[Music] you don't think that's a contradiction no it's not a contradiction all because the gospel writers are constantly contradicting each other no even in the ancient world divine revelation comes into a primitive barbaric World which is full of a lot of really bad guys um and God says keep going no God do God does not God does not say keep going the god that you believe in is acting like a Tribal war god a Christian book has got to be understood in the way Christians understanded way so just just to answer just to ask a
direct yes or no question i' appreciate a direct yes or no to this the god that you believe in is the moral author of the universe morally justifiably commanded the slaughter of innocent children and women yes or [Music] no check check one two we're just getting the YouTube live stream going But thank thank you all for being here nice and early we're going to get going on YouTube and uh yeah we're about 15 minutes away from starting so rock and roll feel free to just relax hello everyone this is Don Don Prager he's up here
doing a little pre-show chat with me today yep uh Travis and I we've been uh talking for a while now haven't we through uh we met on Discord what well you you came in the streamyard days so donon was originally just some someone Who's who signed up to come on and have uh engage in a digital Pangburn discussion and then eventually moved his way up the ranks and now he's uh pretty much yeah and one of you're your co-host to our weekly show the Peng bur update and um what else do you do you also
help judge our Discord server which is a huge job yeah on the Discord and uh on the on the update we do the co-host show on the update and we kind of talk about these topics we go over it week by week going On in the intellectual sphere what people are talking about and stuff like that it's been fantastic if you guys want to join us um if you if you're ever looking for a place that you can go to online that you're going to get a good faith helpful engagement with your ideas and you
like talking about different topics like the topic tonight is the Bible true uh you can come into the Peng Discord server and find a conversation at any time uh throughout your day if You if you work a night shift or if you're if you if if you work somewhere where you're allowed to have you know a conversation happening in your ear and you're able to talk a lot of people do that on our Discord server and it's for Brick Layers or phds we have a variety of different levels of education and and skills and techniques
one is not better than the other in the Peng bur world it's just everyone tries to uh engage in good faith and Helpfulness those are the two kind of physical properties that hold the Peng universe together and that's what we look for uh uh our speakers to bring to the table when they come and speak and we'll be looking for that from Alex and denesh tonight the main point is to find a a small Refuge away from you know all the toxicity that you end up finding around these topics and the name calling and the
unhelpfulness and I think that that's like what we try to do on the Online space and as well I know this Travis's Mission within these conversations that hopefully Alex and denish will have tonight yeah well I tell you they were just hanging out doing a mic check here and they are both pumped up up and ready to go tonight um this is this truly is an intellectual Rumble in the Bronx and uh I think that this is going to be the biggest intellectual challenge for each of them tonight and I know that's saying a lot
Because Alex is 25 but for those of you who aren't familiar with Alex and haven't been following what he's been doing he's been going head-to-head with some seasoned uh veterans in this space and he's been doing extremely well based on my opinion and and denesh I mean a lot of people would say that like when denesh went head-to-head with Christopher Hitchens denesh came out on top because Hitchens did not address the presuppositional argument that um that Uh or sorry Hitchens didn't address the presuppositional argument that denesh was presenting um so and I'm sure Alex will
because he's a he's an academic philosopher he's not he's not this is his domain um so this will be interesting what are you expecting Don I mean I think that if you haven't anyone's kept up with Alex's work he recently was on Jordan Peterson's podcast and what they talked about a lot was truth um and the question is is the Bible true can go in many different directions like which way is someone going to defend the truth are they going to go for like a archaeological scientific truth which we've seen many years or are they
going to take a much more metaphorical approach to truth and there a question is a discussion going to H be able to are they going to be able to meet Minds there or not just talk past each other and that's a difficulty in this conversation right is That each person comes from a different perspective what they mean when they say that something is true well and then when you start studying truth in the philosophical domain you will realize there is this long list that outlines the different criterias of truth that all of us engage with
throughout our day whether we would like to admit it or not sometimes we just believe something to be true throughout our day because it's coherent to us sometimes for for greater Claims we'll require a correspondence like truth model like we do in science um but also we'll make appeals to tradition we will we will decide that we'll AC accept something as true simply because it's pragmatic to our purposes so you know if you one thing I always try to say in all of the q&as I do all the discussions I do is uh look up
and it's a good place to start the Wikipedia for criteria of Truth or criterias of Truth And that is a really good place uh to go and and investigate especially when you come to hear a conversation like this be then you'll realize that the matter of which whether something is is true or not might not be as black and white as as we initially thought a lot of times we're also we kind of compelled when something just makes sense to us we have like that feeling of oh aha this makes sense to me all of
a sudden and then you believe it as true and that's just not When you take a deeper investigation that falls apart every time you end up finding that it's not just because something makes sense to me it's true there are much more things for that and that's what they're both going to discuss today right and uh yeah and and you know you're going to get into a lot of these situations like like behind us here this is Michelangelo's uh um the the creation of man the chapel when he yeah and this is A this is
the at the top of the cine Chapel in in a certain area and you know when you look at this you think uh is this true is it true that this happened we have God being depicted as creating the first man Adam is it true that this happened uh or at least what it's representing um does anyone out there think that it is show of hands anyone not yet they don't think that that this is true representation okay that's fine I and I think tonight denesh is going to Argue that in in a certain way
this is true um and in a certain way it is true that that Jesus was literally resurrected now it'll be interesting to see where where what what point of view Dess tries to um defend here tonight but I think he will be on the the defense to a lot of um uh logical arguments um you know uh sound logical reasoning that Alex ' Conor is going to come from that point of view to try and attack those positions I think Alex might also Get a bit into the minutia of the different types of truth that
the Bible has presented throughout time and that different theologians have contended with and maybe kind of forced thees to open up his mind are there other versions of truth I have to deal with right other than the ones that I'm just trying to shoehorn is he going to just kind of bombard him with PL plates of truth truth different types of Truth to muddy the water or just going to make a Distinct argument that's interesting to see I can't wait I think it's quite amazing that at 25 Alex is getting this opportunity to kind of
follow in the footsteps of Christopher Hitchens if you guys haven't seen the conversation between Hitchens and duza from 2010 I believe it was at Oxford um they went back and forth and of course danes's perspective was uh presenting the presuppositional argument which presupposes the existence of God and uh It's it's a it's a way of of of presenting a you know an ultimate Faith position starting that God is necessary for us to make sense of anything to begin with that we need to have God but is he going to make the same thing when he
talks about the Bible that this needs to be true in order for us to make I don't think he's going to go in that direction do you well I mean as an atheist if I was sitting on stage with with Desh I you know that Would be there's a lot of uh gold to be farmed in a conversation like that true for me um you know trying to take on the burden of these these specific accounts and then you get into authorship right a big thing for me that it's where I haven't been able to
accept the truths of the Bible in at least the colloquial sense of what's what's true is this problem of authorship because we start asking like well who wrote this down okay you're asking me to believe that They were divinely inspired when they did why do we believe that because they claimed it or someone else claimed it so you're really putting your faith in that area in my opinion but I am first a fist right before anything else I'm a fist I could be wrong about any belief I hold so I am always open to changing
my mind I and and I think we we should all listen um carefully when we're when we're taking in content like this just to see if we've made any mistakes and You know it's possible to me in in my worldview that that the Bible is true uh correspondently coherently I I think it's highly unlikely but I think still possible I mean there's stories like of M and men for example I was recently rereading that book is it true of M and Men the message in of M men about the failure of the American dream maybe
is that what we mean by truth I don't know uh when it comes to the historicity I'm kind of with you there so I don't really Have much to say against it but in general Travis hinted an important thing about fallibilism we just have to make remember that we're humans we're fallible we make mistakes all the time we believe things that are false all the time every single day cuz they just make sense to us and it's our job to make sure to step back a bit from our own uh Cave ape nature so yeah
for sure well donon we should uh take a quick break here and then we're going to get going With the uh headline discussion here in just a few minutes and we'll let everyone get in thank you guys so much thank you guys check check welcome back everyone to Pangburn thank you for making it out tonight these events aren't possible unless people like yourselves come out and support them and so I thank you very much for doing that hello to everyone on YouTube uh thanks for being with us we have about 400 live right now so
thank you so much for being Here live and we will be releasing a video um that has more production quality and and the editing uh much more pristine uh at a later date probably within a week um so this is fun is the Bible true that's the question that's going to be up for examination tonight how many of you think the Bible is true show of hands one to a few of you yeah great and Truth is an interesting thing once you start jumping into philosophy and you start studying the concept of Truth you're going
to realize that it's not so black and white at least the way that um like we we kind of have this colloquial idea of truth that deals with kind of like scientific truth a lot of people people think of Truth in that way something that uh uh will correspond with the objects in reality you make a claim and the objects in reality correspond with that claim but I think tonight we're going to see from denesha and Alex that truth is black and white We're going to have 90 minutes of discussion and uh after that we're
going to have 20 minutes for a Q&A so we only have 20 minutes so make sure your questions are concise and you got them sorted out questions end in a question mark as Matt dun always likes to say at our events um so uh yeah we don't need your dissertation but let's try to get through as many questions as we can so without further Ado please welcome to the stage Alex o Conor and denesh to Souza thanks great hi everyone um I'm not really used to doing this kind of thing without a moderator but we've
had a conversation before coming out here and we thought it would be good to sort of give each other 10 minutes each to lay out something of a case we're not going to be too strict with that but uh and then hopefully most of the time we can dedicate to just having a chat um denes said that I can go first which seems a little odd giving That he's I suppose technically on on on proposition but I wanted to lay out a few different ways that I I interpret the question and and see where he
wants to take it some people said that I shouldn't do this debate with this question it's kind of an impossible question it's the kind of question that requires more of an explanation to ask than to answer which is a little bit strange so I thought you know the Bible is not a book it's a library and like Any good Library it contains an amalgamation of different genres and so asking if the Bible is true you might as well ask if the Corpus of Shakespeare is true it sort of betrays a misunderstanding of how people interact
with a text so I thought will dases argue that the Bible is literally true historically true allegorically true morally true theologically true metaphorically true and I suppose the only thing for it is to sort of try each One on for size um so maybe beginning with Genesis uh in an attempt clearly not at historicity but rather allegory and metaphor we can deal with one of our types of Truth here were introduced to Adam and Eve who were told in no un certain terms by God not to eat of the truth of the knowledge of Good
