#363 - Explosive Bible Debate: Exiled Language Expert vs Ancient Religion PhD | Ammon Hillman & Luke Gorton

Watch this episode ad-free & uncensored on Patreon: https://patreon.com/dannyjones Dr. Ammon Hillman is a Ph. D. classicist specializing in Ancient Greek, Roman medicine & pharmacy. Dr. Hillman was investigated by the Vatican for demon possession while teaching as a professor of Classical Languages. Dr. Luke Gorton is also a Ph. D. classicist specializing in religions of the ancient Mediterranean, Greek mythology & ancient magic. On this episode, Hillman & Gorton debate ancient greek literature regarding Jesus Christ's shameful act in the 'Greater Questions of Mary', the ORIGINAL language of the old testament & the origins of the word "Christ". SPONSORS https://kalshi.com/r/DANNY - Click the link or download the Kalshi App & use code DANNY to sign up & trade today. https://meetfabric.com/danny - Join thousands of parents who trust Fabric to help protect their family. Apply today in just minutes. https://amentara.com/go/DJ - Use the code DJ22 for 22% off your first order. https://rag-bone.com - Use code DANNY & get 20% off sitewide. https://whiterabbitenergy.com/?ref=DJP - Use code DJP for 20% off. EPISODE LINKS Ammon Hillman: @ladybabylon666 Luke Gorton: @drlukegorton FOLLOW DANNY JONES https://www.instagram.com/dannyjones https://twitter.com/jonesdanny OUTLINE 00:00 - The study of dead languages 05:08 - Ancient magic 10:30 - Ammon's expulsion from academia 12:43 - how Ammon's dissertation was censored 18:06 - Why Ammon abandoned Christianity 20:54 - Classicists vs. linguists vs. bible scholars 26:58 - Archeologists & linguists working with classicists 30:49 - The problem with bible scholars 36:29 - Biggest misconceptions about the bible 39:18 -When the gospels were written 46:50 - How much ancient literature has disappeared 49:18 - The Greek Magical Papyri 52:47 - Why Greek was the dominant ancient language 01:01:53 - The greater questions of Mary 01:07:15 - Jesus' shameful act 01:10:59 - The d*ck analogy 01:15:47 - Scholiast's definition of αἰσχρότης 01:24:20 - Translation evidence of eating Jesus' semen 01:29:19 - Who was Jesus & did he exist? 01:35:58 - Paul's letter to the Corinthians 01:41:13 - How Paul survived a poisonous viper bite 01:47:47 - Ancient use of drugged wines 01:50:13 - Original language of the Septuagint 01:54:06 - Greek translations that lose their meaning 01:58:42 - Oldest pieces of Hebrew literature 02:04:17 - Why ancient Hebrew texts don't exist 02:14:13 - Luke's theory on the Septuagint authorship 02:16:29 - The language Jesus spoke 02:23:39 - Greek vs. Aramaic quotes from Jesus 02:30:08 - Back formation of language 02:34:20 - The problem with Ammon's methodology 02:39:11 - The "sounds like" linguistics principle 02:45:02 - Origin of the word "Christ" 02:53:57 - Different forms of the Greek word "Christ" 02:58:46 - Analogy for "Christ" as "anointed one" 03:08:52 - When Jews adopted the Greek language 03:16:01 - True origin of the Greek word "cristos" 03:21:42 - "Jewish" Greek vs. traditional Greek 03:26:33 - The magi (three wise men) 03:29:03 - Discriminating between historical texts 03:35:23 - The Isaiah Scroll & the Masoretic Text similarities Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Speaker 00

  Check engine, ABS or maintenance light on? Take the guesswork out of your warning lights with O'Reilly Veriscan. The service is free and provides a report with solutions verified by ASE certified master technicians. And if you need help, we can recommend a shop for you. Ask for O'Reilly Veriscan today.

• 0:37Danny Jones?

  Welcome gentlemen. First of all, just to start this whole thing off, I want to have both of you guys introduce yourselves and your academic backgrounds. Luke, we'll start with you.

• 0:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, my name is Dr. Luke Gordon. I have been fascinated by the ancient world, by ancient languages for most of my life at this point. I was very fortunate to take Latin in 8th and 9th grade. I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I did so. Everyone had always told me, you know, languages are hard, Latin is hard, like, why are you taking that? And then I took it and it just clicked. I just love this stuff. I had no idea that I was going to love it this much, but I did. I ended up taking Spanish later in high school and of course, as we know, Spanish is descended from Latin, it's one of the Romans languages. And that got me hooked on connections between languages. How are languages related to each other?

• 1:29Speaker 02

  How do languages evolve from, you know, an older language to a younger language or whatever? I went to college, I majored in Spanish, I also majored in religion, especially early Christianity, second temple Judaism, Mediterranean religions. That's when I first took Greek was in college. I took three years of Greek in college and I didn't think I could love anything more than Latin, but I did. I found that Greek was just the most amazing language that, of course, at this point, I don't take in three languages, Latin, Spanish, and then Greek, but it was the most amazing language that I had ever. Been fortunate enough to to take and I still feel that way today now that I've taken many, many other ancient languages, especially when I went on to grad school.

• 2:12Speaker 02

  I I decided to do my master's degree in linguistics, specifically historical linguistics, which is again, the study of how languages are connected to each other. It's really the study of old dead languages. That's essentially what historical linguistics is. So as part of that program, I learned the general principles of linguistics, which I think are very important, and I'm sure those will come up more in our discussion. But I also learned, I was also able to take many other old dead languages. I took three semesters of Sanskrit, which is essentially the Latin of India. You know, it's what all the it's what the Rigveda and the ancient Hindu texts are written in, which super cool stuff. I took Avestan, which is the ancient language of Iran. And and you know, there's various ancient religious texts that are written in that as well. I was able to

• 2:57Speaker 02

  take Old Irish. I was able to take Gothic, which is the oldest Germanic language. I also took Hebrew, which of course, you know, we'll get into that as well. And I was able to take a little bit of Old Egyptian, which is what the hieroglyphs are writing. Essentially, they're writing this this Old Egyptian language. Akkadian, which is the old Babylonian or Assyrian language. Hittite, which is a language from what we today call Turkey, and and several other ancient languages as well. So I was able to really fill out my my ancient language portfolio, if you want to call it that. But but my heart always remained with Greek and Latin. And between Greek and Latin, my heart is more on the Greek side. I love Latin.

• 3:39Speaker 02

  I tell all my students this. And my students at the University of New Mexico, they're classicists, for the most part, at least in the upper level Latin and Greek language classes that I get to teach. And and and within classics, as Ammon knows, there are different opinions about Latin versus Greek. There's people who like Latin better. There's people who like Greek better. And sometimes it's just a vibe thing. You know, you you take these two languages. And if you're a classicist, you have to take both of them. It's kind of part of the job description. But some people vibe more with Latin. Some people vibe more with Greek. I was always on the Greek side. I love Latin, but Greek is really where my heart is. It's a fascinating, wonderful language. And honestly, I wish, I wish everybody could learn it, all of you. Yeah, and I could probably.

• 4:21Danny Jones?

  And so you have a PhD in classics?

• 4:24Speaker 02

  That's correct.

• 4:24Danny Jones?

  And what about linguistics?

• 4:25Speaker 02

  My master's degree is in linguistics.

• 4:27Danny Jones?

  Got it.

• 4:28Speaker 02

  And that, so yeah, let me finish the story. So I, I kind of interrupted myself because I'm so excited about ancient languages. So I did my master's degree in linguistics and then I was deciding what to go on for my PhD. And I could have gone on and stayed with linguistics and some people said I should have. But I decided that I wanted to specifically focus on the ancient Mediterranean world, which is essentially what classics is. And I know that you, you and Amen have had some discussions about what this word called classics is because a lot of people don't know. Like they, they hear classics and they think Shakespeare, like we're Shakespeare scholars, which we're not.

• 4:59Danny Jones?

  I had no idea what that word meant before Amen, before I met Amen.

• 5:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think a lot of people are in that boat.

• 5:05Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 5:05Speaker 02

  So that's a, that's a PR issue that I think in classics, we have to kind of deal with. I don't know how we're going to deal with it.

• 5:10Danny Jones?

  And then, and then only Greek experts wear sunglasses.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  That's correct.

• 5:15Danny Jones?

  Inside cathedrals.

• 5:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's the rule that we just made.

• 5:19Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 5:19Speaker 02

  So yeah, are we taking these off? Are you keeping them on?

• 5:22Speaker 03

  No, I feel good.

• 5:23Danny Jones?

  So, so let's treat this as a brand new podcast and assume a lot of the viewers here have never been exposed to you, Amen. Why don't you give a, a brief summary of your background and what, you know, your experience with academia and what you're doing now?

• 5:38Speaker 03

  Okay, I'm also a PhD in classics. I went the whole way through bachelor's, masters and PhD in classics.

• 5:49Speaker 03

  My field of expertise was medicine. I had the privilege of studying with John Scarborough. Who's, you know, the authority. And during this time, I was exposed to texts that are pharmacological, stuff that we don't translate.

• 6:07Speaker 03

  And oh God, all of a sudden, the world of evidence came forward, just out bubbling out of the surface. So I spent a ton of time getting those degrees in a master's in bacteriology, because I wanted to keep my both feet, you know, one foot on this side of the fence and the, you know, the humanities and science divide. And that's what turned on John Scarborough. Right. And by the way, John Scarborough worked with a professor, um, Graff.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, Fritz Graff.

• 6:43Speaker 03

  You're associated with, and this is all ancient magic. So.

• 6:48Danny Jones?

  Fritz Graff was ancient, he specialized in ancient magic?

• 6:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I worked with two professors during my PhD program at Ohio State, who are two of the preeminent scholars in the field of ancient magic. Fritz Graff and actually his wife, Sarah Isles-Johnston, both of whom are amazing professors and scholars who have been in the field for a long time, who have published an incredible amount of stuff, who have done a lot of translations of these ancient magical texts.

• 7:10Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 7:11Speaker 02

  And they've made some of the most authoritative translations that are available to the English speaking market. I was able to work with both of them. Sarah Isles-Johnston, she, she's done a lot of work on ancient witches and witchcraft.

• 7:23Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  She, she used to tell us, because I had classes with both of them, so I know them both personally. She, she, I remember she told us once in one class that she, she gets, she gets phone calls from random people online, or just random people who are trying to become witches, because she knows all the ancient texts.

• 7:39Danny Jones?

  That's amazing.

• 7:40Speaker 02

  She's translated a lot of them. So she, she has some notoriety in that sense.

• 7:44Danny Jones?

  That's amazing. So, um, they knew John Scarborough and, and him were close. They worked together. So we found like a little cosmic connection between you two. That's fun.

• 7:53Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 7:53Speaker 02

  It's not a big field. Yeah.

• 7:55Speaker 03

  Translating the PGM and whatnot, the Greek magical papyri, and all of that information that's in there, that's all locked into the pharmacology.

• 8:06Danny Jones?

  So you were a professor at one point?

• 8:08Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 8:08Danny Jones?

  At University of Madison?

• 8:10Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 8:10Danny Jones?

  Wisconsin Madison?

• 8:11Speaker 03

  Yes, at the extended university. So I, I used to teach medical terms.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I taught a class on that too. And that's a pretty common class we classicists teach for the, for, I assume it was a class that had a lot of biology majors and

• 8:25Speaker 03

  Oh, it was all science people, yeah.

• 8:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, because they want to learn the terms because they're all Greek and Latin, but mostly Greek.

• 8:30Danny Jones?

  And then, um, for context, for people that don't know, you were eventually ejected by the university.

• 8:36Speaker 03

  Then I went to

• 8:37Danny Jones?

  There was some controversy with a play you were doing about Medea, right?

• 8:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, then after that, I went to the, um, to St. Mary's University in Minnesota and was classics there and taught Greeks all the seminarians. And, um, uh, after two years, we got, started getting calls back about how good the, the priests were doing in their Greek, you know, that it was a big deal. So, I, I mean, you know, as well as I know, that biblical studies is not the sharpest when it comes to Greek.

• 9:10Speaker 02

  I, I would, I would love it if they focused on it more. Uh, it would help them.

• 9:14Speaker 03

  Yeah. If they read something outside of the New Testament, maybe, and didn't just interlinear translate, right?

• 9:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. And from what I understand, a lot of seminaries are moving away from language instruction altogether.

• 9:25Speaker 03

  Right.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  And again, I'm not like in the seminary field. This is what I hear from people I know who are, um, which, which I think is, is, is, is a crime. Like you have to, you have to be able to read any of these texts in the original language, which of course, if you're a New Testament scholar, I think you absolutely, absolutely need to be able to work with the Greek. Working with the New Testament is a good start, but like you said, the New Testament is part of a wider linguistic world. It's, it's not an island unto itself, which I think, you know, a lot of times we have these false barriers, uh, within academia, which are very frustrating, uh, for interdisciplinary scholars, and I think we both are. So, you know, people who work on the New Testament kind of have their own little academic bubble. And then people like us who are classicists, who work on the wider Greek world that might be interested in stuff in the New Testament, we have our own

• 10:10Speaker 02

  bubble. And a lot of times it's, it's difficult for us to talk to each other across those lines because we work in different buildings and we work in different departments. And sometimes we don't even know each other. And sometimes they don't want to talk to us. And sometimes some of us, not, not us, but some of us, classicists might not want to talk to them, which is unfortunate. I want to be Trying to build bridges. I mean, that's one of the reasons I'm here is to try to build bridges and talk to people and talk to a wider audience because I think that's our mission. I think a lot of academics are closeted in their own little silos, in their own little fields. And they're like, well, we know stuff and it doesn't really matter if we tell other people or not, or talk to other people who are different than us, who might disagree with us. And I don't, I don't see it that way. I think that we should be reaching out. I think we should be

• 10:54Speaker 02

  talking to people who are different than us, who maybe disagree with us, and there can be productive disagreement.

• 11:00Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 11:00Speaker 03

  So to answer your question that ties in, I was at St. Mary's at a seminary teaching, right? And we did a play, we produced the Medea, Seneca's Medea, not Euripides.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 11:18Speaker 03

  And I was decommissioned. I was let go for what?

• 11:28Danny Jones?

  Opening portals or something.

• 11:29Speaker 03

  Opening portals?

• 11:31Danny Jones?

  Accused him of demon possession and opening portals.

• 11:34Speaker 03

  There was an inquiry, Bishop had to oversee it.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  Was it a Catholic college?

• 11:38Speaker 03

  Yes. Right. Okay. He gets it though, right? You see me as a classicist, right? In the middle of this, and in the beginning of the play, I marched down an eight foot phallus, right? Now, is that?

• 11:51Speaker 02

  Which was normal for Roman times.

• 11:52Speaker 03

  Yeah. Do you see? Do you see what happened?

• 11:56Speaker 02

  Offensive to a modern audience, normal for Roman times, which is one of the things, you know, as we're trying to explain the ancient world to people.

• 12:01Danny Jones?

  If you're in a Catholic school, that might be frowned upon.

• 12:05Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 12:06Speaker 03

  Correct. But they contracted with me.

• 12:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:08Speaker 03

  To do it as historically accurate as possible. So everybody in the chorus had a dildo.

• 12:17Speaker 03

  Right?

• 12:17Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 12:18Speaker 03

  You can see how this would lead to problems.

• 12:22Speaker 02

  Cultural disconnect is what it is, right?

• 12:24Speaker 03

  It is, right? I cannot teach this, even though it's the reality.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  And the disconnect is in many ways between the modern world and the ancient world. The ancient world is a very different place. They had very different morals, customs, standards.

• 12:34Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 12:35Speaker 02

  Back then, you know, phalluses were not considered lewd.

• 12:38Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 12:39Speaker 02

  They weren't considered problematic to just be out in public. And today, whether it's a Catholic college or not, I mean, if you go walking down the street out here, it's still gonna be

• 12:48Danny Jones?

  One of the things that blew my mind with the first time I talked to Amen, he showed me about the God Priapus.

• 12:53Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 12:53Danny Jones?

  Who walked around with this gigantic erection.

• 12:56Speaker 02

  That was his whole thing. He wasn't famous for anything else. That wasn't a pun, by the way. Yeah. So that's what he was known for. Yeah.

• 13:05Danny Jones?

  So you should also lay out for folks who haven't heard what happened to you when you were doing your dissertation.

• 13:13Speaker 03

  Oh, right. So I'm writing this dissertation about, it's Roman pharmacy. And one of the meeting, long story short, I defended and afterwards the meeting was just long, professors were taking forever. Oh, God, what's going on? And the head professor pulled me aside, the head of the department pulled me aside and said, what makes you think that the Romans would use drugs?

• 13:44Speaker 02

  So they didn't bring this up with you before your defense?

• 13:47Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 13:47Speaker 02

  That's odd.

• 13:48Speaker 03

  Interesting, isn't it?

• 13:50Speaker 02

  It's normal for, you know, we go through this whole process when we write a dissertation. It's a years-long process. We're working with an advisor and at least two committee members and, and they send us critiques and, and it's normal throughout the process for them to tell us to take stuff out during the process leading up to the defense.

• 14:08Speaker 03

  Right.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  I got told to take stuff out multiple times and then I had to because that's just how it works. You know, you bow to the powers that be so they, you know, knight you or whatever. So we all had to do that, but, but what you're describing is a little odd because it sounds like what happened with you is after you defended, they told you to take something out.

• 14:25Speaker 03

  Right.

• 14:25Speaker 02

  That's, that's less normal. I had to make some changes to my dissertation after I defended and they voted thumbs up as long as I made the changes.

• 14:34Speaker 03

  They were typical changes.

• 14:35Speaker 02

  Not anything drastic.

• 14:37Speaker 03

  I was told you have to go delete any references to recreational drug use. Take out the chapter on recreational and sacramental drug use. That, take that out and don't mention any of these recreational drugs throughout the, it was clearly just censorship. It was not. And we know that for a fact now because the press came in and invaded and the department said, oh no, he never had a chapter on recreational drugs.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 15:07Speaker 03

  So they went and looked it up. It was already deposited, right? They went and looked it up in the library and it dead. Right? Oh, I'm sorry. It's backwards. It was removed. It was removed in the deposit. No, no, no. Which way did it go?

• 15:22Speaker 02

  Usually it's not deposited till you have your final, final version. It sounds like for your final, final version, they made you take it out. Is that right?

• 15:27Speaker 03

  Right. It was taken out and when they went to, oh, that's what it was. When they went to them, they said to Patricia Rosenmeyer, they said, um, is there a problem here? And is it true what he's saying that you made him take out a chapter on recreational drugs? You know what I mean? And she said, no, huh, we had no problem with that. So they went and looked it up in the deposit, right? And they were like, there is no chapter on recreational drugs. There's no reference. They can see that it was basically Epstein filed, right? Redacted. Hmm. Wow. Right. And the press blew that up and went back to the department. And department after that point said, we have no more comment.

• 16:08Speaker 03

  Right? So it was, it was obvious that my advisor did not communicate with the other members of the department about the existence of the recreational drugs. Right?

• 16:21Speaker 02

  Was it your advisor who asked you to take it out?

• 16:23Speaker 03

  And they got tripped up. No, it was the head of the department.

• 16:26Speaker 02

  And the head of the department was not on your committee?

• 16:28Speaker 03

  The head of the department said, you will not get your degree warrant signed until you have removed all references to recreational drugs. Right?

• 16:37Speaker 02

  Why do you think they had a problem with it?

• 16:39Speaker 03

  Because as she said, quote, "The Romans just wouldn't do such a thing."

• 16:45Speaker 02

  What were her sources?

• 16:46Speaker 03

  Nothing. Right. Exactly. You see, where were you, Luke? If you had been there, this wouldn't have happened. Right? That's a shame. It is.

• 16:57Danny Jones?

  And that's sort of what led you in the path that you've been, that you've taken.

• 17:01Speaker 03

  I took the information that was redacted and I put it into the form of a book and

• 17:07Danny Jones?

  The Chemical Muse.

• 17:07Speaker 03

  published it with St. Martin's Press. And that was a fantastic experience because it allowed people to then see in a broader audience that, oh God, they use drugs in the ancient world and using them for all sorts of things.

• 17:23Danny Jones?

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• 18:08Danny Jones?

  Let's hope not, but it's great fun for me because I get to trade on it. The best part? Kalshi is regulated by the CFTC and available across the country. Whether you think the aliens are coming this year or that the Cowboys will lose, you can trade your prediction and cash out whenever you want if the price moves in your favor. Download the Kalshi app using the link in the description and use the promo code DANIE when you sign up to get $20 when you trade $100. Again, use the link in the description and code D A N N Y to get started today. Also, um, I think it's important to lay out the fact how you originally got interested in this stuff. You came from a religious background, right?

• 18:45Speaker 03

  I had, you know, until about 21, I was Christian evangelical. I taught in a As I was getting my undergraduate in classics, I taught in a mission, you know,

• 19:02Speaker 03

  preached in a mission, I should say, yeah. So I had a particular interest in that and classics, Luke, just liberated my fucking mind. And I was reading Aristotle and got it suddenly,

• 19:16Speaker 03

  talking about nature, you know, and metaphysics, the purpose and everything. And I went out that night and got laid, you know what I mean? And just for succ-

• 19:25Speaker 02

  So Aristotle got you laid?

• 19:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. See, it works.

• 19:30Danny Jones?

  You were holding it off till marriage?

• 19:32Speaker 03

  Right. And so I just laid aside Christianity, but then I came back later, Luke, and looked at this, I started using the texts and looking at them and my God, there is so much drug use, especially all the Christ thing, you know?

• 19:47Danny Jones?

  So, the first time Aman was on the podcast, it just completely blew my mind. I discovered that I'm absolutely fascinated with this stuff, but I simply lack the personal expertise to make an informed assessment on anything that he is saying. He's obviously taken a lot of arrows from people on the internet, poison arrows, if you will. And that's why you're here. So you are the first accredited, high-level Greek expert, classicist, and linguist that has ever, and who

• 20:26Danny Jones?

  actually specializes in some of this same stuff. You specialize in magic, ancient magic and ancient religions, and then like sex and gender in ancient religions, is that right?

• 20:39Speaker 02

  That's right. So at UNM, I teach a class called Magic in Ancient Religion, which is exactly what it sounds like. We read parts of the PGM, as you would imagine, Aman. I teach a class called Sex and Gender in Ancient Religion. Actually, both of those are going on in the spring, so everyone can come feel free to register and hang out, or just come hang out, I don't know. So-

• 20:57Speaker 03

  I'm going.

• 20:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, no, they're both, I mean, they're both fascinating topics. I tell everyone I get to teach some of the coolest stuff in the world, honestly, at UNM. The students regularly, you know, love these classes and feel like they get a lot out of them.

• 21:12Danny Jones?

  So, first of all, I would like to stay kind of high level on this podcast for the first half of it, and then before we really dive into the weeds, because I feel like that's going to lose a lot of folks. But- Luke, in your view, what is the difference between classicists, linguists, and like Bible scholars?

• 21:35Speaker 02

  Okay, this is a great question because, you know, I was just talking maybe 10 minutes ago that oftentimes those of us in academia are kind of in our silos. And you've just discussed three different silos, none of which talk to each other very often, which is really too bad. I am a trained classicist, I'm a trained linguist. I'm not a trained Bible theologian, but I've read a lot of the Bible in the original languages and can comment on it from what I hope is a neutral textual, historical, linguistic perspective. I'm not trying to grind any ax.

• 22:04Danny Jones?

  You didn't come at this from a religious background.

• 22:06Speaker 02

  I'm not trying to, yeah, that's not, that's not my goal. So I'm, as an academic, I'm trying to read these texts and understand them again, historically, linguistically, texturally. Scientifically. Scientifically, sure, yeah. You know, I don't have an agenda either way on that. So like, I'm not, I'm not trying to say something specific about the Bible from a religious perspective. I'm also not trying to attack it from like an anti-religious perspective, right? So I want to make that clear as well.

• 22:33Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 22:33Speaker 02

  Like, I'm actually trying to read what's in there, read what the words say, right? And what the words mean, both within their own biblical context and within the wider cultural context. Okay, so back to your question. Classics is the study of, it's a huge, huge, insanely huge field. It's the study of everything that happened in the ancient world of the Mediterranean and Near East, which is basically what we would today call the Middle East. So everything we would take all the Middle East is pretty much ancient Near East.

• 23:05Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 23:06Speaker 02

  There was no major cultural divide between Europe and the Middle East back then, like there has been for the past 1,400 years, when it's been like a Christianity versus Islam thing, you know?

• 23:17Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 23:17Speaker 02

  Europe being mostly Christian, North Africa and the Middle East being mostly Islam. But that's new. And by new, of course, I mean from our ancient standards, it's new. It's 1,500 years old. That distinction post-dates the era that we are talking about when we're doing classics. So I think that's one thing we have to, we have to remember didn't exist. There wasn't this giant cultural gap between, say, Greece and Syria, like there might be today, right? Because of the different religions that historically in here in those two places today. So, so classics is the study of everything from what's now Spain to what's now Iran. That entire area, that entire geographic area, and then all the way up to Germany, all the way down to Sudan, up the Nile River.

• 24:00Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 24:01Speaker 02

  You know, there are, there are, there are peripheral locations like England and Arabia, and, and India, honestly, like, there's connections with India, of course, because we know that people were going back and forth. Alexander the Great marched all the way from Greece to India, right?

• 24:16Speaker 03

  Drugs, yeah.

• 24:17Speaker 02

  Sure, and drugs, ideas, words, concepts, the, all of these things are flowing back and forth in, in that corridor. So, classics is the study of everything that happened in that whole area up until about the year 500 of our era.

• 24:31Speaker 03

  Okay, can I say something?

• 24:32Danny Jones?

  500 AD?

• 24:33Speaker 02

  AD, yeah.

• 24:34Speaker 03

  That's classics, big picture. If you want to state it differently, if I may.

• 24:40Danny Jones?

  Yep, yep.

• 24:41Speaker 03

  Stated simply for people, right, like me. The evidences, the evidence that we have for that is going to be in Greek and Latin.

• 24:53Speaker 02

  Most of it.

• 24:54Speaker 03

  So, a classical philologist.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  That's why you gotta know Greek and Latin.

• 24:57Speaker 03

  Is supposed to be a master of Greek and Latin. Because all of the evidence for anything you can determine from the civilization these times, it's gonna all be in Greek and Latin. I mean, if you don't like that, go be an archaeologist.

• 25:12Speaker 02

  And, and they have important things to say, too, because they're digging up important evidence as well. And some of that evidence has Greek and Latin written on it.

• 25:18Speaker 03

  Right!

• 25:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, so they, they're our allies. That's another silly wall that often.

• 25:22Danny Jones?

  Well, here's a really interesting anecdote I'll bring up, is the guy who peer reviewed your book in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review, I had him on the podcast, he's a forensic pathologist, who did the only peer review on his book, The Cut the Chemical Muse. I had him in here, he was a great guy, I, he, he did all kinds of amazing work on like the remains of Picasso, Napoleon, Hitler, all these huge figures. And, uh...

• 25:56Danny Jones?

  I asked him what his ancient Greek, uh, what his level was for translating these ancient languages and Greek and all this stuff. And he says like little to none. And I said, well, I'm like, you did this. I asked him like, you did a pretty extraordinary, uh, criticism of this book, The Chemical Muse about which the premise of his book was that drugs were ubiquitous in antiquity because plague and famine and hand to hand combat were, were happening all the times. People were constantly trying to use remedies to cure these, this pain. And, uh, his, his review was basically saying, no, this is wrong. This is like painting the world as being a world of drug addicts. And he's like, I'm like, what Greek do you

• 26:39Danny Jones?

  know? And what have you read? Have you read the sources? And he's like, no, this is not my area of expertise. That was his answer. And, um, I thought that blew my mind. I was like, how do you do a peer review of something based on classical Greek when it's not your expertise? Like, wouldn't you, instead of wanting to do peer review to just dismiss shit, wouldn't you want to like actually engage with the person who wrote it and try to collaborate on ideas? That anyways, that was, uh, something that really kind of like warped my, like blew my perspective out of the water.

• 27:14Speaker 03

  It was a hack job. Yeah. Right. It was a hack job. It was meant to take down the book. That's all.

• 27:20Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 27:20Speaker 03

  But unfortunately, the guy hadn't been exposed to the sources. So he doesn't know what he's doing. He just.

• 27:26Danny Jones?

  Right. But, um, you know, it does make me wonder though, how much do forensic pathologists or archaeologists actually do like communicate and, and, uh, swap notes with classicists and linguists?

• 27:42Speaker 02

  Not much. Um, like I said, there, there are these walls.

• 27:45Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 27:45Speaker 02

  Um, and if, if there's walls between classicists and linguists, which are, which are closely allied fields, then you can imagine there's even higher walls between classicists and forensic pathologists. Um, and oftentimes there's a sense of, uh, superiority that each group has within their own field. Like we know enough. We don't really need to talk to other people. Um, and that's even. True with classicists and linguists a lot of times. As someone who is a hybrid scholar, because I am a classicist and a linguist and I have a graduate degree in both of those, I have a fairly unusual perspective on that because because obviously I don't think linguistics is worthless and I don't think classics is worthless. I think they're both very valuable and have a lot to communicate to each other. But but I'm a I'm unusual in the sense that I have I have degrees in both fields and expertise in both fields.

• 28:30Speaker 02

  And most of my classics friends, even you know, when I was going through the PhD in classics, that I would try to talk to them about Greek linguistics.

• 28:38Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 28:38Speaker 02

  Because we're learning Greek and Greek linguistics. Maybe this will help loop back around to your question a few minutes ago. What is linguistics?

• 28:44Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 28:45Speaker 02

  Linguistics is the scientific study of language. So how do languages work? How are they structured? How do they evolve? All of this kind of stuff. How do humans communicate with each other via language? So linguistics is kind of an overview that applies to what we're doing right now. We're using language right now, the English language of the 21st century in the United States, that particular dialect to communicate with each other. So so if you get a degree in linguistics, like I did, just a two year degree, just a master's, your mind will be blown, honestly, because you learn about stuff that you know, but you don't know you know, because you're speaking a language. So you suddenly find out that you're doing all these things with your with your teeth and your tongue and your mouth to make these sounds that you've never thought about before.

• 29:30Speaker 02

  But we're all doing it very competently right now.

• 29:32Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 29:32Speaker 02

  But but but until you learn linguistics, you don't you don't think about it. So linguistics is a subject that blows people's minds every time it's they're exposed to it anyways. So linguistics can apply to modern English, it can apply to any language, but but I'm particularly interested in it when it comes to ancient languages with, you know, Greek and Latin and the other ancient languages. So as a linguist studying ancient Greek, I have a I have a richer perspective on it than someone who's not a linguist studying ancient Greek in the sense that I can appreciate the sounds that they're making. And of course, we don't they didn't have tape recorders, you know, that we have to try to reconstruct them based on the writing system. So then we have to understand the alphabet and the and the letters and the words they're using, right?

• 30:15Speaker 02

  So that's what linguistics is. That's how it kind of does a Venn diagram with classics. Most linguists are not classicists. Most classicists are not linguists. And so they can't, they can't really, you know, appreciate what's at the center of that Venn diagram when you kind of cross pollinate both those fields.

• 30:31Speaker 03

  Every classicist in a degree program gets forced to do a couple of semesters of linguistics just to be exposed.

• 30:39Speaker 02

  I wish that were true. That's not true in my experience. At Ohio State at least, none of, nobody had to do it.

• 30:44Speaker 03

  They make you take a semester.

• 30:45Speaker 02

  No.

• 30:45Speaker 03

  Oh, we had to take two.

