
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Speaker 1: Any famous atheists or anyone like that who have been
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Speaker 1: at it for a long time and just are confronted
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Speaker 1: with that piece of evidence and it changes their mind.
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Speaker 1: Because I feel like that actually might be one because
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Speaker 1: some of these guys think of themselves, some of the
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Speaker 1: most prominent atheists, they just think of themselves very academic
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Speaker 1: and intellectual. And it's like, you know, where's their proof
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Speaker 1: that any of this is false? They don't have any.
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Speaker 1: When there's all these people just trying to make an
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Speaker 1: industry out of hunting it down. It's probably very compelling evidence.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not only... I think what I've noticed with
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Speaker 3: most of the atheists is that they... will back up
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Speaker 3: into a fallback position that could be summarized as yes, but.
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Speaker 3: So this is a really good example, and this is
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Speaker 3: in fact a true example. Until the 1990s, the atheists
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Speaker 3: were really big on this statement. King David is a myth.
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Speaker 3: There's no King David. There's no evidence for King David.
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Speaker 3: King David is like King Arthur. He's like a legendary
9:35
Speaker 3: king who had these legendary exploits in the Bible. Then
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Speaker 3: out of the ground in northern Israel comes a monument.
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Speaker 3: It's called the Tel Dan Steli. it confirms beyond a
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Speaker 3: shadow of a doubt that there was a King David
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Speaker 3: and there was also a house of David. So a
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Speaker 3: Davidic dynasty. In one blow, the skeptics are like knocked
9:54
Speaker 3: off the ground, right? So you think that they'd be like,
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Speaker 3: I was wrong. No, first of all, a bunch of them,
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Speaker 3: said that the monument was a forgery, even though it
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Speaker 3: came out of the ground, was found by a reputable archaeologist.
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Speaker 3: And so ultimately that became ridiculous. You couldn't say that.
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Speaker 3: In fact, a second piece of that same monument was
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Speaker 3: found a few years later. So it's an authentic artifact.
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Speaker 3: beyond a doubt. So then the skeptics go, well, yeah,
10:19
Speaker 3: all right, there was a King David, but you know what?
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Speaker 3: He wasn't really a big king. He didn't have a palace.
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Speaker 3: He didn't have a kingdom. He was kind of like
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Speaker 3: a local chieftain of a cow town named Jerusalem. So
10:33
Speaker 3: they try to minimize the importance of King David, but
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Speaker 3: then archaeologist Elad Mazar discovers the ruins of King David's palace.
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Speaker 3: Giant walls, huge pillars, 20 feet thick, clearly not some
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Speaker 3: residential building, and it's dated right to the time of
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Speaker 3: King David. So another major blow for the skeptics, and
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Speaker 3: they're like, so what happens is that they never give up.
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Speaker 3: It's never like they go, you know what, we're actually wrong,
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Speaker 3: we shouldn't have... But instead, what they say is like,
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Speaker 3: all right, we admit this, but now, you know, you
11:03
Speaker 3: still haven't proved that. And, you know, we have to
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Speaker 3: admit there are many things in the Bible that have
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Speaker 3: not been proven. Nobody has definitively found like the Tower
11:10
Speaker 3: of Babel. Nobody has found the Ark of the Covenant.
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Speaker 3: There's a debate about Noah's Ark. So my book called
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Speaker 3: The Stone's Cry Out stays on the safe territory of
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Speaker 3: things that have been demonstrated and doesn't get into things
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Speaker 3: that are somewhat dubious.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, right. Well, and it's very smart.
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Speaker 1: And it just, it makes you, it makes you feel,
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Speaker 1: I think, more reassured in your faith if you're already
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Speaker 1: a believer.
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Speaker 2: And if you're not.
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Speaker 1: A believer, I think you'll be absolutely blown away with
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Speaker 1: what Dinesh unearths in the book, The Stones Cry Out,
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Speaker 1: which is out now. I love the subtitle, by the way,
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Speaker 1: Biblical Archaeology, Prophecy, and the Last Days.
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Speaker 2: Very cool. There's also a two-hour document.
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Speaker 1: I think it's a 12-parter is what you guys are
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Speaker 1: doing with PragerU Documentary, which is really cool. Everything PragerU
11:57
Speaker 1: does is excellent, as you guys know. I'm a donor
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Speaker 1: to PragerU, and I recommend all of you do the
12:03
Speaker 1: same so they can keep doing stuff like this. Dinesh,
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Speaker 1: I got a lot of specifics that I want to
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Speaker 1: get into, but before we do, tell me how you
12:10
Speaker 1: found yourself going down these rabbit holes, because you're in
12:13
Speaker 1: really uncharted territory here, historically speaking. I mean, no one's
12:16
Speaker 1: doing what you're doing, and you had a really nice
12:19
Speaker 1: niche there before taking the wood to Obama and Hillary.
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Speaker 2: And it was probably a nice life doing that stuff.
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Speaker 2: And then now you're here. How did that happen?