and Evil you may begin to wonder why knowledge of Good and Evil is such a bad thing but the thought is interrupted by the introduction of the Serpent who says to who says to Eve did God say that if you eat of the tree then in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die and he says yes and the serpent says well that's not going to happen God just knows that if you eat of it you'll become like him knowing good and evil and he doesn't want that that's all you're not going
to die so Eve famously takes the fruit eats some gives some to Adam and what happens do they die in the day thereof some people say In a metaphorical sense yes we'll get to that in a second but at least on the surface of it no what does happen God tells us himself he says now the man has become like one of us knowing good and evil he must not be allowed to reach out his hand and eat from the Tree of Life lest he inherit eternal life and with this Adam and evea banish from
the Garden of Eden so who's telling the truth here this story is quite mystifying to me and I'm not the first To point this out there's actually an apocryphal gospel discovered near nadii in Egypt in the 1940s dated to around the second or third Century called the testimony of truth a gospel that didn't make it into the new testament which identifies the serpent interestingly who's never called Satan in the text by the way identifies the serpent with Jesus I don't know if I'd go quite that far but it does seem that the sort of allegorical
truth of The story leaves a lot to be desired I'm told that maybe Adam and Eve died a sort of spiritual death or mortality entered the world but then we need to ask why it is that God had to proactively banish them from the Garden of Eden this isn't some natural result of sin that you know mortality entered the world they're banished and the implication is that they could have just as easily reached out and eaten from the Tree of Life but God didn't want this to happen so he Guards the gates of Eden with
a cherubim with a flaming sword I find this quite strange and I'd like to know what Des thinks of it um moving on quickly I suppose to uh the events of the later Old Testament skipping over Exodus um we're introduced to another form of truth that I want to potentially engage and that's the concept of moral truth that's another one that I spoke about in the beginning just there the concept of moral truth when we look at some of the Military conquests of the Old Testament bear in mind that the promised land pledged to Abraham
is not an empty plane its indigenous inhabitants had to be shall we say displaced by a series of military campaigns ordered by God and carried out by his prophets thus we have such uh commands as in Deuteronomy chapter 20 when you march up to attack a city make its people an offer of peace sounds from to start with if they accept and open their Gates all the people in It shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you some peace if they refuse to make peace and engage you in battle which why would
they do that on these terms lay Siege to that City when the Lord your God delivers it into your hand put to the sword all the men in it as for the women the children and the livestock and everything else in the city they get to go no sorry hold on you may take these as plunder for yourselves That's right and you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies likewise in 1 Samuel we have the destruction of the amalekites uh there there's the the order now go attack the amalekites
and totally destroy all that belongs to them I'm told sometimes that this is actually an exercise in hyperbole God didn't mean everyone it continues do not spare them put to death men and women children and infants cattle and sheep camels and dones and if You think that this is hyperbole consider what happens when Saul does uh conduct the destruction of the amalekites as ordered and decides to leave alive the king as well as some of the best of the livestock he leaves them alive for this small Act of mercy God responds by saying to the
prophet Samuel I regret that I have made Saul King because he's turned away from me and has not carried out my instructions so not even the animals can escape this Genocide so I'd like to ask Ines I suppose directly which is it is this a morally corrupt series of events or do I have to dispel with my moral intuition that genocide including of innocent children is a bad thing there's plenty more to talk about in that regard I don't want to take up too much time this isn't of course to mention the the advocacy and
explicit instructions around slavery in the Old Testament hopefully we can get onto those two if We want to go down the moral path but I think that the most natural interpretation of the question is this is the concept of historicity uh the literal truth of the of the Bible that is this is where I think we have to move to the New Testament because the genre of the Gospel seems to be historical biography unlike the mythology of a book like the Psalms or Genesis or job and here there's a lot to talk about we begin
With the birth narratives there are two birth narratives in the gospels in Matthew and Luke both give different accounts both have a genealogy of Jesus for example but the genealogies are different I'm told this is because one records Mary's genealogy and one records Joseph's you can do this if you like it doesn't seem like the most natural reading of the text if you're not already predisposed to synchronize the accounts Um then we have for example uh uh the flight to Egypt which is only recorded in Luke which is difficult to reconcile with um with Matthew's
account that they went to the temple in Jerusalem instead but more importantly Matthew then says that uh the family traveled to Nazareth and he says so was fulfilled what was said through the prophets that he shall be called in Nazarene quoting the prophets now you'll notice if you read an online Bible that where the Old Testament prophets are quoted there's a little footnote telling you what the prophet what the prophecy is in this case you won't find one because the prophecy simply doesn't exist it's not there there's no such thing so there are two options
here either Matthew made up this prophecy or got it wrong in which case the New Testament is mistaken or the prophecy does exist but for some reason fell out of our scriptural tradition and now no Longer exists which makes the accuracy and at least the completeness of the Old Testament suspect so again I'd like to ask directly which it is um finally I suppose I should mention the uh the contradictions that a lot of people point to in the gospels some of these I think are legitimate some are not I'll give you some examples very
quickly of gospel contradictions that I do think are real contradictions first the date of Jesus's crucifixion was it before the Passover as John States or was it after the Passover as the synoptic gospel State second Jesus is sending out his disciples to teach in Mark he tells them to take nothing with them except a staff in Matthew and Luke he says take nothing with them including no staff so do they take a staff or do they not a pedantic contradiction but a contradiction nonetheless and one that's LED people like Barnabas Ahern or aern to write
entire articles on this and Augustine himself actually distinguished between a literal staff um a literal staff and a metaphorical staff to explain this difference anything I suppose except considering the possibility of even the most minor of gospel contradictions uh third Jesus flipping the tables at the temple a famous story but did you know that in the Gospel of John this takes place at the beginning of Jesus's Ministry in the synoptics it takes place near the end so When did that occur Mary Magdalene after the uh resurrection of Jesus runs to the disciples in John's gospel
and says they've taken the Lord and we do not know where they have put him strange thing for her to say if as the gospel of Matthew recounts she's visited by an Angel at the tomb who tells her exactly where Jesus is going and then she's met by Jesus herself on the way to the disciples to bring them the news Strange for her to then say they've taken the Lord and we do not know where they've put him um there's more to say on this interpolations things which seem not to be in our oldest manuscripts
but end up in newer manuscripts of the of the New Testament such as the adulterous women let he who is without sin cast the first stone most Scholars agree that this was not in our earliest manuscripts and was added in at a later date and if we can see that the gospel stories were Edited uh after they were written down there's no reason to think that they couldn't be edited before they were written down as oral Traditions too as well as the entire ending of Mark 16 there's a longer version and a shorter version because
the longer version simply isn't in our earlier manuscripts these documents don't seem to have the historical reliability either so in conclusion I've probably spoken for too long here Um are we talking about allegorical truth moral truth metaphorical theological truth historical truth I suppose what I want to say to Desh is take your pick and I'll probably have something to say about it all right here we go if you don't mind I'm going to stand up is that okay please okay I'm standing up because I want to kind of neutralize Alex's accent Advantage I I mention
this because it seems to me no accident that so many of the prominent so-called new atheists have British accents I think this is really important that credibility because think of it if Hitchens and Dawkins and Alex were three Southern Boys from Louisiana would they have quite the same impact I'm not sure anyway this is why I'm Standing little I was a little puzzled about this topic and kind of how to get at it because I've never debated this topic before I'm not a theologian I wouldn't even say I'm an expert on the Bible I'm I
think uh believe and intelligent Christian and um so I have done a bunch of debates over the existence of God over uh can God's omnipotence and benevolence be reconciled with evil in the world those topics appear to be Philosophical topics but when you're dealing with the Bible um you have a different kind of a work altogether and I say because in discussing if something is true or false you have to ask what is it that the book is doing like what's its purpose what is it therefore um take an example of what I mean let's
say if we were debating is Shakespeare's Julius Caesar True or false now Julius Caesar is a historical account this is not one of Shakespeare's works of fiction it's a historical drama but because Shakespeare's interest is in drama he emphasizes dramatic events and dramatic confrontation he does not actually worry about trivial details anachronisms uh if an event occurs over here Shakespeare does not hesitate to pull it in over here because of the Dramatic impact is more powerful this way and so imagine if someone were to come along and say well this is untrue because when one
of The Conspirator shows up to commit the crime he is according to Shakespeare wearing a handkerchief well handkerchiefs didn't really exist in the time of Julius Caesar this is obviously something Shakespeare got right out of Shakespearean England stuck it right in There didn't care about doing that because his purpose is something else to explore the nature of tyranny for example and so to bring the lens of saying this is an acronis well you may or may not be right but you're like missing the point of the whole book and you're also missing the point of
the author and you're missing the point of the reader meaning the author's intention is not to worry about whether Or not people in ancient Rome used handkerchiefs the point of the author is to dramatize something about the the essence of tyranny and conspiracy and maybe the conflict between tyranny and freedom and readers of the work understanding that have always taken it in that spirit so as I listen to Alex I think to myself let's think about the Bible what kind of a book it is well first of all It is a book that exists sort
of within a tradition and within a church I mean there was no Bible for 300 years right the early Christians get together in the 4th Century they put the Bible together now there's already a flourishing Church in fact right about that time the Roman Emperor will convert to Christianity uh Christianity will become the state religion of of Rome and uh the Bible will become This assembled Bible will become the handbook of this church and and so it is to this day now that's one point the second point is that the Bible is a very strange
book to be asking this kind of a question about because the Bible nowhere admits the legitimacy of this kind of inquiry it's worth noting the Bible is a book of Declaration I would say of Revelation it Never tries to prove anything it could but with very rare exceptions and even those exceptions are generally kind of feeble it is a book of sort of bold proclamation in the beginning God created the heavens on the earth boom declared as something true now I want to reflect on that for a moment before I do let me say If
you think about that that Sentence by itself it's a puzzle in the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth obviously somebody's writing this but who no one was there except God and yet the sentence does not say in the beginning I created the heavens and the Earth there's apparently an observer and the Observer is recording and God is in fact in the narrative God is in fact the subject of it in the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth so as I as I think about this statement I think that first of all
it's an it is an astounding claim completely counterintuitive and by counterintuitive I mean well I get most of my intuitions from Aristotle Aristotle using you know you could call it philosophical common sense says the universe has always been around it's always been here you don't need an explanation for how it got started because it never got started It's always existed and the Greeks also believed as you probably know out of nothing can come nothing so therefore if you first had nothing how can you get a universe the Bible goes against this Greek tradition and States