• 30:47Speaker 02

  I'm glad to hear that.

• 30:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, we had to take two. And that's where I first encountered Noam Chomsky.

• 30:52Speaker 02

  Sure. And he's a fascinating figure, of course, with his own theories, you know.

• 30:55Danny Jones?

  I didn't know that. I didn't know he was a linguist.

• 30:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's how he got his start. I know he's kind of into other stuff now. How old is he? I don't, how is he?

• 31:03Danny Jones?

  He's old.

• 31:03Speaker 02

  He's super old.

• 31:05Danny Jones?

  There was a picture of him that just came out in the Epstein files on the jet with Epstein.

• 31:08Speaker 02

  Oh, I didn't know that. That's interesting. Wow.

• 31:10Danny Jones?

  Find that picture.

• 31:11Speaker 03

  Comes back to Christing, I guess. Oh, my God.

• 31:15Speaker 02

  Okay, so it's a third thing. Yeah, just a circle background. Bible scholars. So Bible scholars are exactly what they sound like. They're specifically focusing on and specializing in the biblical texts, but the world of the Bible in general. But oftentimes, and you know, there's all sorts of different Bible scholars and theologians. Some of them are secular, some of them are not.

• 31:35Danny Jones?

  Look at that.

• 31:35Speaker 02

  There he is. Yeah, that linguist. If you told me that was AI, I wouldn't even know.

• 31:40Danny Jones?

  Yikes.

• 31:41Speaker 02

  Well, that's it. Yeah. And that's already what 15 years ago. He looks about 100, right?

• 31:45Danny Jones?

  Right, right.

• 31:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, there's a, this reminds me, you know, the quote from Herodotus. This is the great thing about classics. There's all these fascinating ancient quotes that are just full of all this wisdom. There's, there's this quote from Herodotus, and it's this aphorism from the ancient Greek world that, that you shouldn't judge the happiness, and by that they mean the fortunateness of a person's life until they're dead, because you don't know what's going to happen to them. It's like, you think that, oh, like, this person's the luckiest person in the world, whatever, but then something bad happens to them before they die. Sorry, you're not fortunate after that. That just brought that to mind.

• 32:15Danny Jones?

  Yes, right.

• 32:16Speaker 03

  They're going to Epstein Island.

• 32:18Speaker 02

  Go to Epstein.

• 32:18Speaker 03

  Bible scholars.

• 32:20Speaker 02

  Bible scholars.

• 32:20Speaker 03

  Now, Bible scholars, please be honest.

• 32:24Speaker 03

  The Greek, not so good.

• 32:26Speaker 02

  Well, they're all over the place, right? There's no consistent standard, okay? So even today, if you go to a seminary, some of them will make you learn Greek, which they all should, and some of them are moving away from it. So it depends on what denominations seminary you go to today. Some of the more rigorous ones will make you learn Greek, which again is good, and some of them might not. And then some individuals are more personally dedicated to it than others, right? So there are individual Bible scholars whose Greek has become very good, because maybe they went to a good seminary that actually did force them to do it.

• 33:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, like the one that I taught at.

• 33:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's great that they wanted you to teach, you know, people Greek, which is awesome. It's better than the alternative of not teaching people Greek, right? And then some individuals have taken this farther on their own and have become quite good at it. But like we were talking about, they're probably going to be mostly focused on the biblical texts with less of a, you know, relationship to the outside Greek world that these Bible texts are occurring in. Just like any text that we have in English today, whether it's religious or whatever, it's not existing in a vacuum, right? Those words exist outside of that religious text. Right. They have a context, which is literally con text, which means the weaving together, the text that's with it, right?

• 33:47Speaker 02

  They have a context outside of whatever it is. And so I always tell people, if you want to understand the Bible better, you got to understand the context. The Bible was not written in a vacuum. You know, it was written in a culture. That culture had norms and rules and standards, like we were talking about earlier, that are not always remotely similar to ours. So people who are understanding the Bible, or trying to understand the Bible today, do themselves a massive disservice if they don't learn about the culture that the Bible arose in.

• 34:17Speaker 03

  If you really wanted to understand the Bible, you would read all the Greek from 200 years before until 200 years after.

• 34:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, because that's the context, right?

• 34:29Speaker 03

  Because it's going to give you a rich understanding of what those words mean. And remember, those words are our evidence.

• 34:38Speaker 02

  Sure, yeah. As philologist, so this is another word that's worth, worth studying.

• 34:42Danny Jones?

  Yes, right.

• 34:43Speaker 02

  Philologist comes from two Greek words, philo, which means love, and loge, which means word. Anything logi, logos, logic, whatever, comes from this logos Greek word, which is a very complicated word, by the way. So as philologists, what we are is we are lovers of the word.

• 34:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:57Speaker 02

  And the words, right? It's like, what do these words mean? We're really trying to dig deep into these words. And that's what a philologist does.

• 35:05Danny Jones?

  Right. Yeah, so it does. And one of the things I learned from Amen is that the Bible scholars typically like to stay in that vacuum of the Bible and ignore all the peripheral stuff that was happening.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  You know, again, I'm not a Bible scholar. I can't speak for them.

• 35:22Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  I think some of them do.

• 35:24Danny Jones?

  He doesn't want to fire any shots.

• 35:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:26Speaker 03

  That's okay.

• 35:27Speaker 02

  I'm honestly not here to fire. You can fire all the shots you want.

• 35:29Speaker 03

  Let me do it. Let me do that.

• 35:30Speaker 02

  That's fine. So, and again, I think from what I, from my knowledge of Bible scholars, and I've known a few here and there, even though it's not my field per se, they're, they're all over the place. Some of them are very meticulous and want, do genuinely want to

• 35:43Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 35:44Speaker 02

  reach out and some of them really are just in their lane. So that's been my experience.

• 35:47Danny Jones?

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• 36:31Danny Jones?

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• 37:03Speaker 02

  Oh, man. I, I think, I think a lot of it comes down to what we were just talking about.

• 37:11Speaker 02

  These cultural gaps, right? So, so a random person who, who might, you know, go to church every once in a while, considers themselves a Christian, probably has never read the Bible, like almost at all. Right? I think, I think the vast majority of Christians have, have, have either never read the Bible or maybe cracked it to a few verses here and there. And, and, and when you, when you do that, you are missing the context. And if you crack it to a few verses here and there, you're, you're actually missing the inter, the intra biblical context. So you can't just pull a verse out of context and say, this is what it means. I mean, you can, if you're trying to make some spiritual argument for your life, that's whatever. But if you're trying to make an academic argument about what a verse meant, you, you

• 37:55Speaker 02

  have to get your methodology straight. I think one of the big things that I learned in grad school is, is methodology matters. What is methodology? It's the way that we get from point A to point B. So how do we arrive at what we think we know? How are we going to get there? So there are, there are sloppy ways of doing methodology. There are more careful ways of doing methodology. The scientific method is a classic form of methodology in scientific fields, right? Where you can't, if you're doing science, you can't just throw a bunch of data up in the air and see how it falls. Like you have to organize it in a specific way and then go through that data in a specific way. So that's really, that's important methodology. So pulling a verse out of context is, is bad methodology.

• 38:38Speaker 02

  Because what, when you do that, you're not being careful to take a look at what's around that verse in the same book in the Bible. Right? Like, so that's the first piece of context is what does this book of the Bible say? Not just in this one verse that I like, that speaks to me or whatever. But, but what is the, what is the whole chapter say? What does the whole book say? Why was this book written in the first place? Who was it written by? And then you kind of just go out from there because there's these concentric circles of context, the chapter, the book, the whole Hebrew Bible, or New Testament, or whatever it is, and then the culture that those works arose in, and then the other people who may have, you know, agreed or disagreed with what's being written, their, their voices

• 39:20Speaker 02

  are sometimes found hidden in the Bible, because sometimes a lot, a lot of the Bible is, is arguments between people, you know, like they're arguing about the nature of God, or they're arguing about who Jesus really was, or things like that, right? So, so those arguments are oftentimes hidden in the Bible, and, and we do the Bible a disservice if we try to bury those arguments instead of bringing them to light, and, and trying to understand what the original authors were living through, like what that cultural context was.

• 39:47Danny Jones?

  What is your view on, I know there's different, there's varying opinions, but when would the Gospels were written?

• 39:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, you know, I, I, I tend to, to take a, a pretty standard view on this, but I'm open to other ideas, I don't think anybody knows for sure, but the standard opinion, and, you know, I'm, I'm interested here what Amen thinks, but the standard opinion is that Mark is the earliest Gospel, there are a couple of reasons for thinking this, it's the weirdest Gospel.

• 40:14Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 40:15Speaker 02

  It's got, it's got some-

• 40:16Danny Jones?

  Mark 14?

• 40:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, yeah, I'm sure we're gonna get into that, it's got some, some unexplain- like-

• 40:20Danny Jones?

  Only verse I've ever read in the Bible, by the way.

• 40:21Speaker 02

  There you go. So you need some context, you need some context.

• 40:25Speaker 03

  It's the only one you need.

• 40:27Speaker 02

  So, so, yeah, I'm sure we'll get to the context later, since I just, you know, spent five minutes on a soapbox about context. So, yeah, Mark is, I, I, probably the earliest Gospel, again, we'll, we'll never know this for sure, but, but we're trying to build theories based on the data, which is, which is what we do. By the way, those of us who work with the ancient world, we, we always live in a state of uncertainty, because, because we have a, a fairly limited amount of data about everything that happened in the ancient world, and so when we're trying to seek understanding, which is literally our job and our training, we have to have a certain amount of humility, and, and you're gonna hear me probably say this several times today, that, that, I don't know, Amen might say something, and I might say, well, I'm not sure about that, but I can't disprove it either.

• 41:09Speaker 02

  It might be right. I don't know. Like, let's just, I'm gonna be humble about it. And I'm gonna say that maybe we don't have enough evidence either way to decide this and let's just, you know, look at the evidence we have. So, so I think there's that as well.

• 41:21Speaker 03

  I'm gonna, instead, I'm going to resort to John Scarborough's training and I'm just gonna look at the primaries.

• 41:29Speaker 02

  Well, that's exactly right.

• 41:30Speaker 03

  To me, it's all that matters. If you ask me the same question of when Mark was dated or when the New Testament, I would answer from the perspective of reading it and say, what other texts have I read that are using similar vocabulary and style? And from that, you can put it straight first to second, late first, second centuries. And it's meshing perfectly with the apocryphal, it's using this, these texts are using the same vocabulary. It's gorgeous. So I would put it, look, these are second, these are second century texts.

• 42:10Danny Jones?

  That's consensus or what?

• 42:11Speaker 02

  The consensus, and again, again, I'm humble about this.

• 42:14Danny Jones?

  Again, I hate it when people always fall back on consensus for everything because that's what most people in my experience have done when I ask for shit, you know?

• 42:20Speaker 02

  Sure, yeah. The consensus is it was probably written in the 60s, like around 65.

• 42:25Danny Jones?

  Oh, okay.

• 42:25Speaker 02

  Which is last half of the first century, of course. The consensus, for whatever that's worth, is that it was written in the, in the years leading up to the Jewish revolt against the Romans, which, which took place between 66 and 70, which is a watershed event in Jewish and Roman relations, as you can imagine. So.

• 42:43Danny Jones?

  So that would have been Mark.

• 42:44Speaker 02

  That would have been Mark. And then, and then again, we're talking to consensus here, is that Matthew and Luke were a little bit later. Again, the consensus is that Matthew and Luke use Mark as a source because they have a lot of the same material. The three of them, Mark, Matthew, and Luke are called the synoptic gospels.

• 42:59Danny Jones?

  Right, right.

• 42:59Speaker 02

  Which comes from two Greek words that mean to see together, synoptic. So they see, they have a lot of the same material. The consensus is that Matthew and Luke already have Mark in front of them. So Mark has already been written by the time Matthew and Luke are writing their gospels, which can, which can help explain why they have so much similar material. Luke, writing his prologue, says, "I wasn't there, but I've done my research and I'm using sources." So Luke tells us right up front that he is reading earlier material and talking to eyewitnesses because Luke wasn't there. He didn't see Jesus. So. So Luke tells us right up front, he has earlier sources and it seems like Mark was probably one of them. John is kind of off in his own world, doing his own thing. He

• 43:42Speaker 02

  has a lot of different material from the other three gospels. Most people date John as the latest one, maybe in the 90s, but some people would put it later. Matthew and Luke maybe being in the 70s or 80s. But again, I think, I think these are all estimates. What Amen said about looking at the text is always good, but then of course, what's our methodology? How like, how are we looking at the text? What kind of connections are we making? It's useful to do what you said. I absolutely agree. It's useful to do what you said, but it doesn't necessarily, it's not necessarily slam dunk either because, because you can copy style, right? So like, for instance, I can read a bunch of Shakespeare, which we know was written over 400 years ago, and I could write a Shakespearean play in Shakespearean style right now. If I, if I, you know, bathe my mind in Shakespearean English.

• 44:26Speaker 03

  If you were a weirdo, right?

• 44:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I am a, I am a weirdo. I am a weirdo. Yeah.

• 44:30Danny Jones?

  You guys are two weirdos wearing sunglasses.

• 44:33Speaker 02

  No comment. No, I haven't. No, I haven't, but I could. I could. And that's the point, right? So, so you're right that, that, that, that we can look at similar styles and similar vocab, but that can be counterfeited.

• 44:45Danny Jones?

  Sure.

• 44:46Speaker 02

  By me, I could write a lost Shakespeare play tomorrow and I could make it look pretty realistic.

• 44:51Speaker 03

  One of the best tools, when you're looking at just the language, is the use of quotes. So you know that Paul, for example, quotes Medea ultimately through a

• 45:03Speaker 02

  Paul has a lot of classical quotes.

• 45:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:05Speaker 02

  He seems to be a classically trained individual.

• 45:07Speaker 03

  Those influences can be

• 45:09Danny Jones?

  The Apostle Paul.

• 45:10Speaker 02

  Apostle Paul.

• 45:10Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 45:11Speaker 03

  Those influences can be read in the language. Because for example, just the dialect wise, you can tell that somebody's been reading. The Ionian physicians by the dialects that they're referring to, if they're using technical terms. So Ancient Greek is so gorgeous in so many ways. One of the ways is that you can trace the influences of the person who's writing that text through the language that they're using. And so that's how, for example, you could see people

• 45:53Speaker 03

  reading Nekander. I know we talked about Nekander a little, just mentioned him, right? He is one of the most famous ancient writers. People are quoting him all over the place. Nekander, Nekander, Nekander. What we have, you've probably never heard of Nekander. Who the hell is Nekander, right? But he's a priest of Apollo who is writing poetry that is wholly medical. It is pharmacologically wholly medicinal, right? It's polypharmacy. So it's a whole bunch of, you know, if you get this problem, if you're bitten by this

• 46:37Speaker 03

  animal, give this antidote, which is a combination of these eight different plants, in the form of a song that would be transmitted by a priest, who is a priest of visionary experience. He's a priest of Apollo, Clarus, right? So these sources are sitting there, all surrounding the Bible, these sources, and nobody reads it. It's hard enough to get a classicist to read Nekander. Have you ever read Philomenus? He writes on anecdotes and he writes about different...

• 47:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I haven't.

• 47:16Speaker 03

  No. Right. You don't know where the fuck is he, right? By the way, people, there's something special about Greek. There is so much material.

• 47:25Speaker 02

  It's a big language.

• 47:26Speaker 03

  There is so much material.

• 47:29Danny Jones?

  How much in antiquity? How much Greek was there compared to Latin or Hebrew?

• 47:35Speaker 02

  It's hard to answer that question for sure because we've lost most of all of it. Like, most of the Greek, most of the Latin, most of the Hebrew is gone. And almost all of the Persian is gone. And almost all of the Egyptian is gone. Like, what we have of all the Egyptian is what they inscribe, you know, in hieroglyphs that survived for thousands of years. But there was other stuff written on papyrus that is just gone. So this is something that I always impress upon my classes, that we are dealing with with a lack of data. We're dealing with a serious lack of data when we are trying to understand the ancient world.

• 48:05Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 48:05Speaker 02

  Because they just wrote so much stuff. We know they wrote so much stuff in all of those languages.

• 48:10Speaker 03

  Right.

• 48:11Speaker 02

  And almost all, it's gone.

• 48:12Speaker 03

  Well, wait, and despite that, what we have remaining.

• 48:16Speaker 02

  Is still awesome.

• 48:17Speaker 03

  From libraries, from, from east to west, when they, archaeologists open up a new library, Rome, we're in Rome, right? What would you think would, would be written in these libraries?

• 48:32Danny Jones?

  Dwyling Romans, right?

• 48:33Speaker 03

  Friggin' Latin, right? Because they're Romans? No, it's majority Greek with some Latin. The amount that we have that survives is so much that I've been doing Greek for 35-plus years. You've been doing Greek for what?

• 48:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, over 20.

• 48:51Speaker 03

  Over 20. And between the two of us, we should both know all the authors then if there's not, you know?

• 48:57Speaker 02

  But we never will.

• 48:58Speaker 03

  No, but we never will. There's so much.

• 49:01Speaker 02

  I mean, if we read Greek for the rest of our lives and all of our waking hours, you know, we might, we might make a dent, right?

• 49:06Speaker 03

  Well, now that Herculaneum is coming out, I don't know.

• 49:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, so what we have left from the ancient world. You know, because again, another thing I remind my classes is they didn't have the printing press up until, you know, five, 600 years ago. So everything that has survived, has survived because somebody cared enough to keep it and, and to copy it, right?

• 49:28Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 49:28Speaker 02

  Things that were, almost all of this stuff was on, was written on perishable material, papyrus, vellum, you know.

• 49:35Danny Jones?

  Very humid climate too, right?

• 49:37Speaker 02

  Often, so, so more stuff survives in a place like Egypt, which is not humid at all, it's a dry, dry desert.

• 49:43Danny Jones?

  So even, even near Alexandria?

• 49:47Speaker 02

  So out in the desert. So there, there were a lot of our interesting finds, like the PGM from Egypt, have been found in ancient trash dumps that were out in the desert.

• 49:56Speaker 03

  Oxey rank is.

• 49:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, so they would dump their trash out in the desert and sometimes that trash included manuscripts that had writing on it, such as this, this, this document that's really interesting, the, the papyrus grikai magikai, which is Latin for the, the Greek magical papyrus, as you might guess. And, and there's one copy, one copy that was thrown out and that's the only reason we even have that book today. It wasn't handed down. The people, the people who were in charge of handing these texts down, didn't hand it down. It was probably supposed to be a semi-secret document in the first place.

• 50:27Danny Jones?

  Really?

• 50:27Speaker 02

  But at some point, this one copy got thrown out and it's such a dry climate that it, it, you know, it didn't biodegrade. Some bugs ate holes in it, so we have some gaps.

• 50:36Speaker 03

  Classists translated it.

• 50:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:39Danny Jones?

  And it was, they found purple in it, right?

• 50:41Speaker 03

  And Scarborough was one of them and Scarborough told me, this is the crappiest translation in existence because it is so completely difficult to step from that base level of reading to the higher magical reading. And what do these words actually mean? Are they using code here?

• 51:05Speaker 02

  They are, well, they are. They come out right on saying they're using code, yeah.

• 51:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, right.

• 51:09Danny Jones?

  So wait, wait, wait, hold on for, for, so the Greek magical papyri is what you're discussing right now and it's written in Greek?

• 51:15Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 51:16Danny Jones?

  It was, we found it was written in Greek?

• 51:17Speaker 03

  With magic.

• 51:19Speaker 02

  Magic words that have codes that don't look like Greek and might be from something else.

• 51:23Speaker 03

  Things that they're doing directions for, this is how you do the ceremony and this is what, this is the god you invoke and this is the sub, these are the drugs that you use.

• 51:32Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 51:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:34Danny Jones?

  And do we know, or is there an idea of when those were written?

• 51:38Speaker 02

  Again, I think the consensus is maybe second to fourth century of our era, but it's probably based in older material.

• 51:44Speaker 03

  Right, right. And it from the hymns, the invocations, it's heavily, heavily Orphic and it has elements. I I date the Orphic stuff earlier. I'm of that of that group just because the Orphic hymns are so packed with technical terminology that matches with everything else contemporary in an early time. So I'm talking sixth, fifth century B.C. is what I'd like to push. The ideas that are in the PGM.

• 52:16Speaker 02

  Not necessarily the text.

• 52:17Speaker 03

  Coming out. No, but the language itself, the language itself. So, yeah, I mean, it's got, it's second century is a nice place in anno domini. It's a good place to put it, right? But you've got to realize when you're looking at it, you're not dealing with just the second century. You're dealing with hundreds of years before it.

• 52:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. And there's a lot of cross-cultural fusion that shows up in the PGM. So it's written in Greek, but there's a lot of cultural ideas from other cultures because the ancient Mediterranean world was a very diverse place. As I was talking about earlier today, we kind of think of these two major cultural traditions in the area of the Mediterranean, Christianity to the north and Islam to the south. But back then, neither of those religions existed yet, right? And so there was just a fantastic diversity of local religions all over the Mediterranean basin, local languages, local cultures, local gods, local ways of worship, local ways of doing magic. And so what you get in the PGM is, is a lot of that kind of that material is kind of being brought together into one document. And you can see because they're writing in Greek and the reason they're writing in Greek is because

• 53:21Speaker 02

  just like English today, it was the cosmopolitan global language of the day. So if you wanted your message to get out or just to be understood by as many people as possible, you'd write in Greek. Just like today, if you're on the internet, you're going to write in English to to get the widest audience possible. Like we're recording this podcast in English and obviously we're native English speakers, but we might be doing it in English anyways, even if we were.

• 53:41Speaker 03

  Right. There's also a level of superiority to Greek though.

• 53:45Speaker 02

  Well, the Greeks thought so.

• 53:46Speaker 03

  To the Greek. Yeah.

• 53:47Speaker 02

  They called everyone else barbarians. You're right. The Romans.

• 53:49Speaker 03

  The Romans agreed. Lucretius is writing in Latin. He says, I'm sorry, I have to write in Latin because it restricts me with what I can explain to you. If I, if I could, I'd be doing this in Greek, but you know, hey.

• 54:03Speaker 02

  That's, that's, that's true. So the Romans looked up to the Greeks like a big brother. It was kind of a big brother, little brother relationship is kind of how I'd describe it, which is interesting because the Romans militarily conquered the Greeks. The, the way that the Roman Empire expanded is they conquered Greece. They conquered Egypt, which was Greek speaking by then as a, well, not the upper crust, like not the regular people, but the upper crust was Greek speaking. As a result of Alexander the Great's conquest of the whole, what we today call Middle East and over to India, right? The Romans militarily conquered all of that and they had the military power if they'd wanted to, to impose Latin. They never did that. And the reason is that, as I was just saying, they, they

• 54:38Speaker 03

  Greece better.

• 54:39Speaker 02

  They, they looked up to the, they looked up to the Greeks. They looked up to Greek culture. Um, they knew that the Greeks had been working on science and medicine and all this stuff.

• 54:48Speaker 03

  And they were colonized for fuck's sake by the Greeks. I mean, there was

• 54:52Speaker 02

  Sure. And instead of coming up with their own mythology, they tied in all of their own mythology to the existing Greek mythology, right? The Aeneid is basically just a fanfic. The Aeneid is basically just a fanfic on Greek mythology, right? Um, so they're tying in their own Roman origin story to this pre-existing Greek mythological narrative in the Iliad and the Odyssey, going all the way back to Homer. So, so yeah, the Romans a hundred percent look up to the Greeks, even though they owned them, like they conquered them, right? They're still like, wow, this is a really cool language. This is a really cool culture.

• 55:23Speaker 03

  The Greeks are the first grammarians grammar, right? It's a Greek word for frick's sake. This tech that they are exploiting, this beautiful, beautiful mother Greek is driving all the science, everything. So, you know, it's, it's no wonder that the drug using Marcus Aurelius is writing in Greek. Why would he choose Latin? It's inferior.

• 55:46Speaker 02

  He's the Roman emperor, but he's writing and speaking Greek.

• 55:49Danny Jones?

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• 56:32Danny Jones?

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• 57:17Danny Jones?

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• 57:41Speaker 02

  Now I do want to go another step further. You know, there's always a bigger fish, right? So the Romans looked up to the Greeks because they understood accurately that the Greeks had been doing science and knowledge and writing for longer than they had. But the Greeks weren't the end of that line. So the Greeks in turn looked up to cultures to the east and south of them. Because the Greeks understood that other cultures to the east and south of them had been doing things longer than they had. And those cultures are several different cultures. The Egyptians are one big group, right? So the Greeks always looked up to the Egyptians. They understood, going all the way back to Homer. They understood that the Egyptians were doing drug stuff long before they, the Greeks had been doing it.

• 58:20Speaker 03

  And we're good at it. They knew that they were good.

• 58:22Speaker 02

  Part of its climate, right? So even even in in Homer, you know, the the characters talk about how Egypt is a magical drug land, essentially.

• 58:32Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 58:32Speaker 02

  And the reason they think that, not inaccurately, is that Egypt has a warmer climate.

• 58:37Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 58:37Speaker 02

  So you can grow more tropical plants.

• 58:39Danny Jones?

  What's that word I asked you about the other day? Chem? Chemet?

• 58:43Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 58:43Danny Jones?

  Isn't Egypt known as like land of chemet?

• 58:45Speaker 02

  That's the older name for Egypt. Yeah.

• 58:46Danny Jones?

  That's the older name.

• 58:47Speaker 02

  That's their Egyptian name.

• 58:49Danny Jones?

  Which means chemicals or alchemy or something?

• 58:51Speaker 02

  I'm not sure.

• 58:51Speaker 03

  Dark soil originally.

• 58:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, it does mean dark soil. I think you're right, which is where you can grow a lot of plants.

• 58:56Speaker 03

  Right.

• 58:56Speaker 02

  Which create drugs. Sure. Yeah.

• 58:58Speaker 03

  Awesome.

• 58:58Speaker 02

  Um, the Greeks called Egypt Aegyptos, and that's where our name Egypt comes from, but that was never their native name. So the Greeks looked up to these cultures to their east and south. Uh, Egypt was one of the big ones. Um, and and the Greeks accurately understood that Egyptian culture and Egyptian knowledge, whether drug or otherwise, went back a lot further than the Greeks did. So so the Greeks kind of looked up to the Egyptians as a big brother, in the same way that the Romans looked up to the Greeks as a big brother. Um, other cultures of that area, of course, were the Babylonians, the Sumerians go way back. Um, the Assyrians were a little bit later, but they're still very old compared to the Greeks. The Phoenicians, um, who who lived on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean, basically what's now the country of Lebanon.

• 59:41Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 59:41Speaker 02

  The Phoenicians were were were well known for building boats and sailing all over the Mediterranean. When they did so, they brought, you know, trade goods with them. That's the the reason they were sailing is to try to make a profit mostly.

• 59:53Speaker 03

  They were trading in dope.

• 59:55Speaker 02

  In all sorts of things, all sorts of things, right?

• 59:57Speaker 03

  Opium.

• 59:57Speaker 02

  So.

• 59:58Speaker 03

  So we have the vases. Did you see that?

• 1:00:00Speaker 02

  Push one.

• 1:00:01Speaker 03

  The little opium vases.

• 1:00:03Speaker 02

  I don't think so.

• 1:00:03Danny Jones?

  Are you talking about the cup of Bess?

• 1:00:04Speaker 03

  Ship, whole bunch of little opium.

• 1:00:07Danny Jones?

  Have you seen?

• 1:00:08Speaker 03

  Like the op- the opium head capsule.

• 1:00:11Danny Jones?

  Have you seen the University of Tampa, a couple, maybe a year or two ago, Steve, you can pull it up. They, uh, did an analysis of this Egyptian vase, small little like cup or mug of the god Bess.

• 1:00:25Danny Jones?

  And they did this analysis and they found all kinds of crazy shit in it like uh like what was it vaginal fluid like sick stuff blood.

• 1:00:34Speaker 03

  They identified vaginal proteins.

• 1:00:36Danny Jones?

  Find find that article. That was pretty wild.

• 1:00:40Speaker 03

  Yeah ejaculate because we were talking about ejaculate being used and there it is in this jug that's in Tampa.

• 1:00:47Danny Jones?

  And that it seems like that had something to do with some sort of magical drug rituals or something like that, right?

• 1:00:53Speaker 02

  That's not my bailiwick.

• 1:00:54Danny Jones?

  Here it is right here. Tampa Museum of Art once held psychotropic drugs, human blood, and bodily fluids, research reveals. The object was probably used in rituals by cult worshippers of the deity Bess, one of the most popular figures in ancient Egyptian pantheon.

• 1:01:11Speaker 03

  Talks about vaginal.

• 1:01:13Danny Jones?

  Yeah, scroll down where it says the where it says the there you go. Look right here. Uh by analyzing proteins and metabolites using genetic techniques and syncrotone sync whatever that word is radiation based, uh, Fourier transformed infrared micro spectroscopy.

• 1:01:29Speaker 02

  A lot of words.

• 1:01:29Danny Jones?

  The authors found that the mug contained residues of the psychotropic substances. These included Perganum harmala, also known as harmal or Syrian rue, Nymphaea nocali, uh, blue water lily, and a plant of the Cleome genus. They also found evidence of human blood, bodily fluids such as oral or vaginal mucus and breast milk.

• 1:01:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:57Danny Jones?

  Fun stuff.

• 1:01:58Speaker 03

  Fantastic. The polypharmacy of.

• 1:02:01Danny Jones?

  This was University of Tampa right down the street.

• 1:02:03Speaker 03

  Using the human body as a means of making drugs. Look, there's one right there. That's what they're doing.

• 1:02:09Speaker 02

  They were very creative.

• 1:02:10Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:10Speaker 02

  And they didn't have a lot of boundaries.

• 1:02:12Danny Jones?

  Right. Right. They didn't have the cultural boundaries.

• 1:02:15Speaker 02

  Sure. No, they didn't. Right. In many cases. Now they had boundaries. Every culture has boundaries.

• 1:02:19Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:02:19Speaker 02

  The question is what what were their boundaries and how did they differ from ours?

• 1:02:23Speaker 03

  Why do you think Jesus offers Mary his semen in the greater questions of Mary?

• 1:02:30Speaker 02

  I don't know about that text. Can you bring it up?

• 1:02:32Speaker 03

  Oh, God, yes.

• 1:02:33Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:34Speaker 03

  We made a slide. It's number-

• 1:02:35Danny Jones?

  The Greater Questions of Mary.

• 1:02:36Speaker 02

  Now, that's not a biblical text.

• 1:02:38Speaker 03

  Number seven.

• 1:02:39Danny Jones?

  That one was taken out.

• 1:02:40Speaker 02

  I don't think it was ever in there in the first place.

• 1:02:41Danny Jones?

  That was probably written way after the Bible, I think.

• 1:02:43Speaker 02

  Exactly, yeah.

• 1:02:44Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:02:45Speaker 02

  There's a lot of later mythology about Jesus, and that's one of the methodological questions.

• 1:02:49Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:02:49Speaker 02

  We know that people were saying and writing things about Jesus that were very diverse, even early Christians. Like, some of this stuff came from people who didn't like Jesus and weren't Christian, but some of this stuff comes from people who were Christian, like, who did worship Jesus. But there's a lot of diversity, a ton of diversity. So the question is, you know, what group do these texts come from? And what kind of historical accuracy would we assign them?

• 1:03:14Danny Jones?

  Find the context for it, Steve.

• 1:03:16Speaker 03

  One before that.

• 1:03:17Danny Jones?