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Speaker 3: Well, I went to Israel for the first time in 2022,
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Speaker 3: and I was exposed to some of these artifacts. And
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Speaker 3: I said to my wife, I go, you know, I've
12:34
Speaker 3: been in churches for many, many years. They give a
12:37
Speaker 3: lot of teaching about the trial of Jesus, the story
12:40
Speaker 3: of Jeremiah in the pit. But they never treat the
12:45
Speaker 3: Bible historically. I'm talking about the pastors. They teach the
12:48
Speaker 3: Bible like it's a bunch of parables or morality tales, like, oh,
12:52
Speaker 3: Jeremiah was in a pit. I'm sure that you have
12:56
Speaker 3: been in many pits in your life, and I'm going
12:58
Speaker 3: to give you some tips for how to get out
12:59
Speaker 3: of the pit. You know, this kind of thing, as
13:01
Speaker 3: opposed to Jeremiah lived in the 6th century BC. The
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Speaker 3: king at the time was named Zedekiah. The Babylonians were
13:09
Speaker 3: preparing to invade. So in other words, pastors are trained.
13:12
Speaker 3: They go to divinity school. They don't study archaeology. And
13:15
Speaker 3: so they stay a little bit away from all this. Now, interestingly, Alex,
13:19
Speaker 3: the archeological community is also skeptical in the sense that
13:23
Speaker 3: most of these guys are, you know, they're in university departments.
13:26
Speaker 3: They think of themselves as scientists. They're like, I don't
13:29
Speaker 3: want to be seen as proving the Bible. And so
13:31
Speaker 3: even if they find something that directly corroborates the Bible,
13:35
Speaker 3: they will minimize it in their academic reports. So if
13:39
Speaker 3: they're looking at, I'm not even exaggerating here, they're looking at,
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Speaker 3: let's say, the childhood home of Jesus. And the title
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Speaker 3: of the archeological study will say something like, architectural variations
13:50
Speaker 3: of a first century home in Nazareth. No mention of Jesus,
13:54
Speaker 3: no mention of the Bible. You're acting as if you
13:56
Speaker 3: just found a home in Nazareth, happens to be where
13:59
Speaker 3: Jesus was raised, and you're now describing which century these
14:04
Speaker 3: stones date to and what the pottery tells you. It's
14:08
Speaker 3: like you bury the lead, you bury the main point.
14:12
Speaker 3: And so I thought to myself, look, this is like...
14:15
Speaker 3: tailor-made for me because it bridges the gap between a
14:18
Speaker 3: somewhat esoteric academic field and a general public that's genuinely
14:24
Speaker 3: interested in this stuff, but is not getting it either
14:27
Speaker 3: from the archaeologists or the pastors. And so that's really,
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Speaker 3: I thought, this is really a gap that I think
14:32
Speaker 3: I can fill. It plays to what I do well.
14:35
Speaker 3: And so I thought, but I won't rush it. I'll
14:37
Speaker 3: spend a couple of years really plunging into the field
14:40
Speaker 3: because I want to understand, I don't just want to
14:42
Speaker 3: list artifacts. I want to understand sort of archeological thinking.
14:46
Speaker 3: Like if you come to a place, how do you
14:48
Speaker 3: know this is ancient Sodom and Gomorrah? Like what criteria
14:51
Speaker 3: would you look for? Because biblical locations don't come with
14:55
Speaker 3: like name tags or something. You have to be able
14:57
Speaker 3: to figure it out. And so how do archeologists think
15:01
Speaker 3: and how do they resolve issues? So the book I
15:04
Speaker 3: think is valuable, not just in that it tells you
15:06
Speaker 3: about conclusions, but also the mode of reasoning that goes
15:11
Speaker 3: into making those judgments.
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Speaker 1: It's really interesting because I imagine people who are pretty
15:16
Speaker 1: fluent in scripture are going to, it's going to add
15:20
Speaker 1: a lot of detail for you when you're going through it.
15:24
Speaker 2: I was thinking about it.
15:24
Speaker 1: It's almost like you treat everything like a Shakespearean play
15:28
Speaker 1: where there's always so many nuances and layers that it's
15:31
Speaker 1: accessible if you're not super, it's accessible for everyone, but
15:36
Speaker 1: also if you're a real scholar, then you can even
15:39
Speaker 1: get more out of it. And I think you're providing
15:40
Speaker 1: that roadmap for people. So You may have enjoyed the
15:43
Speaker 1: Bible more after reading some of Dinesh's stuff in this regard.
15:46
Speaker 1: The Stones Cry Out Again is the book. I can't
15:48
Speaker 1: recommend it enough to people. I learned a lot. Dinesh,
15:52
Speaker 1: I'll tell you that one of the things that was
15:54
Speaker 1: really relevant to today is there's some real evidence justifying
15:58
Speaker 1: the Jews returning to their homeland, which is really important
16:01
Speaker 1: because it seems like All of a sudden, we can't
16:03
Speaker 1: stop talking about the Jews and whether or not there
16:05
Speaker 1: should be Jews anymore. Maybe the Holocaust wasn't so bad
16:09
Speaker 1: after all. We're having a lot of that discussion online.
16:11
Speaker 1: And you go in there and you go into pretty
16:14
Speaker 1: significant detail about how the Jews returned to their homeland
16:17
Speaker 1: is biblical prophecy.
16:19
Speaker 2: Break some of this down for us.
16:21
Speaker 3: Many times in the Bible, in the book of Isaiah,
16:24
Speaker 3: in the book of Ezekiel, it says that the Jews
16:27
Speaker 3: will be scattered, quote, to the ends of the earth.
16:31
Speaker 3: And then implausibly, they will return to their ancestral homeland
16:36
Speaker 3: and reestablish their nation. Now, this is stated very clearly.
16:41
Speaker 3: This is not like Nostradamus, where it's vague and you
16:44
Speaker 3: can't really... This is a very clear prophecy in the Bible.