categorically as a matter of fact that first there was nothing and then there was a universe because God made it so there are some factual assertions here the assertion that the Universe had A beginning the assertion that the Universe in a sense came out of nothing and of course the assertion that the Universe was created by God so we can if we want to go down this road I'm not going to do it right now explore whether this astounding claim that was made by the ancient Jewish writers with no evidence at all no empirical investigation
no scientific experiment no attempt to Mentor measure The red shift of galaxies nevertheless the ancient Hebrew writers says we know this to be true because God told us and now here we are more than 2,000 years later really more like 3,000 years later and we're in a position to ask is this claim true so I'll defer that I'm happy to discuss that and probably will but this is one way to think about whether what the Bible says Is true it's making these categorical assertions and most of these assertions I would argue are in the domain
of Revelation the Bible is in fact a revelation a revelation right here we have a problem because how does one approach a revelation [Music] philosophically Alex you just tell me when I'm out of time okay I'm just going to go until you stop me three minutes I Think I'm okay three minutes was I got three minutes oh wow I was just getting started all right I I've got I'll save some of my stuff but um let me just say this um what is the point of Revelation at all you know we have a guy here
who says he's Cosmic skeptic many of you probably think you're Skeptics and um and so you might ask Well why the heck do we need Revelations we have reason Well turns out that here we are flung into the world and if we reflect upon this fact and reflect upon our place in the world several important questions pop out that are the inevitable result of reason but which reason is utterly incapable of answering not that reason has an answer to date reason cannot answer what are these questions One why is there a world two what is
our purpose in it why are we here three what happens after we die four is our passionate concern with Justice with morality with goodness that is constantly betrayed in the actual life of the world ever cosmically Vindicated after the world or beyond the World so I'm just I could go on but I'm giving you four straightforward questions that no intelligent person I think can avoid having to raise and yet to which there is no available or even conceivable answer it's not as if there's no answer but we'll get an answer tomorrow because let me put
it this way let's take the question about life after death and I'll I'll close on this uh and and open the door To further inquiry let's talk about life after death is there life after death yes or no Shakespeare says the debt is the Undiscovered Country no traveler who has gone there has ever come back I think we probably have to agree with this you might get some tiny hints from like near-death experiences but by large we don't know and not only do we not know we have no way of knowing the Key Point here
is that probability the absence of evidence is the evidence of absence this is all gobbledygook because all of this is only based on prior experience if you show me a guy and telling me he has three eyes I won't believe you because I've seen thousands of people maybe hundreds of thousands of people and I've got a lot of experience and based upon that the probability that a guy can show up with three Eyes may seem to mean to be pretty low but the question of life after death if I think of an anal alogy for
it it's something more like the possibility of aliens it's not even an exact analogy but it's it's a similar analogy because because if I say to Alex you believe in aliens there's no probabilistic way to say yes we have nothing in our experience to go this way or that way and here's my point it is exactly when ra Reason Not Only breaks down but reason like can't even go there that revelation steps in and delivers an answer and here we are like debating is that answer true and the question I want us to think about
at least to get started tonight with what tools are you going to deliver a true or false verdict on subjects that are outside the domain of Reason itself I mean Emanuel KH says on the first page Of the critique of pure reason before we discuss the great reach whether we discuss whether this is reasonable or that's not reasonable and whe this is empirical he goes we first got to set the boundaries of Reason what is it that reason can and cannot know why because what Kant is basically getting at is that once you go beyond
the reach of Reason faith is not unreasonable at all why because you have nothing else So what I want to emphasize here and I'm happy to discuss all the specifics we've covered today or Alex has covered today but essentially the Bible is something that is taught in church it's a tool for Ministry for for exhortation to get people to live better lives to help them deal with their life in the world I have never heard a single Pastor for example and I'm quite sure this doesn't happen in Jewish synagogues as well going you know what
let's go out And find the amalekites of our day and kill them right now nobody says that no one even thinks that no one reads the passage that way nobody reads the passage of the fall in the way that Alex described it and so we have a little bit of a problem we got a book it's a book that exists within a community for a purpose that the community is extremely clear about this book is used every single Sunday millions of times and all around the world it's used in Protestant And Catholic churches obviously there
are interpretive communities that differ on how things can be read and understood there's also the whole separate question of the relationship of the Old Testament to the new there's an old saying that goes that the New Testament isn't the old concealed the Old Testament is in the new revealed so the Old Testament and the new exist in a kind of odd relationship To each other in fact so odd that one party the Jews repudiates the relationship all together and from the Christian point of view the Old Testament is incorporated but superseded by the new uh
and different there are different ways of looking at that relationship which which we can get into let me just close by saying this yes um rather a long three minutes though oh it's a rather long three minutes it's Maybe maybe you meant you'll finish soon in the way that Jesus Promised let me let me let me pause let me pause right here because an ambiguous soon um but I'd love to question you on some of the things you've already said you don't mind we will put the ball in your court so I think what's going
to happen now is we're going to go into discussion hope so okay and you're going to ask me some questions we'll discuss and I'll ask you some sure and I'm I'm happy to Essentially take the things that I said in my opening statement and Slot them in and apply them to the things that you just said right there so you began by saying that the Bible is a is a strange book to ask these questions of because of its purpose I I assume you'd agree with me that the Bible is a collection of books rather
than a singular text with different authors different intentions and most importantly different genres so the first question I' suppose I'd like to ask you is do you agree for example that at least some uh biblical texts are attempts at historical biography such as in the Gospels of course uh I I would agree with that but let me make a let me just qualify it this way so the when we think of the Bible as revealed the question now becomes what do we mean did did God write the book did God Inspire the book and human
Beings wrote it did God show human beings events that they then described in their own words okay so the reason these things are important is it seems to me to answer the question I raised earlier about about in the beginning God created heavens and the Earth the way I understand it is there's a perfect Revelation shown to a gospel to a Bible to a Jewish scribe who sees it so to speak but writes it in his own Words when I look at the Book of Revelation same thing and does it get anything wrong do the
scribes get anything wrong it's quite possible that they when you say get get anything wrong they are writing it in human terms I mean you know I mean I mean the specifically mundane human things I'm not talking about when when when the author of Genesis says that God created the heavens of the Earth or talks about the spirit moving across the face of the Water this is clearly mythological this is clearly an an attempt at mythological writing that's fine it would be silly to ask if that's true or not but when somebody I I don't
think it is mythological writing at all I think that it is simply I mean put it this way if we were in the year 4,000 BC if we were John the Divine and let's just say that God showed us in a vision the actual end of the world right apocalypse uh I we would then write down the Four Horsemen Of the Apocalypse uh death and famine and destruction we're not engaging in mythmaking at all I'm actually writing what I see so you think there'll be a seven-headed demon of course not I'm saying I'm saying that
to me what I'm seeing is so let's just say for example it is a Cosmo it is a it is a thermonuclear explosion of of a kind that the ancient Bible writer doesn't even know what it is yeah right and the consequence of it Is death and destruction and famine he's going to write it down the way he sees it but how where is he going to get the seven-headed dragon and The Prostitute from this is this is this is his like a human attempt to to describe a nuclear reaction yes because because when when
words and and images fail metaphor is the actual conduit to truth now I'd understand if that were the case if you said that perhaps after a nuclear blast somebody describes it as You know the gods of fire descending upon man with their flaming swords or something like that but like a prostitute and a seven-headed dragon well first of all I'm not saying it is a nuclear explosion you're the problem is we we're we're given this ad fantasmagorical future account right it's it and it's it is so wrenching and Powerful that many people for example have
tried to render it by Art and it's not easy to do it right it's not easy to Do it because we have to stop and realize first of all that we're dealing not only with the limitations of of perception but the limitations of language Let me give you a simple example uh I come to America from India I have never eaten a mushroom okay I ask you Alex what does a mushroom taste like sure I would submit that you would be completely unable to render to me in words however lengthy and ornate what a Mushroom
actually tastes that may be true but you I was asking for example about uh Jesus's presentation at the Temple of Jerusalem after his birth this is not like trying to describe a mushroom or the end of the world no no okay so now let's talk about hold on a second this is a historical event that's being recorded by one New Testament wrer at the same time as another New Testament writer says that the family had traveled to Egypt I don't think this Is an attempt at metaphor or allegory as I would say of Genesis whether
you think that is or not I would say that in the case of the gospels we can agree that in at least some instances this is a clear attempt at mundane history this is not attempt at writing some kind of metaphor to explain a truth that's otherwise unknowable to the human mind it's a very straightforward attempt to record what actually happened and they contradict each other they contradict each other Because they're written by four different people sure so let me ask you this if if if God were writing it I'm quite sure he would have
written it once he would need four sure so so some of them are wrong then no okay so let's when you say they're wrong let's consider Luke's gospel for a minute Luke is a medical doctor Luke is not present at the events being described Luke is is virtually in the position of Two Cities writing the pipian war now two cities Did fight in the war but in most of the events described by tties in the pelian war he wasn't there making him very unreliable right no on the contrary it is in fact the most Rel
reliable account of the pelian war that say let's not say that it is reliable though no it is what I'm trying to say is that when you're when you're talking about historicity and you're talking about historicity now in the ancient world you have to recognize that these people are not These people are not approaching it with as modern historians Luke is going around interviewing people so let me ask this very very straightforwardly then okay Luke says that after the birth of Jesus the family fled to Egypt Matthew says that they went to the Jerusalem Temple
are they both correct or is one of them wrong who the heck cares I mean I do and so people who listen to say let me say why let me say why what you're what you What you care about is is not only trivial but indicates a kind of unwillingness to try to get what the text is trying to I'll tell you why I don't think it's trivial because I think that the reason why Luke may have invented the flight to Egypt but he tells us Luke says when he records the flight to Egypt and
then they return from Egypt he says this is so that we can fulfill the prophecy from Hosea 11 out of Egypt I shall call my son now in Hosea God is talking here about the nation of Israel at least in this case unlike the Matthew prophecy the prophecy actually exists and we can interrogate it it seems to me like what Luke is doing here is attempting to display Jesus as the Fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy and in fact he tells us that that's what he's doing therefore if it is the case that Jesus didn't
go to Egypt and didn't come out of egyp Egypt on his return then this would Undermine Luke's attempts to identify Jesus as the Jewish Messiah fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy that's why I think it is relevant well look and not trivial right but but I I think that the would you agree with that I mean do you think it's a completely trivial point if it's so trivial I think that the point as the point as you stated it before is Trivial the point the point you're now raising is not trivial but the point you're