  This is Amen's slide, but find, like, the definitions of the Greater Questions of Mary, so we can give the audience context of who wrote it, when it was written, and all that kind of stuff.

• 1:03:27Speaker 03

  It is epiphanius.

• 1:03:29Danny Jones?

  Okay, okay.

• 1:03:30Speaker 03

  Okay, and he is writing about the heresies in Christianity. Do we want the English or the Greek?

• 1:03:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the heresies-

• 1:03:38Danny Jones?

  Just find like a Google explanation of it.

• 1:03:39Speaker 03

  Okay, good. It's good.

• 1:03:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. So as I was just saying, there was a ton of diversity in early Christianity. And you might think that something like this, that sounds off the wall, was coming from someone outside of the faith, but it might not have been-

• 1:03:50Speaker 03

  It's not, no.

• 1:03:50Speaker 02

  Might not have been, right?

• 1:03:51Speaker 03

  It's coming from a bishop.

• 1:03:53Speaker 02

  Because there was no orthodoxy yet.

• 1:03:55Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:03:55Speaker 02

  Right?

• 1:03:56Speaker 03

  And it's being established.

• 1:03:57Speaker 02

  Early Christians are arguing with each other about who Jesus was, why he's important.

• 1:04:03Speaker 03

  And why we have to eat his semen.

• 1:04:05Speaker 02

  Well, that's what apparently some people thought.

• 1:04:07Speaker 03

  These guys, yeah.

• 1:04:07Speaker 02

  I don't think that was ever orthodox. You don't think that was orthodox, right? You don't think that was normal?

• 1:04:11Speaker 03

  No, it was one of the things-

• 1:04:12Speaker 02

  It was one of the many things that somebody said at some time.

• 1:04:14Speaker 03

  The Ophites from the beginning were doing it, so-

• 1:04:17Speaker 02

  There was all-

• 1:04:17Speaker 03

  Was Simon Marcus and all of his groups-

• 1:04:19Speaker 02

  Crazy diversity, crazy diversity.

• 1:04:20Speaker 03

  And in the Book of Jude, it says, "Hey, stop doing all that sexy sex."

• 1:04:25Danny Jones?

  Okay, early Christian writings.

• 1:04:29Danny Jones?

  Epiphanius writes the following about the Gnostics, and this is our only source for the contents. They publish certain questions of Mary. So what year was this published, Amen?

• 1:04:44Speaker 03

  Ah, it wasn't well.

• 1:04:46Danny Jones?

  Or written rather?

• 1:04:47Speaker 03

  Let's see, Epiphanius is fourth, right?

• 1:04:49Danny Jones?

  Okay, so fourth century, so 400.

• 1:04:51Speaker 03

  Right, confirm my friggin' dates.

• 1:04:53Speaker 02

  I think that's right.

• 1:04:55Speaker 03

  He's right after Julian, right after Julian dies.

• 1:04:58Speaker 02

  The fourth century is really important to Christianity because that's exactly when orthodoxy is being formed, right? Because Constantine converts to Christianity in 313.

• 1:05:06Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:05:07Speaker 02

  And for the first time, there's a, there's a top-down power structure where somebody at the top can say, and Constantine did say this, guys, get your act together. What do we believe? Like, what is this religion anyways? Who was Jesus? What's the official story on him?

• 1:05:19Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:05:19Speaker 02

  And so then you get a guy like this, who's, who's cataloging some of the diverse and maybe unusual stories about Jesus.

• 1:05:27Speaker 03

  Yes, if that's the way we can refer to it, exactly. That's perfect. And remember, this is Epiphanius, we're talking about after Julian tried to restore the pagan.

• 1:05:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, 360s, yeah.

• 1:05:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:40Danny Jones?

  This is the hard thing to me about trying to figure out, I, I think, and I also think that that's kind of like coming at it from the wrong perspective, trying to figure out exactly what was going on, because you're never going to do that. All you can really do is just sort of read it and then take it for, for face value. You can't really, because my question was like, how many people in antiquity that are writing stuff like this had an axe to grind against someone else?

• 1:06:05Speaker 02

  Most of them.

• 1:06:05Danny Jones?

  Like, how do we know this wasn't the ancient National Enquirer? You know what I mean? Something like that?

• 1:06:10Speaker 02

  And, and yeah, this guy is reporting on this thing that he's calling a heresy. He doesn't agree with it. The guy who's writing this doesn't think that's true, right?

• 1:06:17Speaker 03

  No, he's saying, no, no, he's not saying it's not true. He's saying, this is what they do. The people who eat the semen, right? This is how they justify it. Jesus said, eat my blood and flesh. That blood is his hyma, his.

• 1:06:36Speaker 03

  Excrementa, his semen.

• 1:06:39Speaker 02

  Well, hymen and semen are two different words, right?

• 1:06:41Speaker 03

  Originally hymen, no, originally hymen is what, an essence? It's a bodily essence, right?

• 1:06:48Speaker 02

  A little blood.

• 1:06:49Speaker 03

  Right?

• 1:06:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, blood.

• 1:06:51Speaker 03

  Okay, not just blood, it's not just blood.

• 1:06:54Speaker 02

  Now, I mean, let me, let me tell you this, this will help you. The ancient Greek physicians, and you know this, thought that semen was a highly concocted form of blood.

• 1:07:03Danny Jones?

  Whoa.

• 1:07:04Speaker 02

  They did, that's what they thought. They thought that it-

• 1:07:06Danny Jones?

  A highly concocted-

• 1:07:07Speaker 02

  Highly concocted form of blood. So what they thought is that your blood go, if, if you produce semen, your blood goes through your brain, and it picks up thought and air bubbles and spiritual essence, which is why it's white, by the way. And that's where it comes from.

• 1:07:19Speaker 03

  It's an essence, a question of essence that you and I can sit and debate about.

• 1:07:23Speaker 02

  Oh, sure.

• 1:07:23Speaker 03

  What are the earliest references to hymen? Can this be semen here?

• 1:07:27Speaker 02

  So, so here's what I'm saying, yeah.

• 1:07:28Speaker 03

  But in what, what he, what the Christian author here is saying is this is what these people-

• 1:07:34Speaker 02

  Sure, he's reporting, yeah, he's reporting.

• 1:07:36Speaker 03

  He's, he's, he's reporting it.

• 1:07:38Speaker 02

  And, and he's orthodox, so he doesn't agree with it.

• 1:07:40Danny Jones?

  He's not Christian?

• 1:07:41Speaker 03

  This section-

• 1:07:42Speaker 02

  I think he is Christian.

• 1:07:43Danny Jones?

  He is Christian, okay.

• 1:07:43Speaker 03

  He is a Christian, yeah. And in this section, he's talking about ischuregia, which is fellatio, fellatio. And he says right up here, wa, watch, he says right, let me just translate. And now Luke is of course here to, just to make sure that I don't, you know, pull any wool over anybody's eyes.

• 1:08:05Danny Jones?

  Not taking us into the back alley.

• 1:08:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm not taking you guys into the back alley, right? He says, "These people aren't ashamed to say that he himself, Jesus, revealed to her this ischuregia, this terrible shameful act, right? And in the questions of Mary that are called the greater, you know, because he says there's also, in the parentheses, he says, "There's also these lesser questions of Mary," right? That have been created, right? He says, "They assert that he showed her this by taking her up into the hills, praying and positioning her at the level, throwing her down to the level of his groin."

• 1:08:50Speaker 02

  Where are you getting groin from?

• 1:08:51Speaker 03

  And began plauras.

• 1:08:53Speaker 02

  Where's that? Well, that means side, that means side, yeah, side, not groin.

• 1:08:56Speaker 03

  Right, it, right, but it's in the region of the side.

• 1:09:01Speaker 02

  From the side, which means by his side.

• 1:09:06Speaker 03

  Telling you positionally, we're talking about position. By his side. Okay, so her head's by his side.

• 1:09:11Speaker 02

  Which is vague, not necessarily groin.

• 1:09:14Speaker 03

  Okay, she's on her fucking knees for some reason. Why?

• 1:09:17Speaker 02

  Doesn't say that word.

• 1:09:18Speaker 03

  Let's keep, okay, let's keep going and see if maybe as we translate it clears it up.

• 1:09:24Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:09:24Speaker 03

  And they said that he began oxamnon to do what to her? To incata mignus thigh. Now, mignumi is involving the fluids once again.

• 1:09:37Speaker 02

  Oftentimes it means sex.

• 1:09:38Speaker 03

  And it's sexual, but mignumi means to mix the fluids. And what do we do with the, what do we do with the compound form, the kata? And when you put kata, it has a sense of consumption, somebody consuming. This thing is being consumed and it can also mean wasted, positionally down. It can also be wasted, like you used it up. And the in positionally within, this is referencing fellatio. The act of sex that is that exchange of fluids, that life giving fluid.

• 1:10:22Speaker 03

  Because what does Jesus say?

• 1:10:24Danny Jones?

  What is the word that's highlighted there?

• 1:10:28Speaker 03

  Iscrotia, the shameful act.

• 1:10:30Danny Jones?

  What does that mean, the shameful act?

• 1:10:32Speaker 03

  It's fellatio here.

• 1:10:32Danny Jones?

  Do you agree that means fellatio?

• 1:10:34Speaker 02

  It does not mean fellatio. It literally means, so iscrot means shameful, as you said correctly. Org means act, work, deed, something like that. So iscrotia means some kind of shameful act. Now, the question is what kind of shameful act? Now, Amin, you're taking a step further and putting your own interpretation of this word.

• 1:10:51Speaker 03

  No, no, no, why am I doing that?

• 1:10:52Speaker 02

  Well, you are, which is fine.

• 1:10:53Speaker 03

  No, no, because of my experience. No, I'm not. Yes, I'm doing it. But I'm doing that because of my experience with the Greek.

• 1:11:01Speaker 02

  I have a lot of experience, that's not necessarily what that means.

• 1:11:04Speaker 03

  Because ice, do you know what an iscrotis is?

• 1:11:06Speaker 02

  We talked about this, yeah.

• 1:11:07Speaker 03

  What is it? Look it up, Steve. Look up iscrotis. It's a person who performs fellatio.

• 1:11:14Speaker 02

  Not necessarily. Okay.

• 1:11:16Speaker 03

  Is the person who performs fellatio or not? Not necessarily. It's not really a good answer.

• 1:11:21Danny Jones?

  Can it be more than that?

• 1:11:23Speaker 02

  Can it be other things?

• 1:11:24Danny Jones?

  Can it be? Can it be? Is it possible that is that also somebody who performs fellatio as well as other things?

• 1:11:29Speaker 02

  Okay, let me, let me talk about this a little bit because I think it would help to kind of make an analogy so that we're all sort of in the same phase methodologically. All right. So let's say that there's a scholar in 2000 years because I like to do these thought experience about, let's say, somebody studying classical English in 2000 years. And I think we are living in the era that will someday be called classical English because we're a global language. We've spread to every corner of the world. Everyone's speaking English. There's so much English literature being created. It's diverse though, right? So the English that's spoken in the United States is not the same as the English spoken in Britain or Australia or some, some place like India, right? It was colonized by the, by the British. So let's say that there's a scholar in the future who, who notices that there's this

• 1:12:13Speaker 02

  particular word in 21st century American English. And I don't know if you're going to have to bleep this or not, but I'm just, you know, making, making, making a scholarly point here. That is the word dick.

• 1:12:23Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 1:12:24Speaker 02

  All right. And, and those of us who, who live in and speak 21st century English, we understand that this word today primarily refers to male genitalia.

• 1:12:33Danny Jones?

  Right. Or it can be someone being an asshole.

• 1:12:35Speaker 02

  Exactly. Okay. So this one word, it, it, it refers to male genitalia, but then we can use it colloquially to say like, stop being a dick.

• 1:12:43Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:12:44Speaker 02

  And, and, and when I say that, I'm not, I'm not literally saying that you were male genitalia.

• 1:12:49Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:12:49Speaker 02

  I'm, I'm making a, a reference, right? And we understand that, okay? Now, there's also another use of this word that's older. And so from my understanding, this use of the word dick as, as male genitalia is pretty recent, actually.

• 1:13:03Danny Jones?

  Is this idioms? Is this kind of like?

• 1:13:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So every language has idioms and semantic references, right? So this, this use of the word that we kind of take for granted in English today is pretty recent. Up until fairly recently, Dick was used as a name for Richard. Right. As we all know, as we all know, right? So we had a president named Dick Nixon. We just had a vice president who just died named Dick Cheney. Dick Cheney. Right? And there's lots of other dicks in the world who are just guys named Richard, right? Okay. So we understand, because we speak English, that there are multiple meanings of the word dick, and they don't all mean male genitalia. Right. Right? So we understand that Dick Nixon was not calling himself that because he was making, trying to say he's the penis guy. Right?

• 1:13:50Speaker 02

  He's not. He's not. It's a totally different thing. And it actually predates our meaning of the word dick. Now, let's say that there's a scholar of classical English at some university in 2,000 years who correctly notices that this word dick in 21st century classical English, as I'm calling it, oftentimes occurs in dirty contexts. Okay? It refers to male genitalia. And then he has 100, 1,000, a million different examples of that. Right? And so he hits you over the head and says, look, this word clearly means male genitalia. And he's right. Right. That oftentimes it does mean male genitalia. But then let's say he takes a leap and he says, well, you know what this means about Dick Nixon, right? That means that Dick Nixon was calling himself that because he was a child.

• 1:14:35Speaker 02

  Like, he just was obsessed with male genitalia. And I mean, like, why else would he use that as his first name? Like, how dirty would he have to be to use Dick as his first name? Right? And so this person 2,000 years down the road has this theory that Dick Nixon was, I don't know, maybe he was gay. Maybe he, who knows? Like, come up with some theory like that. Now, those of us who speak English today know that that makes no sense and isn't true at all. Right. Right? Because we know that there are different contexts in which this word can exist, and it has different meanings in different contexts. Right. And that's methodologically sound, as we have to pay attention to the text. So I want to consistently come back to this. That word. Because what I'm calling this is pulling a Dick Nixon.

• 1:15:19Speaker 02

  So from now on, when I say pulling a Dick Nixon, and I think I'm gonna have to say it multiple times, what I'm referring to is pointing out a word that could be dirty or could mean a certain thing. Yes. But then, but it might not.

• 1:15:30Speaker 03

  It could mean.

• 1:15:31Speaker 02

  It might mean something else.

• 1:15:32Speaker 03

  It could mean fellatio here, right?

• 1:15:34Speaker 02

  Is it possible it means fellatio in that context? Okay. So since it means dirty deeds.

• 1:15:40Danny Jones?

  I see it. Yeah.

• 1:15:41Speaker 02

  Oh, by the way, can we bring that up?

• 1:15:42Danny Jones?

  Yeah, show that.

• 1:15:43Speaker 02

  So this is actually

• 1:15:44Danny Jones?

  Show that, Steve, pull this up.

• 1:15:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, so this was from your short. You sent this to me a few weeks ago, but since you brought it up, let's bring it up now.

• 1:15:49Speaker 03

  Steve, LSJ.

• 1:15:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, LSJ. Okay. Uh, it was ice krugia, right? Yeah.

• 1:15:54Speaker 03

  No, no, um, ice croates.

• 1:15:56Speaker 02

  Ice croates, okay.

• 1:15:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:16:00Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:16:01Speaker 02

  Honestly, can we, can we bring up?

• 1:16:02Speaker 03

  Wait, you said it may be.

• 1:16:04Danny Jones?

  I gotta take a leak, so you look it up.

• 1:16:06Speaker 02

  No, this is good.

• 1:16:07Danny Jones?

  I'm gonna go pee. Steve, are you ready?

• 1:16:09Speaker 03

  Go to the definition first.

• 1:16:10Speaker 02

  Let's go to the definition.

• 1:16:12Danny Jones?

  All right, we are back. And Steve just pulled up the definition of, what's this word again?

• 1:16:17Speaker 03

  Now, this is ice croates, right? And all of this is using the beautiful glorious Greek root Alpha, Yota, Sigma, He, right? That row is hanging on there, can come off or not, but the iskrone is that which is just awful, ugly, deformed, oh, look, it's in his hand, eh, the iskrone.

• 1:16:40Speaker 02

  So you see the main, the main definition, ugly, deformed.

• 1:16:42Speaker 03

  Ice krugia is the working of this shameful thing.

• 1:16:48Speaker 02

  Committing, committing ice croates, right?

• 1:16:49Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 1:16:50Danny Jones?

  It's filthy conduct.

• 1:16:51Speaker 02

  And ugly misdeformity.

• 1:16:53Speaker 03

  You notice it's a euphemism for fellatio, right?

• 1:16:56Danny Jones?

  But why is it, so I'm curious, why is it fil-, so they're associating filthy conduct with fellatio?

• 1:17:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, because these are Victorians, right?

• 1:17:05Speaker 02

  Okay, so this is something now, now for, for the listeners, the three of us have had a, had a text discussion or a text thread, um, for the past few months.

• 1:17:13Danny Jones?

  Um, yes.

• 1:17:14Speaker 02

  Amin sent this to the thread, uh, a few weeks ago.

• 1:17:18Danny Jones?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:17:18Speaker 02

  And, uh, I pointed out at the time that that semicolon is very important. Right after Ephesians 5, 4, there is a semicolon. Amin, what does that semicolon mean to you?

• 1:17:28Speaker 03

  You surprise, you surprise me. As a Greek reader, it means nothing to me.

• 1:17:33Speaker 02

  Well, that's a problem. It means something very important.

• 1:17:35Speaker 03

  It's an and as an English reader.

• 1:17:37Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 1:17:38Speaker 03

  And it's the euphemism.

• 1:17:39Speaker 02

  Separating two things there.

• 1:17:40Speaker 03

  As you see from the scolliast on Aristophanes, right?

• 1:17:44Speaker 02

  Sorry, Aristophanes frogs.

• 1:17:45Speaker 03

  Frogs, 1308.

• 1:17:47Speaker 02

  Yep, we agree with that.

• 1:17:48Speaker 03

  And then they refer to you, the general term, iscrosune, right? Which is, which Tzitzis is gonna talk about, right? And his comment, Tzitzis is Byzantine.

• 1:18:00Danny Jones?

  All right, to you, what does that colon mean?

• 1:18:03Speaker 02

  It's separating two different things that are, that are pretty different here, okay? So specifically, it's separating two places in which that this word, iscrotase, has been used by two different authors at two different times and places.

• 1:18:14Danny Jones?

  Uh huh.

• 1:18:15Speaker 02

  Before the semicolon, what we see is filthy conduct, a pistol to the Ephesians, chapter five, verse four.

• 1:18:20Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 1:18:20Speaker 02

  Okay? And in, in that use, and we can go look at that if you want, but I don't think this is particularly controversial. Uh, the author of Ephesians is simply saying, don't engage in iscrotase, right? He doesn't define it. I think, I think, because I think he's being vague.

• 1:18:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:18:37Speaker 02

  I don't think he's, I don't think he necessarily has one particular dirty thing in mind when he says that.

• 1:18:42Speaker 03

  Asel gaya.

• 1:18:43Speaker 02

  I don't think he does.

• 1:18:44Speaker 03

  It's all the asel gaya.

• 1:18:45Speaker 02

  Now, it could, hold on.

• 1:18:47Danny Jones?

  Let him, let him, let him finish.

• 1:18:48Speaker 02

  It could be sexual.

• 1:18:50Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:18:50Speaker 02

  Okay, so I think, I think when he has dirty things in mind in Ephesians, sexual stuff is part of it.

• 1:18:55Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:18:55Speaker 02

  All right? But he's not narrowing down the sexual stuff.

• 1:18:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:18:59Speaker 02

  Do you agree with that? He doesn't just mean one particular sexual thing in Ephesians?

• 1:19:01Speaker 03

  No, he does, because he calls it adololatria. It is the act itself of engaging in these dirty, dirty mysteries where they are eating.

• 1:19:12Speaker 02

  Let me go back to the semicolon, all right?

• 1:19:14Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 1:19:14Speaker 02

  So then, the next use of this is, is centuries later. I'm actually not sure what century the scolliast to, to Aristophanes frogs is. I want to say like 11th or 12th century. It's over a thousand years after Aristophanes.

• 1:19:28Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:19:29Speaker 02

  Or sorry, 1000 years after the author of Ephesians. It's Byzantine, right? So, so hundreds, maybe over a thousand years later, a scolliast, and let me, let me tell everyone what a scolliast is. I'm gonna, I both know. A scolliast is somebody who, who is a commentator on an, on an. Older work. Okay. So like, for instance, today, you can buy a Shakespeare annotated volume because sometimes we don't know what Shakespeare means because it's been 400 years. And so somebody will say, put notes in and say, this is what Shakespeare meant when he said this or whatever. That's what a scolius is doing. He's a later writer who is a commentator on an earlier work.

• 1:20:01Speaker 03

  Usually grammarians, grammarians.

• 1:20:03Speaker 02

  All sorts of nerdy people, as you can imagine, are scolius, right?

• 1:20:06Speaker 03

  Linguist, ain't you?

• 1:20:07Speaker 02

  Sure. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Sure. So this is a much, a much later commentator on this classical Greek play. So Aristophanes, you know, fifth century, late fifth century, early fourth century, BC. Okay. So there is the, the use of this word iscrotase in this play by Aristophanes. In the play by Aristophanes, it's the, the author doesn't explain what he means by iscrotase. But this later commentator from, from literally, literally a millennium and a half after Aristophanes wrote this, he says, I think it means fellatio. Okay. So that doesn't mean he's wrong, but that doesn't mean he's right. That's his, that's, that's the opinion of someone from a millennium and a half later. That's important to know.

• 1:20:53Speaker 02

  That, that some, some later ran, literally random dude who never was part of that culture at all, speaks and reads Greek, but from a much later, much later period. That's what he thinks. That's his opinion.

• 1:21:03Speaker 03

  I think you're under emphasizing.

• 1:21:05Speaker 02

  Is that not, do you agree with that?

• 1:21:07Speaker 03

  No, I think he's, I think Luke, you're under emphasizing.

• 1:21:09Speaker 02

  What do you disagree with about what I said?

• 1:21:11Speaker 03

  The scolius are so separated from these traditions. They're grammarians. John Cici's, the guy on the end there, he's a Byzantine guy. And he is right up there in preserving. I mean, he preserves stuff that we don't even have. He talks about in the Odyssey, what's going on when Cersei goes back to visit Homer? And you're like, what? We didn't know that tradition was there. How the hell, huh? It's the first time we see it. He preserves that from things he's read himself.

• 1:21:45Speaker 02

  That's sometimes true. That could be true.

• 1:21:47Speaker 03

  Like, he has a commentary, that guy who's there, talking about the Ice Crossone, which is the older form that they would have been using. He is saying, oh, this source is telling us X, Y, and Z, and we don't have any other record of that. He's, he's, he's the one who's saying, look, this is euphemistically, right?

• 1:22:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's saying it's a euphemism for fellatio. Now, I'm, I'm not, to be clear, I'm not saying he's definitely wrong because he's writing 1500 years later. And I 100% agree that these Scholias are, are in a tradition where they are very well read. They're not dummies. Just like if you, if you hire someone to write a commentary on Shakespeare, hopefully they've read all of Shakespeare and everything else from the period to even know what they're talking about, right? So the, I am not trying to discount that these Scholias don't know anything. Otherwise, we wouldn't cite them in a dictionary. However, we have to cite them with a, with a pretty large grain of salt. So we can't just say that's definitely right. Because this is 1500 years later that somebody is coming along and saying, I, Mr. Scholias from the Byzantine

• 1:22:48Speaker 02

  period, think that the use of this word in Aristophanes' play, The Frogs, means fellatio, right? That's its opinion. It's a learned opinion. Okay. I'm not saying he's wrong. I'm just saying we do have to take it with a grain of salt. We can't just say that's definitely what, yeah. So also, I want to make this point. He's only talking about the use of the word in Aristophanes' Frogs. He's not talking about it anywhere else. Okay. He's not talking about the use of the word in Ephesians. He had no comment about the use of the word in Ephesians. He's not talking about the use of the word in what we were discussing before we changed to this,

• 1:23:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's the Victorians who are putting them next to each other and putting the semicolon.

• 1:23:23Speaker 02

  Well, no, the semicolon is, is, no, no, no, it's not. No, it's not. The reason that the semicolon is there, it's, it's very simple. It's, it's, it's dividing two different times that this word was used. You agree. It was used in Ephesians. It was used in The Frogs.

• 1:23:35Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:23:36Speaker 02

  Two different times. And that's all, that's all the semicolon's doing.

• 1:23:38Speaker 03

  And I would say it's used the same. I would say it's used the same. And that semicolon is an and.

• 1:23:44Speaker 02

  You can have that opinion, but it's just your opinion. And I might have a different opinion. You might have a different opinion. We can both argue for it.

• 1:23:51Speaker 03

  Correct. And it's good. That's what university is for.

• 1:23:53Speaker 02

  Yes, we argue for our particular.

• 1:23:55Speaker 03

  You think, you think the leaders of the museum didn't fight with each other and all the other things?

• 1:24:00Speaker 02

  They fought all the time and they stormed off and they started new museums.

• 1:24:02Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 1:24:03Speaker 02

  Of course they did.

• 1:24:04Speaker 03

  Exactly. Now, can we have the text now?

• 1:24:06Danny Jones?

  I'm just trying to start a new religion here today. That's all I'm here for.

• 1:24:08Speaker 03

  To finish the text?

• 1:24:09Speaker 02

  So I want to go back to, yeah, we were debating, actually what led us to this is what the word isgrugia means. And so, so what Aman has done is he's, he's pointed out that hundreds and hundreds of years later, one guy had an opinion that this meant fellatio. In a different text, not even here. He said.

• 1:24:23Danny Jones?

  Not even in this text, right. This was in an Aristophanes play.

• 1:24:26Speaker 02

  Aristophanes play, which is not what we're dealing with here.

• 1:24:28Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:24:28Speaker 02

  So, so this is where methodology comes into play. On the, no pun intended. On the one hand, Aman is doing linguistic work here, which is important and valuable because he's saying, look, here's another time where somebody said that this word used in a different place, but still the same language, even if it's 1,500 years apart or whatever, means this particular thing. However, it doesn't remotely prove in any way that that's what it means here. Are we pulling a Dick Nixon by saying that this means fellatio?

• 1:24:54Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:24:55Speaker 02

  And it's up to you. You're the one who has to kind of build your case.

• 1:24:58Speaker 03

  Answer that by just translating. I don't want to have any ideas, but I just want to translate it, right? So what does it then say after he did entered into this act, this sexual act with her? What really happened? Dathan, he's really emphasizing that he took the metal lava into the aporoyan. He took the off runnings, right? Well, what is that?

• 1:25:27Speaker 03

  His own, his own off runnings.

• 1:25:30Speaker 02

  It could be.

• 1:25:31Speaker 03

  His effloescence, his effloescence, right?

• 1:25:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. It's vague though.

• 1:25:36Speaker 03

  Right? It could be, except we know also, also contextually though, he's been talking about semen eaters. So, right?

• 1:25:43Speaker 02

  Context matters.

• 1:25:44Speaker 03

  Right. Spermatafage is right. He's been talking about it. So it's a little bit of a cheat, but he's been talking about it already.

• 1:25:51Danny Jones?

  Who has?

• 1:25:52Speaker 03

  The author of this, Epiphanus, who's writing it. And he says he, he showed her that we do this in order to. We live, right? How are we, how are we gonna live if we don't do this? And then it says, look, and it says, Mary, Tarek says, she was taken aback and falls down.

• 1:26:14Speaker 02

  More than that, she was deeply troubled. That's what Tarek says. She's not happy about this.

• 1:26:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, yeah, yeah.

• 1:26:20Speaker 02

  She's like, what?

• 1:26:21Speaker 03

  It's like she's stunned, funny, what the hell? She falls all the way, to the ground.

• 1:26:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:28Speaker 03

  And he picks her up and he says to her, why? Why are you so fricking unfaithful, you faithless bitch? Right? All he go, piece of.

• 1:26:40Speaker 02

  That's the Ammon translation.

• 1:26:41Speaker 03

  Right? I added the bitch part, right? I had the bitch part. Now tell me something. Where is the, where is the off runnings? Where, what is he doing? He's making her eat something like the Ophites that Epaphanes has already talked about her eating the semen. He, it goes on, this passage goes on to explain what the people who are eating the semen believed about why he was doing this.

• 1:27:07Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:27:08Speaker 03

  And they use a half a dozen verses from the New Testament. So they're quoting, when Jesus says X, he means this. When Jesus said, eat my flesh and blood, this is the offering. When he said, I'm going somewhere and I'm going to return from the origin. The origin is his semen.

• 1:27:34Speaker 02

  Is that your interpretation?

• 1:27:36Speaker 03

  I'm ascending to the place it was his semen. That's what they, how they explain it. There's all sorts, there's a half a dozen justifications.

• 1:27:45Danny Jones?

  This is how Epaphanes explains it.

• 1:27:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, of why these people were doing what they did. And it's through Epaphanes's.

• 1:27:52Danny Jones?

  So do you believe that this is Epaphanes's theory on what was happening in the Bible?

• 1:27:57Speaker 02

  He's quoting, he's quoting somebody that he calls a heresy to believe this.

• 1:28:01Danny Jones?

  Oh, I see.

• 1:28:02Speaker 03

  Epaphanes is talking about people who are doing this, saying, this is not good. Right? This is one of the heresies. And in this one, they justify the eating, this ice kurgia. They justify it by saying Jesus specifically showed Mary how to do this and said, look, we have to do this to live. And they go on to quote, which is to me, most important. They're going on to quote Jesus when he is saying things like, eat my flesh.

• 1:28:31Speaker 02

  And that's right here?

• 1:28:32Speaker 03

  It's what he means. It's following it, following it, blow where.

• 1:28:36Speaker 02

  Okay, what is your take on this? Okay, I, I think context, as we've been talking about, and I'm gonna both agree on this, context is paramount, right? So this is from a late document, but for, for Christian historical standards. Four hundreds. Four hundreds. So this is 400 years after, you know, 300 plus years after Jesus, right? So, and it's from a guy who is, who is trying to catalog all the weird things that people think about Jesus. But, but this guy doesn't think they're true. Not that we would necessarily care what this guy thinks either way, but it's, I don't think he thinks it's true. Even if he did think it's true, doesn't make it true. Right? Lots of people are wrong about a lot of things.

• 1:29:10Speaker 03

  Except for that dathan. Except for that dathan, which is, it's like he's saying,

• 1:29:15Speaker 02

  What is dathan?

• 1:29:16Speaker 03

  You literally, you have to snap your mind out of it and realize now that really what I'm telling you is.

• 1:29:24Speaker 02

  Okay, wait, so you think he, so you think this, the Epaphanius secretly thinks this is true and he's trying to like?

• 1:29:30Speaker 03

  No, no, he's telling his reader, you know, don't be shocked here. This is really the way that they're doing it.

• 1:29:35Speaker 02

  Okay. So yeah, what I want to do is back up here and, and, and ask ourselves why this matters. Okay. Uh, to Jesus, right? So, so we're, we're trying to get back to Jesus here as historical scholars, like not, not doing biblical theology of like, what Jesus means from a theological perspective, but, but we're trying to understand as historians, because classic historians, right? So who was this guy Jesus who walked the earth? Right. And, and most of us really, you know, there's a minority mostly on the internet, the things that Jesus has made up. And, and there never really was a guy named Jesus, but almost everybody in the academy that I've ever met. Would say that there really was a historical Jesus who did walk the earth. Amen. You think there was a historical Jesus who walked the earth?

• 1:30:17Danny Jones?