16:48
Speaker 3: And prophecies are valuable in direct proportion to their implausibility, right?
16:53
Speaker 3: If I were to say, Alex, say, flip a coin,
16:54
Speaker 3: I'm going to call heads... You're like, well, yeah, but
16:57
Speaker 3: you got a 50-50 chance of getting it right. But
17:00
Speaker 3: if I make a prediction that's extremely implausible, unlikely, and
17:05
Speaker 3: then it comes to pass, you'll be like, well, wow,
17:07
Speaker 3: how did Dinesh know that? So if you look over
17:10
Speaker 3: the centuries... it seemed just vanishingly improbable that this could happen.
17:16
Speaker 3: Even as late as the 20th century, it seemed absurd.
17:19
Speaker 3: No other group has ever been dispersed in this way.
17:22
Speaker 3: I mean, there are other groups that have been scattered,
17:24
Speaker 3: and then we never hear from them again. They vanish
17:27
Speaker 3: off the pages of this, including, by the way, many
17:29
Speaker 3: of the enemies of Israel, right? Like, where are the
17:32
Speaker 3: Philistines now, for example, right? But with the Jews- Well,
17:39
Speaker 3: they are actually not. And that's where, again, archaeology has
17:42
Speaker 3: something to say, right? Because if you go, the name
17:46
Speaker 3: Philistine and Palestine, those are the same name, it's true.
17:49
Speaker 3: But the Philistines, interestingly, were not, you know, they weren't Semites.
17:53
Speaker 3: They weren't, they certainly weren't Arabs. They were Europeans who
17:57
Speaker 3: came from Cyprus and Crete. They came from the Aegean,
18:01
Speaker 3: the areas of the Aegean. And they were called the
18:04
Speaker 3: Sea Peoples. And they were basically bandits. I mean, they
18:07
Speaker 3: came down and started fighting with the pharaohs. The pharaohs
18:11
Speaker 3: chased them out of Egypt. And so they settled in
18:13
Speaker 3: this place called Philistia. And in Philistia, there are five cities.
18:17
Speaker 3: And the chief one, Gaza. So the Philistines are from Gaza.
18:23
Speaker 3: But they're not genetically or historically. Not the same Gazans.
18:27
Speaker 3: Different Gazans. Different Gazans altogether. Got it.
18:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.
18:30
Speaker 3: Absolutely. So, yes, I think the, you know, the archaeology
18:35
Speaker 3: unmistakably shows you. I mean, just recently, out of the
18:38
Speaker 3: ground comes a giant, you know, mikvah, mikvah being a
18:41
Speaker 3: kind of ritual bath. Now, sometimes in these residential mikvahs,
18:44
Speaker 3: they're really small, but this one was like the size
18:46
Speaker 3: of a room, and it took a massive crane to
18:49
Speaker 3: pull it out, and it's dated to about the time
18:53
Speaker 3: of Jesus. So Jews would immerse themselves in the ritual
18:56
Speaker 3: bath and then go to the temple. So you can't
19:00
Speaker 3: look at this stuff and say with a straight face
19:02
Speaker 3: that Jews are colonizers because quite obviously this is their
19:06
Speaker 3: ancestral land going back a very long time. And even,
19:10
Speaker 3: and equally important, they didn't leave voluntarily, right? If you
19:13
Speaker 3: or I get up and vacate our house and we
19:15
Speaker 3: take off and somebody else moves in, okay, they might say, well,
19:18
Speaker 3: you left. But the Jews were forcibly ejected and therefore,
19:23
Speaker 3: I think, retain the right to reclaim their land.
19:26
Speaker 1: Remarkable, and I think it provides a really, again, compelling
19:29
Speaker 1: argument that is relevant to modern times.
19:32
Speaker 2: Dinesh, who do you think you wrote this book for most?
19:36
Speaker 1: Just like all authors, I think everyone would like my books,
19:39
Speaker 1: but who is your ideal audience member here when you're writing?
19:44
Speaker 3: Well, I wrote it as an encouragement to the believer,
19:47
Speaker 3: because I think that it is... isn't it great that
19:50
Speaker 3: things that you have believed for a long time on
19:53
Speaker 3: faith alone can now be seen as also a matter
19:56
Speaker 3: of fact. I mean, there's a certain exhilaration that was
19:59
Speaker 3: for me in discovering these artifacts that confirm, you know,
20:05
Speaker 3: minute things, the Bible down to its microscopic details. but
20:10
Speaker 3: I also wrote it as a sort of, um, a
20:13
Speaker 3: kind of healthy provocation to the skeptic. Because the skeptic
20:18
Speaker 3: always claims to be a man of evidence, a man
20:20
Speaker 3: of science. To put it somewhat differently, I mentioned earlier
20:24
Speaker 3: how Western civilization is based on Athens and Jerusalem. The
20:27
Speaker 3: skeptics typically, going back to the time of Darwin, they
20:30
Speaker 3: use Athens or reason against Jerusalem. And my book uses
20:36
Speaker 3: Athens to defend Jerusalem. In other words, it uses the
20:38
Speaker 3: techniques of science and archaeology to make the point that
20:42
Speaker 3: that the Bible, in fact, can be historically authenticated. And
20:46
Speaker 3: by the way, this kind of scrutiny cannot be done
20:50
Speaker 3: with any other sacred book. You can't archaeologically vindicate the
20:54
Speaker 3: Quran or the Bhagavad Gita, for example. The Bible and
20:58
Speaker 3: only the Bible has been able to stand unscathed in
21:02
Speaker 3: the face of 150 years of withering skeptical scrutiny. And
21:06
Speaker 3: that's a big story to me.