now raising is is one in which You have three centuries of Jewish Christian disputation about whether Jesus is the Messiah okay and by and large the disputation breaks down in this way the Jews are the biblical literalists and the Christians are the um the sort of metaphorical uh readers and I say this because let's take a very famous passage that bears on this very topic where Jesus is talking about the destruction of the temple and the Jews go you know You said the temple would be destroyed now interestingly Jesus did say the temple would be
destroyed and the temple was in fact destroyed in 70 AD in fact 40 years after Jesus said that the temple was in fact physically raised to the ground uh and the Jews dispersed in the second in a huge diaspora but my point is Jesus doesn't reply that Jesus doesn't say Hey listen wait 40 years Jesus says no you're misreading me completely when I said the temple I was Actually speaking of the Temple of my body he doesn't tell them that he well but this is stated we we're told that that's what he means we're told
that's what he means so what I'm getting at is here you have a case where you have an event you have a Jewish literalist reading and a Christian metaphorical reading another example and and you know so would you would you say then the flight to Egypt is a metaphor is that what you're trying to say I in other Words I'm trying to understand what it is that you're doing here to actually answer the question that I'm asking you which is about because here's my theory here's an idea okay uh Luke the author of Luke uh
invents the flight to Egypt in order to identify Jesus as the Jewish Messiah meaning that when we read Luke we should note that where it appears that he's making historical claims we should note his willingness to twist history in order to fulfill a Theological you don't know if he's doing that you're assuming that this is your theory no no no what I'm saying is that that's one thesis to explain the contradiction between Luke and Matthew if you want to say that it's trivial then fine but we still have to explain how it comes about and
what I'm saying is one idea of how this comes about leads to us undermining our trustworthiness of Luke what I'm asking you for is your explanation that would Not lead to us uh having to undermine our trust the trustworthiness I I'm I I don't I'm I don't have the the ability to referee that passage I'm not aware of this contradiction I'll have to go back and look and see go go and look it up but but what I am doing is I'm I'm questioning your methodology and your you're kind of you're kind of um what
would I call it you got the Jews and the Christians arguing about events And they're very Complex events and they are very power powerfully meaningful events like let's take for example Abraham and and Isaac are going up the mountain MH and Isaac says to Abraham something to the effect of where is the where is the Lamb for the sacrifice and Abraham says to him God will provide God will provide now in a Jewish reading this whole thing has got to be understood in terms of here's Abraham he's willing to sacrifice his Son God says stop
it's a tale of obedience in the Christian reading it's not that it's not not only that the Christian reading is Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world so when Isaac says where is the lamb and Abraham says God will provide it is a foreshadowing of a significant event in the New Testament now again as I say the Jews and the Christians argued this for three centuries and More I'm not even trying to adjudicate who's right but I'm saying you're waling in coming with neither of these two assumptions in
fact I assume you think that the Old Testament is a mythological as the new no no no sorry I need to and I guess what I'm saying is that is that people who who read the Bible to understand what the Bible is trying to say and what we can learn from it do what the the Jewish rabbis did and do what theologians like Augustine and anel And so many others have done they don't really do what you're doing which is saying hey Luke must have talked to a guy who thought it happened over here but
in fact you know this guy says the roof was thatched but another guy says they let the guy in through the roof who had to be healed contradiction and I'm like is this your way of trying to say the Bible is not true the yes it is the old yes that's precisely what I'm doing The Old Testament is is not fully mythological I think Genesis is mythological I think that Exodus makes more of an attempted history but has mythological undertones I think that the military conquests I mentioned in my opening statements are attempts at describing
literal historical events I think Psalms of poetry I think that job is mythology I don't think a man called actually existed right and so there are lots of different there are lots of Different genres here the reason I'm asking about the contradictions in the gospel and and I understand if you don't want to talk about the the specific example of Egypt and Jerusalem fine whatever maybe maybe you can send me an email about it later or something that's fine but the reason I bring it up is to say that there are lots of these and
in each case if we try to look at why they might be contradicting each other the reasons I Think we're given uh tell us that the historicity of this text should be in dispute for example I mentioned the date of Jesus's death the synoptic gospels specifically place this after the Passover meal they have the Last Supper as the Passover meal John uniquely uh sets it before the Passover because he has the theological purpose of wanting to depict Jesus as the Passover Lamb mhm now this is a contradiction if the gospels are supposed to be historical
Accounts of what happened to Jesus which I imagine if we were having a debate about whether Christianity were true about whether you know the god of the Bible existed you might put forward say an argument for the resurrection of Jesus you might say well we have good historical evidence to think that Jesus rose from the dead and you might point to the to the story of the crucifixion and the disciples seeing him after he died this is a common a common threat The problem is that if we're treating it as historical in a in an
area like that then we have to engage with it as a historical text why would they contradict each other I would say for the same reason that Luke contradicts Matthew in the birth narratives because they're attempting to make a theological point which tells us at least and maybe you think that the New Testament is an entirely theological and in no way historical text would you agree at least That the New Testament writers are seemingly willing to adapt the historicity of an event in order to serve a theological point would you agree with that yes and
no I would agree that definitely is a contradiction well it's not a contradiction because well I mean toddies is relaying historical events to make a moral point about the nature of politics and both are completely consistent with each other it's not as if thiddies is so he's he's He's a student of power politics he is making a point his speeches are driven at making a point but the point is excavated out of the actual ual events now I think that there's a reason that we're given four perspectival accounts of Jesus's life and they're not identical
in fact as I say if they were identical you wouldn't need four the the point of reading these and and I think the way I think the way to read them let me say a word the if you want to if you Want to um determine veracity you have to operate a little bit like a jury and by that I mean um pick up the gospel of Mark the first of the gospels now by the way these gospels are written very proximate to the events they describe and I say this by the standards of we're
talking about historicity of any historical document 70 AD would you say for Mark uh yes I mean I would say within Decades of the Events that they describe crucially would you say would you agree with most historians that this happened for example after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple thereby allowing the author of Mark to put the prediction in the words of Jesus's mouth without being anything miraculous this is a this is a highly debated point because Mark's gospel leaves off incomplete and has what seems to be at the very end and added section I
don't actually I don't Want to debate that little fragment of Mark here's what I'm getting at the if you've never read the Bible and we've all read the Bible in a way I I was raised Catholic and so I I was habituated to going to Sunday mass and sort of felt like I I know the Bible yeah I me yeah I've heard these stories read and so on but it was a completely different experience for me as an adult to go back with critical skepticism and just read the book of Mark straight through it has
the complete ring of authenticity and I say this because not only does it give you little details that don't really seem to even belong there it's clearly not written with a pical purpose exclusively Mark will tell you things that not only seem irrelevant but at other times undermine what he's trying to say and and that is the true ring of authenticity because if someone would what's that an example well here's an Example in the um Jewish tradition um the testimony of a woman was considered inherently suspect but the testimony of men generally reliable and therefore
not that the testimony of women is disregard altogether but you needed for example many women to say the same thing yeah now the gospels tell us that when when Jesus was crucified and put in the Tomb if I were Mark and I were or I were Luke and I were trying to be inventive And I were trying to establish a truth for pro posterity I would not have it that a group of let's just say hysterical women Mary Magdalene whoever it was a group of women go to the tomb and they are the ones who
find the tomb empty this is like a little dubious because most people are going to go well yeah we know but women you know so here's an example of the gospels Insisting upon a point that would only make sense if that was actually the way it happened allow me to answer that if I can um if I may go ahead if I may um this is a this is a commonly presented argument for the for the historicity of the Resurrection which by the way now we're talking is well I'm not no no hold on I
I didn't say it's an argument for the historicity of the Resurrection I said it was an argument let me say a word okay now We're talking about these textes if they are historical texts the thing about the women is look this is quite straightforward to me who anoints bodies who goes to tombs and anoints bodies after someone dies it's not men it's women and so if if the authors of the gospels had the men go to the tomb to anoint the body which is what Mary and the other women were doing when they uh went
to the tomb that itself would be very strange and give us a reason to Doubt the the the historicity of the events in other words it's it's like if if there's a task that women do and that task is how Jesus's empty tomb is discovered then why would he invent it uh why would they invent a story that has men going and doing it secondly you said that you know you need multiple women's testimony how many women go to the tomb multiple thirdly what do the women do immediately after seeing the empty tomb they run
and tell the men who Come and verify it for us so I I don't think that this this is this this fulfills the criteria of embarrassment at all in fact I think the opposite is true I think that if this was an invented story I'm not saying it is by the way but if it were then of course we could expect the people who discover the empty tomb to be women because it's women who go to anoint the the body at the tomb okay so so let's let's put together what I just said and you
just Said and let's ask the question based upon what you said and what I said did it happen that way and I would submit that what you have done see you're doing Special pleadings You could argue I'm doing special pleadings but I would admit that the thrust of the Bible and the thrust of the story is in fact aimed at delivering a truth from Revelation that's what you're trying to do is saying all right I can't contest that because that's outside the domain Of reason but what I'm going to do is I'm going to adopt
sort of the nitpicking strategy and because we got four accounts I'm hold on you're the one who brought that up you're the one who said that that women discovering I'm saying nothing you've said has has even slightly refuted it you don't think anything I just said refuted the idea that that that that that would be something you wouldn't expect from the gospel authors if if if it were invented No here's what I'm saying I'm saying that I'm saying that you let's let's look at what we agree on what we disagree on you agree that in
that culture the testimony of women in general counts for Less I think we we that's this is something that Josephus tells us but it's it's impossible to know what sort of culturally people actually thought at the time it's impossible for us to know but I'm happy to Grant it yeah sure it it's impossible For us to know know even though Josephus says it okay that's in a court of law right no but what I'm saying is if if you say if you're applying the is impossible for us to know I would suggest to you it
is impossible for us to know that it was the absolute and unwavering duty of women to provide all the ointments you've stated that as a fact no uh and I would say it's impossible for us to know what I'm what I'm saying is that if if somebody's Reading this text and you say well if this were invented why would it be women who discover the tomb that would be embarrassing for them the So-Cal embarrassment CR peran I'm saying would it not be just is not the fact that we're told why they're going to the tomb
to anoint the body is this not just reason enough no I mean like I'm I'm not the one claiming I know how this went down by the way and also you you just accused me a second ago of special Pleading I wanted to ask you what it was that I'm specially pleading well what I'm saying is that what I'm saying is that uh you have an event the these events are described with great um precision and a sort of iwit presence there now we know in some cases there weren't eyewitnesses but they're nevertheless described this