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• 1:31:39Speaker 03

  I read texts that talk about them all the time. That's my only, I don't, all of the, all of the academic debate, all the myth, you know, is this person a myth? Is this, does it fucking matter? The Greek is what matters. That's what our evidence is.

• 1:31:55Speaker 02

  Of course it matters because they wrote a lot of made up stuff about everything. Not just about Jesus, about Zeus, about, I mean, you know, so just because something is written in a historical text and we do want to be responsible linguists and philologians and try to dive down into the text, which is what we've been talking about here, right? And try to get a good idea of what it means. The next question to ask is, so what? So like, okay, maybe we were trying to see what this text means. Does this word specifically mean this or something else? Those are wonderful debates to have, but then the next step is, You know, like, did Jesus really exist? Okay, and it sounds like, Amin, you're kind of not taking a position on that, which is fine.

• 1:32:33Speaker 03

  No, I don't take any positions. This text says Jesus was making Mary blow him. And he tried to make the apostles do the same thing after this. And they didn't. And it says they didn't follow him after that point.

• 1:32:47Speaker 02

  Okay, so, so do you believe that really happened?

• 1:32:50Speaker 03

  I don't have to believe anything. That's the text I'm talking about.

• 1:32:53Speaker 02

  Okay, we're having a disconnect here.

• 1:32:55Speaker 03

  It's science. It's not, this is science.

• 1:32:57Speaker 02

  No, it's a text.

• 1:32:58Speaker 03

  I don't have to believe, I don't have to believe in chlorine. I know chlorine exists.

• 1:33:01Speaker 02

  Texts lie. I don't know if you know this, but sometimes texts lie. Actually, usually texts lie.

• 1:33:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, you can be, that guy could be lying out his butt. Epiphany, church bishop, he can be lying out his back. Plato's the biggest fucking liar on the planet.

• 1:33:15Speaker 02

  He's quoting people, so he's not lying.

• 1:33:17Speaker 03

  Plato is the biggest liar on the planet.

• 1:33:18Speaker 02

  Oh, sure, Plato admits to it right up front.

• 1:33:20Speaker 03

  So, no, that's a part of the text, but I'm still gonna tell you what Plato wrote.

• 1:33:24Speaker 02

  Sure, I 100% agree with that, but then I don't agree that, that it's not worthwhile or that we can just wave our hands and say, well, so what? Like, did this really happen? And, and what you're saying right now is that, that, that you don't know. You don't necessarily believe this happened. You don't necessarily believe this happened.

• 1:33:38Speaker 03

  It doesn't matter.

• 1:33:38Speaker 02

  Or it doesn't matter to you, because you're more text-based, which I, I respect text-based.

• 1:33:41Speaker 03

  It matters that somebody, somebody wrote this down, and that's our evidence.

• 1:33:46Speaker 02

  So, let me, let me tell you how I see this. Again, it's a fourth-century text from a, from a Christian guy who is trying to explain what some, what he calls heretical Christians' belief. Okay. This is not coming from outside the church. This is coming from inside the church. And, and he's saying, these are some Christians with what we would today kindly call diverse beliefs, but that, that sounds too positive for what he's trying to do here, I think. He's saying, these are weirdos. Yeah. These are heretics. These are people who, who don't know who Jesus is, but they think they know who Jesus is. And they tell stories, okay? They tell stories about Jesus doing some weird stuff with Mary. All right? That, that most other Christians, including this guy Epiphany, says are not gonna believe.

• 1:34:25Speaker 02

  And, and so, so, you know, we can kind of back away from that. Now, this is where biblical theologians would say, well, we know what Jesus did, and he did this, and he didn't do that. But as a historian, I'm actually still interested, not from a biblical theologian perspective, but I'm still interested in trying to get back to the historical Jesus. Like, and I do believe there was really a historical Jesus who really did walk the earth, and we can talk more about him. So, so that's the question that remains. So, you know, on, on, on, on your YouTube channel, you bring up texts like this, but then I think you kind of, you, you leave the question hanging as to like, whether this is true or not.

• 1:34:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, cuz I'm, I'm only there to present evidence to the court. Let the viewer figure out whether or not they think it's true.

• 1:35:04Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:35:05Speaker 03

  When, I'm a pure, pure classicist. I only want the philology. That's all I want.

• 1:35:12Speaker 02

  Classicists are also interested in what really happened.

• 1:35:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:35:14Speaker 02

  Aren't we?

• 1:35:15Speaker 03

  We are, but the, the actual surgery, like a surgeon, sure, the surgeon has morals to him. What matters is the surgery, that technique. You know, it's an art, and you have to do it right. And that's all I'm saying. When, when you go to the Bible and you see terms that are related, and you see episodes that are related, and Paul's saying throughout your book, your magic books, and in Jude, he's saying, "Don't do this, Asalgaia, this stuff, this idolatry that involves the pharmacia, don't do it. That's sexual stuff." Don't, Paul's like, "Stop fucking your family members," right?

• 1:35:54Speaker 02

  Stepmother, yeah.

• 1:35:55Speaker 03

  And in Alexandria, and in Alexandria, what are, what are they persecuting Christians for? Incest, right? They go to their ceremonies, they put out the lights, everybody disrobes, and they screw. Why? Because these fluids are life. They're life. This is the salvation. Right? This is what Epiphanius is trying to.

• 1:36:19Speaker 03

  Say, hey, this is, you know, within Christianity, it's this, this is a movement. And just like Jude said, don't do this stuff.

• 1:36:28Speaker 02

  Okay, so, so yeah, in 1 Corinthians, which is a very early letter, everyone agrees, Paul wrote it in the 50s, probably. It's one of our earliest Christian documents because it's earlier than the Gospels. Yeah, you're absolutely right. Paul has to call out some of the, the people in the Christian community at Corinth. One of them is sleeping with his stepmother. And he says, don't do that. Like, what, what are you sleeping with your stepmom for, bro? That's, that's my translation.

• 1:36:53Speaker 03

  Well, the Romans hated incest to the Romans was like, no, God.

• 1:36:58Speaker 02

  So that's not technically incest.

• 1:36:59Speaker 03

  Don't, don't be doing this.

• 1:37:01Speaker 02

  There were, there were people in the Christian community that there was actually, and this actually goes to show the, the crazy diversity within the very early Christian community. Some Christians were, were at, were at opposite ends of the spectrum as far as their attitudes towards sex. So some Christians heard Paul's message of a resurrection and that we're going to get new bodies. Okay, that's, that's one of Paul's central messages, it seems like, that we can reconstruct from his letters. He's going around telling people Jesus is coming back soon and, and we're going to have our bodies transformed. He says this in 1 Corinthians 15. And so some Christians, like apparently some of them at Corinth, took this to mean that we can do whatever we want with our bodies because we're getting new ones anyway. So who cares? That seems to have been their attitude.

• 1:37:46Speaker 02

  And so some of those Christians, this is not people outside the church, but some of those Christians were sleeping with their stepmother. They were sleeping with prostitutes. They were doing whatever they wanted sexually, right? Because, because they actually internalized Paul's message in a, in a, in a way that he didn't necessarily intend. And the way, the way we know that he didn't intend it that way is because then he wrote the letter of 1 Corinthians to tell them not to do that. Among other things, like in, in 1 Corinthians, it's a fascinating piece of literature from, from the mid first century B.C. that offers a pretty. Important window into into early Christian thing, at least from Paul. Now, again, we always have to remember there's diversity, and that's one of the things I'm trying to hammer home with this text.

• 1:38:25Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:38:25Speaker 02

  Is that just because we have one Christian text that says some Christians were doing it this way, doesn't mean that anyone else was necessarily.

• 1:38:31Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:38:31Speaker 02

  So we can't, we can't, we have to be careful with methodological slippage.

• 1:38:35Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 1:38:35Speaker 02

  Which means we can't just wave at a text and say, oh, yeah, that's, that proves everything. It doesn't necessarily prove much at all. Okay, back to Paul, back to Paul. So he, he's writing specifically to this one community, these Christians at Corinth that he had just recently converted from paganism, the recent converts from paganism to the Jesus movement. And, and

• 1:38:54Danny Jones?

  Paganism, explain what paganism is.

• 1:38:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I'm, I'm using this loosely. And of course, that's a later term, as Amen probably knows.

• 1:38:59Danny Jones?

  Like polytheism.

• 1:39:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so they were worshiping the Greco-Roman gods. So paganism comes from, from a Latin word that means rural. So, so it comes from a later period when Christians had taken over the cities, ideologically speaking, not militarily, but ideologically speaking. But then there were still people out in the countryside doing things in the conservative way. As, as is the case today, oftentimes in places like the United States, cities are what is deemed more quote unquote progressive and rural areas are more likely to be conservative. It's honestly kind of always been that way.

• 1:39:30Speaker 03

  It's derogatory.

• 1:39:32Speaker 02

  It is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:39:32Speaker 03

  It's kind of like hillbilly.

• 1:39:34Speaker 02

  It was derogatory because it was

• 1:39:36Speaker 03

  It's the old time.

• 1:39:36Speaker 02

  It was used by Christians to refer to, yeah, hillbillies. Pagan, pagan means hillbilly, you know, rural bumpkin or something like that. Obviously, I'm not using it in a derogatory sense. Polytheism is fine, though. So he, so, so Paul had just converted some, a handful, we don't know how many, 100, not that many people, in the Greek bustling metropolis of Corinth to the Jesus movement. He rolled into town, told them the message of Jesus as he saw it, and then converted this handful of people. And then he left because he, he had to go to the next city and make more converts. That's, that, that was his whole career, going from city to city, trying to make converts. And, and he, he felt the urgency that Jesus was coming back soon.

• 1:40:15Speaker 03

  And getting thrown in jail a lot.

• 1:40:16Speaker 02

  Getting thrown in jail a lot.

• 1:40:17Speaker 03

  He gets thrown in jail. What did he do to the Pythia? Oh, my God, that whole city was mad.

• 1:40:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, the time that he cast the, cast the demon, according to Acts, cast a demon out of

• 1:40:27Speaker 03

  She kept saying, you're, you're doing the Christos thing.

• 1:40:30Speaker 02

  So, yeah, we'll get there. I'm sure. I assume.

• 1:40:33Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 1:40:33Speaker 02

  So, so, so Paul, Paul writes to this community at Corinth, and he says, yeah, so you, you guys need to Not be sleeping with your stepmother.

• 1:40:42Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:40:42Speaker 02

  Just because I said you're getting new bodies doesn't mean it doesn't matter what you do in this body.

• 1:40:46Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:40:46Speaker 02

  Now, there were, there were Christians on the other end of the spectrum who apparently thought that you should never have sex with anyone ever, even your own spouse.

• 1:40:53Speaker 03

  And Paul. Never?

• 1:40:54Speaker 02

  Never. And, and there was a monastic movement. It wasn't called that yet, but there was, there was a, a.

• 1:41:00Danny Jones?

  That's what creates those sicko priests.

• 1:41:02Speaker 02

  There was a self, there was a strain of self-control already within Greek philosophy that Amen probably knows about. Where, where Greek philosophers were already saying, maybe you should control yourself and like focus on higher spiritual realities.

• 1:41:13Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:41:13Speaker 02

  Meditate, maybe sex isn't the best way to, to use your, your finite earthly existence.

• 1:41:18Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:41:18Speaker 02

  So, so, so Christians didn't make this up. Jews didn't make this up. This is Greek philosophers were saying this. They weren't always living it, but they were saying, they were saying it a lot of times. And so Paul also disagrees with them. So he also thinks sex has a time and place. You should never have sex. And that's basically, that's the middle ground that, that Paul is trying to drive in, in, in the letter of first Corinthians. And that's where this stuff comes up essentially. So again.

• 1:41:44Speaker 03

  Why do you think he didn't suffer the ill effects of being bitten by poisonous viper when he got shipwrecked? And all the locals were like, oh God, that dude's gonna die. Watch him.

• 1:41:55Speaker 02

  That's, that's an interpretive question. So we have the story in Acts 27 or Acts 28. Where, where he, he has a shipwreck. He's being taken to Rome to stand trial before the emperor. And so they're, they put him on a ship, load him from the eastern Mediterranean, sail him all the way to Rome. They have a shipwreck on Malta, which is an island in the Mediterranean to the south of Italy. You know, he's not supposed to be there, but the locals kind of take him and the other shipwreck victims in. And then they're sitting around a, a fire. It's winter apparently. And, and this, this snake comes out of the fire and latches onto his hand. And he, and, and all the locals look at him like he's gonna die because he just got bit by this viper. And apparently.

• 1:42:34Danny Jones?

  Talking about Paul, right?

• 1:42:35Speaker 02

  Paul. Yeah. It's apparently it's a poisonous one. And he like just looks and like shakes it off into the fire like nothing happened and keeps going on with his preaching. And all the, all the natives just look at him, stare at him, wait for him to die. He doesn't die. It's like nothing happened. And then they start worshiping him as a god. And then he has to be like, no, guys, I'm not god. I'm just guys representative. And so the text, and again, this is an interpretive question, right? As we were just saying, we have the text. That's what the text says. The text doesn't give us an explicit explanation for why Paul doesn't die, except that I think, I think that, you know, the author of the text, which is probably Luke, wants, wants us to believe that God is protecting him. Right? That doesn't mean that you can't come along like amen, I think, and say, he's got some kind of concoction of, of, of anti-venom in his body or something.

• 1:43:20Speaker 03

  If we have other contemporary texts, like Philomenus, who we're talking about, hey, um, this is the theriak that is used. You can counter the viper with this and that, but you have to christ it. It has to be christed. Um, those texts are additional evidence that there's something going on there with Paul's viper bite. Um, I don't have to believe in miracles because I have the reason of the word. And that word clearly is reflecting a real scientific anthropological reality that Paul is walking around with viper venom,

• 1:44:03Speaker 03

  which is not typical, which is not atypical, excuse me, is not atypical.

• 1:44:10Speaker 02

  So you think he's like the guy in the princess bride?

• 1:44:11Danny Jones?

  So he's using, he's using his knowledge of, of Galen's theriak, which allegedly Galen was using as like a performance enhancing drug to keep himself safe from being poisoned by venoms, by snake venoms. And he's connecting that to this biblical writing of Paul getting bit by a snake.

• 1:44:31Speaker 03

  All of that is written in Galen, in a work on the theriak de Piso.

• 1:44:36Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:44:36Speaker 03

  And he talks about the theriak that Marcus Aurelius is on with its compound drugs.

• 1:44:42Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:44:42Speaker 03

  The concept of using antidotes through the viper venom specifically traces in the Baccic texts as well. It's the same. All these priests like Nicander, that's what they're talking about. They're talking about the use of these venoms and toxins in order to induce that open eyed spiritual experience, vision.

• 1:45:08Speaker 03

  It is a process that is biochemical and I, as an investigator of the Greek, it looks to me like Paul is on that list and that's why the Pythia calls him out for it. She knows that he's gotta be Christing. She knows what Christing is.

• 1:45:25Danny Jones?

  All right, we're gonna get into the Christing stuff. I wanna make sure we stay on track, though, and not make this thing go all over the place. I wanna keep it kinda like segmented. So, does that make sense to you, how he's connecting this theriak, the idea of the theriak and these, first of all, I'm sure you know about, or are you familiar with Galen's theriak and Nero's physician talking about this?

• 1:45:51Speaker 02

  Marcus Aurelius, yeah.

• 1:45:52Danny Jones?

  Also Nero's physician talked about the theriak, right? A concoction of like seven different viper venoms, viper flesh, and all kinds of stuff that allegedly Marcus Aurelius was using and drinking daily, it had opium in it as well, to keep himself safe from people who were trying to kill him with poisons.

• 1:46:12Speaker 02

  I have little doubt that there were people doing drugs, regardless of what your advisor said.

• 1:46:17Danny Jones?

  Well, this wasn't necessarily like a drug to get you high.

• 1:46:21Speaker 02

  Medicinal concoction, sure. That's fine, that's fine. Again, I think Amin and I both agree, we wanna be faithful to the texts and be careful with the texts. So Galen is writing quite a bit later, Nero's obviously closer to Paul's time, much closer to Paul's time.

• 1:46:38Speaker 03

  He's executed under Nero, isn't he?

• 1:46:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, at least traditionally, right?

• 1:46:43Speaker 03

  It's actually Nero's physician.

• 1:46:45Speaker 02

  Our sources aren't great for that.

• 1:46:46Danny Jones?

  Paul was executed under Nero?

• 1:46:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, traditionally, like our sources are not great for that, but that was the early rumor, very early rumor. It's definitely not a later creation by any stretch. It's not in the Bible. So, so my perspective on this is that we can hypothesize. I think it's interesting to hypothesize. I don't see any evidence in the Bible for that. I don't see any evidence in the biblical text of Acts where this viper bites Paul that makes me think he's definitely on some kind of concoction.

• 1:47:16Danny Jones?

  Sure, sure, I get that, I get that.

• 1:47:18Speaker 02

  Like, it's not in there.

• 1:47:19Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:47:20Speaker 02

  But it doesn't say he's not.

• 1:47:21Danny Jones?

  But do you think it's reasonable how he's making the connection from Galen's theriak to Paul not dying from being bit by a viper?

• 1:47:27Speaker 02

  I think he could write an article on it.

• 1:47:28Danny Jones?

  Is that too much of a stretch?

• 1:47:30Speaker 02

  We could talk about it. I think, I think he could write an article on it.

• 1:47:33Speaker 03

  I'm done with it.

• 1:47:33Speaker 02

  It'd be fun. It'd be fun because I, the, the community can decide if it's too much of a stretch. Now, the community is wrong sometimes.

• 1:47:40Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:47:40Speaker 02

  Right? I think we can all agree on that.

• 1:47:42Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:47:42Speaker 02

  Um, sometimes the community is too conservative. I don't mean that politically. I mean, like, they, they just cling to older ideas, right? I don't know. I'm not a drug expert, honestly. Like, like, you know, I haven't read Galen, so I can't really comment. I've, I've read parts of Galen.

• 1:47:56Speaker 03

  See, and that's why I respect you, because he admits that. He hasn't read Galen. He doesn't know.

• 1:48:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. As we were talking about earlier, I'm here to call balls and strikes and, and most of what we've talked about has been, been within my area of expertise. I have no problem saying you've read more Galen than me.

• 1:48:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:48:11Speaker 02

  Okay. Now I'm interested. Maybe like you send me these sources and I'll take a look at them and then we can do this thing with them.

• 1:48:17Speaker 03

  You know, a good connection is your wine, too. You didn't, he wrote about wine and the origins of wine.

• 1:48:24Speaker 02

  I know a lot more about wine than any other drugs.

• 1:48:25Speaker 03

  It's connected because diascorides and others, physicians write about the use of, wine is a base for the drugs, man.

• 1:48:33Speaker 02

  A lot of times they put drugs in the wine.

• 1:48:35Speaker 03

  All sorts of wines that are drugged wine.

• 1:48:38Danny Jones?

  This is like the Lucian mysteries, right?

• 1:48:40Speaker 03

  This is not anything to do with cult. This is just people enjoying drugged wines.

• 1:48:45Danny Jones?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:48:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's for health.

• 1:48:46Danny Jones?

  Really?

• 1:48:47Speaker 03

  Yes, it's for health purposes. They're, and they're all, oh God, the descriptions of them are lengthy and the stuff, the amount of ingredients they're putting in. Oh, it's fantastic. And there's always a medical connection. It's always like, oh, this one cures your dropsy, right? Or your inflammation will be reduced with this wine, which has these three herbs that are attic herbs from so and so.

• 1:49:10Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 1:49:11Speaker 03

  Fantastic. But you did wine. You do, you, history of wine and stuff.

• 1:49:15Speaker 02

  And of course, wine was the most common drug in antiquity.

• 1:49:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:49:18Speaker 02

  Like, everybody drank it, even kids.

• 1:49:20Danny Jones?

  Really?

• 1:49:20Speaker 02

  Although we do have to understand that, that the Greeks specifically mixed wine quite heavily with water. Um, so, so their, their traditional concoction of wine was two parts water to one part wine. In other words, it was only one third wine and it was two thirds water that they were drinking. What this did, and of course, we know this now, they didn't know this, is that it killed the bacteria, or at least a lot of the bacteria in the water. They had very dirty water.

• 1:49:42Danny Jones?

  The wine did.

• 1:49:42Speaker 02

  The wine did, by mixing the water and the wine.

• 1:49:45Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 1:49:45Speaker 02

  And so, they, they just realized-

• 1:49:47Danny Jones?

  They didn't get in plague, just be drunk all the time.

• 1:49:49Speaker 02

  They real- they real- well, they didn't want to do that either, though. So they realized with trial and error, that if you, if you mixed one third part wine with two thirds part water,

• 1:49:59Danny Jones?

  You wouldn't get buzzed.

• 1:49:59Speaker 02

  You were healthier.

• 1:50:00Danny Jones?

  Oh, really?

• 1:50:01Speaker 02

  You were healthier, because it would kill a lot of the bacteria in the water, where if you just drank straight water, you'd get sick all the time.

• 1:50:06Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:50:07Speaker 02

  Because their water sources were terrible.

• 1:50:08Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 1:50:09Speaker 02

  But, when you drank this water mixed with wine, you wouldn't get sick near as much. But you also wouldn't get drunk unless you drank a lot. Because if you, if it's two parts water to one part wine, it's gonna take quite a bit for you to even get buzzed, right? Which is why they would give it to kids. So it was a health drink for everybody of any age.

• 1:50:25Speaker 03

  And opium, they gave a shit ton of opium to kids. And earaches, toothaches, the recommendation is always opium.

• 1:50:31Danny Jones?

  Really?

• 1:50:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know about that. I have nothing to say about that.

• 1:50:34Speaker 03

  Diarrhea opium, yeah. It's way, way over prescribed, way, way overused. It's like, common. Very common.

• 1:50:41Danny Jones?

  Okay, before we get into the Christening stuff, I want to talk about the idea that Amen brings forward about the septuagint. And Amen believes the septuagint was originally written in Greek and then translated into Hebrew. And he's the only person with a pulse-

• 1:50:59Speaker 03

  In the cosmos.

• 1:51:00Danny Jones?

  On the, in the cosmos, that believes this to be truth. And other people I've had on here, experts, I've asked the same thing, and they all say that, that the Greek in this septuagint was, I think, one guy Gad Barnier said it was Jewish Greek. Some people say it's Koiné Greek.

• 1:51:16Speaker 02

  It is Jewish, yeah.

• 1:51:17Danny Jones?

  It's Jewish.

• 1:51:18Speaker 03

  It's, wait, wait, are you gonna say it's Jewish Greek?

• 1:51:20Speaker 02

  Why don't you make your case, and then I'll-

• 1:51:22Danny Jones?

  Yeah, Amen, Amen, Amen, make your case, make your case. Lay it out for folks who aren't familiar with this, the people that may not even know what this septuagint is.

• 1:51:30Speaker 03

  Sure, so I'm not actually the first person to say this, nor am I the only person. There was a Jewish scholar, Yehuda, Dr. Yehuda, who wrote a book- book called Hebrew is Greek. And in it, he takes the or he takes the trilateral roots that you find in the Hebrew. And then he shows you the Greek from which that term was derived. So, and he shows you through the use of colloquialisms, euphemisms, that the Hebrew is actually being constructed around the Greek. And he's, he wrote his book Hebrew is Greek in the eighties, I think it was seventies, eighties, something like that.

• 1:52:13Speaker 03

  And of course, you can imagine it did a dive because if, if that's the case, everything that we know about biblical scholarship is wrong, completely wrong. There is a rabbi who came forward, do you have, oh, there it is. Do you have, and there he's talking about the Spartans and the Greek, that the Jews are actually from Sparta and, and Crete. Anyway, um, can you, Steve, did you get the video clip, the short clip that I sent you? Last night? Yeah, yeah, I got it. Yeah, this is Rabbi, right? Tavia, right? Let's see here what he says. I'll be quiet.

• 1:52:58Speaker 04

  The key is that Christians are appealing to a septuagint, a Greek translation. A translation can never be superior to the original. It's in any Western court, the law of best evidence states that an original document in its original language is always superior to any translation. So this is a specious argument, but.

• 1:53:27Speaker 03

  He is exactly right. A translation cannot be.

• 1:53:33Speaker 03

  Superior.

• 1:53:35Speaker 02

  To be clear, he is saying the Septuagint is a translation.

• 1:53:38Speaker 03

  Right, he's saying the Septuagint is a translation.

• 1:53:40Speaker 02

  Not agreeing with you.

• 1:53:40Speaker 03

  Right, so the Septuagint should be a step down from the Hebrew original, because in the translation process, you lose information. You never gain information. You never get a more technical document from a translation, because the translation is not adding.

• 1:54:00Speaker 02

  You can always add stuff anytime you translate anything.

• 1:54:03Speaker 03

  Well, you can, but you're not translating. You're then embellishing.

• 1:54:07Speaker 02

  A lot of the Septuagint is an embellishment of the original Hebrew.

• 1:54:09Speaker 03

  You're embellishing.

• 1:54:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, so what I'm saying is exactly what you're saying doesn't happen, does happen with the Septuagint. Okay, go on.

• 1:54:15Speaker 03

  So his premise is the superior form is the original.

• 1:54:21Speaker 02

  Who decides superior form?

• 1:54:22Speaker 03

  I'll show you right now. Let's look at an actual text. Hit it, Steve, with the Greek text there. This is from Genesis 1:2. This is from Genesis 1:2. Is it this one? The one with the... Yep, there you go. "The whole verse is in the middle, and the earth was aoratos and akataskeostos." "The earth was King Jamesy without form and void." "Kaiskotos," in the darkness, was upon the deep, they'll say, the abyss. "And the Spirit of God hovered there over the waters." Now, look at the two words that the earth is in the beginning. "The earth was aoratos," in Greek, "and akataskeostos."

• 1:55:07Speaker 03

  If you look up those words, just because you want to know what they are. Next slide, Steve. If you look them up, you're gonna see. Right, here we go. Look at the... Just tell me really quick. Akataskeostos, not properly prepared. And after that, they give a reference to a pharmacon, right? This word is used for synthetic drugs, right? "These are unworked principles." Akataskeostos. Look at kataskeostos, but below it. That's without the alpha privative on the front, so the alpha privative just negativizes the word. So what is something that is kataskeostos? It's artificial.

• 1:55:50Speaker 03

  It's created or artificial. Okay. So the earth is akateskevastos, not prepared, not created, not yet synthesized. Look at the bottom, aoratos. What else is the earth? It's unseen or invisible. I want you to drop down to the second line. And look at to aoraton. What is it when you take the substantive of this adjective? It's an unseen world. And right after that, you get ex uranu. Do you understand me? This is a part of Greek physics that you're looking at this word aoratos. Gaia and uranos are part of it. Are you ready? Give me the next one. Wait, let me finish.

• 1:56:35Speaker 03

  Give me the next, after that. Here's the verb, because everything comes from the verb. What does the Hebrew version? Okay, let's see. Is this superior or inferior? Look at the Hebrew version, an empty place. This is tohu for aoratos. Does this, does the, was the translator on dope? If this went from Hebrew, and this means an emptiness, it, how did it get to aoratos? You couldn't have. Somebody's on dope, or Hebrew is less sophisticated, clearly. Look at the next word for akateskevastos, bohu. Are you kidding? They just took tohu and made it into a boh. And what have they got here? Again, emptiness.

• 1:57:19Speaker 03

  This Hebrew is not original. It is being constructed from the Greek. It is a terrible, terrible attempt to make a native translation out of a language that is so far sophisticated. Greek has 1.5 million word forms. Hebrew has 7,000 unique words. It can't compete. Okay, I'll stop there. You respond now.

• 1:57:46Speaker 02

  Okay, thank you.

• 1:57:49Speaker 02

  So again, let's, let's examine our priors here. In other words, what are we sort of assuming? You're assuming as, as you go through this, number one, that you can make a judgment as to which language is more superior, which is very debatable. But let's, let's just say for the sake of argument that you're right, that somehow Greek is more superior than Hebrew, which no linguist would.

• 1:58:06Speaker 03

  Technically superior, that it's more advanced, that it's more descriptive, has a bigger vocabulary.

• 1:58:11Speaker 02

  Greek has the philosoph, the philosophical tradition by this point, right? And so the translator, who, who must be fluent in both Hebrew and Greek to do this translation, is probably a Jewish person who knows Greek, uh, cause nothing else really makes sense. And this is a person probably in Alexandria, which is a center of Greek philosophical learning, right? And this Jewish guy who knows Greek, and maybe Greek is even his native language.

• 1:58:35Speaker 03

  Of course it is.

• 1:58:37Speaker 02

  Because, because he's in a Jewish colonial context, just like a Jew in the United States today would have English as their native language. Doesn't make them any less Jewish. Doesn't mean that they haven't been to synagogue.

• 1:58:46Speaker 03

  No, he's Judean, 100%, I get it.

• 1:58:48Speaker 02

  So this, this guy is familiar with the Greek philosophical tradition. And so when he's translating these words, he is embellishing them. He's absolutely embellishing them. He's taking the Hebrew, and by the way, tohu wabohu, we don't even know to this day exactly what this means. Okay. Like there, there have been so many books written on just these few words, and it's, it's unclear. Okay.

• 1:59:11Speaker 03

  Outside of the Septu, outside of the Torah.

• 1:59:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:59:15Speaker 03

  How much Hebrew literature from the third century, um, uses this word bohu or tohu and bohu, huh?

• 1:59:23Speaker 02

  Uh, very rare.

• 1:59:24Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, cause there's no Hebrew literature outside.

• 1:59:27Speaker 02

  Of course there is.

• 1:59:28Speaker 03

  The, the Old Testament, is there?

• 1:59:30Speaker 02

  Of course there is. Yeah. So, okay. What Hebrew literature is there outside? Let's say that your theory is right, that, that the Greeks or Jewish, you know, Greek speaking Jews or whatever, in Alexandria, which is probably where this is being written, the Septuagint, um, are, are inventing this language. You think they're inventing it in Alexandria, in the third, second century B.C.?

• 1:59:50Speaker 03

  Definitely.

• 1:59:51Speaker 02

  Okay. So if that were true, there should be no Hebrew before that.

• 1:59:54Speaker 03

  There should be no literature at all. There should be nothing.

• 1:59:59Speaker 02

  Amen, you have a problem because there is Hebrew before that.

• 2:00:02Speaker 03

  And what is the Hebrew?

• 2:00:03Speaker 02

  The archaeological evidence. We have a lot of archaeological evidence.

• 2:00:06Speaker 03

  Some scribblings.

• 2:00:06Speaker 02

  No, it's not. It's okay.

• 2:00:08Speaker 03

  You have no work. You have no, it's, you go to and look at, they talk about the amulets. You go and look at these things. It looks like it could be an olive. It must be. It must be Hebrew. Or no, it's proto Hebrew. You have no works. Like Danny just said, you have no works in Hebrew.

• 2:00:25Danny Jones?

  Let's see what, let's hear, let's hear what he has to say about it.

• 2:00:27Speaker 02

  Amen. We have the priestly blessing, which is in the book of Numbers attested from an archaeological dig dated to the 7th century B.C. Amen.

• 2:00:36Speaker 03

  You have the-

• 2:00:36Speaker 02

  That's 500 years before the Septuagint.

• 2:00:38Speaker 03

  You have the text, you have a text for this?

• 2:00:41Speaker 02

  That Hebrew radically predates.

• 2:00:42Speaker 03

  You have the text?

• 2:00:43Speaker 02

  You can go look it up. It was in an archaeological dig.

• 2:00:45Speaker 03

  The text of Numbers on a-

• 2:00:46Speaker 02

  It was an archaeological dig.