21:08
Speaker 2: That's a fantastic answer. It's totally right.
21:10
Speaker 1: Exactly how I felt when I was reading it, because
21:12
Speaker 1: I like to mix my theology with my intellectual side,
21:17
Speaker 1: and this is exactly what this is doing, which is
21:18
Speaker 1: really cool.
21:21
Speaker 2: You mentioned it was exhilarating to confirm stuff.
21:23
Speaker 1: Was there an example in particular that you thought this
21:26
Speaker 1: was really exciting when you came across it?
21:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, nobody would say this is the biggest finding in
21:30
Speaker 3: biblical archaeology, but to me, it's one of the craziest. So,
21:34
Speaker 3: the Israelites are crossing over to the Promised Land. This
21:38
Speaker 3: is about 1500 BC, by the way, so 3,500 years ago.
21:42
Speaker 3: In order to do that, they have to go through Jordan,
21:45
Speaker 3: which at the time is Moabite territory. The Moabites are
21:48
Speaker 3: one of the classic enemies of the Israelites. And the
21:51
Speaker 3: king of Moab, very angry that the Israelites are crossing
21:55
Speaker 3: his land, rounds up a local fortune teller. This guy's
21:59
Speaker 3: name is Balaam, son of Beor. And the king says,
22:03
Speaker 3: you need to curse the Israelites. We need to give
22:05
Speaker 3: them all kinds of problems, plagues and things like that
22:08
Speaker 3: as they're trying to cross over our land. And this
22:11
Speaker 3: guy Balaam is up for it, but the Bible says
22:14
Speaker 3: that God intervenes and prevents him from cursing the Israelites. Now,
22:19
Speaker 3: in the biblical story, this guy Balaam has a donkey,
22:22
Speaker 3: and there's kind of an absurd episode in which Balaam
22:25
Speaker 3: is conversing with his donkey. Think about it, it's a
22:28
Speaker 3: talking donkey. Now, nothing could be more like tailor-made for
22:32
Speaker 3: skeptical derision, right? Think of like professors... you know, sitting
22:35
Speaker 3: at universities in Europe. They're like, this is ridiculous. A
22:38
Speaker 3: guy with a talking donkey. He's obviously a legendary figure.
22:42
Speaker 3: The Bible clearly took some fairy tale and just stuck
22:45
Speaker 3: it in here. It's clearly not true. Okay. Fast forward
22:49
Speaker 3: 2,500 years. Scholars are digging. These are secular scholars, by
22:53
Speaker 3: the way. They're digging in Jordan and they find an
22:56
Speaker 3: ancient plaster inscription and written in the stone. It says this,
23:02
Speaker 3: the warnings and sayings of Balaam, son of Beor. So
23:08
Speaker 3: now in archeology, you can't just go on a first name, right? Balaam,
23:11
Speaker 3: maybe there are many Balaams, but same dad, son of Beor.
23:15
Speaker 3: Not only that, it's in the right place, Jordan, Moabite territory.
23:19
Speaker 3: Not only that, but if you read the warnings and
23:22
Speaker 3: sayings of Balaam, son of Beor, he's some kind of
23:25
Speaker 3: a soothsayer or fortune teller. So the right place, the
23:28
Speaker 3: right profession, the right name, it's the same guy. And
23:32
Speaker 3: so one of the most unlikely characters in the Bible
23:36
Speaker 3: is archaeologically supported based upon this rather obscure finding in
23:42
Speaker 3: an ancient building in modern day Jordan. And again, remember
23:46
Speaker 3: that the people who find these things aren't looking for them.
23:48
Speaker 3: They're not trying to prove the Bible. They just find
23:51
Speaker 3: the inscription and then somebody goes, hey, you know what?
23:54
Speaker 3: That guy's in the book of Exodus. And then they
23:56
Speaker 3: all go running to look it up. And it's like, whoa,
23:59
Speaker 3: all right. So this biblical character says, who was once
24:04
Speaker 3: thought to be just a character in a quote novel,
24:06
Speaker 3: so to speak, is now supported and enters the pages
24:10
Speaker 3: of history via the pathway of archaeology.
24:13
Speaker 1: Was there any moments in the book when you were
24:15
Speaker 1: researching it where you thought you wish there was more evidence?
24:17
Speaker 1: Were you disappointed at all in any of the rabbit
24:20
Speaker 1: holes you went down that you didn't get ample justification
24:24
Speaker 1: for something?
24:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, I freely admit in the book that there are
24:27
Speaker 3: times when, let's say, for example, Sodom and Gomorrah, there
24:31
Speaker 3: are two rival sets of locations. And I'm not sure
24:36
Speaker 3: which it is. There are actually pretty good arguments on
24:38
Speaker 3: both sides. So I give you the arguments. I kind
24:40
Speaker 3: of let you adjudicate. And I tell you the underlying
24:44
Speaker 3: reasoning that goes into deciding this kind of thing. When
24:47
Speaker 3: it comes to the Exodus, the presence of the Israelites
24:50
Speaker 3: in Egypt, There is, if I were a skeptic, I
24:53
Speaker 3: would go there in terms of like, this is a
24:56
Speaker 3: case where there does not seem to be a lot
24:58
Speaker 3: of evidence. Now, in fairness, if you look at the
25:02
Speaker 3: royal records of ancient civilizations, they never record a defeat.