is the way it happened and four guys are telling you their point of view right yeah none of them the women who actually discover The tomb by the way not you're not hearing from the women I agree you're four M male gospel writers uh apparently um now um I lost my train of thought for a second sorry uh I also don't want to get too caught up on this specific example but I I suppose we'll have to sort of leave it with the audience in the live stream um the point that I'm trying to make
is that it like the historicity of at least some of this is important for for Christianity the historicity of the life of Jesus like if it were discovered historically speaking that a man called Jesus never existed that would completely undermine Christianity important no I'm not saying that of course I'm not saying let me ask a different question saying I'm saying that historic historically it matters the crucifixion the resurrection these are matters which historically matter to Christians and so when we're dealing With a historical account of what happened when they're riddled with contradictions I think that
that's a problem if you don't think that's a problem then that's fine but I think that the people listening and wanting to find out if the Bible is true might see that as reason to undermine the trust of the text not first of all almost everything that we know about those events in terms of modern historical reliability for example where is the Sight of Jesus's crucifiction unknowned disputed there are a couple of potential sites but it's not known uh what day of the year was Jesus born unknown mhm uh we think Jesus lived for 33
years but let's say that one of the gospels said it was 33 and the other one said it was 34 do you think that that would actually refute Christianity no it would not it would actually be quite understandable that you'd have two guys no yeah and they would get that and they'd be off on That and this contradiction would be trivial because the issue is not whether Jesus live for 33 or 34 years old that's a different kind because if you could tell me that the reason why they had specifically chosen those ages was to
serve a theological Point knowing that they're not trying to knowing that they're willing to sort of adapt history in order to make a theological point I wouldn't say that that point alone undermines Christianity what I would say Is that it undermines our trustworthiness in the Bible I'm not saying that any one of these contradictions can tell us Christianity is false of course firstly firstly hold on the firstly the question is not if Christianity is true it's whether the Bible is true it may be the case that a man called Jesus came down to earth rose
from the dead it's just that the gospel accounts get the details wrong which mean that the Bible is not correct but The story The tells is true it means that Christianity is true but the Bible is false that's perfectly consistent I'm simply saying that what what you're doing is you are supplying a motive that is completely made up and that I could engage in exactly let's just take for example the 33 versus the 34 years now here's here's what I'm saying if if there was such a contradiction and I were being you I would say
oh the reason that Matthew said it was 33 is because Three is the number of the Trinity and so 33 has a certain theolog iCal resonance because three and three is 33 hold on and then I would come around and say well the reason the other guy said 34 is actually 3 + 4 is seven God made the world in seven days seven is known to be a number fraught with theological significance and I'm saying this is basically Alex BS Jess Jess the gospel writers tell us that's why it happened they say that the reason
the family went To Egypt was to fulfill the prophecy of of of josea okay and so you so they they tell so so in other words if the gospel writer and now imagine that the gospel writers had written what you just said imagine in the actual text one of them said he was 33 when he died because of the number three in it significance and another said that he was 34 because of the number four in its significance that would be a contradiction and not and in in that instance not just a historical Contradiction but
a spiritual and Theological one too uh actually no it actually wouldn't I'll see it come on it wouldn't I tell you why you don't think that's a contradiction no it's not contradiction all because the gospel writers are constantly contradicting each other no drawing not contradicting each other if they were constantly cont each other you wouldn't have spent half an hour on a single event that frankly I haven't even heard of in fact no one's Ever heard of I've never ever heard anyone discuss this in any context so fish out this this prophecy about Hosea I'll
go back and look at all this but what I'm trying to get at is if you had a plethora of contradictions you wouldn't be spending the entire debate on one that sure no one in the audience is heard off either but oh well so okay you a it probably because you've been listening to his YouTube channel right you don't you don't think that this is a You don't think this is a highly discussed point of contention in the gospels the flight the flight to Egypt and its contradiction with the flight to Egypt look the flight
to Egypt is an important event in the gospel I'm also you said you know why could you only bring up this one example take your pick the date of Jesus's crucifixion whether they're to take a staff or not to take a staff the the dating of Jesus flipping the tables at the temple Mary Magdalene And what she says at the tomb uh when the temple curtain rips uh in in the Gospel of Luke it says that this happens before Jesus's death and in the gospels of Matthew and Mark it says that it happens afterwards like
we can go through any of these contradictions that you like but the problem is that what you're going to tell me is that it's trivial and then when I try to explain that it's not trivial you say oh well you know I I haven't even heard of It and no one else really cares about this when other people do by the way this is this is this is a highly discussed contention point of contention in the gospel all I'm asking you to do is say that this is you know when I mentioned the staff in
my opening statement and I said that whether or not they take a staff is is a is a totally trivial contradiction I'm not bothered by that if I were a Christian I would say yeah of course because you know the Texts are not going to perfectly Accord but for some reason Augustine could not accept this and so comes up with this ludicrous idea of a literal staff and a metaphorical staff that Jesus is talking about if you if you were willing to just say yes this is a contradiction but that doesn't upset the method of
Christianity I think it would be a much more defensible and respectable approach but instead it seems that you're unwilling to admit that there's even a single Contradiction in these texts I I am saying that the texts are are written from four different points of view do they contradict and it is quite possible that on details Matthew tells you things that are not in Mark or different than Mark different than Mark contradict Mark contradict Mark yes contradict Mark and and so the point is here's my point you're acting I mean look let put this way you
would be scoring a point if you could say God wrote four books and they Contradict each other just like if you're able to say denesha said this in the beginning of the debate and that at the end of the debate dases is contradicting himself on the other hand if we have two guys who are here today to go and write an account of this debate M right and then we look at their accounts which are authentic first person I was their account with a lot of detail and one guy says for example you know the
lights were dark the other guy Says the lights were dim or one guy says for example that dises was sitting at a 45 degree angle another guy says it was a 50° angle yeah these are not and then and then someone goes dases was sitting at a 435 degree angle because he thought this was a maximizing his his rhetorical Effectiveness for the audience people would be like now imagine somebody said now imagine somebody said Alex is wearing a blue jacket and the reason he was wearing a blue jacket oh you know Someone said it's a
blue jacket someone else said it's a red jacket who cares you're quite right but if somebody said specifically I know that the reason he was wearing a blue jacket was because there's an upcoming election in the UK that's just been announced and he was trying to represent the conservative party and somebody else said I know that the reason he was wearing red and in fact he told us himself that the reason he was wearing red is because he wanted To support labor in the upcoming general election in his country say that is a contradiction and
means that one of you wasn't paying close enough attention not just to the color of my jacket but the very message that I was trying to get across that could well be true but what I'm getting at is we know we know just from normal experience that if the two of us are sitting in a cafe and we see an accident these kinds of differences are normal normal so let's just say for Example here's God showing us a revelation and the Revelation can be whatever it is and you and I write an account of it
and somebody finds that my account of it not only is different than yours but let's just say for example I go oh Jesus was wearing a cloak another guy goes he's wearing a robe for anyone to actually think that this is in fact the refutation of the truth of the Bible is ludicrous is ludicrous so Anyway we've in our format we've agreed to to do a flip where you been asking me questions now let me ask you if you've got something to ask let me turn around and and and ask you questions in in in
a sort of a what I think is a more fundamental mode because it gets to what the bible really is that's um do you think that the Universe had a beginning I don't know I would I would suspect yes you suspect yes yeah sure how did the writers of the Book of Genesis know that I have no idea could I mean if I'm going to be if I'm going to be cynical about this if they did guess it would be 50/50 guess and I also think that if we had scientif would it be a 50-50
guess yeah because and it might even be worse than that for you because if we had uh some kind of scientific popular hypothesis because of course the big bang might not have been the beginning of everything who knows right but like whatever the popular scientific Hypothesis is if it were pointing to an infinite Universe for example as Einstein thought we lived in and I'm sure that people would open Genesis they would say that in the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth and and say that the Earth just means the Earth itself right like
I I think it would be equally easily interpretable on either on either account all right so one of my professors at Dartmouth was Robert Jastro uh head of the Mount Wilson laboratory one of the great astronomers of the 20th century sure so jastro writes in his book God and the astronomers that for 250 years modern science has been attempting to discover whether the universe had a beginning and you can think of these scientists as as ascending a very tall mountain in which there are many Pathways and and and for many years uh with the steady
state Hypothesis and so on there were beliefs that the Universe was eternal it never had a beginning in fact that was the prevailing point of view and then jastro argues it's almost as if we reached the top of the mountain and there was a bunch of Hebrew prophets or theologians sitting there would been there from the beginning so I'm describing now a skeptic a true skeptic and a true scientist describing the scientific shock that attends to a Discovery that and I think it is out of the spirit of that Discovery for you to go oh
yeah I mean could have been this it's like tossing a coin it isn't like tossing a coin this is a question that's been argued for two centuries and only resolved in the last several decades uh and resolved decisively in one side and the other and the fact that you're not willing to just straight out say yeah it is actually an astounding fact that we now know no no no no I mean look the the Scientific method has also revealed to us that the earth was formed about 4 and a half billion years ago that is
much later than the sun the gos the the Old Testament account the Hebrew Bible account tells us that it was the other way round so it got that bit wrong all right so so so so we're yes the Bible is not sometimes it gets things right sometimes it gets things wrong you know the Bible is not it's not listing out a scienic well now hold on a Second you can't now move the goal poost especially if you're still going to especially if you're still going to miss the the the issue well well no the issue
of of the origin of the universe is extremely critical told you just told me that Genesis predicted or knew about or somehow knew about the scientific hypothesis of the origin of the universe then when I pointed out another scientific observation that doesn't OCC with Genesis you tell me that Genesis Isn't the scientific text to begin with well if you if you read if you read Genesis it is making a astounding claim which pertains to God obviously God created the heav is it making a scientific claim or not is it telling us How the Universe scientifically
formed or not the it's not telling us How the Universe scientifically formed because if it did they would be outlining the history of the big then what's the relevance of bringing this up in the First place because because it is stating a conclusion not a process it's not telling you how the universe was formed it's not telling you it also doesn't tell us how the sun was formed but it tells us that it was formed after the Earth was it it it tells us that that's the case that's wrong it's incorrect uh show me I