• 2:00:47Speaker 03

  Written on the entire book of Numbers?

• 2:00:50Speaker 02

  No, I said, I said three verses, the priestly blessing in Numbers.

• 2:00:53Danny Jones?

  Let's look at this. Let's look this up. Let's look this up.

• 2:00:55Speaker 02

  Look up, look up Ketef.

• 2:00:57Speaker 03

  That's fantastic.

• 2:00:58Speaker 02

  Ketefinom, K-E-T-E-F-H-I-N-N-O-M. Two words. Yeah, yeah. Space.

• 2:01:05Danny Jones?

  Two words.

• 2:01:05Speaker 02

  Ketef, space, H-I- Yeah, there it is. Ketefinom scrolls.

• 2:01:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:01:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:01:11Danny Jones?

  Go to all?

• 2:01:11Speaker 02

  This is the silver. It's written on silver.

• 2:01:14Danny Jones?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:01:14Speaker 02

  And it's written in paleo Hebrew. There it is. Priestly blessing from number six.

• 2:01:18Speaker 03

  Do they think it's in paleo Hebrew?

• 2:01:20Speaker 02

  It is paleo Hebrew.

• 2:01:21Danny Jones?

  Two tiny silver-

• 2:01:22Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, it's a theory because it's true.

• 2:01:24Speaker 03

  No, no. What is paleo Hebrew? Explain to the people what paleo Hebrew is. And what are your documents that are in paleo Hebrew?

• 2:01:30Speaker 02

  Right here. Here's one of them.

• 2:01:31Speaker 03

  No, no, no. This is three lines from a silver, from a silver plate.

• 2:01:36Speaker 02

  One of thousands.

• 2:01:36Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 2:01:37Speaker 02

  So, there is paleo Hebrew. Everyone agrees that paleo Hebrew is an alphabet that was used in, in pre-exilic times. So, leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. They used a different alphabet than they used later. And this is what it looks like. This is what it looks like. That's paleo Hebrew.

• 2:01:53Danny Jones?

  That's silver?

• 2:01:54Speaker 02

  That's silver.

• 2:01:55Danny Jones?

  And written, so can you zoom in a little bit more, Steve?

• 2:01:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:01:58Speaker 03

  So, tell who Wabo who is in there?

• 2:02:00Speaker 02

  No, of course not. That's not the verse. It's the priestly blessing.

• 2:02:03Danny Jones?

  So, that scribbling is Hebrew?

• 2:02:05Speaker 02

  That's Hebrew. Yeah. And it's something that's in the Bible. It's something in the Hebrew Bible that already is found in an archaeological dig from, from earlier than 600 B.C. So, it predates the Septuagint by hundreds of years. They're already writing Hebrew. They're already writing stuff that's in the Bible. They're already inscribing it and on scrolls, maybe keeping it with them, maybe as an amulet.

• 2:02:26Speaker 03

  And what is Paleo Hebrew?

• 2:02:28Speaker 02

  Paleo Hebrew is this alphabet we're looking at.

• 2:02:30Speaker 03

  This is an alphabet?

• 2:02:31Speaker 02

  That's an alphabet.

• 2:02:32Speaker 03

  And it's alphabet, gemel, dalit, hevah?

• 2:02:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's an abjad technically.

• 2:02:36Speaker 03

  It's the exact alphabet of the...

• 2:02:38Speaker 02

  It's an abjad.

• 2:02:39Speaker 03

  What we call classical Hebrew.

• 2:02:41Speaker 02

  It's a different script, but it's the exact same alphabet, yeah.

• 2:02:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, and they're sure it's completely been identified as Hebrew.

• 2:02:47Speaker 02

  Sure, it's very clear.

• 2:02:48Speaker 03

  I see a Hebrew rendition, I see a Hebrew rendition, but they are certain, wait, and they base that on what? It's just from this one?

• 2:02:58Speaker 02

  There's thousands of these. This is just the most famous one.

• 2:03:00Speaker 03

  But there's no, is there a translation of this from antiquity? I mean, how do we know?

• 2:03:06Speaker 02

  It's an archaeological dig. They didn't put English translations in the archaeological digs.

• 2:03:10Speaker 03

  How do we know that that's the line from the text that we have?

• 2:03:15Speaker 02

  Because it's the exact same words from several years later.

• 2:03:19Speaker 03

  Somebody put that, somebody put that.

• 2:03:20Speaker 02

  Oh, you think it was planted?

• 2:03:21Speaker 03

  No, no, no.

• 2:03:22Speaker 02

  Is this like an alien theory?

• 2:03:23Speaker 03

  They do the same thing with Phoenician, right? They do the exact same thing about guessing what the letters are. And that's why when they find an inscription, they guess that it's either Hebrew or Proto Hebrew. At the time that this is being written, what's the date on the silver?

• 2:03:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, I mean, so, yeah, 7th century B.C.

• 2:03:42Speaker 03

  600 B.C., 600 B.C.

• 2:03:44Speaker 02

  That's the consensus.

• 2:03:46Speaker 03

  How much, how much literature is there being generated that is from this Proto Hebrew? What other cultures are referring to Proto Hebrew? It's none.

• 2:03:59Speaker 02

  Uh, there's several cultures around them that refer to Israel and refer to specific kings of Israel that are in the Bible.

• 2:04:04Speaker 03

  They think they found the name Israel in an inscription.

• 2:04:07Speaker 02

  They found it multiple times. I don't think anybody debates that, except you apparently.

• 2:04:10Speaker 03

  What is the Israel, where's it come from? What's the, you're a linguist guy. Where does the word Israel come from?

• 2:04:16Speaker 02

  Well, it's a Semitic word. It looks like a verb, but it's a name, of course. So Semitic names are often compounds of a verb and a noun. And the L at the end is God.

• 2:04:26Speaker 03

  L at the end is God, right?

• 2:04:28Speaker 02

  The yisere part, looks like a third singular masculine Semitic verb. There's debate about which verb it would come from, but it might mean God rules, or he struggles with God, or God struggles with somebody.

• 2:04:37Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 2:04:38Speaker 02

  That's the traditional etymology.

• 2:04:40Speaker 03

  Okay, what literature do we have in it that you just gained that insight from? Where is the evidence?

• 2:04:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, so here's, I think, the methodological problem. You're saying that if a culture got destroyed, and the pre-exilic Israelite and Judean kingdom got destroyed. Well, no, the people, the kingdoms got destroyed by the Assyrians in 721 B.C. And then the Babylonians in 586 B.C. They had an apocalypse, essentially. Those nations, those ethnicities had an apocalypse, where these foreign empires rolled in and destroyed them. They just leveled their cities to the ground. Jerusalem was leveled to the ground in 586 B.C. They burned Jerusalem to the ground in 586 B.C. And so what happened when Jerusalem specifically was burned to the ground in 586 B.C., guess where all the texts went? Burned, gone, they got burned. That's why we had the silver, is what we had.

• 2:05:31Speaker 02

  The silver survived, and this was, I think, yeah, it was buried, and it was outside of Jerusalem, so it wouldn't have been clocked in the fire.

• 2:05:37Speaker 03

  It was in a library?

• 2:05:37Speaker 02

  They would have had libraries that got burned, just like the Library of Isaiah. They almost certainly did.

• 2:05:41Speaker 03

  Full of Hebrew libraries.

• 2:05:42Speaker 02

  Almost certainly, almost certainly.

• 2:05:44Speaker 03

  Almost certainly, or they did?

• 2:05:45Speaker 02

  It got burned.

• 2:05:46Speaker 03

  That's a big difference.

• 2:05:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay, Amen, let's back up and talk about methodology again, because I want to make sure.

• 2:05:51Speaker 03

  No, I just want to know if they had Hebrew libraries.

• 2:05:52Speaker 02

  I want to keep our.

• 2:05:53Speaker 03

  Where this language was preserved, that's all.

• 2:05:55Speaker 02

  I want to keep our eye on the ball.

• 2:05:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:05:57Speaker 02

  We've already said, two hours ago at this point, that we don't know much about the ancient world. So what we're dealing with usually is probabilities. I like to think this from like the perspective of a Vegas gambler. We don't know, you know, if you're gambling on something in Vegas, you don't know for sure what's going to happen or whatever, but you have probabilities, okay? You can say, well, it's most likely, or it's less likely, and so I'm going to put money on things that are more likely. And so we have probabilities. So you're asking me for 100% probability of something that happened 3,000 years ago.

• 2:06:25Speaker 03

  Evidence, I'm asking for evidence.

• 2:06:27Speaker 02

  This, it's right up on the screen, Amen.

• 2:06:29Speaker 03

  No, it's not.

• 2:06:30Speaker 02

  This is evidence.

• 2:06:31Speaker 03

  That's somebody's interpretation of what that is. That is not. The evidence.

• 2:06:34Danny Jones?

  So you wait, wait.

• 2:06:35Speaker 02

  You don't know.

• 2:06:35Speaker 03

  What I'm telling to you is if this is.

• 2:06:38Danny Jones?

  Amen. Hold on, hold on.

• 2:06:39Speaker 03

  If this language is being used at the time, if this language is being used at the time, what other surrounding peoples and cultures record it?

• 2:06:49Speaker 02

  I just told you, there's multiple ones, but the problem is that those same empires that rolled in and destroyed Jerusalem destroyed those other cultures too.

• 2:06:56Speaker 03

  Right. Why isn't there a Greek record?

• 2:06:58Danny Jones?

  So Amen, are you saying?

• 2:07:00Speaker 02

  The Greeks weren't doing anything over there.

• 2:07:01Danny Jones?

  Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Are you saying that the Hebrew writing on the right?

• 2:07:07Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 2:07:07Danny Jones?

  Is not accurate to what's on the silver?

• 2:07:10Speaker 03

  How do we know that it's accurate?

• 2:07:11Speaker 02

  You don't, you don't know Hebrew writing.

• 2:07:12Speaker 03

  The evidence of the people who made this translation or interpretation of what it is, because what other documents are they using? Do they have? That's why I asked, do they have libraries? You can't do this with Greek. There's no guesswork.

• 2:07:27Danny Jones?

  Well, Luca knows Hebrew.

• 2:07:29Speaker 03

  Proto Hebrew versus, no.

• 2:07:31Speaker 02

  Greeks had different alphabets.

• 2:07:32Speaker 03

  No. At this time that you say this day is existing, there's Greek works all over the place. Society is run.

• 2:07:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, guess what?

• 2:07:40Speaker 03

  By that Greek work.

• 2:07:41Speaker 02

  You know what the Greeks avoided? Getting burned to the ground by the Persians, which almost happened in 480. Okay? So if the Greeks had not managed to fight off those two Persian invasions, we'd probably be in the same position with Greek literature where it would have all got burned to the ground and then we'd be in this position where all we would, all the Greek we would have is digging up stuff in archaeological digs.

• 2:08:00Speaker 03

  I hate to guess.

• 2:08:01Speaker 02

  We'd be in a difficult position. We always have to guess.

• 2:08:03Speaker 03

  But when the Christians.

• 2:08:04Speaker 02

  Anything we do is guessing for the ancient world. We don't know anything for sure.

• 2:08:07Speaker 03

  I hate to guess, but when the, um, when Greek lost its, began to lose its glory as the oracle shut down and as the fourth century lurched over its loss of its pagan origin, the language was affected and you see that, but the whole, in the influence of the Byzantine Greek.

• 2:08:31Speaker 03

  The problem is throughout the use of the Greek, we've got Greek grammarians. We've got Greek scientists who are working on the language, right? What I am saying here is at the time that the Greeks are doing that and noting these other histories and these other societies around them and forming anthropologies and explanations of history of the cultures around them, nobody ever encounters anything like this. The only reference that we have to anything Semitic is the Phoenician. And we know the connection to the Phoenician, that the Greeks even argued themselves that

• 2:09:15Speaker 03

  the Phoenician was not responsible for Greek. There's Greeks to say it was and Greeks to say it wasn't for the alphabet, right? So this is theoretical. There's no contemporary documentation of any of this. This could be somebody sitting in a desert copying out BS.

• 2:09:36Speaker 02

  And then planting it in the ground for an archaeological dig to be dated to 600 B.C.

• 2:09:41Speaker 03

  No, I'm not saying it's planted. That's why I hate ideas. If we stick with the text, what I'm saying is this thing that you've got here just showed up in a vacuum.

• 2:09:54Speaker 02

  It showed up out of the ground.

• 2:09:56Speaker 03

  Where does this paleo Hebrew come from? Did they build buildings? If they got to this level of writing, they must have structures, they must have history and archaeology. Where is it for this?

• 2:10:08Speaker 02

  This is the archaeology.

• 2:10:09Speaker 03

  It's not this thing.

• 2:10:11Speaker 02

  It's coming out of the ground.

• 2:10:12Speaker 03

  This thing is not the archaeology.

• 2:10:13Speaker 02

  It's coming from the archaeologists who found it in the ground when they were doing an archaeological dig.

• 2:10:17Danny Jones?

  Everything has to start somewhere, right?

• 2:10:18Speaker 03

  Right. But when you find, let me tell you what I'm talking about. When you find, when you're doing a Greek site, for example, and you find Greek writing, the Greek writing builds for you exactly what's going on. You see those columns, you see this type of architecture, you see what they're using, the mathematics, they're in these Greek texts. This is in isolation. It's got no relatives.

• 2:10:40Speaker 02

  That's how archeology works.

• 2:10:41Speaker 03

  It's just sitting there by itself.

• 2:10:44Speaker 02

  So is it?

• 2:10:44Speaker 03

  They didn't find anything with this way. They didn't find anything with this that was a building dedicated to some guy with using this in his name, using this alphabet. Why do they have to?

• 2:10:57Speaker 02

  There's so much stuff in this alphabet.

• 2:10:58Speaker 03

  They just found that.

• 2:11:00Speaker 02

  It's widespread. This alphabet is very common.

• 2:11:02Speaker 03

  Right, but it wasn't in a building with a dude's name on it that was using the same fucking alphabet.

• 2:11:06Speaker 02

  There's a lot of stuff with dudes' names on them in this alphabet that has been found in archaeological digs from the sixth to the 10th century B.C.

• 2:11:12Speaker 03

  There are cities that use this proto Hebrew.

• 2:11:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's widespread.

• 2:11:16Speaker 03

  As they're like, there are cities.

• 2:11:18Speaker 02

  In Israel.

• 2:11:18Speaker 03

  And they have libraries.

• 2:11:19Speaker 02

  They had cities. Yeah, Jerusalem was a city.

• 2:11:22Speaker 03

  And there's libraries in Jerusalem.

• 2:11:23Speaker 02

  They were burned to the ground.

• 2:11:24Speaker 03

  There's libraries.

• 2:11:25Speaker 02

  By the Babylonians.

• 2:11:26Speaker 03

  Okay, so was Herculaneum.

• 2:11:27Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:11:28Speaker 03

  We still have the, we still have a shit ton of it.

• 2:11:30Speaker 02

  And then, and then they built a bunch of stuff on top of it. I don't know if you know about Jerusalem.

• 2:11:34Speaker 03

  That's no evidence. You're not giving me any evidence.

• 2:11:36Speaker 02

  I just don't think you're going to look at the evidence.

• 2:11:38Speaker 03

  This is in isolation. This is in complete isolation.

• 2:11:40Speaker 02

  You don't like the evidence, so you're discounting it. That's all that's happening here.

• 2:11:43Speaker 03

  It's not. The, the thing that really bothers me is that there is no Hebrew literature. When you talk outside the Torah, there is no Hebrew documentation. There are no Hebrew doctors. There's no Hebrew architecture. There's no Hebrew geometry. There's no Hebrew anything.

• 2:12:00Speaker 02

  Cause it got burned to the ground.

• 2:12:02Speaker 03

  Everything.

• 2:12:03Speaker 02

  So you're saying they should have just done a better job of not getting burned to the ground.

• 2:12:06Speaker 03

  You're saying everything got lost of any Hebrew writing, anytime.

• 2:12:09Speaker 02

  The only remnants were, there was a small group of captives after the city got burned to the ground and lots of people got slaughtered and taken into slavery by the Babylonians.

• 2:12:17Speaker 03

  No, that's not how life works. No, I'm sorry.

• 2:12:19Speaker 02

  Of course, that's how life works. That's how all ancient world.

• 2:12:20Speaker 03

  If they went in and took them over.

• 2:12:24Speaker 02

  There's a small, there's a small group of people who were taken into captivity by the Babylonians to Babylon, and they could only carry anything they could carry. They carried their most sacred text, and that's all that survived that conflagration, that civilizational conflagration. That's all they kept. That doesn't mean they didn't have more. In fact, they almost certainly had more. It's gone.

• 2:12:41Speaker 03

  And they're the only conscious culture that that happened to.

• 2:12:44Speaker 02

  Of course, they're not the only culture that happened to.

• 2:12:46Speaker 03

  You have language. The language will survive.

• 2:12:49Speaker 02

  It did survive. You just don't want to see it. It survived in the Torah.

• 2:12:52Speaker 03

  In this, that's all you've got.

• 2:12:54Speaker 02

  And it survived in the ground.

• 2:12:55Speaker 03

  That's all you've got.

• 2:12:56Speaker 02

  Okay, you just made a, you've just made a statement that is false, and that is, this is the only culture that's happened to. Of course, it's not the only culture that's happened to. Tell, let's talk about the Persians.

• 2:13:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:13:04Speaker 02

  Let's talk about the Persians. The Persian Empire was far mightier, far more scientifically advanced than the Hebrews.

• 2:13:09Speaker 03

  Do we have classical Persian?

• 2:13:11Speaker 02

  We have inscriptions. We have the Behistun inscription. And then we have a few things from Herodotus where he's transliterating words from Persians.

• 2:13:18Speaker 03

  So we have contemporaries. We have contemporaries talking about the language.

• 2:13:22Speaker 02

  We have Herodotus talking about them.

• 2:13:23Speaker 03

  That's exactly what I'm talking about. We have no Herodotus who can say, there is paleo Hebrew. Yes, we've got the Persians, we've got the Phoenicians.

• 2:13:31Speaker 02

  He's 200 years after that.

• 2:13:32Speaker 03

  All of these, like, well, I'm saying, and a dude like Herodotus.

• 2:13:36Speaker 02

  Actually, you're wrong. You're wrong about that, too. You're wrong about that, too.

• 2:13:40Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 2:13:40Speaker 02

  The Nebuchadnezzar Chronicle has been discovered in Babylon. So Nebuchadnezzar was the most powerful king of Babylon. He, from 605 to 562 B.C., he was the guy who came over and burned Jerusalem to the ground with his armies. This is, historians generally accept this. We have found his chronicle. So most kings would, would write a chronicle of the things that were ongoing during their reign that they thought was important enough to be kept for future generations. We found his chronicle from 605 to 594 B.C. Unfortunately, it cuts off in 594 because we just haven't found the rest, or maybe it got shattered or lost or something. In his chronicle, he talks about Jerusalem and the Jews in his chronicle that has been found from that time period. So when Ammon says there's no other records, he's wrong about that because King Nebuchadnezzar, the most powerful king in

• 2:14:24Speaker 02

  the world at that time, talks about them.

• 2:14:26Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 2:14:26Speaker 02

  It's in the chronicle. And he says, I'm going over there to talk about them. There it is, right there. Confirming biblical accounts of his conquest of Jerusalem in 597 B.C., the deposition of King Jehoiakim, and the installation of Zedekiah. It's all there.

• 2:14:38Speaker 03

  And look, it justifies.

• 2:14:39Speaker 02

  That is a contemporary document, Ammon.

• 2:14:41Speaker 03

  It justifies the text perfectly.

• 2:14:42Danny Jones?

  So the people, you're, so, so, so your belief is that the people who were writing Septuagint were Jewish Greek speakers who were...

• 2:14:51Speaker 02

  Living in Alexandria in a Greek milieu.

• 2:14:53Danny Jones?

  And they were taking the Hebrew, translating it into Greek and embellishing and adding stuff to it.

• 2:15:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, so there's a whole, there's not just one translator who does all of this work. It's different Jews translating different books at different times. And I can say this because I've worked with this stuff. I've gotten my hands dirty with this, with this stuff. It's incredible stuff. I've written articles on it, you can look them up. I did my master's thesis on the Septuagint.

• 2:15:20Speaker 03

  Oh, fantastic.

• 2:15:22Speaker 02

  So it's very linguistic.

• 2:15:23Speaker 03

  This is perfect. That's why I said you're perfect.

• 2:15:25Speaker 02

  It's wonderful.

• 2:15:26Speaker 03

  Hit me with the evidence.

• 2:15:27Speaker 02

  So they, they, there's different translators who are translating different books at different times. What seems to have happened is

• 2:15:33Danny Jones?

  And what year was it translated?

• 2:15:35Speaker 02

  We don't know for sure, but probably third, third to first century B.C. Probably the earliest stuff is third.

• 2:15:40Speaker 03

  The only way you can really date something is by people who quote it. What's the earliest we get people reading this text, right? That's really what you can quote. You can look at the letter of Aristaeus, which people in antiquity said was a forgery that talks about the translation. People said that was a forgery. That doesn't matter. Who's quoting it? And when are they quoting it? Jesus is quoting it, right? The New Testament is quoting the Septuagint, so in Greek.

• 2:16:10Danny Jones?

  In Greek.

• 2:16:11Speaker 03

  It never quotes it in Hebrew, which has always bothered me. If the Hebrew is the superior original, and that's what the people, the rabbis are promoting, why the hell doesn't Jesus quote Hebrew?

• 2:16:24Danny Jones?

  Why don't you think Jesus is quoting in Hebrew?

• 2:16:26Speaker 02

  Well, Jesus was probably quoting in Aramaic.

• 2:16:28Speaker 03

  Probably. No, that's linguistically not.

• 2:16:32Speaker 02

  Let's go back to methodology.

• 2:16:33Speaker 03

  Probably. Is it probably in Greek? No, it either isn't Greek or it isn't.

• 2:16:37Speaker 02

  Amin, you're trying to pull a fast one here. All we have is probably. So when I say probably, I'm being responsible. When Amin doesn't say probably, he's being irresponsible with the data. I want to be clear about that. So I'm a responsible scholar. I hope you are too. Let's try to work toward that.

• 2:16:50Speaker 03

  Obviously not.

• 2:16:51Speaker 02

  You know, hey, look, I'm dealing with you and we're talking about stuff. I'm not calling you names.

• 2:16:55Speaker 03

  I just want to know how many times Jesus quotes Hebrew?

• 2:16:58Speaker 02

  Well, here's the thing. As you know, Jesus didn't write anything down, right? So all the stories we have about Jesus are somebody talking about him at a later date. Right. But when they're writing about him, they're writing about him in Greek because that was the colonial cosmopolitan language and they want their message to get out. Okay. All right. So Jesus was not a Greek guy. He was a Jewish guy. You agree with that, right? I mean, I guess you already said you don't know who Jesus was.

• 2:17:22Speaker 03

  Greek is not an ethnicity. It's a language. Jesus was a dude who spoke Greek fluently. And he was in Egypt. So he probably studied in Alexandria and he would have been studying Greek, not Hebrew. The question is, why does Jesus or anybody in the New Testament never quote Hebrew?

• 2:17:41Speaker 02

  Quotes Aramaic several times. In fact, the only times in the New Testament, in the Gospels, of course, when Jesus is directly quoted, at least a handful, right?

• 2:17:51Speaker 03

  At least a handful. And a couple of those are ones that we think, right? That we think may be Aramaic.

• 2:17:58Speaker 02

  No, they are. It's pretty clear if you know Aramaic that he's Aramaic.

• 2:18:00Speaker 03

  It's pretty clear. It is.

• 2:18:03Speaker 02

  And we're going to keep going back to this every time.

• 2:18:05Speaker 03

  It's science. Look, it's science. It either is clearly Aramaic or it's not.

• 2:18:09Speaker 02

  You want me to say it this way? It is clearly Aramaic.

• 2:18:11Speaker 03

  It's clearly Aramaic. Lama, Sabakthon. That's when they say, that's when they say.

• 2:18:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. Mark 27, sorry, Mark 15, I believe, is when Jesus gets quoted saying, "Eloi eloi lama sabakthani."

• 2:18:25Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:18:25Speaker 02

  Can we, can we put that up?

• 2:18:26Speaker 03

  And everybody says, oh, it's Aramaic.

• 2:18:28Speaker 02

  I believe that's Mark 15.

• 2:18:28Speaker 03

  Aramaic, Aramaic.

• 2:18:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, because it is. So let's talk about it. Let's talk about it. All right. I love this. Yeah. So I have not studied Aramaic, but it's closely related to Hebrew. So just because I've studied Hebrew, I can understand the Aramaic because they're like Spanish and Portuguese. They're not, they're not that different. And so if you, if you study one, you can, you can make heads and tails of the other. Okay. So I can tell you what this Aramaic is and I will break it down for you linguistically. Okay. Scroll down, scroll down. We don't, yeah, we, okay, this is the Greek, but can we get it in English? I think it's going to be more helpful if we get a translation.

• 2:18:59Speaker 02

  Actually, I Mark, yeah, one chapter over. If you look at the Sabak Thon in the Greek, that you have to see the Greek.

• 2:19:05Danny Jones?

  Hold on, let's focus on this.

• 2:19:07Speaker 02

  Scroll down, scroll down, scroll down. It's toward the, it's when he's on the cross and he cries out his final word. Yeah, a little more, a little more. There it is, there it is. They even put it in italics, okay? Eloi, eloi, lama, sabakthani. Okay, they put it in italics. So Jesus is being directly quoted as saying this. And then they have to translate it because that's not Greek.

• 2:19:28Danny Jones?

  My God, my God.

• 2:19:29Speaker 02

  Why have you forsaken me? So, so Mark is writing in Greek, but he's quoting Jesus saying something Aramaic.

• 2:19:34Danny Jones?

  So he's writing in Greek and he's interrupting his Greek to

• 2:19:36Speaker 02

  To say something Aramaic.

• 2:19:37Danny Jones?

  To say something Aramaic.

• 2:19:37Speaker 02

  Because Jesus is saying his final words in Aramaic, because that was his native language. So, let's break down this Aramaic linguistically. L is God, just like Hebrew. All right, L, eloi, eloi. The E at the end, in both Hebrew and Aramaic, is a first-person possessive pronoun that means my.

• 2:19:54Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 2:19:54Speaker 02

  So eloi is my God, which you can see is translated correctly. They're my God, my God. That's the eloi, eloi part. In Hebrew, right? In Hebrew and Aramaic. And Aramaic. He's speaking Aramaic and not Hebrew. Yeah, he's speaking Aramaic. Okay, so in Aramaic and lema. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lama is actually two words that are usually written as one, whether in Hebrew or Aramaic. Like Lama in Hebrew, right? Why? Exactly. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, yeah. So la, la means for, and ma means what. Yes. So when you say for what, you're asking why. Does that make sense? So Lama is why, but it means literally for what. Lama. Sabakthani, I think this is the most important word here. Clearly, this is your verb. As you can see from the translation, they're translating this, have you forsaken me? Those are the words that we have left in the English there. And that's, that's being translated

• 2:20:38Speaker 02

  from the Greek. I mean, the Greek says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? In the, in the, in the translation, which is in parentheses there, right? Okay, so Aramaic has this verb. Now, there's trilateral consonantal roots in, in the Semitic languages, not just Hebrew, not just Aramaic. The Babylonian languages, Phoenician, all the Semitic languages operate on what we call trilateral consonantal roots, which means it's three consonants. And you put vowels in the middle of the consonants to sort of inflect the term. Okay. So there's three consonants here, S, B, and ch. The CH is being, is a chi there in Greek. Because in the original Semitic, this is actually a guttural sound, ch. that we don't even have in English and they didn't have in Greek either. So they're doing the best they can to transliterate this because Greek has this that is a Kai.

• 2:21:23Speaker 02

  It's the letter Kai in Greek. So they're doing the best they can to write this in, write this Aramaic sound in Greek.

• 2:21:30Speaker 03

  What's the Aramaic letter for the he?

• 2:21:34Speaker 02

  It's a it's a

• 2:21:36Speaker 03

  Okay, what does it look like?

• 2:21:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, it looks like a, it kind of looks like, well, it looks like a P thing. But it's the source of our Q.

• 2:21:41Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:21:42Speaker 02

  It's the source of our Latin Q, actually.

• 2:21:45Speaker 03

  Got it.

• 2:21:46Speaker 02

  Because the alphabet wandered from Phoenicia to Greece to the Etruscans and ultimately to Rome, and that's where we get it from. So you have this, you have this sound that the Greeks don't know what to do with, but they write the next closest thing, which is which is we transliterate with C H there into English. But that's a Kai. That's the letter, the letter Kai in Greek, right? We can go look at it. So yeah, however you want to pronounce it.

• 2:22:06Speaker 03

  Right, who cares? Modern Greeks.

• 2:22:08Speaker 02

  Modern Greeks, whatever. It's in ancient Greek. That's, that's what's going on there. The, the Semitic languages have the sound shuh. And Greek, as you know, does not have the sound shuh. So, so Greeks did not, could not pronounce the sound shuh. They did have the sound suh, like a regular S. And so anytime there is a word in any Semitic language that has a shuh sound, and there's lots of them, and they want to try to pronounce that in Greek, they write S instead of shuh because it's the next closest thing.

• 2:22:38Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 2:22:38Speaker 02

  Okay, so this is shabach in the original Aramaic, which means it's this trilateral root. You put vowels in the middle, shabach, that means to forsake. All right. You inflect it by putting a second singular masculine ending on it, which is the ta, the T H A there.

• 2:22:56Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:22:57Speaker 02

  That's the second singular masculine ending because Jesus is talking to God and second singular is you. Okay, so he's talking to you, God, singular. And then the ni, Semitic languages have this really cool thing where they, they actually just attach object pronouns right to the word. So in English, if you say have forsaken me, me is a separate word from forsaken. You don't say forsaken me, all as one word, right?

• 2:23:18Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:23:18Speaker 02

  But in Semitic languages, you, you say that all as one word, forsaken me. And you write it all as one word. So that ni is the first person singular object pronoun. So when Jesus says Sabak Dany, that's why it takes four English words, uh, which by the way, shows that, that Semitic languages are very elegant. They can actually express a lot of ideas that, that take us multiple words in English, which is another reason I, I, I push back against your idea that somehow Hebrew is, is not as superior as Greek because it's pretty cool. It's a very elegant language and this is Aramaic, which is similar to Hebrew, right? So he, so, so the author of Mark is, is going out of his way. He doesn't have to do this. He's writing in Greek, but he goes out of his way to say, actually Jesus said this in Aramaic. And then he quotes the exact Aramaic here.

• 2:24:02Speaker 03

  Well, he doesn't say he says it in Aramaic.

• 2:24:04Speaker 02

  That's Aramaic.

• 2:24:05Danny Jones?

  That's Aramaic, right?

• 2:24:06Speaker 03

  But he doesn't say it's in Aramaic.

• 2:24:09Speaker 02

  Elsewhere, there's another quote where he says, in Hebrew, Jesus said.

• 2:24:12Speaker 03

  Okay. But here he's not saying this is in Aramaic.

• 2:24:15Danny Jones?

  Why does it matter if he did? What, what, why would it matter if he says it? If it's written in air, if it's in Aramaic, why does he have to say it's Aramaic?

• 2:24:22Speaker 03

  Because it's written in Aramaic is our conclusion, is your conclusion.

• 2:24:25Speaker 02

  Okay. Go ahead. Argue against me.

• 2:24:26Speaker 03

  It's not, it's, go back to the Greek, go back to the Greek. Go back to the Greek text. Let's see. Maybe it's not Aramaic. Is it possible?