25:07
Speaker 3: So if the Israelites did outwit Pharaoh, if they all
25:10
Speaker 3: took off and escaped captivity, if Pharaoh's armies tried to
25:14
Speaker 3: go after them and got swallowed up by the sea,
25:17
Speaker 3: you would expect the Egyptians to say nothing about it.
25:20
Speaker 3: And sure enough, they do say nothing about it. So
25:23
Speaker 3: But again, if you're looking for concrete proof of a
25:27
Speaker 3: large number of Israelites in Egypt, I can give you
25:30
Speaker 3: some examples that suggest, yeah, there were Samites in Egypt. Yeah,
25:34
Speaker 3: they did service slaves. Yeah, they did make bricks. But nevertheless,
25:38
Speaker 3: the full story of the Exodus in the Bible, I
25:41
Speaker 3: would say, lacks adequate archaeological justification.
25:45
Speaker 1: Okay, so I confide in you, Janesh. So I always
25:48
Speaker 1: like to read the books. I made it about two
25:49
Speaker 1: thirds of the way through before I ran out of
25:51
Speaker 1: time and we had to go and do the interview.
25:53
Speaker 1: And so I'm very curious about, I'm about to get
25:56
Speaker 1: to where you break down the crucifixion of Jesus.
25:59
Speaker 2: I think, I think that's coming up.
26:01
Speaker 1: And what do we have archaeologically about the crucifixion of Jesus?
26:05
Speaker 3: All right, I'll give you one thing that I think
26:07
Speaker 3: you'll find pretty jaw dropping. So the great trial scene
26:11
Speaker 3: of Jesus involves four people, King Herod, the Roman governor
26:16
Speaker 3: or prefect named Pontius Pilate, the high priest named Caiaphas,
26:21
Speaker 3: and the accused man, Jesus. Now, I'd love to tell
26:24
Speaker 3: you archeology on all four, but I'm gonna focus just
26:27
Speaker 3: on one, the high priest, the orchestrator in a way
26:30
Speaker 3: of the crucifixion, this is Caiaphas. And the Bible only
26:33
Speaker 3: gives you one name, he's Caiaphas, but we know from
26:36
Speaker 3: the Jewish historian named Josephus that Caiaphas had a first name,
26:40
Speaker 3: it's Joseph. So we now know his name, he's Joseph Caiaphas.
26:44
Speaker 3: All right, now, recently, a few decades ago, digging in
26:47
Speaker 3: the priestly quarter of Jerusalem, archaeologists find a number of
26:51
Speaker 3: stone boxes that are called ossuaries. A stone box is
26:56
Speaker 3: for bones. If you die in the first century AD,
27:00
Speaker 3: they bury you in a tomb. But to save space,
27:02
Speaker 3: when your body decays, they take your bones out, put
27:05
Speaker 3: it in a box, and put your name on it.
27:07
Speaker 3: This was the customary practice. And so here you have archaeologists,
27:11
Speaker 3: and they are looking at these 20 or so ossuaries,
27:14
Speaker 3: and one of them is particularly ornate. And as they
27:17
Speaker 3: approach it, they can't believe it, because it says at
27:20
Speaker 3: the top, Yehoshaph bar Kayaphah. So Yehoshaph is Joseph, bar
27:27
Speaker 3: means son of, and kaiapha, Caiaphas. So they open the
27:31
Speaker 3: box and inside are the actual bones of a 60
27:35
Speaker 3: year old man. And they date those bones and they
27:38
Speaker 3: date to the first century AD. So it's Caiaphas. So
27:42
Speaker 3: imagine you and I have grown up, we've heard stories
27:46
Speaker 3: about sermons on Easter Sunday about the crucifixion. Here's this
27:50
Speaker 3: major biblical villain named Caiaphas. And it's not just a
27:54
Speaker 3: matter of seeing some historian write about him or even
27:56
Speaker 3: a stone inscription. You're looking at the guy's actual bones.
28:01
Speaker 3: So for me, that's the kind of thing that brings
28:03
Speaker 3: the reality of this massive and important event right to
28:09
Speaker 3: the emotional center because of this artifact that you're staring at.
28:14
Speaker 3: You're actually looking at the man's remains.
28:18
Speaker 2: Unbelievable. Really good.
28:19
Speaker 1: Dinesh, tell me about also in the subtitle, a part
28:22
Speaker 1: that I haven't gotten to yet, is the last days.
28:25
Speaker 1: So you mentioned, again, the stones cry out biblical archaeology
28:28
Speaker 1: prophecy and the last days.
28:30
Speaker 2: What about the last days do we need to know?