don't have a I don't have a Bible okay well I've read that passage maybe a dozen times I've never spotted this contradiction that You're describing but I'll go back and look at it again but but but again on what day is it that that God makes the the the Sun and day day four it's day three or day four something around there you're right but but the mainam of the Christian tradition does it obviously can't be day four because because the concept of day in in the in the original Hebrew doesn't mean day sure but
the day four comes after day one right it's describing it's describing Obviously epics or or or periods so so actually it's much worse because now the sun is created much much much later than the earth was well not necessarily um well show me I don't I don't I mean we can we can read through that we can find gen I don't think I don't the best best use of our time I mean we can do it if you really want to but what I'm trying to say is that like it's not as why not it's
not astonishing to me That the that like if you if you're making claims about the origin of the universe especially in the case where if it was if it is making a specific H claim in the knowledge that there's a sort of infinite hypothesis and a beginning hypothesis to take a 50-50 step it's not amazing to me it would be more amazing to me if if everything lined up and it and it gave us an otherwise unknowable historical scientific account of the beginning of The universe but as you say that's not even what Genesis is
trying to do so I I don't in other words I don't understand how I'm not saying that Genesis is trying to unfurl a I'm saying the Genesis is making a statement about creation and the statement about creation has a very startling uh scientific implication because if there was a creation then there obviously wasn't something and then there was something you know I mean It's not just science which can tell us that the the universe had a beginning I mean like there are lots of philosophical arguments that people have made um perhaps most famously Al gazali
uh who argues against for the impossibility of a past infinite universe and I think does so quite convincingly with no reference to Red shifting and no reference to scientific hypothesis so it's perfectly possible for somebody to to take a pretty uh Studious and educated guess at the fact that the Universe had a beginning long before the Scientific Method told us that that was the case I'm not saying that it's not possible to make philosophical arguments and of course as you know there was a tradition in ancient Greece of making philosophical arguments all over the place
maybe so maybe that's why the me let me let me keep going me I'm trying to answer your Question maybe maybe if you ask me how would they know isn't this astounding I would say well maybe they just had a had a philosophical tradition that that tore the beginning of the universe and that's where they got it from except that it's not inconceivable it's not inconceivable but it's it's it's not likely because when we think of the tradition of Western Civilization we speak of Athens and Jerusalem we speak of the origins of philosophy starting in
about the 8th Century BCE and then really developing first in Greece and then we talk about the tradition of Revelation developing in in ancient uh Jerusalem so is there was there a hidden philosophical tradition possible but probably unlikely let's proceed to the let's let's proceed to the issue of the veracity of the um of the some of the historical events described in the Bible uh would you say that figures like Jeremiah um David Are these historical figures or mythological figures i' say I don't know for certain but I would say that the Bible is certainly
attempting to paint as historical figures for what it's attempting to do you've been you've been trying to I I don't know but you don't know Happ to say yes okay so so so on a mean I I would predict yes I would I would say yes you would you would say what I would imagine yeah okay uh do you think that Sodom and Gomorrah are Historical cities uh probably yeah probably yes uh would you say that um pontious pilot was a real person yes yes sure okay uh would you say that um all right now
these statements that you're saying now um were in no way known to be true MH until recent decades some of those I'm not sure all the ones I mention if you're talking about like archaeology like I'm talking Biblical archaeology let me let me give you an example of you can't prove the historical existence of of a person very easily well let me let me go into this a little bit here and also I I don't like it's you can I want to make sure we're using the time wisely here you could give me a a
sound archaeological bit of evidence that all of these people existed that that is in no way tells us about the the truth of the stories that are attributed To them uh no it does well let me put it this way um for many centuries uh the is the whole tradition of biblical scholarship in the 19th century in fact really until until in some cases 10 15 or 20 years ago there was absolutely no evidence historically for the Existence for example of a Hezekiah Jeremiah yeah David let alone actual locations for David's Palace sure UMB all
right uh Hezekiah hezekiah's um his tunnels uh tunnels now let me tell you something I Discovered I was getting a tour recently a few months ago in Israel from the guys at Hebrew University and they were talking about uh a an archaeologist named Elliot Mazar who's what she she calls herself a Biblical archaeologist she's not a Christian uh or even a believer but she the way that she does archaeology is this she has the Bible in one hand and the sort of the pickaxe and the other and the approach to it is pretty simple It
is is I want to find David's Palace now no one has ever heard of David's I mean David's Palace is in the Bible but it there's no independent corroboration of it at all um there's a foundation in in Jerusalem called the city of David Foundation they have a little office uh Dr Elliot Mazar walks in their office and says to them you have to move your office because the Palace of David is in the ground underneath your office and These guys are like how would you know that and Dr mazari says because if you read
the Bible it will tell you that David when he built his Palace brought in Phoenician Builders who brought materials from Phoenicia and also brought Phoenician building expertise the Phoenicians were apparently the Builders of the day and so Dr Mazar says we have found Phoenician seals Phoenician coins Phoenician Inscriptions here and so I predict that the palace is right underneath here because the Bible tells me that that's how that Palace was built so so David's Palace exists David's Palace is there for you to see today okay and it is in the exact location of where it
was set to be and what I'm getting at is the the archaeological approach here is to use the Bible as an archaeological tool the location of Sodom and Gomorrah there was a lot of speculation that said Sodom and Gomorrah were cities over here or cities over there but actually makes no sense because a what we know about Sodom and Gomorrah is that they were once flourishing cities two they were burned to ashes three Abraham supposedly could see the smoke from a long ways away and so these locations of Sodom and Gomorrah were never found uh
until recently by recently I mean recent decades an archaeologist again in the Eliot Mazar tradition takes the Bible and Says for Sodom and gomorah to exist it's not enough to just go looking and see if we find stuff and go hey is this Sodom and Gomorrah let's actually follow the tracks of the Bible let's follow the map provided admittedly in very sketchy terms the Bible is not trying to give you a map but it's giving you Clues and based on these Clues the actual Sodom and Gomorrah is located and you dig into it and guess
what you find the remains of an ancient City and you also find Ash And and and and debris in other words there was an ancient city there it was completely burned to the ground so one of the great cities of the ancient world then becomes an absolute nothing and has been an absolute nothing since and not only does the bible describe these events but it says exactly that that these great cities will cease to exist and will never be resurrected again as they have not been to this day if I may because I'm beginning to
suspect this Isn't a question I might just um jump in here um sure yeah okay so the the authors of the Hebrew Bible so the so the if I if I if I might answer the question I mean it is your time but I need to be able to speak as well um the Bible contains accurate data about where archaeologically we can find the ruins of an ancient cities okay that that's not too extraordinary to me I I have no problem saying that the people who wrote these texts knew where these places were With with
with exact precision and in fact notice what's happening notice what's happening in my view what's happening is that the Bible is a historical text and a scientific text when it needs to be and it's not one when you don't want it to be so when I said a moment ago here's a relatively mundane historical fact about the gospels you said well the fact that some mundane historical fact should undermine Christianity is ludicrous but now you're Telling me that a mundane historical fact is enough to butress Christianity I don't think you can have your cake and
eat it too in that case I'm not I'm not trying to have my cake and eat it too I'm simply saying that if somebody gives a true account of events complete with small details that are incidental to the narrative the Bible refers to very minor figures at times um let's take for example Caiaphas Caiaphas is one of the two high priests who is present at Jesus's trial uh we don't even know his first name he's mentioned as Caiaphas the historian Josephus calls him Josephus cifas and that is the only indic from Josephus and only one
source and and and and a source writing a little later of what this guy's name even was and until recently few decades ago there was absolutely no corroboration that there was ever a guy even named Caiaphas except now not only do we have Inscriptions with his name we actually have his bones but what does okay so what I'm getting at is does this matter at all to the to the question why does it matter why does this matter because if somebody is giving if somebody is giving a true account of events you know a guy
comes running into this room and he goes guess what I've just I've just witnessed to murder he's going to give us a lot of accounts and a lot of detail right now look if somebody was trying to Claim that Moses parted the Red Sea and I said well how could you possibly know that's the case and you said well look we didn't have any evidence that a guy called Moses existed but we've discovered this rock where someone wrote Moses was here great okay we know we know Moses existed and maybe we know where he existed
but the actual event the stories that are attributed to these characters are in no way supported by anything that you're saying and that's The important thing I think that's what people are interested I I doubt that anybody in this room and they can they can make themselves known if they're here I don't think anybody in this room either thinks that it's important or would be is troubled in their skepticism by the existence of these people and the real existence of the places that are described in the old test right and neither do I think anybody
neither do I think that a single Christian believer In the world would be shaken by anything that you've said today so let's really try to meet in the middle on the stuff that really matters and I think what we're really saying when you mentioned The Parting of the Red Sea to me it's like now we're talking because we're talking about these are different these are different these are categorically different types of events I mean I mean what you just said these are different because people are troubled by what I Say and they're not troubled by
what you say because for an atheist to say that Hezekiah existed doesn't mean they can't be an atheist for a Christian to say that Jesus didn't historically rise from the dead means that they're not a Christian correct so these are different they're asymmetrical they're as asymmetrical so let's let's pick up let's pick up the so so it matters it matters when the historical elements are wrong in terms Of our grand conclusion for for the Christian it matters when the history gets it wrong for the atheist it doesn't matter when the history gets it right what
what I'm saying is that if somebody if if someone gives a true account of events it is normal for the accounts to vary to differ in some cases to have minor contradictions the real question is is did the thing that's being cribe actually happened so let let's turn to that let's you think for example that The slaughter of the amalekites that I mentioned before actually happened probably of course and if that happened I mean we haven't spoken about the concept of moral truth I'd like to get the time to do we can come to that
but let's let's F let's stay with with what I what I think you were about to get to which I think is the hard the matter that we haven't even gotten to and that's this the Bible is the where the Bible is the most Unbelievable is in its account of astounding and miraculous events sure right healings let's take the most the most outrageous event of all um which is let's just say bringing a guy back from the dead y presented in the Bible as a miracle talking about Lazarus here rather than I'm talking about Lazarus
yes Lazarus perfect um now for a Christian a Christian would say this a the Bible doesn't try to prove it it Simply asserts it in fact it presents it as a truth of Revelation if you will reveal this it's a miracle which is to say that it is a it is a it is not something that happens within the seeming known laws of nature which we'll talk about in a moment and and the question really here is are these kinds of Miracles possible if you say are they implausible or are they rare or is it
difficult to Believe the Christian is like right with you I think the question is did they happen did they happen right and and and and and the CH here's where the Christian and the atheist are on Common Ground because the Christian and the atheist would both say that based upon ordinary experience it can't happen sure because otherwise it wouldn't be a miracle so what evidence might we have to suggest that these miraculous events as described in the Gospels did happen I'm saying that because the miraculous events I'm I would simp the Christian would simply say