• 2:24:34Speaker 02

  It's written in Greek letters.

• 2:24:35Speaker 03

  Is it possible it's not in Aramaic?

• 2:24:38Speaker 02

  I have all ears.

• 2:24:39Speaker 03

  Bring me the text, right? Scholars, scholars entertain discussion, right? It's a museum. Blow it up, Steve, on the, on the verse. What verse was that?

• 2:24:50Speaker 02

  A little further down, a little further down.

• 2:24:52Speaker 03

  What verse is it? Do you remember?

• 2:24:54Speaker 02

  Some of the 30s.

• 2:24:54Speaker 03

  There it is. There it is. It's right above 35.

• 2:24:57Speaker 02

  Right in the upper middle, right, right side, right margin, right margin.

• 2:25:00Speaker 03

  No, no, go right, go right.

• 2:25:01Speaker 02

  There it is.

• 2:25:02Speaker 03

  There, stop.

• 2:25:02Speaker 02

  Right up, that, that, right there.

• 2:25:03Speaker 03

  Blow that up, that last word, that last word before the semicolon. And remember, there's your semicolon. Wait, just show me.

• 2:25:12Speaker 02

  That's not a semicolon. That's a question mark.

• 2:25:17Speaker 02

  In Greek, you write, you write question marks, semicolons.

• 2:25:20Speaker 03

  Right? And who put that in? Some Byzantine nerd. The Greeks didn't put that in.

• 2:25:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's true. I mean, all the punctuation is later. All the capitalization is later.

• 2:25:27Speaker 03

  Right. And the word spacing, there's no, there's no word spacing.

• 2:25:31Speaker 02

  Sometimes there's no spaces in the original.

• 2:25:32Speaker 03

  There's no spaces. Okay, Steve, Steve, blow it up.

• 2:25:35Speaker 02

  You just gotta know.

• 2:25:35Speaker 03

  Just blow up that one word. That's as blown up as I can get. Is that as blown up? Okay, just, just this one word, because this is the verb, and to be honest, this is the most interesting of the word. Verb is always awesome.

• 2:25:47Speaker 02

  Oh, sure.

• 2:25:47Speaker 03

  So if this is, is Aramaic, as you say, this, this should have really no Greek essence to it.

• 2:25:56Speaker 02

  Why?

• 2:25:57Speaker 03

  It should, it.

• 2:25:59Speaker 02

  What, what do you mean by Greek essence?

• 2:26:00Speaker 03

  Because there's no influence. There's no Aramaic influence on Greek.

• 2:26:04Speaker 02

  There are people bilingual with each other.

• 2:26:05Speaker 03

  We have no authors, though, who are saying, um, I'm gonna use this Aramaism, and I'm gonna write and write it out. We don't have that.

• 2:26:13Speaker 02

  Marcus is just doing this.

• 2:26:14Speaker 03

  Okay. Well, no, not if it's a quote.

• 2:26:17Speaker 02

  He's quoting him. Yeah.

• 2:26:18Speaker 03

  Right. It's just a direct quote. It's just a direct quote. You're saying, Sabachthon, is there anything in that that looks Greek? If I have read the Greek Magical with Pyrrhus, I now, my anus twitches, because you can see both the roots for Sabah, that worship, and the Thonian divinity that is the Christing head, the Ion, who is the person inside the synagogues, that is pictured on the walls of the synagogues, the god Ion, that is Sabah of the Thorn. This is used in magic. Jesus is from the cross, using magic Greek.

• 2:27:01Speaker 03

  And he's talking about that god that induces that transfer from death to resurrection. And if you look up, if, if you, you know, the Sabah root, right, that I'm talking about, and you know the Thonian.

• 2:27:16Speaker 02

  Sebrute, not the Sab root. Are you talking about Sebomai, to a worship?

• 2:27:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, Sebomai is the verb.

• 2:27:22Speaker 02

  So that's a different word.

• 2:27:23Speaker 03

  But here, the Sabah, no, this is the same. Sabathoth, the god, your Sabbath.

• 2:27:29Speaker 02

  That's different altogether.

• 2:27:29Speaker 03

  He's gonna say it's Hebrew. See? I told you. It's the same thing. Where is the literature that backs you up?

• 2:27:37Speaker 02

  What do you mean the literature that backs me up?

• 2:27:38Speaker 03

  Where's the literature outside the Bible that backs you up? Because I can give you literature outside of this that backs this up.

• 2:27:43Speaker 02

  We've already been over this methodological territory.

• 2:27:45Speaker 03

  It doesn't exist.

• 2:27:46Speaker 02

  We're just beating a dead horse.

• 2:27:46Speaker 03

  It doesn't exist, though.

• 2:27:47Speaker 02

  Because it got burned to the ground.

• 2:27:47Speaker 03

  No, it doesn't exist.

• 2:27:49Speaker 02

  Because it got burned to the ground.

• 2:27:50Speaker 03

  You don't have evidence that it exists. You don't have any Hebrew literature that's going to use the term Sabbath. What you have is Greek, and you have Greek in the magical. You have Greek that is telling us, even the pharmacology does this.

• 2:28:04Danny Jones?

  His reasoning for that is because he thinks it all got, well, he says, we know it all got burned down, burned to the ground.

• 2:28:10Speaker 03

  Magically got disappeared.

• 2:28:11Danny Jones?

  All the libraries are gone.

• 2:28:12Speaker 02

  There was nothing magic, it was imperialism.

• 2:28:13Speaker 03

  If your evidence got magically disappeared, it's easy to make whatever argument you want.

• 2:28:18Danny Jones?

  Sure, you can say that.

• 2:28:19Speaker 03

  The fact is, we have Greek evidence that where these roots are coming from.

• 2:28:22Speaker 02

  What are you talking about?

• 2:28:24Speaker 03

  Okay, Sabakthon. When you look in the PGM, we were just talking about the PGM. You've worked with professors who help translate it, right?

• 2:28:32Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:28:33Speaker 03

  And so did I.

• 2:28:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, go on.

• 2:28:35Speaker 03

  So fantastic. In the PGM, do we refer to the God of the Sabbath?

• 2:28:40Speaker 02

  Sabbath oath appears in the PGM.

• 2:28:42Speaker 03

  Right, right. Is that a Hebrew concept?

• 2:28:45Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 2:28:46Speaker 03

  Where's the Hebrew to back it up?

• 2:28:47Speaker 02

  It's behind the PGM. So we talked about the PGM earlier.

• 2:28:50Speaker 03

  It's behind it, so it doesn't exist.

• 2:28:51Danny Jones?

  Explain what you mean, it's behind the PGM? What do you mean by that?

• 2:28:54Speaker 02

  So we talked about the PGM earlier, actually right near the start of this. And I mentioned that the PGM is a collection of diverse cultures, cultural sources, okay? They reference Egyptian gods like Thoth, okay? So according to Ammon's argument here, if we see the Greek letters THOTH, that proves it's Greek and not Egyptian.

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• 2:30:13Speaker 02

  Which is not true, of course.

• 2:30:14Speaker 03

  No, no, that's not what I'm saying. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying the cult, because I'm not talking ethnicities. I'm talking language.

• 2:30:21Speaker 02

  I'm talking language too.

• 2:30:22Speaker 03

  The language conveys the practice of a cult and the cult terminology is the Sabbath Thon, the God of Sabbath.

• 2:30:29Speaker 02

  Okay, so we're actually...

• 2:30:31Speaker 03

  That is not Hebrew, that is Greek.

• 2:30:32Speaker 02

  Time out. We're dealing with three different things here that you're conflating and none of them have anything to do with each other. There's the Greek word sebomai, which means to revere, to worship. Theosebase means God worshiping, theosebase, okay? That's an Indo-European root. That goes back to the Indo-European root tiegwa, which is found as far afield as India.

• 2:30:54Speaker 03

  And you will put an asterisk, you will put an asterisk on that term because that is a backformation, you're guessing. Indo-European is guesswork.

• 2:31:04Speaker 02

  For the thousandth time, we're guessing about everything.

• 2:31:06Speaker 03

  Yes, guessing.

• 2:31:07Speaker 02

  Guessing about everything.

• 2:31:08Speaker 03

  Well, I'm not, these are texts and I don't want to guess. I have seen that expression in magical texts. That is not Hebrew or Aramaic. There is no guesswork here.

• 2:31:18Speaker 02

  He's quoting him in Aramaic.

• 2:31:19Speaker 03

  This is pure philology. There is no text that you have to back that up. There is no Hebrew doctrine, there's no Hebrew epics, there's no Hebrew place, there's nothing outside of the Hebrew Bible, nothing.

• 2:31:34Speaker 02

  I think we've already disproven that point several times, so I think we should move on. So here's the deal. Sebemai, all right, is a Greek word, goes back to an Indo-European root that is found, and you're right, backformed, because Indo-European language, proto-Indo-European, that was spoken by very early Greeks.

• 2:31:48Speaker 03

  Tell people what backformation is.

• 2:31:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, what it means. And I did my, my master's degree on this for two years. Okay. So, and honestly, I think, I think anyone who's interested in ancient texts should probably become a historical linguist. It's fascinating stuff. So what we do is we look at the texts that exist, the texts that exist in the real world, whether Greek, Sanskrit, Latin, Old English, whatever. And we notice similarities that are highly unlikely to be accidental. Okay. And, and the scholars, the European scholars who, who first noticed this, they, they already knew Greek and Latin. They went to India as part of the British colonial project that was there. And then they, they learned Sanskrit. Some of them learned Sanskrit. And they said Sanskrit is suspiciously similar to Greek and Latin. Okay. Now, there were

• 2:32:33Speaker 02

  always theories, like in, in antiquity, people already noticed that Latin and Greek were suspiciously similar. Their theories usually ran in the direction of, well, like the Latin is like a borrowing of Greek or something like that. But what, what, what, what scholars have, you know, recently realized in the past couple hundred years is that none of them are stealing from each other. The reason they look similar is the same reason that you look similar to your brothers and sisters and cousins. It's not because you stole genetic material from your brothers and sisters and cousins because you have a common ancestor. There's an, there's an evolutionary tree that's going on here. And so the Sanskrit word tiaj means to worship. It means to revere. It means to do that kind of thing. In, and, and we're talking about science and data. So historical linguistics is all about science

• 2:33:15Speaker 02

  and data. That's really all we do in historical linguistics. I think you'd like it, Aman. So you, so what happens?

• 2:33:21Speaker 03

  Me and the Grimm brothers, they're into the, they were in the.

• 2:33:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, Grimm's law is a famous sound law in, in ancient, ancient Germanic linguistics. So they, so what we've seen in historical linguistics is anytime you have the sound tia, it paladizes, that's kind of a technical term in linguistics, it paladizes to an S. All right. Tia becomes sa, which you got, you can almost kind of see how tia, sa, not that different, right? So anytime you have a tia in, in, in, in proto-Indo-European, it's going to become a sa in Greek. And then anytime you have a gua. It's gonna become a "bu", it simplifies to a "bu", so "seb" is the regular outcome of this hypothetical, but I think pretty well substantiated based on the linguistic evidence, Indo-European root that meant to worship. In Sanskrit, it doesn't change as much. The "gu" becomes a "ju", which we write "jay" usually, but it's in Daimonogori originally.

• 2:34:09Speaker 02

  And so you get this form, alright? So, "sebomai" is a well-understood Indo-European root that goes back thousands of years in the Greek language that means to worship, it's a native.

• 2:34:20Speaker 03

  So, backformation is the creation of a word that you don't have a text to back it up.

• 2:34:26Speaker 02

  That's because there were no texts 6,000 years ago. Right. Yeah, we already said that.

• 2:34:30Speaker 03

  So, the backformation is a creation. It's not a reality. In language and philology, it's not a reality. That's why they have to put an asterisk next to it in linguistics to show you this is not a real word.

• 2:34:47Speaker 02

  Do you think those are all made up?

• 2:34:47Speaker 03

  There is no evidence. They are all speculation, just like you were saying.

• 2:34:53Speaker 02

  Everything is.

• 2:34:53Speaker 03

  We are speculating.

• 2:34:55Speaker 02

  The question is, when we go to Vegas, what odds are we gonna get on that speculation?

• 2:34:58Speaker 03

  I don't wanna speculate.

• 2:35:00Speaker 02

  Then you can't do this work. All you can do is speculation, Alan. Everything is speculation.

• 2:35:04Speaker 03

  When you talk about historical linguistics, the Greeks themselves, the grammarians, I don't know if you read many grammarians, but I do. And the grammarians will talk about the influence of languages like Pulaskian with the double sigma. And they'll talk about how that arrives and the influences far west as the Etruscans. That's the type of historical development you don't have to put an asterisk next to. The Grimm Brothers, with all of their stories, oh god, it's just speculation. And I don't want speculation for this text. If I see other Greek texts that use this word and it's a magical text, that makes me think this is probably a magical term.

• 2:35:51Speaker 02

  Okay, so you keep harking on this thing, just speculation, just speculation, just speculation. But then in your work, we've already noticed that a lot of what you do is speculation.

• 2:35:59Speaker 03

  No, give me an example.

• 2:36:00Speaker 02

  Yes, we've already talked about this, okay?

• 2:36:02Speaker 03

  Give me an example.

• 2:36:02Speaker 02

  Like, like the earlier thing.

• 2:36:03Danny Jones?

  The fellatio?

• 2:36:04Speaker 02

  The fellatio, pure speculation.

• 2:36:05Speaker 03

  No, it said it was a euphemism. It said it's a euphemism. I didn't say that.

• 2:36:08Speaker 02

  Okay, you're, when you speculate that that's what that word means in that context, it's pure speculation. Now, we can go to Vegas and put odds on it, but you don't know that. We've already, we've already covered that ground.

• 2:36:18Speaker 03

  When it says it was in his hand.

• 2:36:20Speaker 02

  You don't know that.

• 2:36:20Speaker 03

  You don't think.

• 2:36:21Speaker 02

  Okay, another thing.

• 2:36:23Speaker 03

  Something's wrong. There's a wall here.

• 2:36:25Speaker 02

  Something is wrong, Amin. Something is wrong, Amin. So, it seems, it seems like you think that texts are divine. Like, you think that it's in the texts, that's all we got, texts are divine.

• 2:36:36Speaker 03

  No, I'm a classical philologist. That's all I do is texts.

• 2:36:39Speaker 02

  That's a problem, because you have to have context for the text. There's more to just what we're doing than just what the text is. We have to analyze it. We have to say, is this text wrong? Is it right? Who wrote it? What's the propaganda angle?

• 2:36:49Danny Jones?

  What was everyone else saying in different, in different professions surrounding that?

• 2:36:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:36:54Danny Jones?

  Like, doctors, or lawyers, or physicians, or whatever, philosophers.

• 2:36:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. Can it, can we return to Sabakthani? Because there's several more.

• 2:37:01Speaker 03

  My speculations. I want to hear more about them.

• 2:37:03Danny Jones?

  Let's wrap up, let's wrap this. I want to move on after this.

• 2:37:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, Amin, what did you say about the kathon? You said it's connected to kathon.

• 2:37:10Speaker 03

  Kathon is divinity, is correct.

• 2:37:12Speaker 02

  Okay, all right. So, let me point out the methodological problem with the way that you're, you're approaching this word. It seems that you're saying, hey, look, there's, there's this word that doesn't appear to be in Greek, because it's nonsense in Greek. Sabakthani doesn't mean anything Greek. But there's a part of it that looks like a word that is Greek.

• 2:37:28Speaker 03

  It's not nonsense.

• 2:37:29Speaker 02

  There's a part of it.

• 2:37:30Speaker 03

  No, it's not, no, you're wrong.

• 2:37:32Speaker 02

  No, I'm not wrong.

• 2:37:33Speaker 03

  That's not what I'm saying. It's not nonsense. Sabakthon is tested in the PGM. You can go and look at a goddamn ion, ion wall.

• 2:37:43Speaker 02

  Are you mixing up Sabakthon and Sabakthani?

• 2:37:44Speaker 03

  Do you know who the god Ion is?

• 2:37:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm familiar with it.

• 2:37:47Speaker 03

  What does Ion give the Jew or the Christian? Ionic life, it's why he's sitting in the synagogue.

• 2:37:55Speaker 02

  I own.

• 2:37:56Speaker 03

  Yes, and ideos. Why does that also mean eternity?

• 2:38:00Speaker 02

  What does this have to do with Sabathani?

• 2:38:01Speaker 03

  What is I, no, no.

• 2:38:02Speaker 02

  Can we focus here?

• 2:38:03Speaker 03

  Listen, I'm telling you, read so much Greek. I can show you.

• 2:38:07Speaker 02

  Mystically see things that nobody else, even me, cannot see.

• 2:38:10Speaker 03

  No, I'm showing you what experience does.

• 2:38:12Speaker 02

  Oh, so 20 years is not enough? Am I gonna learn this in year 30? 32? When am I gonna get to this?

• 2:38:17Speaker 03

  I'm gonna bring you, when I bring you an apocryphal text that uses Ionic right next to eternal ideos. And you will see the difference, but you haven't because you are trusting in Jesus.

• 2:38:31Speaker 02

  What are you talking about?

• 2:38:31Speaker 03

  You are trusting in that text. You are the one who's making this divine.

• 2:38:36Speaker 02

  I have no idea what you're talking about right now.

• 2:38:37Speaker 03

  Yes, no.

• 2:38:37Speaker 02

  Do you, Danny? No, I'm lost.

• 2:38:39Speaker 03

  Listen, listen, have you read Philomenus?

• 2:38:44Speaker 02

  Does it matter? Why does it matter?

• 2:38:45Speaker 03

  I'm asking you.

• 2:38:46Speaker 02

  You have to prove me why it matters. Not most of it, why does it matter?

• 2:38:49Speaker 03

  So you have no idea what's in Philomenus, correct?

• 2:38:52Speaker 02

  Hey, we're reading Mark, not Philomenus right now.

• 2:38:54Speaker 03

  If I told you Philomenus.

• 2:38:55Danny Jones?

  Yeah, let's try to stay on topic.

• 2:38:57Speaker 03

  Corroborate, I am.

• 2:38:58Danny Jones?

  It's becoming more confusing, trying to bring in all this other stuff that I don't even, I don't even know what you're talking about.

• 2:39:04Speaker 02

  Okay, so I want to get back to what we're talking about with kthon here, because I'm gonna interrupt you when I was trying to talk about this. So Ammon's methodology seems to be, hey, there's a Greek word kthon, which we both agree is a real Greek word that means earth. Okay, and it's in various compounds like, you know, different Ericthonius, mythical, mythical early King of Athens, etc.

• 2:39:21Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:39:21Speaker 02

  Okay, it's not the same word, there is a, there is a vowel different, kthon versus kthon, but at least it sounds like it. It's not the same word, but it sounds like, by the way, vowels are very important in Greek, you can't just substitute them in and out.

• 2:39:31Speaker 03

  Vowels tweet.

• 2:39:32Speaker 02

  Vowels are very important. So you can't, you can't say that kthon and kthon are the same thing, but, but let's give him the benefit of the doubt, say, oh, you know, they're mispronouncing it, okay, whatever. Let me, let me, hold on.

• 2:39:41Speaker 03

  Stop putting arguments in my mouth, that's disingenuous, man.

• 2:39:44Speaker 02

  You are mispronouncing it.

• 2:39:45Speaker 03

  You don't do that at Camus, do you?

• 2:39:46Speaker 02

  You are mispronouncing it.

• 2:39:47Speaker 03

  Do you talk about, do you talk about?

• 2:39:50Speaker 02

  I know you want to talk about this, because honestly, no one's gonna take you seriously.

• 2:39:53Speaker 03

  I was once a professor, I was unprofessional.

• 2:39:56Speaker 02

  So, here's the deal, so, we got kthon, which is a valid Greek word, we all agree with this, okay? Ammon says he sees the word kthon in this Aramaic word, or what, what everyone else except Ammon thinks is an Aramaic word.

• 2:40:08Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 2:40:08Speaker 02

  Sabathani, okay? So here's the problem with this kind of this kind of methodology. And I actually talk about this in my book on wine, which came out in my dissertation. I have a whole chapter on linguistics and linguistic methodology in that book. Okay. And in that chapter, literally the very first part of the chapter, when you open it up, is a quote from an ancient grammarian, because we were talking about this. I love the grammarians, okay. And, and they talk, they try to make connections like this. So Wait, wait, wait. Say that again. Hold on, hold on. Say that again. Well, let me explain. They try to make connections like this. Let me explain. Okay. Yeah. So I deal with the wine word, oinos, weenum, you know, this word that's floating around the ancient Mediterranean, right. And what I'm doing when I do this is I'm, I'm, first of all, I'm going all the way back to the original sources. What did the grammarian

• 2:40:53Speaker 02

  say about it? Like, what did the Greek grammarian say about this word? What did Romans say about this word? And their speculation usually relies on what I call in the book, the sounds like principle. Okay. So they'll say, the word oinos, or oinos in Greek means Diagama. You put the diagram. Of course, of course. Nice, nice. Love the diagram. So you got oinos or oinos, weenum in Latin, and they're already trying to figure out like where this word comes from, like what other words out there in the, in the universe is it connected to? Right. And they use what I call the sounds like principle. So what, and there's multiple layers of speculation where they say, oh, maybe it's connected to this word that sounds like oinos or oinos. Maybe it's connected to this. What, you know, one of them says, hey, maybe it's connected to this word oneseos, which means benefit, because oneseos, oinos

• 2:41:38Speaker 02

  kind of sound alike. They have most of the same consonants, right. And that's the, that's, that's the methodology that the ancient grammarians use. All right. Modern historical linguistics has moved far past that methodology. All right. We Oh, that sounds so arrogant. That sounds so arrogant. It's just called building on things. Do you think science, do you think science has actually What if you think the Greek is musical? Do you think science has made progress in the past 2000 years or not?

• 2:42:02Speaker 03

  Science is completely based on what that great concept of how to create a hypothesis.

• 2:42:09Speaker 02

  Okay, so has science progressed in the past 2000 years?

• 2:42:11Speaker 03

  Not beyond its roots. No. Technologically, yes, but not beyond its basic methodological roots.

• 2:42:19Speaker 02

  Well, what I'm saying is the methodology has progressed. And I told you we would come back to this time and time again. The methodology has progressed, all right? We are not doing the sounds like principle anymore because it didn't work. Let me explain. No, of course not. The Greeks were brilliant for their time period. Hey, you're talking to me. I love the Greeks. I love Greeks. So don't put words in my mouth.

• 2:42:39Speaker 03

  Just not Greek grammarians, right?

• 2:42:41Speaker 02

  Well, we read them, but we don't believe everything they say.

• 2:42:45Speaker 03

  This was antiquity. They're arguing like this in antiquity, too. The etymology of words is important to the Greeks. And some people say, you're full of shit, bro. You don't know what you're talking about.

• 2:42:55Speaker 02

  Here's why the sounds like principle doesn't work. So Aman is saying, okay, there's this, there's this part that sounds like something else that he has read, which is a legit thing, whatever. How do we know it's connected, though? All right. So there's lots of things that sound like other things. Okay. So for instance, let's say that as a linguist, I said that your name Danny contains the word knee. The last syllable contains knee, which proves that there's a connection to the knee that's your body part. And then I could make up a story. I could say your ancestors would knee people. I don't know. Who knows? Or, or maybe a little more fanciful. I could say, you know what? Your, your, your ancestors were the knights who said knee. Okay. Right. From, from Python, okay? Love, love that movie. Love that reference.

• 2:43:36Speaker 02

  And so your ancestors stood in a forest and, and demanded shrubberies from passing knights because of the knee in your name. Okay. That's where the sounds like principle leads us. I could do it with Sabatani. I could say, see the first syllable sob. That proves that it's connected to the Swedish car company that produces sobs. All right. That's where the sounds like principle can lead us. It can lead us anywhere random. Anything sounds like anything. It's not good enough, right? Right. So we need a more principled way of acting. And that's where the modern discipline of historical linguistics comes in. So the modern discipline, to go back to your name, I assume Danny short for Daniel. Okay. So Daniel is a Hebrew word. I don't know if Aman believes this or not, but everyone else does. Daniel's a Hebrew word and we can break it down into three morphemes.

• 2:44:21Danny Jones?

  So I'm Jewish?

• 2:44:21Speaker 02

  Uh, well, your name is.

• 2:44:23Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 2:44:23Speaker 02

  Your name is Hebrew. Yeah. But lots of our names are, mine isn't, but, but lots of our names are from some Hebrew source in the Hebrew Bible, which was written in Hebrew.

• 2:44:31Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:44:31Speaker 02

  So, um, so Daniel, we can break it down into three morphemes. Let me, your, your ears pricked up because I said morphine, but I didn't. Morpheme, morpheme, which is a meaning bearing unit of language. Every language has morphemes. Like if you say the word trees. There's two things that, that have meaning in there. Tree and tree means a thing that grows out of the ground. And this means plural.

• 2:44:54Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 2:44:54Speaker 02

  More than one. Okay. That's all a morpheme is. All right. So there are three morphemes in the name Daniel. Don, which is the Hebrew word for judge. E, the I in the middle of your name, which means my, it's the same I in Elohim, actually, right there. And L, which means God. L, which means God.

• 2:45:10Danny Jones?

  Hold on, hold on. This is interesting.

• 2:45:11Speaker 02

  Don, E, L means God is my judge. It literally means God, my judge. But you throw in the is to make it make sense.

• 2:45:16Speaker 03

  That's because you learn that because that's what Hebrew, ancient Hebrew grammarians wrote, right?

• 2:45:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, they got burned to the ground. We talked about that.

• 2:45:23Speaker 03

  Oh, but how do you know that then that that's what it means?

• 2:45:26Speaker 02

  We don't know anything. We talked about that too.

• 2:45:28Speaker 03

  Oh my God, am I stoned?

• 2:45:31Speaker 02

  You might be.

• 2:45:31Danny Jones?

  Yes, you are.

• 2:45:32Speaker 03

  Oh my God.

• 2:45:35Speaker 03

  Wait a minute, all of that was based on not having any evidence though? That's bad, brah. That's bad.

• 2:45:42Speaker 02

  I think we've gone through this already. I don't know if we need to go through that anymore.

• 2:45:45Danny Jones?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:45:46Speaker 02

  What time is it? We're already three hours in.

• 2:45:48Danny Jones?

  We're almost three hours in.

• 2:45:50Speaker 02

  We have a lot of ground to cover. We might have to come back.

• 2:45:52Danny Jones?

  We have to move on.

• 2:45:53Speaker 02

  So much to cover.

• 2:45:54Danny Jones?

  Yeah, we will.

• 2:45:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, can we come back?

• 2:45:56Danny Jones?

  Yeah, well, we're not going to end it right now. We still want to.

• 2:45:57Speaker 02

  Oh, no, I know.

• 2:45:58Danny Jones?

  Oh, you can absolutely do one.

• 2:45:59Speaker 02

  I just think we have another five hours left here. I mean, we got way more.

• 2:46:02Speaker 03

  I'm wondering if we're keeping the audience.

• 2:46:04Danny Jones?

  Yes. Yeah, we got, we really got stuck here on, on, in the weeds here on this, uh, this stuff about the subtuagen and this, this word. But so basically the, the case Luke is making is Jesus spoke Aramaic. He was Jewish and, and you think he was Greek. He think he only spoke Greek.

• 2:46:23Danny Jones?

  Textual evidence. Right. Which Amen loves. Right. The audience can make up their mind. We'll have to definitely do another one on this. So now I want to move on to Amen's biggest claim is that Christ is a pharmaceutical term. Now, the case Amen makes, and correct me if I'm wrong, is the original, the first time the word Christ was ever used in Greek was from Homer, and it's been used hundreds of times before Jesus Christ. Correct.

• 2:47:01Danny Jones?

  And Amen specializes in ancient pharmacology and ancient pharmacy, and he uses that context to corroborate all of this other historical writing we have from Homer and everything else, talking about christing arrows with poisons and all kinds of christing, right? Applying something to the skin, to the eyes, to, to an arrow, to something else. And he's taking that and connecting it to Jesus Christ, saying that he, Jesus was someone who was known and was connected to drugs. Is that, is that about right?

• 2:47:42Speaker 03

  Correct. Yes.

• 2:47:45Speaker 03

  Yeah. We have the reference. Bring up Odysseus. It's a gorgeous.

• 2:47:49Danny Jones?

  So he has tons of references and he sent us in our group chat, a whole list of. I read them all. Hundreds of references.

• 2:47:56Speaker 03

  Just to make a long story short, you can tell by having read all those references and you've read hundreds. I sent you over a hundred. If you search for all the compounds of christing, you're going to find thousands and thousands. There's, this is like not an unusual word. That's why when Bart Ehrman came along and said, I doubt if christing came before the septuagint.

• 2:48:21Speaker 03

  Why he looks so bad because it's overwhelming the history of this word. Biblical scholars have no idea what christing is. They don't know it's an actual drug. They don't know the action of christing as somebody applying a drug. They don't know that chrio is associated with oysters. The sting of the gadfly, the Greeks had established in mental, mental changes, frustration, craziness, mania, right? Those are all associated with being christed. We have it in Aeschylus himself with Io, right? And she says, what about this?

• 2:49:06Speaker 03

  I'm being christed by this powerful mind altering thing.

• 2:49:11Danny Jones?

  So from, from the arguments I've heard against Amen, me using my, my best judgment is that what most people believe is that christing was applying something. It could have been drugs. It could have been a roof. It could have been a coating underneath a ship to make ships more buoyant. They would christ him, painting something. Yes, it was drugs. It was lots of other things, but they don't believe that Christ had anything to do with this word similar to your Dick, Dick Cheney. Yeah, pulling a Dick Nixon. Dick Nixon, right? Sure, yeah. Okay. That seems to be the general pushback to Amen. But Amen thinks christing was exclusively drugs.

• 2:49:56Speaker 03

  No, no, no.

• 2:49:57Danny Jones?

  It definitely wasn't exclusively.

• 2:49:58Speaker 03

  You can christ plaster. No, see, here's the thing.

• 2:50:00Danny Jones?

  You can chrio all sorts of things.

• 2:50:01Speaker 03

  I don't come up with ideas. I just read the text. Now, in the overwhelming majority, it's drugs. You can christ plaster shit. Heraclitus christed himself with, with poop.

• 2:50:13Speaker 03

  Right? Dung. Um, there's all sorts of things. You can christ a ship with a pitch so that so that it's not waterproof, right?

• 2:50:22Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:50:23Speaker 03

  Um, but the overwhelming majority are drugs and the texts that I read are talking about the use over and over and even texts like, um,

• 2:50:33Danny Jones?

  And how do you know?

• 2:50:34Speaker 03

  Did, notice his paraphrase of John, he talks about the antidote, that's the Greek word.

• 2:50:41Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:50:41Speaker 03

  That was given to Jesus when he was on the cross. So this is not the association of christing. You can christ your penis. There's a very well-known satir's right where you christ the penis and you introduce that christ penis to the vagina and that process is to kickstart the mystery. It's a baccic satanic chorus. You didn't know, did you know in Greek that you have the expression the baccic satanic chorus?

• 2:51:11Speaker 02

  I mean, Satan is a Jewish idea, not a Greek idea. So what are you talking about?

• 2:51:14Speaker 03

  Do you, I'm asking you, did you know that there is a Greek text that uses the Greek term baccic satanic chorus?

• 2:51:24Speaker 02

  I'd have to see the text and I think you would agree.

• 2:51:25Speaker 03

  I would love to show it to you.

• 2:51:26Speaker 02

  This is probably not the time.