28:33
Speaker 3: Well, the Bible talks about a kind of last age
28:35
Speaker 3: of mankind, and it's not a fixed amount of days,
28:39
Speaker 3: and it's not even a time that we can know
28:42
Speaker 3: for sure when it is. But the Bible does give
28:45
Speaker 3: you certain signs. you have to be careful with the
28:47
Speaker 3: signs because you have to make sure, first of all,
28:49
Speaker 3: that all the signs are present. One of the signs,
28:52
Speaker 3: for example, is wars and rumors of wars. But gee,
28:56
Speaker 3: you know, if you lived in World War I, you
28:57
Speaker 3: could be like, hey, there's a big war going on. Obviously,
28:59
Speaker 3: this is the end of the world. But the other
29:01
Speaker 3: signs were not there. So one important sign is, in fact,
29:06
Speaker 3: the return of the Jews to their ancient homeland. We
29:08
Speaker 3: know that has happened. the Bible predicts that in the
29:12
Speaker 3: last age, there will be a rising tide of hatred,
29:16
Speaker 3: not only against the Jews, but also against the Christians
29:20
Speaker 3: who are portrayed in the Bible as like engrafted into
29:23
Speaker 3: the Jewish vine. So in other words, God's people, his
29:26
Speaker 3: chosen people, the Jews and the Christians are both going
29:30
Speaker 3: to be tormented more than ever before. We see some
29:34
Speaker 3: of that going on. Now, I raise a question related
29:39
Speaker 3: to archaeology which is this. These artifacts that I'm describing
29:43
Speaker 3: have been sitting under the ground in some cases for
29:47
Speaker 3: thousands of years. I don't know exactly when King David's
29:50
Speaker 3: palace was destroyed. He built it about 1000 BC. Let's
29:54
Speaker 3: say for some reason it was displaced or destroyed by
29:56
Speaker 3: 700 BC, that that palace has been sitting underground from
30:01
Speaker 3: 700 BC to about 2005. So it is only in
30:07
Speaker 3: our time, in the lifetime of you and me, that
30:10
Speaker 3: these incredible things confirmations are coming out of the ground.
30:15
Speaker 3: So I raised the question, like, why now? Like, why is,
30:17
Speaker 3: it's almost like God is speaking to us in a
30:20
Speaker 3: new language. He used the old kind of thunderous language
30:24
Speaker 3: of the Bible. Now he's using the quiet language of
30:27
Speaker 3: the dirt. Not to displace, but to like compliment the
30:32
Speaker 3: other message. and the two go beautifully together. So I'm
30:35
Speaker 3: just excited about this idea of doing archaeology. You've got
30:38
Speaker 3: like the Bible in one hand and your spade or
30:41
Speaker 3: trowel in the other hand, and off you go looking
30:44
Speaker 3: for the confirmation of massive biblical events. I also think
30:48
Speaker 3: with AI, I'm just excited to see what new discoveries
30:52
Speaker 3: are made like in the next 25 years.
30:53
Speaker 1: So- Dinesh, that's a perfect point for me to ask
30:57
Speaker 1: about something I was thinking about during the course of this,
31:00
Speaker 1: which is that now with all this evidence corroborating biblical
31:04
Speaker 1: stories and they aren't fables and they aren't abstractions, these
31:09
Speaker 1: are real and there's real evidence. And the more evidence
31:12
Speaker 1: that we have, the more confirms what's in the Bible.
31:16
Speaker 1: Let's look to the future. Let's look at prophecy. What
31:18
Speaker 1: is yet to come for us? Did your view change
31:21
Speaker 1: on anything that is.
31:22
Speaker 2: Yet to come?
31:23
Speaker 1: As predicted by the Bible, as prophesied by the Bible,
31:26
Speaker 1: now that we have all this evidence supporting what's already
31:30
Speaker 1: come before us?
31:32
Speaker 3: I would say that the final confirmation that we are
31:36
Speaker 3: in the last days or the last age is a
31:41
Speaker 3: bit controversial. And it's controversial because there are two interpretations. Essentially,
31:48
Speaker 3: what we're talking about is the reconstruction of the ancient
31:53
Speaker 3: Solomonic temple in Jerusalem. Now, Solomon built a temple. It
31:59
Speaker 3: was destroyed in 586 BC by the Babylonians. It was
32:03
Speaker 3: then rebuilt and extended by King Herod. That's called the
32:06
Speaker 3: second temple. So this would be the construction of a
32:10
Speaker 3: third temple. Now, there are some Jews who are very
32:14
Speaker 3: excited about this. They are preparing for temple sacrifices. They
32:18
Speaker 3: take this, I kid you not, very seriously. Among Christians,
32:23
Speaker 3: there are some Christians who believe that Jesus, because at
32:29
Speaker 3: one point Jesus has asked about the temple and he
32:31
Speaker 3: says the temple is my body. So these Christians interpret
32:34
Speaker 3: this to mean that Jesus is saying that I've already
32:37
Speaker 3: fulfilled that prophecy and There is no further rebuilding of
32:41
Speaker 3: a temple that is going to happen or is even necessary.
32:45
Speaker 3: So that's one interpretation. But there's another interpretation, I think
32:49
Speaker 3: just as valid, that says, no, although Jesus did say
32:54
Speaker 3: that metaphorically, and that's true in a spiritual sense, the
32:59
Speaker 3: fact of the matter is that there needs to be
33:02
Speaker 3: a third temple built as a kind of indicator of
33:05
Speaker 3: the last days. And so I don't take sides in
33:09
Speaker 3: that debate. I simply point out that there is a
33:12
Speaker 3: group of people, Christians and Jews both, who believe that if,
33:17
Speaker 3: I mean, you know as well as I do, there's
33:19
Speaker 3: a Dome of the Rock, an Islamic victory monument sitting
33:22
Speaker 3: there right now. It's adjoining the Al-Aqsa Mosque, so it's
33:26
Speaker 3: not exactly easy. Again, it's a very... it would be
33:30
Speaker 3: highly controversial to somehow take down those Islamic monuments and
33:34
Speaker 3: rebuild the temple. But let's just say if that does happen,
33:38
Speaker 3: if in some way the Dome of the Rock comes down,
33:42
Speaker 3: the Al-Aqsa Mosque comes down, and the third temple is
33:45
Speaker 3: being rebuilt, I would take that as a very important
33:48
Speaker 3: sign that we are entering.