if God exists Miracles are obviously possible sure I agree The Atheist has has a has a higher burden and that is the atheist has to say that whether or not God exists which is not the topic of our debate here Miracles are impossible because if they're possible they don't have to say that you don't have to say that no of Course they don't have to say that you don't have to say that you say you say it is possible for a man to be raised from the dead I can I can say that that's possible
without thereby without saying but you're saying but this particular one didn't happen but the event is possible without thereby in any way telling us anything about whether it happened as reported to is it possible for the for for is it possible for the Red Sea to be parted sure why not it is Okay okay is it possible for but what does that do for us is it possible that Muhammad Flew To Heaven on a winged horse Okay so so here's our problem hold on yes or no is it of course it's possible of course it's
possible so so that means that you know the miraculous events that's described in Islam uh you've got such a higher burden of proof than the Muslim does if you're having a debate with a Muslim I I but but but because you have to say that's I am not Trying to prove the veracity of this or that miracle I freely admit that I can't do that I'm not trying to prove the veracity of this but you can't disprove it either no of course I can't disprove it exactly that's not my task here that's like that's like
me saying that's like me saying you know um I I I think that I don't know to take a Shakespeare an example I think that you know spoiler alert you know we don't Romeo took the poison let's take let's take an actual And if you said well hold on how do you know that that actually happened and I said well you can't prove that it didn't well let's let's let's let's let's pick an actual example that pertains to ch Christianity let's talk about something I raised earlier 5 minutes before Q by way do you believe
do you believe that there is life after death I don't know you don't have no idea yeah I'm an agnostic on that so if I say that there's life after death am I being Unreasonable I don't think so not at all depends depends on your reasons it depends on my reasons but what I'm saying is if I were to tell you that there is no empirical way yeah to prove this one way or the other my fate let's say that there's life after death is just as reasonable as someone who says there isn't sure it
depends on what the reasons that that are given are of course but but sure that we're talking about the reasons That are actually available not the person who's giving a reason may give the best or not the best re it'san but I'm happy to say yes I just want to I just want to be careful what I say because people might get the wrong impression of my beliefs but but but yeah sure I mean sure we've got two people one says life after death one says not they're both just as reasonable as each other they're
both just as reasonable sure yeah that could be Excellent okay good um I wanted to clarify that point particularly because do with the truth of the Bible well what I'm what all I am saying is that the claims of Miracles you and I are not going to be in a position to go back and see whether or not Jesus raised a man from the dead it's not all you say it's not all you're saying the Christian is perfectly willing to take that on faith you think that did happen and you're taking it on faith and
that's fine like More power to you and in fact I I envy your ability to believe things just despite the what well don't you take a lot of things on faith of course yeah absolutely plenty of things on faith yeah all the time so all the things that you take on faith are are are are things that you think are not unreasonable but the things that Christians take on faith are to you unreasonable because they can't be corroborated with historical evidence is that what I said I don't Remember saying that so are the Christian beliefs
on faith just as reasonable as everything that you believe on it can be depending on the reasons but the the veracity of the Gospel accounts and the Old Testament prophecy I think is unreasonable to believe in not not life after death that's fine you can believe that not like you know A Man Called Jesus rose from the dead fine but the idea that the Bible comports with reality either in Mythological sense in an allegorical sense in a moral sense or in a his in the sense of his let's talk about the moral sense since you
raised it and we'll just talk about we time for Q&A but look I can I can I can reread the text if you like um the amalekites well let's not talk about the amalekites in part because here's a problem for most Christians the Old Testament is different than the new and is seen through the light of the new so If you want if you want to go to you know Dennis Prager who has written about this from a Jewish perspective has written about the Deuteronomy the book of Kings the amalekites we can BR what he
considers to be the justifiable Massacre of the Canaanites I don't really want to go there because I know why you don't want to go there well the reason I don't want to go there the Old Testament is Old Testament is is full of horrific massacres that that that is Hold on massacr which are ordained massacres which appear to be ordained by Yahweh directly agreed and why why you saying Yahweh instead of God why are you why you trying to trying to distance yourself from the god of the Old Testament well I'm not trying to distance
myself I'm simply trying to say that any reader so why is that the first time you've used the the word Yahweh and because I'll tell you why because there is a there is a movement within the Bible itself that that you are completely missing um do not think that I have come to the law or the prophets not come to abolish them but to fulfill them for truly I tell you until Heaven and Earth disappear not the smallest letter not the least stroke of a pen will by any means disappear from the law until everything
is accomplished therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches accordingly will be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven Jesus said that in The Sermon on the Mount referring to his fulfillment of all Testament prophecy and and law referring to his fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy Old Testament law and and what I'm what I'm refering you hear is an Old Testament law which you're now trying to distance yourself from and say that it's different
the new say that's Not what Jesus thought I'm saying you're missing the I'm saying you're missing the developmental uh track of the Bible that is obvious to any intelligent reader let me give let me give you one example of what tell tell me about the amalekites tell tell me tell me what the development it's not about the amalekites it's about the way that the whole story of the Bible changes in tone and mood and message I mean for example Help me out here like just tell me where any any where you like tell me where
this fits into that trajectory we have just a couple minutes guys so let's wrap it up before the Q&A tell underlying message of the Old Testament is an eye for an eye the amalekites are the enemies of the Israelites the Israelites will crush them with the same Venom that the amalekites would have crushed the Israelites that's called an eye for an Eye hold on the children the infants the children the castle the Sheep the camels the donkeys yeah that Dennis Prager says yes but but my point is different you will not find that spirit at
all in the New Testament in fact in the New Testament you've got a spirit of forgiveness so what I'm getting at is to pretend like you don't have this the I mean Christianity is based is named after Christ it's based on Christ as a fulfillment of the Old Testament but What does fulfillment mean it actually means Transcendence in in Abraham's Time Blood sacrifices are normal right when Christ comes as a sacrifice Christ is the Lamb the point point is those blood sacrifices aren't necessary anymore that's the Christian reading and and you keep filibustering me because
you know that the Bible is showing a a movement in in a direction and to miss the movement is to miss the Bible let's look at God in the Bible let me make one Quick Point God there's nothing quick about what you're doing D there's nothing quick about what you're doing I need to be allowed to respond to what you're saying I'm getting sick whenever you're cross examining me on the justice of of smiting the amalekites honestly I don't see any justice in it but I do agree that that was the eye for an eye
ethic of the Old Testament that is repudiated and transformed and transfigured in the new I can I can I I Get I I've had this conversation so many times most recently with William L Craig at least he had the ghoul to to just tell me that yes that is that was a moral thing for God to do I get sick to death of people hand waving away this genocide by some vague reference to the fact that Jesus came along to do something which somehow kind of undo the immorality of it like this is not an
eye for an eye this is a genocide of combatant men innocent women and Children and animals Saul is punished by God for not killing all of the animals like that that is that is that is actually a ludicrous reading of what happen let me just let me just make let me just make a Qui Point let me just make a quick point I I have to make this point I've got to read the the text from Joshua as well okay and then we'll check in with the audience cuz we're we're probably I think the audience
is going to agree that we want this to keep going Instead of going to but we'll check in just after Alex's Point here I think it's important like read these texts for yourself there there is no way that I'm misreading this text we know that this is what's happening in in the slaughter of I AI That's that's a type of Canaanite in Joshua we're told that when Israel had finished killing all of the men in I in the fields and in the wilderness where they had chased them and when every one of them had been
put To the sword the Israelites returned to I and killed those who were in it that is to say that we're told that this is just because the promised land was inhabit Abed and God's God you know he's allowed to do this so because the Israelites want that land they have to go and Chase out the eye so they chase them into the Wilderness they chase after them they slaughter them in the wilderness they then turn around come back into the City and kill who's left Who's left if the combatants have run away the women
and the children this is intolerable and I I cannot have it simply waved away Jesus just for a second it can't happen it can't keep happening completely you're completely blind to the irony of what you're saying dases can we pause for just a second okay everyone who wants uh to go to Q&A right now make a loud noise everyone who wants the discussion To continue on and eat up the Q&A time cheer okay sorry guys we're gonna we're going to let them roll through Q&A let's let's we might have some time Christianity invented the just
War tradition According to which the slaughter of women and children is out of bounds prior to Christianity no one thought this everybody did it and everybody today does it everywhere in the world and we do it too the bombing of Dresden Uh the bombing of Hamburg Hiroshima and Nagasaki the the incineration of women and children is the normal course of War uh I just watched the World War II documentary uh in which they interview an old bomber us a bomber pilot and he goes I was given a bombing mission to to hit a Target I
asked the US authorities who's in the building they said 20,000 women and children and this guy kind of breaks down you can watch this on Netflix and he goes I'm like what the Hell you want me to to kill 20,000 women and children he goes we're supposed to be the good guys and he goes but I I couldn't repudiate the order it was an order so I did it so what I'm getting at is is it everybody does it it is not ethical it is not but I'm simply saying Alex that you are a product
of the Christian morality that repudiates it now you're standing on a Christian mountain and acting like whoa look at these Christians they taught you to talk Like this these people did not teach me to think like that they did these people were listening to their God who was telling them to slaughter innocent women and children Amal right the ancient Israelites were but the ancient Israelites are not what taught you what taught you is the the what taught you is the Thousand-Year tradition of the early Christian Church the which came a bit too late for the
amalekites it came a bit too late for the amales to be sure Were the Israelite armies not instructed by the god that you believe in they were instructed by God and they were instructed to do things which you would now consider to be immoral yes absolutely so God has God has God has commanded them to do something which you now consider to be immoral whether or not you consider it to be immoral because the later developments of Christian ethics God himself has told us that we must abon our intuition that the That the slaughter of
women and children and by the way when it's unnecessary in those instances to slaughter them well well I I don't I don't view it that way this is how I view it Christ um let's put it this way even in the ancient world divine revelation comes into a primitive barbaric World which is full of a lot of really bad guys um and God says keep going no God God does not God does not say keep going but what God does is is and and and again this is Called you know trying to get the point
of what is happening there's slavery in this world in the ancient world and it is true the Bible doesn't come in and go we denounce slavery we denounce the killing of women and children it doesn't do that it actually immerses itself into an existing admittedly barbaric culture and what's actually going on there with the amalekites the Canaanites and so on if you just read the Old Testament it tells you it has to do with the Displacement of polytheism with monotheism that's fine hold on hold on that justifies the murder of children do I say it