• 2:51:27Danny Jones?

  All right. Here's the point. Here's the point. Here's my question. Are you just saying it's overwhelmingly associated with drugs because you specialize in drugs and read drug texts or have you looked through everything?

• 2:51:41Speaker 03

  I'm saying performing a TLG search on everything that we've got on christing. The overwhelming majority are drug associated.

• 2:51:50Danny Jones?

  That should be pretty easy to prove or disprove, right? With the TLG.

• 2:51:54Speaker 02

  Okay. So what, do you think inject is a drug term?

• 2:51:56Speaker 03

  Uh, the English term?

• 2:51:58Speaker 02

  Inject, yeah, the English inject.

• 2:51:59Speaker 03

  Um, I think it's a pharmaceutically associated term.

• 2:52:03Speaker 02

  I agree. I agree. Yeah. So it's a term that is often used in drug contexts.

• 2:52:07Danny Jones?

  Sure.

• 2:52:07Speaker 02

  It's also used in other contexts. Like let me inject myself into this conversation.

• 2:52:11Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:52:11Speaker 02

  Right?

• 2:52:11Danny Jones?

  Correct.

• 2:52:11Speaker 02

  And so the verb creo in Greek is the same way. Okay.

• 2:52:15Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 2:52:15Speaker 02

  It can be used in various terms because it means to apply something, apply something to the surface of something else.

• 2:52:21Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:52:22Speaker 02

  So if you're applying. buying an ointment, which is a medicine, which could be called a drug, then sure, if you want to call that a drug term, go for it. I'm not going to argue with you on that. And, and, and you have all these references where, where there's some kind of ointment, some applied, you know, medicine, drug, pharma con.

• 2:52:38Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:52:38Speaker 02

  That's fine.

• 2:52:39Danny Jones?

  There was your epides, he said, was it a, what was it? Was it a potable or a Christ?

• 2:52:44Speaker 03

  What kind of drug is it? He says in a, in a politics, is it a Christ or is it a?

• 2:52:48Speaker 02

  Is it, is it one that's anointed and other smeared on like an unguent?

• 2:52:52Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:52:53Speaker 02

  Or is it one that you drink?

• 2:52:54Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:52:54Speaker 02

  And those are two main different kinds of drugs.

• 2:52:56Speaker 03

  There's also a, a big catch. You probably didn't catch this, or you did, and you went past it because you accepted the common modern notion in Greek, the expression in Christoi, right? Is coupled with Yesu, a genitive form of Jesus in the Christ of Jesus. It, every time it occurs in Paul, it's in the Bible in general, it's translated as, but Paul uses it most. It's translated as in Jesus Christ. We have faith in Jesus Christ. We have this in Jesus Christ. The problem is that genitive is just a genitive and nowhere else in Greek are you going to translate that as part of that dative?

• 2:53:40Speaker 03

  So it literally should be translated in the Christ of Jesus. Jesus was performing the mystery openly. The fact that he is casting out demons is perfect, perfect evidence of that. He knows these terms or he wouldn't be called the one who was Christed. And there wouldn't be a naked kid with a medicated bandage.

• 2:54:06Speaker 02

  We're getting ahead of ourselves here.

• 2:54:06Speaker 03

  With, with, with him there.

• 2:54:09Danny Jones?

  So do you think Christ knew, spoke Greek or knew Greek at all?

• 2:54:12Speaker 02

  Probably not.

• 2:54:13Speaker 03

  Oh my God. Oh my God. Right. Who knew Hebrew? If there's that much Hebrew.

• 2:54:18Speaker 02

  He didn't speak Hebrew. He spoke Aramaic. We talked about that.

• 2:54:20Speaker 03

  And if there's that much Hebrew, then there would have been documents left.

• 2:54:23Speaker 02

  This magical disappearance of all the Hebrew. We're not talking about Hebrew anymore. We're talking about Aramaic.

• 2:54:28Danny Jones?

  So if you, you agree, you agree with Luke that Christing was similar to the English word inject? Christ was similar to inject.

• 2:54:36Speaker 03

  I think that.

• 2:54:37Danny Jones?

  Inject is commonly associated today as injecting something into your body, but you can also use other words. I would say it's overwhelmingly associated with a syringe, right? Obviously, but you can use that expression for other things like a conversation or whatever.

• 2:54:51Speaker 03

  If you could expand it to.

• 2:54:53Danny Jones?

  Would you agree with him on that?

• 2:54:54Speaker 03

  When you say inject, though, you're not including things like injection. What is the substance? That Christ becomes the substance as opposed to the act of Christing. So inject, okay.

• 2:55:05Speaker 02

  This is important.

• 2:55:06Speaker 03

  Maybe injection.

• 2:55:07Danny Jones?

  An injection. Okay, I see what you're saying.

• 2:55:08Speaker 02

  And then you have like fuel injection engines.

• 2:55:11Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:55:11Speaker 02

  Which doesn't have to do with drugs, but has to do with something else.

• 2:55:13Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:55:14Speaker 02

  We're being put into something else, right? Yeah.

• 2:55:15Danny Jones?

  Sure.

• 2:55:15Speaker 02

  I think we agree on that mostly.

• 2:55:17Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 2:55:17Speaker 03

  Okay, let's go.

• 2:55:18Danny Jones?

  So where do we disagree here?

• 2:55:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, so this is an important thing that you just brought up, which there's different parts of speech. There's inject, there's injection, there's past participles, there's present participles. You have this verb creo in Greek, which is a well-understood verb. There's, you can make a present participle out of it. In English, our present participle ending is ing, right? So you're anointing, if we just use the sort of whatever term anointing. Anointing, like I am anointing my body with some drug or all of it, it doesn't matter. And then there's the past participle, which means you have been anointed. Okay? I want to use the word just to kind of to make this this point here. I want to use the word bite, which is a different word, but the reason I'm using this word is going to become clear.

• 2:56:02Speaker 02

  Specifically, in English, our past tense, like I anointed my body yesterday, and the past participle, my body has been anointed, are often identical with most verbs, but that's confusing the point because in Greek, they're not identical, as I'm a no.

• 2:56:15Speaker 03

  Because Greek is sexy.

• 2:56:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, because I'm a thinks Greek is superior, which I love Greek too, so whatever. So I'm using bite because because in English, bite is one of the relatively small number of verbs where the past tense is different from the past participle. I bit. Into a cake yesterday, but I have been bitten. So bitten is the past participle. If you were in a state of having been bitten, then you were already bit and you have been resulted from that action. Like I was bitten by, and I'm going to get into this, I was bitten by a vampire. I was not, that's not a confession, but that's, you know, that's, that's how we would use the term, right? So bite, bit, bitten. Biting is the present participle, bitten is the past participle.

• 2:56:58Speaker 02

  So the first point I want to make is that, is in this, you know, this is, I just want to make it clear because I'm here to call balls and strikes and I think people, people know, you know, this, this is the simplest grammatical thing in the world. Christing is not a word in Greek. And let me explain, because I'm not accusing you of anything super, I'm just explaining here, all right? Christos is a past participial form of krio. So the kri in christos is the verb part, the tos part at the end is a past participle. It means, yeah, like bitten, exactly like bitten, is one who has been anointed. A christos can be one who has been anointed or a drug, like in the,

• 2:57:34Speaker 03

  Jesus the Christ, right?

• 2:57:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're gonna get there, we're gonna get there. We're gonna get there. It's somebody who has been, had an action, an action of anointing that has done to them. So I just, again, I just want to make clear that the ing ending is the present participle and you can't mix those two. Okay? So when Ammon says christing, he's actually taking the T of the past participle and then putting a present participle onto it and you will never find that form in Greek.

• 2:57:59Speaker 03

  No, I'm making an English word.

• 2:58:01Speaker 02

  Correct. Yeah, you're making a neologism and we deal with neologisms all the time. So I just want to make it clear.

• 2:58:06Speaker 03

  Just because I don't want to say anoint, because

• 2:58:08Speaker 02

  Because it sounds like something else.

• 2:58:10Speaker 03

  The verb is krio, the verb is krio. So just use the Christ, just use the root. It's Christ.

• 2:58:16Speaker 02

  But the work that that neologism is doing for you is that it's, it's making people who don't know Greek think the connection to Christ is more obvious than it is.

• 2:58:24Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 2:58:25Speaker 02

  Because that's not a word, that's not a word in Greek. But you're doing the, you're making the argument without doing the work by using that word.

• 2:58:32Speaker 03

  If they had read though, if this audience that we're talking to that we're right now, if they had read all these documents in Greek, it's going to hit them like it's hitting you.

• 2:58:40Danny Jones?

  Yeah, you can say that all day long, but they're never going to do that. So you have to make a case in. Something we can understand.

• 2:58:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:58:46Speaker 02

  Right. So this is me calling balls and strikes.

• 2:58:47Danny Jones?

  Sure.

• 2:58:48Speaker 02

  I'm saying that's not a word in Greek. It's based on a true story.

• 2:58:50Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:58:51Speaker 02

  But it, there's no word Christing in Greek. All right. Because that's a past participle.

• 2:58:54Danny Jones?

  Christing.

• 2:58:55Speaker 02

  Christing is not a word.

• 2:58:56Danny Jones?

  Christing.

• 2:58:57Speaker 02

  Cry, cry, crying, which is not a word either. I just made it up with an I.

• 2:59:02Speaker 03

  How about the participle, Chriomenos?

• 2:59:04Speaker 02

  Well, that's also a participle. That's a present, medieval passive participle.

• 2:59:06Speaker 03

  It's Christing though. How would you translate that?

• 2:59:08Speaker 02

  Being anointed? That's what that means. Chriomenos. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. I just wanted to establish that.

• 2:59:15Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 2:59:15Speaker 02

  Hopefully not controversial. I just wanted to make sure that we're all on the same page here so that people understand that, that, that, that Amen has created a Neologism, which he's welcome to as long as we know that he's created a Neologism. Okay, let's move on.

• 2:59:27Danny Jones?

  So wait, so does that mean that, that the current word is different?

• 2:59:32Danny Jones?

  Like that the current, so is anointed?

• 2:59:34Speaker 02

  So Christ comes from the Greek word Christos, which is, which is a past participial form, which means the anointed one.

• 2:59:40Speaker 03

  Technically.

• 2:59:41Speaker 02

  The person who has been anointed.

• 2:59:42Danny Jones?

  The person who has been bitten.

• 2:59:44Speaker 03

  Technically, it comes from the verb.

• 2:59:46Danny Jones?

  Christos means you're bitten, a bitten one.

• 2:59:48Speaker 02

  You've been anointed.

• 2:59:49Danny Jones?

  Anointed, Christed one.

• 2:59:50Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 2:59:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, except not Christed, the, the anointed one.

• 2:59:53Danny Jones?

  Anointed.

• 2:59:53Speaker 02

  But again, it's a Neologism, as long as we're all clear. You can use a Neologism as long as we're.

• 2:59:57Danny Jones?

  That makes sense. That makes sense.

• 2:59:58Speaker 02

  Okay, cool. Cool. Onward. So I want to, I want to take an analogy here, using this word bite that, that I think will help us understand.

• 3:00:05Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 3:00:05Speaker 02

  And Amen's going to disagree with this. I'm going to say it anyways. It's what 99.99% of us would agree with. Uh, except maybe Amen, but let's, let's hear what he says.

• 3:00:14Speaker 03

  Let's see. I'm excited.

• 3:00:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Okay. So as, as I've already said, Greek was the colonial language of the day.

• 3:00:21Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 3:00:22Speaker 02

  And, and in that sense, it's like modern English. All right. Modern English has spread all over the globe. Partially, that's the legacy of, of, you know, British colonialism for the past three, 400 years or whatever. British people sailed everywhere, you know, Australia, New Zealand, uh, obviously North America, South Africa, wherever. They've taken English and, and lots of people who didn't used to speak English, uh, their descendants now speak English. Right? Like, like the Maori in New Zealand were the natives. They didn't speak English. But now because it's a colonial language, they, they, they now speak English, right? Greek was the same way. Greek was a language that was originally just spoken in a relatively small part of the world called Greece, and not even all of it that we would call Greece. They really just the southern part. And then Alexander the Great comes along and Alexander

• 3:01:07Speaker 02

  the Great conquers everything from Greece to India, including Egypt, Palestine, and everywhere in between, right? So he, he brings the Greek language all over, all over that part of the world. He spreads it all over that part of the world. And it becomes the colonial language of the day, just like English has become the colonial language of our day. And so you have a lot of people speaking Greek, post Alexander, and Jesus is living 300 some odd years after Alexander the Great. So he's living in what we call the, the, the Hellenistic period, which means the Greek period. The Greeks called themselves the Hellenes. So you have a lot of local colonized ethnicities who are speaking Greek sometimes.

• 3:01:49Speaker 02

  Okay. But sometimes they're not. Okay. So oftentimes what there is, is there's an upper crust, and this happens in Egypt. We all know this happens in Egypt. There's an upper crust of, say, Egyptians who speak Greek because it is the cosmopolitan colonial language of the day. But the, the everyday peasants in Egypt are not speaking Greek. They're speaking Coptic, all right? Which is the native Egyptian language. Like, they didn't get it from anywhere. That's just what they've always been speaking there in Egypt. And we have Coptic records from a little bit later. Okay. So this is the, this is the case in a lot of the Greek speaking world of the Eastern Mediterranean. Okay. And this is similar, and I'm going to extend this analogy. This is similar to, to English speakers.

• 3:02:32Speaker 02

  Let's say the British sailed to the South Pacific, which we know they did, James Cook, whatever. And I'm just going to invent a, a South Pacific community. It doesn't really matter who for the purpose of the analogy. And there is a local Polynesian group, Polynesianly ethnic, I just made up an adverb, Polynesianly ethnic group in the South Pacific. That has their own local customs, but then the British show up and they colonize them. And there might be some people who learn English, but then most of the like to deal with their English colonial overlords or whatever. And of course, at this point, English becomes the elite language. And if you're a Polynesian person from this South Pacific country, island chain or whatever, and you want to leave, you're going to need to know English to go to Australia, New Zealand, Britain, United States, whatever.

• 3:03:15Speaker 02

  Okay. So, so you have this colonial relationship that is going on. Okay, let's say that there is a, a, a tradition in this, this local Polynesian island chain. Again, it's hypothetical, but I'm making, I'm making a point because this is actually the history of the era we're dealing with 2,000 years ago. And they have a tradition, I'm going back to this bite word now, they have a tradition. And, and I made this up specially for you because I know you like this. They have a tradition where if you become the ruler, or maybe in order to become the ruler of the, of, of this local island, you have to get bitten by a snake. You like this, right? I knew you would like this. You have to get bitten by a snake. They put a snake up to your arm. It's non venomous. It doesn't kill you. Maybe Amen would say it's going to inject you with some pharmac or whatever.

• 3:04:00Speaker 03

  Boring.

• 3:04:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, you can't die because you're going to be the ruler.

• 3:04:03Speaker 03

  Use the venomous snake.

• 3:04:04Speaker 02

  You're going to be the ruler. Give me the rule. You can't die. Can't fall over.

• 3:04:07Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 3:04:08Speaker 02

  So, so in, in this local Polynesian community, they refer to their kings as the bitten ones. And it's based on a very specific ceremony that they do in, in their part of the world to, to create rulers. They get bitten by a snake.

• 3:04:27Speaker 03

  That's cool.

• 3:04:28Speaker 02

  It is cool. I just made it up just for you. Okay.

• 3:04:31Speaker 03

  So you're making this up?

• 3:04:33Speaker 02

  Yes. Yeah, sorry.

• 3:04:34Speaker 03

  God damn it. I thought there were some.

• 3:04:37Speaker 02

  Well, there might be. I don't know. I'm not a Maori expert.

• 3:04:39Speaker 03

  I was gonna say they should have a theriak. And then when they got bitten, they wouldn't.

• 3:04:43Speaker 02

  Okay. So let's keep going. So, uh, they, they've been colonized by the English. They are hoping for freedom from, from, from English colonial overlords. All right. And they are hoping that one of their bitten ones, which is their rulers, will rise up and throw the English out. And so they're, they're looking forward to the day that a bitten one, and of course, they're using their own native Polynesian language, which again is hypothetical. It's like, it's like Hawaiian, it's like Maori, it's one of those languages. It doesn't matter what the word is. It's not the word bitten, because that's an English word, and they're not speaking English, because they're a local people, right? They're not speaking English. So they use this word bitten to refer to, to their kings, and then they are looking forward to a king, a bitten one, as they would call them in their local language, who

• 3:05:28Speaker 02

  is going to, to kick the English out, so they can get their freedom back. Okay. Now, let's say that there is a, is a, is a wannabe ruler in this local Polynesian society, and, and, and some people think he is the bitten one who is to come, and some people don't, and there's arguments about them. And then, he, he dies, and, and then there are missionaries who go out from those Polynesian islands, and they believe that he, he came back from the dead, or some religious thing happened, it doesn't really matter, but there's some, they think some religious thing happened with this guy. And, but they, they decide they're gonna leave their native islands and go preach the message of the bitten one to other places in the world.

• 3:06:10Speaker 02

  When they do that, they can't use their own language to spread that message anymore, because no one, except the people on their island chain, understands their local language. They have to use English, right? Because English is the global colonial language. So they translate that native term, that was referring to a native, kind of, you know, unusual custom of getting bitten by a snake, to be, to be a ruler, right? They, they translate that word as bitten into English. And then they go out and preach the message of the bitten one in English. Now, in the English-speaking world, they have to explain what they even mean by a bitten one, right? Because if someone rolled up to you and said, "Have you heard the good news of the bitten one?", you'd be like, "What? What does that even mean, right?" Nobody knows what that means, because we're not Polynesian. Right. Okay, we're not from this, this, this local culture. And we're not familiar with the whole snake biting ritual.

• 3:06:54Speaker 02

  We're not familiar with the whole snake biting thing, and honestly, at some point, it gets attenuated to the point that maybe the people preaching it to you don't even remember that ritual. Right. They just call him the bitten one, because that's, that's, that's, that's what he's known for, as being the bitten one, right? But now they're using English. They weren't originally using English, but now they're using English, okay? And so they're preaching the message of the bitten one in the United States, in England, and, and some people are converting. People who are not Polynesian, who never spoke that Polynesian language, but they hear about this, this hypothetical, potentially religious divine figure called the bitten one, and they decide to convert to bitonism. Okay. All right. Now, some people.

• 3:07:31Danny Jones?

  Bitteranity.

• 3:07:32Speaker 02

  That's perfect. I love it. Bitteranity. So in the English speaking world, that word bitten has been, it's a native word that stretches back to Old English. This is, this, this word is attested in Shakespeare's, destined in Chaucer. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's a good Old English word. All right. So we have a thousand plus year literary textual history of this word bitten. But it, but that doesn't, that, those uses of the word bitten from a thousand years ago don't have anything to do with this new use from Polynesia of the word bitten. It's actually a translation of a local Polynesian term and a translation of a local Polynesian custom.

• 3:08:07Speaker 03

  Do we have texts about the bitten?

• 3:08:09Danny Jones?

  Hold on, let's finish this.

• 3:08:10Speaker 02

  Well, I just, I just made it up. I wish we do. I'm making this up.

• 3:08:12Speaker 03

  No, no, I'm asking you, in this hypothetical world.

• 3:08:15Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 3:08:15Speaker 03

  We have texts, right? Because the Polynesians.

• 3:08:18Speaker 02

  They probably didn't write it down.

• 3:08:19Speaker 03

  No, they didn't write anything down either.

• 3:08:21Speaker 02

  They probably didn't. Yeah. In the hypothetical, it's not strange at all. Most, most cultures that have ever existed never had texts. I mean, you agree with that, right?

• 3:08:28Speaker 03

  Most cultures that have existed have never had texts because most cultures that have existed have crap language.

• 3:08:36Speaker 02

  Okay. Well, that's your judgment and that's fine. You're welcome to, I don't think that's why.

• 3:08:39Speaker 03

  I am totally biased.

• 3:08:40Speaker 02

  All right. That's fine. You make your bias. I respect that.

• 3:08:42Speaker 03

  In your hypothetical example, if there was written, why do these cultures always not leave anything written?

• 3:08:49Speaker 02

  Most of them don't.

• 3:08:50Speaker 03

  If, if what you're saying is true.

• 3:08:51Speaker 02

  It gets destroyed.

• 3:08:52Danny Jones?

  Interesting. So, so, so why?

• 3:08:54Speaker 02

  Can I say one more thing about this?

• 3:08:55Danny Jones?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Continue.

• 3:08:56Speaker 02

  So just one more thing. In, in English, we have a rich tradition of vampire literature. And in vampire literature, there is a clear connection to the word bitten. Right? Like you're bitten by a vampire and then something happens, right? So when these, when these missionaries from Polynesia roll up into English speaking places and they, and they preach the message of the bitten one, some people think they're talking about vampires. Because we know that there is, in fact, in English,

• 3:09:23Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 3:09:23Speaker 02

  You know, this tradition of vampire literature.

• 3:09:25Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:09:25Speaker 02

  Now, if we understand the history, there's, this was not a vampire king.

• 3:09:30Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:09:30Speaker 02

  Okay, from Polynesia, there's this, there's this, uh, uh, local custom about being bitten by a snake, but it doesn't have to do with vampires. But a lot of people are gonna think that it has to do with vampires. And then, when this new religious tradition gets loose in the global English-speaking community, some people are going to start to worship the bitten one as a vampire lord. Because they misunderstand the original meaning of it. Or they're just like, hey, I mean, we got biting, we got bitten ones in English, they're vampires. Now, from a historical perspective, we would say, well, we know that that's not the original meaning of the word. But there, there, there may well be people, and there probably are going to be people in this hypothetical scenario, who take, who take this, this religious figure, this new religious figure from an ethnicity that's, that's not even English.

• 3:10:15Speaker 02

  Um, and from a language specifically that's not even English, and they are going to say, oh, there's a connection. Okay, let me bring this back, you can probably already see where this is going. Jews were a subject colonized population by Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great conquered that whole area, including Palestine, which is where Jews were living around Jerusalem in the 300s B.C. Jews were not speaking Greek at the time that Alexander the Great colonized them.

• 3:10:38Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 3:10:38Speaker 02

  Why would they? He was the one who brought the Greek.

• 3:10:40Speaker 03

  How about the Jews in Asia Minor?

• 3:10:42Danny Jones?

  One second, I don't want to derail this yet, let's, let's.

• 3:10:45Speaker 02

  So, so it's generally conceded that the Jews who were living in and around Jerusalem, when Alexander showed up for the first time bringing Greek, were speaking Aramaic. Okay? Hebrew was already a liturgical language by that point, but their living language was Aramaic. Which, by the way, is why Jesus gets quoted.

• 3:10:58Danny Jones?

  What do you mean liturgical language?

• 3:10:59Speaker 02

  Liturgical is like Latin in the Catholic Church today. It's used in, in, in religious circumstances.

• 3:11:05Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 3:11:06Speaker 02

  Um, but it's not, it's not a language that people speak every day with each other.

• 3:11:10Danny Jones?

  Got it.

• 3:11:10Speaker 02

  You know, unless you're the Pope and you learned Latin or something. Okay, so, that, that's what I mean by liturgical. So the Aramaic was like their regular language they used with each other on a daily basis.

• 3:11:19Speaker 03

  When you say that they were assuming they're using it, the Aramaic, is that because we have Aramaic texts?

• 3:11:26Speaker 02

  We do. We have lots of Aramaic texts from the second temple period.

• 3:11:28Speaker 03

  Fantastic.

• 3:11:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. And some of the later books of the Hebrew Bible, AKA Old Testament, are written in Aramaic. Like, a whole chunk of Daniel is written in Aramaic. Yeah, which is probably from that period, right?

• 3:11:38Danny Jones?

  All right.

• 3:11:38Speaker 02

  And we have other Aramaic.

• 3:11:39Speaker 03

  So you have that. That's data. I love that.

• 3:11:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:11:41Danny Jones?

  So Alexander the Great comes.

• 3:11:42Speaker 02

  Alexander the Great comes. He's the one bringing Greek for the first time to Palestine. There's no evidence of Greek speakers in Palestine until Alexander comes. But just like in my analogy, or my metaphor, or whatever, he's the colonial power who's coming and conquering this other area, just like the British come and conquer Polynesia.

• 3:12:01Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:12:01Speaker 02

  And bring English. So Alexander's bringing Greek, just like they're bringing English. There are local customs. They're, obviously, they're, the Jews are their own ethnicity. They're not Greek. Okay. Of course, over the centuries, there's, there's over 300 years between Alexander and Jesus, right? You have the upper crust of Jews learning Greek, because it's the cosmopolitan language. It's the elite language, just like in what I was saying. You would have upper-level Polynesians maybe learning English so they could travel. They could talk to their English overlords, their colonial overlords, whatever. Okay. But you still have most of the people, the common people, the peasants, who are not being educated, who are speaking the local traditional language of Aramaic and not Greek.

• 3:12:45Speaker 02

  Now, Jesus is very likely one of them. This is where we're going to disagree. But Jesus was very likely one of those peasants. He doesn't seem to have come from a wealthy family. He seems to have lived a poor peasant existence. And he's gathering his followers from the peasantry and not the upper-level groups. He never goes to the elite cities where Greek is being spoken. So nobody who reads the Bible.

• 3:13:09Speaker 03

  How do we know that?

• 3:13:10Speaker 02

  Well, let's read the Bible. Let's go back to the text, because you like the text.

• 3:13:13Speaker 03

  How do you know he didn't, like, I'm genuinely asking this, as a Bible scholar. How do you know that he didn't? How can you make the statement, Jesus never went to Alexandria?

• 3:13:23Speaker 02

  Well, we can't for sure, because here we go, for sure. Right? What's going on?

• 3:13:28Danny Jones?

  Sounds like a battery backup.

• 3:13:31Speaker 03

  Oh God.

• 3:13:33Speaker 02

  Huh?

• 3:13:33Speaker 03

  We broke the system.

• 3:13:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. So should I pick up with like, sort of, I already fleshed out the analogy, but like bringing it into what we're really talking about here.

• 3:13:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:13:43Speaker 02

  So, so you have Alexander, he's, he's bringing Greek as this colonial language with all his conquests. The upper crust in these, in these, among these local subject populations speak Greek, but most of the peasants never learn it. They're still speaking their, their native language. In Egypt, they're speaking Coptic, which is a native Egyptian language. In Palestine, they're speaking Aramaic, because that's by this point, the native Jewish language. All right. And everywhere else, they're speaking anything. Okay. All over the place, there's different subject languages.

• 3:14:11Speaker 03

  Barbarian.

• 3:14:12Speaker 02

  Well, that's what the Greeks, that's what the Greeks called them, right? The Greeks called them barbarians, because the Greeks were chauvinist.

• 3:14:17Speaker 03

  They don't speak Greek.

• 3:14:17Speaker 02

  But most cultures are chauvinist.

• 3:14:19Speaker 03

  Because they don't speak Greek, man.

• 3:14:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:14:21Speaker 03

  And it was all ethnicities. The Syrians spoke Greek.

• 3:14:24Speaker 02

  Well, at some point, at some point, they learned it, right? At some point, at some point.

• 3:14:28Speaker 03

  Mother Greek went down and seduced them. They all abandoned the crap they were speaking, and they embraced it, just like the Judeans in Alexandria.

• 3:14:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. Just, just to make the point, I'll say, and if you go to a linguist school, they're never going to say that some languages are crap.

• 3:14:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, of course not.

• 3:14:44Speaker 02

  That's your personal opinion, fine.

• 3:14:45Speaker 03

  No.

• 3:14:46Speaker 02

  All right. We disagree on that, but that's, that's neither here nor there.

• 3:14:49Speaker 03

  Right.

• 3:14:50Speaker 02

  That's fine.

• 3:14:50Speaker 03

  It's just me, I'm, I'm free to say that.

• 3:14:52Speaker 02

  You were free to say whatever you want.

• 3:14:54Speaker 03

  I would never have said that as a professor.

• 3:14:55Speaker 02

  I mean, I don't believe it, honestly. Like, I'm, I'm telling you what I believe, I don't think that's true. Okay. So, so to, to bring my analogy to, to, because that was all hypothetical, the Polynesians and everything else.

• 3:15:06Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 3:15:07Speaker 02

  You have Jesus, and oh, I, you know, we were talking, and you brought up the good point, how do we know Jesus didn't speak Greek? We don't. Okay, we're, we're doing exactly what you want us to do, which is look at the text. Okay, so when, every time Jesus is directly quoted, it's in Aramaic, like what we looked at. I know we disagree, I think I made my point. So, it's in Aramaic, there's a couple other texts. Maybe when we come back, we can look at the other text.

• 3:15:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:15:27Speaker 02

  Whatever, neither here nor there. So, when he's quoted, it's in Aramaic. And, and again, his earlier, earliest followers are these peasant Jews who seem to be speaking Aramaic and not Greek. You have, you have John writing the Book of Revelation in Greek. And he's a, he's a Jewish guy, but his Greek looks like a guy who learned Greek as a second language as an adult, and he's making some basic grammatical mistakes. Like a second language learner.

• 3:15:56Speaker 05

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• 3:16:26Speaker 02

  Okay, like somebody who moved from, who, who, who learned a local native language, but then moved to London and had to learn English.

• 3:16:33Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 3:16:34Speaker 02

  As an adult, and he never gets quite comfortable with it, but then he has to, that's what Revelation looks like in Greek. I know you're familiar with the Greek of Revelation. It's, it's, it's pretty trippy, right? It's pretty trippy. Anyways.

• 3:16:44Speaker 03

  I wouldn't say uneducated.

• 3:16:46Speaker 02

  I didn't say uneducated.

• 3:16:47Speaker 03

  Or language, or language way.

• 3:16:49Speaker 02

  I didn't say uneducated.

• 3:16:50Speaker 03

  People criticize Peter too. They say, ah, it's Greek, isn't it? Fuck you, man. Peter's awesome. His Greek is great. I worked with an M div on, on Peter, and I can't, I can't fault his style, baby. People say he's not as good as Paul. Fuck you. You know what I mean?

• 3:17:06Speaker 02

  In First Peter, he says that he wrote this letter, Dia Solanu, which means through the agency of Sylvanus, who's a Greek guy, which means that Peter, as a native Aramaic speaker, is probably telling this content to his friend who's bilingual in Aramaic and Greek, and Sylvanus is writing it in Greek form.

• 3:17:24Speaker 03

  Sylvanus is his bitch.

• 3:17:26Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 3:17:27Speaker 03

  And he does exactly what he should do.

• 3:17:30Speaker 02

  Scribes were very common back then.

• 3:17:31Speaker 03

  So is Mark, man. Mark is up his bitch too. And he's writing.

• 3:17:35Speaker 02

  How are you defining bitch here again?

• 3:17:38Speaker 02

  What's your, what's your specific technical?

• 3:17:39Danny Jones?

  Define bitch.

• 3:17:41Speaker 03

  Somebody who is subservient.

• 3:17:45Speaker 02

  His servant.

• 3:17:45Speaker 03

  To another.

• 3:17:46Speaker 02

  His servant.

• 3:17:47Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:17:47Speaker 02

  Sure, there are lots of servants.

• 3:17:48Speaker 03

  No, not technically a slave, right? Doesn't have to be that, right?

• 3:17:53Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:17:54Speaker 03

  Akolutho, I'm your attendant.

• 3:17:56Speaker 02

  Follower, attendant, sure.

• 3:17:57Speaker 03

  There you go.

• 3:17:58Speaker 02

  That's fine.

• 3:17:58Speaker 03

  That's fine.

• 3:17:59Speaker 02

  That's fine. Okay, right. So, so Jesus, just like our, our local Polynesian bitten one.