33:51
Speaker 1: the last stage fascinating so did that you'd have to
33:54
Speaker 1: come back and we're gonna have to check in and
33:55
Speaker 1: do we get any closer to the last days because
33:58
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be you're gonna be the one I'm gonna
33:59
Speaker 1: be checking in with to keep an eye on those
34:01
Speaker 1: things let's go back to the title quickly the stones
34:04
Speaker 1: cry out this comes from Luke tell me about why
34:07
Speaker 1: you chose this title and how it relates.
34:10
Speaker 3: Jesus is coming into Jerusalem, kind of triumphant. He has
34:15
Speaker 3: all these followers and disciples, and they're cheering. And the
34:18
Speaker 3: Pharisees or the priests are kind of upset, and they
34:22
Speaker 3: say to Jesus, you know, quiet these people down. And
34:25
Speaker 3: Jesus goes, no, I can't do it. But even if
34:28
Speaker 3: I did, Jesus says, quote, the stones would cry out.
34:32
Speaker 3: I think what Jesus is saying is, in effect, my
34:34
Speaker 3: message can't be stopped. But I read the message archaeologically
34:39
Speaker 3: as saying, guess what? We're living in an age when
34:42
Speaker 3: these stones, which have lain pretty silent for generations, centuries,
34:49
Speaker 3: they're now suddenly starting to tell us something. Archaeology is
34:54
Speaker 3: the science of pulling stuff out of the ground. It
34:57
Speaker 3: could be, you know, an arrowhead, a skeleton, sometimes a
35:01
Speaker 3: whole city, sometimes a just walls and pillars, sometimes a
35:05
Speaker 3: clay seal with some writing on it or pottery with
35:08
Speaker 3: some writing on it or a stone inscription. So all
35:12
Speaker 3: of this work that's going on in many places covered
35:17
Speaker 3: by the Bible. The timescale of the Bible is about
35:21
Speaker 3: 2100 years from about 2000 BC to about 50 AD.
35:23
Speaker 3: The the early Christian movement. And the geography of the Bible,
35:29
Speaker 3: some people think it's all in Israel. No, some of
35:31
Speaker 3: it's in Jordan, in Syria, in Babylon, which is now
35:35
Speaker 3: modern day Iraq. And of course, in the New Testament,
35:38
Speaker 3: there's Greece, there's Rome, there are parts of Turkey. This
35:42
Speaker 3: is the place where the Apostle Paul, for example, journeyed.
35:45
Speaker 3: So all of this, this entire timescale and this whole
35:48
Speaker 3: geographical spread are all covered in the book. So you
35:51
Speaker 3: raised this point earlier, and I want to highlight this, that,
35:54
Speaker 3: you know, for me, it's almost like I've now taken
35:56
Speaker 3: my Bible and I run a tapestry on the top
35:58
Speaker 3: of it. I can parachute in all the dates. And
36:02
Speaker 3: I can parachute in all the artifacts. So this now
36:05
Speaker 3: gives me an historically like a Bible with historical scaffolding.
36:11
Speaker 3: And it's a it's to me just a very, very
36:14
Speaker 3: inspiring to be able to to have all this evidence
36:18
Speaker 3: supporting the structure and in a sense, bringing faith and
36:21
Speaker 3: reason closer together.
36:24
Speaker 1: The book is a case against biblical minimalism where we
36:27
Speaker 1: basically accept the Bible or don't, and then we don't
36:30
Speaker 1: really go into it on theology.
36:32
Speaker 2: And I've kind of operated that way.
36:35
Speaker 1: I've been very passive, but you're really trying to arm
36:37
Speaker 1: people with the, you can actually argue for this stuff,
36:40
Speaker 1: not just on a theological level, but on a.
36:44
Speaker 2: Literal fact-based level. And I think that's very cool.
36:47
Speaker 1: I mean, is there, do you feel like this is
36:49
Speaker 1: an emerging field or do you feel like you're kind
36:51
Speaker 1: of lonely out here doing this?
36:53
Speaker 3: Well, there's some good books on this. And there are
36:57
Speaker 3: some people who are kind of laboring in this vineyard.
37:00
Speaker 3: I'm probably the most high profile. So I'm able to,
37:04
Speaker 3: you know, kind of broadcast the message in the most
37:07
Speaker 3: wide way, right? So I'm taking advantage of my platform
37:11
Speaker 3: to do that. But I'm relying on people who are
37:14
Speaker 3: doing just painstaking archaeological work. I mean, If you watch
37:18
Speaker 3: the Indiana Jones movies, it's all about, like, these megalithic structures,
37:22
Speaker 3: the Ark of the Covenant.
37:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, right.
37:24
Speaker 3: Christy wrote about, you know, the pyramids. You know, she was,
37:27
Speaker 3: by the way, married to an archaeologist. But a lot
37:29
Speaker 3: of archaeological work is you find the tiniest thing in
37:33
Speaker 3: the ground. and then you have to decipher it, and
37:36
Speaker 3: that's laborious work. So there's a lot of just hard
37:41
Speaker 3: work that goes into this. And what I love about
37:43
Speaker 3: this is that on the one hand, you have the
37:45
Speaker 3: armchair skeptics who never leave their armchair, and they'll say
37:49
Speaker 3: things like, you know, there's no way Samson could have
37:51
Speaker 3: pulled down a Philistine temple. Well, I've actually been to Gaza.