does I'm saying I'm saying the way it happens historically is God takes aide the the single monotheistic God who by the way in the Old Testament does not act like a monotheistic God he acts like a tribal God right he act like the god of only the Israelites Len isra's enemies listen to what you just said the god that you believe in is acting like a Tribal war god the god of the yes the the the the god that is depicted in the Old Testament is he's he goes I'm picking the Jews I'm choosing you
to the to the extent that your male and your enemies become my enemies to the exent that your male and female slaves may come from the Nations around you from them you may buy and sell slaves you may also purchase some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their Clan born in your town you can Be them to your children as inheritable property this is human beings by the way you must but you must not over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly so not only do we have you know the description of slavery in
the Old Testament we have an an an explicit condoning instructions on how to do it and doing it based on race well I wouldn't say based on race because how else do you inter first of all racism racism is an invention of the modern world tribe call it tribe if you Like right ethnicity these are Clans you Tre isite slaves this way and you treat non Israelite slaves this way by the way the way that the Israelite slaves treated we're told in Exodus Exodus 21 if you have a male slave they're to go free after
7 years but if you give them a wife and they have children while they your property then they don't go free after seven years only the man does and exodus 21 says but if the man decides that he loves his wife and his children And his master and wants to stay then he can say to his master he wants to say at which point he's taken outside his ear is pierced like cattle and he becomes a slave for life now by the way female slaves aren't let go after s years at all in the first
place now I understand what you're saying when you say hold on when you say like okay maybe God couldn't have abolished slavery for some reason but at least for example when the male slave goes free let his wife and Children go with him yeah why why not this simple moral Improvement there is no conceivable reason that this could not have been ordained ordained by God but it was not you you have a capital argument here to be had with the rabbis and and and and look there is a massive rabinal tradition that discusses every fine
point but but but but it's not my job to isolate the Old Testament from the new and and and and justify ancient battles That have no bearing let me put this way someone if someone were to listen to you they would have no idea that the first anti-slavery movement in the world is driven by the Quakers and the Evangelical Christians they read the same Bible but evidently they don't read it your way because if they read it your way they would be the prime apologists and Defenders of slavery so you have to explain why you
take a universal insti when did that happen in every culture When did that happen when did what happen when did that movement first get off the ground it's well it starts it's in America it starts shortly after the Quakers get here so the early anti-slave let's put it this way the early anti-slavery movements are about uh 1710 1720 two hypothesis then one hypothesis is that God actually didn't like slavery the whole time it just took human beings literally thousands of years to work it out and that just so happened to Coincide with the Enlightenment that's
one hypothesis another hypothesis another hypothesis is actually that the Bible does condone slavery and that what's going on is I I think for example when you look at the actual verses that are being given as justification for for the Christian Abolitionist Movement what what kind of verses are we talking about well what I'm saying is that the what you know first of all the Christians who did it but they wer to say that they Were doing it as motivated by Christianity is a different kind of claim it is it is it is it is a
very significant claim because because to you see the Bible exists in an interpretive tradition that has been uh expostulated over many centuries by Christians they're reading that Bible they're reading it with with with great care as to what it's trying to say and and the enlightenment far from being the origin of any of this in fact the the The the racism that came out of the Enlightenment was of a species that never existed before I mean you think of the great philosophers like Hegel Kant uh their denunciations of blacks for example you'll find nothing like
that in in in the Old Testament leave alone the new and if and if modern Enlightenment thinkers were beholden to think that these Enlightenment thinkers were ineffable uh you know creators of of an inviable ethic then we'd probably have Had a harder time getting rid of it don't you think well nobody nobody see nobody do you think do you think the Abolitionist Movement was helped or hindered hinded by the existence of the verses that I've just described well I mean I I think it was hindered by them because I think that the that the southern
apologists of slavery appeal to those verses to be sure they appeal to the Old Testament verses tell tell me where you could appeal to be Anti-slavery specifically I mean not not love your enemy love your love your neighbor tell me specifically like here's how I can put it you're in a time machine you go back to antibellum slavery in the American South and you you find yourself on a plantation and you say to the Master of the House you know you own a bunch of slaves I don't think this is moral I don't think you
should be mistreating them where do they turn and plausibly so to justify what They're doing well the answer out their Bible and you can say to them well hold on have you read this verse tell me the verse tell me where I can point this person in order to to dispel them I would recommend to you a compendium of sermons that were delivered by Northern preachers in the decades leading up to the Civil War I want to know what the vers so I'm going to give you their mode of preaching because the key to it
is to understand how they use the Bible it's Not the way you do it um there they even the southern theologians weren't dumb enough to say they Enslaved the amalekites therefore you can enslave this guy who's here from the Congo no the the southerners didn't use those arguments either your arguments are in a different species altogether if you look at the arguments between the Northerners and Southerners over slavery they were far more Nuance than that basically you had to do something like this the Northern theologians would say this are we or are we not created
equal in the eyes of God yes or no yes are we all equally in need of Salvation yes does God therefore love us all equally and make salvation available to us all yes and then you flip over the old and all that being the case so hold on it takes a a movement now to go from this theological truth to a political application but I don't have to prove that this is plausible because it Already happened it's far too vague it's it's far it's far too vague for you you it's from a skeptical Compass it's
vague this always happens this always happens but I'm saying millions of people believed it this always they listen to these sermons they acted on them that's because people retrospectively impart uh their own values why do you think why do you people why do you think people in the north who had no stake in the matter signed up to fight the Civil War why did They do it I don't know I you have no idea you but I don't I don't think it's because they they they read the Bible look at the look at the sermons
that are being given look at look at the language that's being used people talk about the Exodus story for example you know that enslaved in Egypt freed by God and brought into the promised land and and this is a story that is favored this is a story that's favored by Abolitionists to say look at this look at this anti-slavery Spirit or something like Exodus leaving out the fact that when the Israelites are uh are liberated from Egypt and trying to take the promised land they do so by slaughtering genociding and also then enslaving the people
who are already living there they leave out that bit because if they kept it in then we'd realize that God did not have an anti-slavery Essence God had an anti- Israelite uh oppression uh Sentiment and it's and it's in it's in in the Old Testament specifically the the Israelites whose oppression he's upset with and not only fine with the oppression of others but mandates the oppression of others through the Israelites okay and all I'm saying is that there is a whole tradition that involves millions of slaves millions of abolitionist preachers Martin Luther King none of
them not one of them reads this story Your way they just don't mention it they just don't mention it right but isn't the significance of a text determined by the reading and use to which it is put let's say for example there's a story of murder and everybody who reads that story becomes a wonderful citizen loves their family and you're the only guy who goes oh no really guys you're all misreading the text it's really about murder guys and Martin Luther King goes you know no slaves for Hundreds of years have taken consolation in The
Exodus I mean go down Moses way down to Egypt land and tell old Pharaoh let my people go to you this is gobbley go because guess what the Israelites did next and then Mar the king next what did they do next well my point what I would say to Luther King if I agree about what they I agree about that description in the Bible I'm simply saying that I'm simply saying descrition a Christian book has got to Be understood in the way Christians understand it and if you come out with a quote let's just say
for example don't put it in scare quotes like you can say you know go to pharaoh and say let my people go and if I was trying to make a theological B I would say and then do what what did they do next you know like don't get me wrong I am more than happy that Martin Luther King was able to make a theological case for the abolition of slavery fine but I would say that he was Slavy for civil he was misreading the text yeah you're right minutes not the other way around it's like
we have to ask who's misreading the text and let's say let's just suppose for a moment that you could point to me which you still haven't done to a ver a single verse even in the New Testament which tells me that slavery is a bad thing which by the way s Paul writes in um I can't I can't remember which I wish I could I wish I could remember which which letter it is But you'll know what I'm talking about where he writes slaves be obedient to your Masters not just the good ones but also
to the cruel or the fruid as the King James has it it like if it were the case that even if you could which I'd still love for you to do point to a single verse in the New Testament that tells me that slavery is actually not so good the fact that so obviously God is okay with it in the Old Testament means that even if you could do that the best We're left with is that we have a text here which can say one thing on one day and another thing the next if if
you don't understand if you don't if you don't read I'm sure I'm sure I bribed more people than that on the way in so if you don't read the Bible in the way that the Christians do then I'm trying to try to understand what is the you're essentially you're essentially a kind of a a new interpreter who's saying the first of All texts are always open to interpretation right so if I say for example um uh the meaning of the edus story is the Quest for truth no matter where that takes you and that is
and that is the meaning of the sophoclean hero the sophoclean hero is isolated antigon edus they hold on to a truth no matter what however unpleasant however dangerous it often takes them to their destruction or their death and that is the way in which I let's just say a student of ancient Greek drama reads this work and that is the way that the work has always been read you come along and say let's just say you're a Sigman Freud and you go no to me the work really means something to be different people have a
secret lust for their moms and uh and this is repressed now it's a very interesting interpretation but it's sort of like I'm telling you no One no Christian reads it that way you're like but there it is in the text sometimes a genocide is just a genocide I'm not denying the facts as described it's the wiping out of the amalekites as as ordained by the god that you believe in as as ordered by Yahweh so just just to answer just to ask a direct yes or no question I'd appreciate a direct yes or no to
this the god that you believe in is the moral author of the universe morally Justifiably commanded the slaughter of innocent children and women yes or no in the Old Testament yes there you have it when so now we've C now we've covered historical metaphorical allegorical and now moral truth and I suppose it can only be up to the audience to decide whether they think that this is true fair enough okay all right everyone let's do a big round of applause for denes and Alex wow Thank you sorry about the questions sorry we'll be around afterwards
no it's all good uh we do have poster printouts for all of you in the lobby free of charge uh and you can all get them signed by Alex and dases that'll be uh joining us in the LOB and uh everyone on YouTube thank you so much for stopping by to watch we we I think we Peak that 2,000 viewers live so so that's excellent for Pangburn things are growing really fast make sure you guys Subscribe and drop a like button before you uh head out of the stream thank you everyone so much and I'll
uh hang out with you guys in the lobby I'll see you there and questions questions come come they we uh you can ask them there yes yes ask your questions line up we do have a bit of time so thanks guys thanks all right appreciate it [Music] w [Music]
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