37:55
Speaker 3: If you look at the temples in old Philistia, in
37:59
Speaker 3: Philistine country, they're really small. They're almost like a hut,
38:02
Speaker 3: and they're held up by two wooden pillars that are
38:05
Speaker 3: like five and a half feet apart. So a large,
38:08
Speaker 3: strong man could easily stretch out his arms, put his
38:12
Speaker 3: arms around the two wooden pillars, and if he's strong enough,
38:15
Speaker 3: in theory, rip out the wooden foundation and bring the
38:18
Speaker 3: building down. So suddenly, it's like... You know, you can
38:21
Speaker 3: pontificate out of the, you know, history department at Berkeley,
38:25
Speaker 3: but you just haven't taken the trouble to go actually
38:28
Speaker 3: look at a temple and see that what you're saying
38:31
Speaker 3: makes no sense. I'm not proving that Samson did it,
38:34
Speaker 3: but I'm showing you it's not as preposterous as you think.
38:36
Speaker 1: And I did take an archaeology class at Berkeley, Dinesh,
38:39
Speaker 1: so that hits close to home, very close.
38:42
Speaker 2: I'm feeling violated, that last comment. That's very true. Okay,
38:46
Speaker 2: so it's the last one for the day.
38:50
Speaker 1: And again, everyone should pick up The Stones Cry Out
38:53
Speaker 1: wherever you get your books and check out the documentary
38:56
Speaker 1: at PragerU. I'll link all these in the show notes
38:58
Speaker 1: so you guys can get easy access to these. But
39:01
Speaker 1: let's connect it to your prior life as a political guy.
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Speaker 2: How do you see this as an extension?
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Speaker 1: Because I'm sure you do as a person who's been
39:08
Speaker 1: an advocate for American values and Judeo-Christian values on a
39:11
Speaker 1: very broad scale, one of the most effective and popular
39:15
Speaker 1: commentators and writers of our time. How do you explain
39:20
Speaker 1: this evolution in that context?
39:23
Speaker 3: A lot of my earlier work is a defense of
39:27
Speaker 3: the core principles of the West. I think that the
39:33
Speaker 3: founding fathers, when they came from Europe, they didn't come empty-handed.
39:37
Speaker 3: They brought with them the legacy of Athens and Jerusalem.
39:42
Speaker 3: And you can see this in the debates around the founding.
39:45
Speaker 3: You can see it in the Federalist Papers. and you
39:49
Speaker 3: can see it in a lot of the sermons that
39:50
Speaker 3: accompany the American Revolution. Now, Athens is actually very easy
39:55
Speaker 3: to defend, right? Because Athens represents science, it represents reason,
40:00
Speaker 3: it represents free speech, the idea of Socratic questioning, it
40:04
Speaker 3: represents the birth of democracy. Okay, so Athens is actually
40:08
Speaker 3: in a pretty secure foundation, but Jerusalem is much more controversial.
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Speaker 1: Right?
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Speaker 3: The idea that our rights come from God, the idea
40:17
Speaker 3: of the Exodus, which is this sort of notion of
40:20
Speaker 3: human liberation, the idea that there's a moral order in
40:24
Speaker 3: the universe external to us, represented, for example, by the
40:27
Speaker 3: Ten Commandments, the idea of the Hebrew prophets who are like,
40:31
Speaker 3: you know, fulminating against the king, the wisdom of the Proverbs. So,
40:35
Speaker 3: Jerusalem has always been the more fragile pillar of Western civilization.
40:41
Speaker 3: And so, When I discovered biblical archaeology, I thought, wow,
40:45
Speaker 3: this is a way to, I mean, not only to
40:47
Speaker 3: support the historical narrative of the nation of Israel, which,
40:52
Speaker 3: by the way, is the only nation whose essential past
40:55
Speaker 3: is based on a book, but it is also a
40:58
Speaker 3: way to support more broadly the kind of supporting pillars
41:03
Speaker 3: of Western civilization. That's very consistent with my earlier work,
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Speaker 3: although it's defending it in a new way.
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Speaker 2: Totally. That's great. Perfectly articulated as usual.
41:12
Speaker 1: Dinesh D'Souza, always a pleasure to spend time with you
41:15
Speaker 1: as you've been kind to do with me over the
41:16
Speaker 1: years and congrats on this. I think it's really inspiring
41:20
Speaker 1: because it's nice to, it's cool to see people reinvent
41:23
Speaker 1: themselves and be equally as effective on new endeavors, which
41:26
Speaker 1: you're doing, which.
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Speaker 2: I admire a lot. That's all on my end.
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Speaker 3: Dinesh, anything else you want to share with us before
41:31
Speaker 3: I let you run? Well, I just say, follow me
41:34
Speaker 3: on X at Dinesh D'Souza. I have a weekly show
41:36
Speaker 3: called Dinesh And yes, go to PragerU.com, look me up.
41:41
Speaker 3: It's The Stones Cry Out. And then the book, which
41:44
Speaker 3: is out from Charisma Publishers, and you can get it
41:46
Speaker 3: wherever you get books. So thanks, Alex, for having me on.
41:49
Speaker 3: It's been a real pleasure.
41:51
Speaker 2: I totally agree. Go in peace, to love, and serve
41:52
Speaker 2: the Lord.