• 3:18:07Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 3:18:07Speaker 02

  There's these, there's a local Jewish custom.

• 3:18:10Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:18:10Speaker 02

  Of anointing kings and usually it's with olive oil. All right? Maybe Amen would have some theory about the.

• 3:18:16Danny Jones?

  It was a Jewish custom of anointing kings with olive oil.

• 3:18:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it goes all the way back throughout the Bible. Every Jewish king gets, and, and sometimes priests and prophets as well. They get olive oil poured on their heads, which is a local custom. The Greeks, the Romans don't do this, but, but Jews do it. And that's their traditional way of showing that you've, you've been inaugurated. Okay, the, the example I always use, because everyone's going to get it, is it's like putting your hand on the Bible and saying the oath when you become president. If you think about it, that's kind of a weird custom.

• 3:18:44Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 3:18:44Speaker 02

  That's how we Americans do it.

• 3:18:46Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 3:18:46Speaker 02

  And, and that's how we show, okay, you have now become this new thing that's important, right?

• 3:18:50Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 3:18:51Speaker 02

  And different cultures have different things. And this made up culture from Polynesia, they, you get bitten with a snake. In, in Judaism, in Jewish culture, you get olive oil poured on your head, you get anointed. All right?

• 3:19:01Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:19:02Speaker 02

  So when you have been anointed, you are the anointed one. Just like, once you have been bitten, you're the bitten one.

• 3:19:07Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:19:08Speaker 02

  In Hebrew, that, that native word is mashiah, which means anointed one. It's person who has that oil poured on their head. Literally, that's all that word means, okay?

• 3:19:16Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 3:19:17Speaker 02

  You get oil poured on your head, now you're the king. And so people can refer to the king as, as the anointed one. The one who has been anointed in the past and therefore is in the state of being anointed. That's what a past participle does. Okay?

• 3:19:27Danny Jones?

  And they're trying to translate this into Greek.

• 3:19:29Speaker 02

  They are translating into Greek with Christos.

• 3:19:31Danny Jones?

  With Christos.

• 3:19:31Speaker 02

  Because Christos is a past participle in Greek that means anointed one.

• 3:19:34Speaker 03

  Why do we?

• 3:19:35Speaker 02

  That's all they're doing. So just like you translate the local Polynesian word.

• 3:19:38Speaker 03

  I want to register. He's made an error.

• 3:19:40Speaker 02

  Just like.

• 3:19:41Danny Jones?

  You can correct him in a minute.

• 3:19:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, try to correct me, yeah. So.

• 3:19:45Speaker 03

  Oh, somebody's

• 3:19:46Speaker 02

  The challenge, baby.

• 3:19:47Speaker 03

  You gotta restrain that, you know what I mean? Your people and your faculty will be like, oh.

• 3:19:52Speaker 02

  That's alright.

• 3:19:52Speaker 03

  You got so wild.

• 3:19:54Speaker 02

  Bring it on, bring it on, bring it on. So, we've been bringing it on with each other this whole time. Yeah, let's keep doing it, let's keep doing it. So, you have, you have the anointed ones, meshiach, in the, in the, in the, in the Hebrew. Right. And then, just like, the, the word bitten in this local Polynesian language is not the English word bitten, it's some other word. I didn't even bother making one up. Sure. That's the, that's the equivalent of a meshiach, in this case. Got it. It's a local, it's a local word, it's a local custom. And then, after the death, and as his followers believed, the resurrection of Jesus, whom they declared to be the anointed one they were waiting for. They called him the anointed one. Right. Which is, which is meshiach, okay? Which is, by the way, as you, as you probably know, we transliterate that. Even the Greeks transliterate that as Messiah. Remember I said that the Greeks don't have the shah sound?

• 3:20:39Speaker 03

  That's the exact point.

• 3:20:40Speaker 02

  Remember, they don't, yeah, okay, yeah. Let's, let's start, start that, so we can come back.

• 3:20:43Speaker 03

  We have a Greek word, nesias, right?

• 3:20:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, which is a transliteration of the Hebrew meshiach.

• 3:20:48Speaker 03

  Christ is not nesias, Christ is christing. Okay, anyway.

• 3:20:52Speaker 02

  Alright, so, you have, you have the local Hebrew word. Sometimes the Greeks do transliterate that Hebrew word as nesias, which we just talked about. Sometimes they, they do what's called a calque, C A L Q U E, which is a loan translation. Which means that you translate a word as you're borrowing it into your language, okay? So, they, they borrow this local Jewish custom of anointing rulers. And, and when somebody's been anointed, that person is the meshiach, the anointed one. The person who has that oil poured on their heads to show that they're a king. No, no, no, christos is a native Greek word. But then, when they take that language into the cosmopolitan Greek-speaking world that was created by Alexander. Yep. The colonial world, they can't speak Aramaic anymore, because no one will understand them.

• 3:21:35Speaker 02

  Just like the local Polynesians can't speak their local Polynesian language if they come to London. Right. Or New York City. They have to, they have to translate everything into English. And they translate, is, they translate that term as the bitten one, because that's the English word, right? In the same way, when those local Aramaic peasants who were following Jesus, and, and believed that he was resurrected and is the king that was to come, and they call him the anointed one, the meshiach, as, as a result, they translate that term as christos.

• 3:22:02Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 3:22:03Speaker 02

  Because that's the Greek equivalent of Mashiach. Now, when it gets, when, when that term gets loose out there in the Greek speaking cosmopolitan colonial world, just like in my, just like what I was saying, that some people are going to make a connection with vampires, because, because there's this vampire literature in English, and it involves biting and being bitten and all these other things. So also, once you get the message of the Mashiach, AKA the Christos, Jesus Christ, as we would call him, which is a past participle, someone who has had oil poured on his head, anointed, right? Or as you would call it, Christed. You're going to have Greeks hearing this message, who are, who are radically divorced from the original Jewish context. They don't know Aramaic. Why would they? It's a local language within, within the Greek speaking world.

• 3:22:48Speaker 02

  And those people might think that Christos has something to do with drugs, that, that Jesus is a drug lord. Because Christos can, like inject, can be a drug term. Right? Just like bitten, we use the word bitten all the time in English, doesn't have to be a vampire.

• 3:23:03Danny Jones?

  We would think it's a vampire.

• 3:23:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, you might think it's a vampire. You don't have to.

• 3:23:05Speaker 03

  Drugs and sex, don't leave out the sex element, because even Jeb, the class, great classicist, you know Jeb?

• 3:23:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, Jeb Bush, of course.

• 3:23:15Speaker 03

  Fantastic. No, we're talking about a great classicist, who's already pointed out that Christ thing is used with drugs to induce sexuality.

• 3:23:30Speaker 02

  And I think this is a little far afield of what we just discussed.

• 3:23:33Danny Jones?

  Yeah. This is, yeah, yeah.

• 3:23:35Speaker 03

  Well, no, no, you were talking about Messias, weren't you?

• 3:23:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I want you to respond to what I just said. Like, where's, where's your? No, I'm done.

• 3:23:41Danny Jones?

  So, so, so, so what Luke just said seems to make sense to a dumb dumb like me. Like, that, that, that seems to make logical sense, that what he was saying about the, the Jews speaking Aramaic, and Alexander the Great bringing in the Greek, the people who were divorced from, who didn't know, understand the Aramaic, they're used to the word Creo, Christos, that is being associated with injection, or applying something to the skin. They might confuse that Mashiach word with a drug term.

• 3:24:14Speaker 03

  Right.

• 3:24:16Speaker 03

  Right. You are meant to be confused by all of this.

• 3:24:21Danny Jones?

  Does that not look?

• 3:24:22Speaker 03

  Remember, this is a thought experiment, correct? You're not talking about actual sources.

• 3:24:26Speaker 02

  I created an analogy based on the sources that we have from the ancient world. They're talking about the history of what happened.

• 3:24:31Speaker 03

  I have no clue. I have no clue if there is any element of reality in what was just spoken.

• 3:24:38Speaker 02

  So Jews didn't speak Aramaic ever?

• 3:24:40Speaker 03

  I know, I know that we have texts. And that those texts tell us about who is speaking what. And we don't have.

• 3:24:53Speaker 02

  You've read Josephus, right? Josephus talks about this.

• 3:24:55Speaker 03

  We don't, Josephus is writing in Greek. Perfect, beautiful Greek. Perfect, beautiful Greek. It's a pleasure to read Josephus.

• 3:25:05Speaker 02

  He probably had a scribe helping him with that.

• 3:25:06Speaker 03

  It's a pleasure.

• 3:25:08Danny Jones?

  Who is Josephus?

• 3:25:09Speaker 02

  He's a Jewish guy.

• 3:25:10Speaker 03

  Despite the farting, Philo 2, right? Philo Judea, right?

• 3:25:16Speaker 02

  So, just like today, Jews were scattered all over the, well, the Mediterranean at that point. And so they spoke different languages, just like Jews today. Jews in America are going to speak English. Jews in Sweden are going to speak Swedish, whatever. And so you had Jews living in Palestine who were speaking Aramaic. That was the Jewish homeland. That's their native, that's their native homeland, right? They're speaking their traditional language, which at that point was Aramaic, after, after they came back from the Babylonian exile. Jews, as they went out into different parts of the world, just like Jews today, oftentimes spoke whatever the local language was as their original language. So Jews in Egypt were 100% speaking Greek as their first language in Egypt.

• 3:25:54Speaker 03

  He's educated.

• 3:25:55Speaker 02

  Philo, oh yeah, Philo is.

• 3:25:56Speaker 03

  Philo is educated.

• 3:25:57Speaker 02

  He's an Egyptian Jew.

• 3:25:59Speaker 03

  He's quoting.

• 3:25:59Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:26:00Speaker 03

  He's quoting fantastic Greek sources. For somebody to say that that's not Greek.

• 3:26:08Speaker 02

  Of course it's Greek. Who said that?

• 3:26:09Speaker 03

  He's doing, a professor from Hephas said he is writing in Jewish Greek.

• 3:26:15Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:26:16Speaker 03

  Josephus? Okay, Josephus, the Septuagint, Philo.

• 3:26:21Speaker 02

  It's a dialect of Greek, yes.

• 3:26:22Speaker 03

  No, it's not. It doesn't exist.

• 3:26:25Speaker 02

  Okay, do you believe there-

• 3:26:25Speaker 03

  There is no Jewish Greek. It's just Greek. I'm telling you, I read it all the time. It's just the same fucking language.

• 3:26:31Speaker 02

  This is something we need to come back to in the next interview, because we didn't actually get into this.

• 3:26:34Speaker 03

  Do you think there's a difference between Koina and when I say Classical Greek? Do you think there's a difference?

• 3:26:40Speaker 02

  It's a later version, right? Classical evolves into Koina.

• 3:26:42Speaker 03

  Is Koina Greek?

• 3:26:43Speaker 02

  Later.

• 3:26:43Speaker 03

  Is Koina Greek?

• 3:26:44Speaker 02

  Of course it is. It's a different stage.

• 3:26:45Speaker 03

  Is a classicist, is a classicist like yourself qualified to read Koina Greek? Just tell me that.

• 3:26:55Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:26:56Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 3:26:57Speaker 02

  What's your point?

• 3:26:57Speaker 03

  So, what we're being flooded with is people saying, "No, no, no, this guy is an expert in Classical Greek, not Koina." It's stupid misconceptions- You're saying people are saying that about you? Yeah. It's stupid misconceptions like this that come from-

• 3:27:15Speaker 02

  What's the misconception?

• 3:27:15Speaker 03

  The biblical side. People saying, let me state it very simply. Ammon has PhD in Classical Greek. He's not qualified to read the Koina Greek because it's a different language.

• 3:27:32Speaker 02

  Okay, I disagree with that.

• 3:27:33Speaker 03

  It's bullshit, isn't it?

• 3:27:34Speaker 02

  Of course it is.

• 3:27:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly.

• 3:27:35Speaker 02

  They are different dialects, but not that different. Not that different. Okay, you can go between them.

• 3:27:41Speaker 03

  What is the Koina from? Which dialect is it Koina of?

• 3:27:44Speaker 02

  It mostly comes from Attic Ionic Greek.

• 3:27:46Speaker 03

  Yes, very nice. Gorgeous. See, he knows what he's talking about, right? Fantastic. So, this is the thing that is replacing the little languages of the backwaters like Judea. You have to admit, Judea is a shithole. Nobody wants to go to Judea. The governors that are getting assigned there, it's punishment, right?

• 3:28:12Speaker 03

  So we have no system of education when Jesus comes back from Egypt because he was given a shit ton of money from the Magi. And you're well familiar with what a Magus is, correct?

• 3:28:26Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 3:28:27Speaker 03

  Because you teach ancient magic.

• 3:28:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're Magu, not wise men.

• 3:28:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:28:31Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 3:28:32Speaker 03

  When he goes with all the gold.

• 3:28:34Danny Jones?

  What are the Magi?

• 3:28:35Speaker 02

  Oh, that's a whole nother thing, but they.

• 3:28:36Danny Jones?

  Just like for people, just for people that are listening.

• 3:28:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I actually think this is a whole nother hour we could do just on this topic. It's where the word magic comes from, but it doesn't mean magic necessarily. They were, it comes from a Persian word. Speaking of Persian and Persian that we have left, the priests of the Persian religion, which was Erastrianism, were called Magush. And that was their, that was the regular word in Old Persian for, for the priesthood.

• 3:29:01Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 3:29:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, the Greeks heard about them and they borrowed that word into Greek. And they called them Magu, which is the closest they got to that. It was pretty similar, obviously.

• 3:29:09Speaker 03

  They know the drugs, they're known for practicing the pharmacia. All the drug works.

• 3:29:16Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:29:17Speaker 03

  They're the ones bringing us and they give Jesus all the gold and the frankincense and the myrrh, the frankincense and the myrrh bases for drugs. When he comes back from Egypt.

• 3:29:27Speaker 02

  Valuable spices.

• 3:29:28Speaker 03

  When he comes back from Egypt, plus venoms. When he comes back from Egypt.

• 3:29:35Speaker 02

  Which gift of the wise men was that?

• 3:29:36Speaker 03

  He's, it's the guy who put it in his buttocks.

• 3:29:39Speaker 02

  I don't remember that in the text.

• 3:29:40Speaker 03

  That's how they administer it. No, I'm not kidding you. The doctors are talking about this, right? Even Dioscortes talks about the Magu and what they do with the drugs.

• 3:29:54Danny Jones?

  So, so you're making the case that Jesus, there's texts that connect Jesus to drug use.

• 3:30:02Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 3:30:02Danny Jones?

  Quite literally.

• 3:30:03Speaker 03

  Yes, when he came back from Egypt, he goes to the temple and he's, you know, he's just a kid, but he's outsmarting the people that are there because it's backwater shithole. He went to an educated Egypt, Alexandria is only unified in its Greek that you were talking about. You think he didn't speak Greek? Of course he did.

• 3:30:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, other than.

• 3:30:28Speaker 03

  Christos, that's a great concept. So Davy is a great concept, right?

• 3:30:35Speaker 02

  I only know of one early halfway Anything Reliable reference to Jesus going to Egypt is when he's a baby and he comes back while he's still a baby. I don't know of anything early that ever says he goes to Egypt. Now, we've seen, because remember that very first thing we looked at, we saw that there's all these crazy stories about Egypt from, sorry, about Jesus, Egypt too, from hundreds of years later. Okay? They may or may not be reliable. Often they're not. So you're saying, let's look at the text. And I'm saying, are these texts reliable?

• 3:31:02Speaker 03

  Okay, this is perfect. I'm glad you said that. This is something I don't do. I used to, but I don't do it anymore. I don't discriminate between the Bible, the New Testament, and any of the other Christian literature, any of it that's contemporary. I read it all, the apocryphal stuff, everything.

• 3:31:25Speaker 02

  I read it too, but I do discriminate. And there's a very good historical, methodological reason I discriminate, and any historian would. And that is that we go by the principle, the earlier, the better. So this is true for any historical event, not just about Jesus. I mean, we use this for everything. If you call witnesses into a courtroom, actually, you know, let's, we can do this with anything.

• 3:31:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:31:44Speaker 02

  If you have a source that was written, let's say it's the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

• 3:31:50Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 3:31:50Speaker 02

  Lots of, lots of theories. Let's say you have a source from 1964 about it.

• 3:31:54Speaker 03

  Right.

• 3:31:54Speaker 02

  And we know it was written in 1964. And then you have a source from, from today. I don't know. They made something up yesterday, or maybe not made something up, but they wrote something yesterday and it's not necessarily based on earlier sources. You're going to be more likely to just a priori judge that the 1964 source is more likely to be reliable.

• 3:32:12Speaker 03

  Right.

• 3:32:12Speaker 02

  Than the 2025 source. Now, that's not a guarantee. That's not a guarantee.

• 3:32:16Speaker 03

  You need contemporary. No, I totally agree. You need contemporary sources.

• 3:32:20Speaker 02

  So we need to discriminate.

• 3:32:21Speaker 03

  Contemporary evidence.

• 3:32:21Speaker 02

  We need to discriminate based on age.

• 3:32:23Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 3:32:24Speaker 02

  Of the text.

• 3:32:25Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 3:32:25Speaker 02

  If we can date the text.

• 3:32:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:32:26Speaker 02

  Right? So I think we should discriminate.

• 3:32:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:32:28Speaker 02

  Now, if I quote unquote discriminate in favor of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, it's not for a religious reason, it's for a historical reason. Those are the four earliest stories we have about Jesus, or sources we have about Jesus. Okay? All of this stuff that's coming from 200s, 300s, 400s, we know there's all this mythology that grows up about Jesus in those intervening centuries, right? That doesn't mean it's all made up. Okay, so when, when we put something up on the screen from 350 or something, or 370, I'm not saying all, it's all fake, we should throw it out, I'm not saying that.

• 3:33:02Speaker 03

  That's the same.

• 3:33:02Speaker 02

  I'm saying methodologically, it's a lot less likely to be true than something written 30 years after he walked the earth.

• 3:33:08Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 3:33:08Speaker 02

  That's the principle.

• 3:33:09Speaker 03

  That's why I think Dysgordis is so important, because you need contemporary data to back up. And Christing, if you want to see more about Christing than any other source, go look in Dysgordis, dude. Right? It's, you've got more Christing there than anywhere.

• 3:33:26Speaker 02

  Not anointing in the Greek tradition.

• 3:33:28Speaker 03

  Exactly, contemporary with Jesus, it's perfect. So, nobody pays attention to that, so is Philomenus. Right? So anecdotes, anecdotes, right? It's all there.

• 3:33:41Danny Jones?

  So what is the best connection, in your view, Ammon, that Jesus had anything to do with actual drug use?

• 3:33:50Speaker 03

  His title, right?

• 3:33:54Danny Jones?

  But he just explained that, he just explained.

• 3:33:56Speaker 03

  What we, the history of his title is most important. By the time Jesus Christ is called the Christed One, there is a thousand years of popular history to Christing. It is something that is featured on the democratic stage of fucking Athens.

• 3:34:26Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:34:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a Greek word.

• 3:34:28Danny Jones?

  As well as 300.

• 3:34:29Speaker 03

  No, no, no, Christing, the actual verb, Christing is what I'm talking about.

• 3:34:35Speaker 02

  Crio, all the forms.

• 3:34:36Speaker 03

  Look, we're all about the language.

• 3:34:37Danny Jones?

  But they were, they were using it way before Jesus, and they were also using it way after Jesus.

• 3:34:42Speaker 03

  They were using it during Jesus's time, and after Jesus's time.

• 3:34:45Danny Jones?

  Sure.

• 3:34:45Speaker 03

  Right? You take a look and figure out, the best evidence that you're talking about comes from his contemporary. What are the contemporaries saying? And when you jump into that pond, you're gonna find sex drugs and mystery ritual that involves the consumption of semen by a bunch of child traffickers. And that's why Jesus is screaming out on the when he's arrested, I am not a Lays stays. You could have arrested me at any time. Why'd you come out here with all the weapons? I am not a Lays stays.

• 3:35:23Danny Jones?

  That's something that we should definitely talk about.

• 3:35:24Speaker 02

  Next time. Yeah, that's a whole nother thing. I think we need hours. At least an hour to for Lays stays. Yeah. Can we save that? Can we come back to that?

• 3:35:32Speaker 03

  Did you read Lucian?

• 3:35:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm familiar with it. Let's come back to that. Let's come back for that. Yeah. If we can.

• 3:35:38Danny Jones?

  Yeah. No, that's, uh, that's something that I'm definitely fascinated by. And, um,

• 3:35:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, we don't want to, we don't want to short shrift that.

• 3:35:46Danny Jones?

  Right. Yeah. Okay. We'll do a part two to that then.

• 3:35:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:35:51Danny Jones?

  Well, thank you, guys. I think this has been fantastic. I think there's definitely a lot more for us to discuss. We should definitely set up a part two. And, um, yeah, I have tons, I have tons more questions. I feel like we're only halfway through this, but.

• 3:36:05Speaker 02

  That's how I feel too. I think that's why we needed a part two. Yeah.

• 3:36:08Speaker 03

  I just wish we could have talked about some of the Christings like I was looking forward to the shit Christ thing.

• 3:36:14Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 3:36:15Speaker 03

  Christing virgin breasts and little boys. Did you see that one in there?

• 3:36:22Speaker 02

  I mean, I try to avoid little boys personally.

• 3:36:24Speaker 03

  I know, but did you see that? And all the Christings that I sent both, let the world hear it.

• 3:36:30Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 3:36:30Speaker 03

  I sent both of these champions. I sent them.

• 3:36:34Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 3:36:35Speaker 03

  All the Christings with the sex stuff and Christing your balanos fried.

• 3:36:44Speaker 02

  There's no doubt that Christos was a term that could be a drug term that was used going back a thousand years.

• 3:36:48Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:36:49Speaker 02

  I don't think there's a debate about it.

• 3:36:50Danny Jones?

  I don't think, I don't think.

• 3:36:51Speaker 03

  Did you get this, all the sex stuff I said?

• 3:36:53Speaker 02

  There, there's sex stuff in there too. Sure.

• 3:36:55Speaker 03

  A lot of graphic sex stuff, right?

• 3:36:59Speaker 02

  Well, of course.

• 3:36:59Speaker 03

  With saviors.

• 3:37:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. Soteria was a Greek word that was very complicated that later got applied to Jesus.

• 3:37:07Speaker 03

  And it has a pharmaceutical history. You would love that. It's a history.

• 3:37:12Speaker 02

  I love words.

• 3:37:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:37:13Speaker 02

  I'm a philologist.

• 3:37:14Speaker 03

  We should talk about that.

• 3:37:15Danny Jones?

  We're definitely gonna talk about this. One quick thing, completely unrelated to any of this, I want to ask before we wrap it up.

• 3:37:24Danny Jones?

  The Isaiah scroll found in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Maseratic texts from a thousand AD. There are people who say that it's like a miracle that the Maseratic texts of Isaiah match the Isaiah scroll word for word.

• 3:37:45Danny Jones?

  First of all, is that real? Second of all, what do you, what do you make of that claim?

• 3:37:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I would want to actually, and maybe we can, maybe I can answer this question in part two, just because I want to be as responsible as possible. I haven't compared them word for word personally.

• 3:37:57Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 3:37:58Speaker 02

  I will say in general, because I do know this, that, that of the Dead Sea Scrolls, some of them match the MT, the Maseratic texts that, whose earliest copies we still have are from a thousand years later. And, and some don't. So those are all over the place. I, I want to double check the Isaiah scroll before I say anything.

• 3:38:13Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 3:38:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:38:14Speaker 03

  Can I just say, no fucking way. Do you have that much time and the transmission of the text is exact? No way.

• 3:38:24Danny Jones?

  A thousand years.

• 3:38:25Speaker 03

  It's a miracle.

• 3:38:26Speaker 02

  I will say it's possible. It is.

• 3:38:28Danny Jones?

  That would make, that would make me believe in God if that was real.

• 3:38:31Speaker 02

  Here's, here's, here's why I know it's, here's why I know it's possible. We've talked about India. I took three semesters of Sanskrit. The Rigveda, the earliest texts of the Sanskrit or, or the Hindu religion that are written in very early, very early, early Sanskrit. They were handed down orally for, for, I think around 2,000 years before they were written down. And they are pristine. I mean, they look exactly like we would think from the earliest level of Sanskrit. I mean, linguists think that they almost didn't change a single word in 2,000 years.

• 3:39:01Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 3:39:01Speaker 02

  In Hinduism.

• 3:39:02Danny Jones?

  But also, wouldn't it be possible for, for people to be copying that scroll? Like when, when they hid those scrolls in those, in those pots or whatever? Isn't it also possible that there was many other copies existing?

• 3:39:14Speaker 02

  There were.

• 3:39:14Danny Jones?

  And that were being copied up until that time?

• 3:39:17Speaker 02

  There, there were multiple copies. The Dead Sea community had their copies. Other people in Jerusalem and elsewhere would have had their copies as well.

• 3:39:24Speaker 03

  When does the first copy of the Hebrew Bible emerge?

• 3:39:28Speaker 02

  Like, like, like, complete copy?

• 3:39:30Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 3:39:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's 11th century. The oldest one that still exists. Now, the reason, and I know you know this, is not because there weren't earlier copies. You don't think they invented it in the 11th century, do you?

• 3:39:41Speaker 03

  I'm wondering if it was a process of, not just at one time, but a process. Why don't we have like, consistent copies? That's what I don't understand. It's a Masoretic invention, right?

• 3:39:56Speaker 02

  The vowels are a Masoretic invention. The vowel points, they were the ones who started writing the vowels. So the continental text is, is older. The vowel points probably go back to the 7th century.

• 3:40:04Danny Jones?

  Isn't it possible?

• 3:40:05Speaker 03

  And why does every, all the translators, why do they use just that Masoretic text?

• 3:40:11Speaker 02

  I, I wouldn't want to just use the Masoretic text. I would want to look at the subduition. I would want to look at the Vulgate.

• 3:40:16Speaker 03

  Cause you know, but why didn't they?

• 3:40:18Speaker 02

  Good Bible translations look at all those. They don't just look at the empty.

• 3:40:21Speaker 03

  Are there good Bible translations? What would you recommend?

• 3:40:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would recommend learning Hebrew and reading it.

• 3:40:28Speaker 03

  For the, okay.

• 3:40:30Speaker 02

  Just like learning Greek, learning Greek and reading it.

• 3:40:32Speaker 03

  That's a shame though, isn't it?

• 3:40:34Speaker 02

  What's a shame? Learning the original language?

• 3:40:36Speaker 03

  What if the Greek, no. If, this is my thought experiment. I get one too. What if the Greek is the original? Then you're doing yourself a huge disservice.

• 3:40:47Speaker 02

  I read the Greek too.

• 3:40:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:40:49Speaker 02

  I, I study the, the translation, because we both agree there's a translation going on here. 99.9% of the world, including me, thinks it's Hebrew to Greek. You think it's Greek to Hebrew, but we both agree it's a translation.

• 3:40:59Speaker 03

  And what did you think about the tohu, wabohu? Can you just like sum it up? Going from these really sophisticated concepts in Greek to these really basic, and it means the same thing, empty and empty.

• 3:41:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm, I'm still not sure of your logic as to why you think it has to go in one direction.

• 3:41:16Speaker 02

  I don't understand that.

• 3:41:17Speaker 03

  Like, okay, so if you do have this Hebrew original and you're translating it into Greek, you're gonna see "tehu wabohu," which both mean empty, and somehow you're gonna get two concepts of "aoratos" and "akaskevstos," which are totally different.

• 3:41:34Speaker 02

  Well, that's how translation works. You have to choose the best word you have in the target language.

• 3:41:38Speaker 03

  Well, why didn't they just choose "empty"?

• 3:41:40Speaker 02

  Because they didn't want to. Why does any translator choose any word?

• 3:41:43Speaker 03

  Oh, it sounds... Do you understand why it sounds sus to me?

• 3:41:48Speaker 02

  I don't think I do. I mean, I want to understand. I genuinely want to understand. The Greeks had a rich philosophical tradition, so they had complicated words like "aorastos" and "akaskevstos," right? That's fine. So they had those linguistic technology. You want to call it that? Linguistic technology, all right? That they could just, okay, let's plug this into this word. All right. Hebrew had "tehu wabohu." Now, we don't know what kind of Hebrew philosophical tradition preceded the cataclysmic destruction.

• 3:42:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, because nothing survives.

• 3:42:19Speaker 02

  Well, the Torah survives and the rest of it.

• 3:42:21Speaker 03

  Besides the Torah, nothing. None of this rich literature survives.

• 3:42:24Speaker 02

  And the archaeology.

• 3:42:25Speaker 03

  Right, and those goddamn silver tablets.

• 3:42:28Speaker 02

  By the way, I do think we should bring this up again in part two. First of all, I think it's one of our... It's a good discussion we had. I think there's more that both of us could bring to bear. I have other points. I made a list of about 10. I got through three of them.

• 3:42:39Speaker 03

  What are some of mine?

• 3:42:41Speaker 02

  We'll do the replay. And I'm sure you can bring more. I have many more points that I could make as to why... Arguments for why the Septuagint, the Greek, is a translation of the Hebrew and not the other way around.

• 3:42:52Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:42:52Speaker 02

  And I'd like to hear what he has to say about those.

• 3:42:54Danny Jones?

  Fantastic. Everybody, this has been super fascinating. I think this has been a great discussion between both you guys. You guys obviously respect each other's expertise.

• 3:43:04Speaker 02

  Hey, we both have PhDs and classes.

• 3:43:06Danny Jones?

  You guys share the same passion for these languages, and this has been super informative for me. And at the very least, I think what this discussion is gonna do is going to bring more inquiry into this stuff and bring more interest into this classics, the study of classics and the ancient language and all this stuff. And thank you guys so much for your time.

• 3:43:27Speaker 03

  Can I say one thing before you finish?

• 3:43:30Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 3:43:32Speaker 03

  This is the first time that you've seen somebody trained in the dojo. Do you understand why I say now that without the classicists, you've got the Bible scholars and they're not up to snuff. They really don't work with these texts, right? They just kind of do a little peripheral and pull in and BS and people are supposed to follow them.

• 3:43:57Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 3:43:58Speaker 03

  But this is a classicist today, Luke, who has stepped forward. And do you see how the, the training is different?

• 3:44:05Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 3:44:06Speaker 03

  And that's why I say I can spot it. I can spot it.

• 3:44:08Danny Jones?

  A hundred percent.

• 3:44:09Speaker 03

  I can't, I want to thank you for bringing that force.

• 3:44:15Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 3:44:16Speaker 03

  And, and Luke, thank you for engaging. It's been a long battle for me to get somebody with training to be able to sit here and talk to. And I know you don't think that Jesus was arrested in a public park.

• 3:44:34Speaker 02

  We'll get to that.

• 3:44:35Danny Jones?

  That'll be part two.

• 3:44:36Speaker 02

  We'll get to that.

• 3:44:37Speaker 03

  It'll come. Let's see it.

• 3:44:40Danny Jones?

  Thank you guys both. Luke, uh, where can people, um, find more about you online or read your work or anything like that?

• 3:44:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, I have a, I have a side project that's a YouTube channel called Word Safari. That's, that's pretty small. It doesn't deal with any of this stuff except etymology. Um, so I deal with a lot of Greek and Latin roots on that channel. And it's all about English, to be clear, like that, that is about English words that come from Greek and Latin. And I think you agree with that, right? There's nothing controversial here, right?

• 3:45:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, I've watched it. Your audience are, must be totally brainy nerds.

• 3:45:09Speaker 02

  They have some very smart comments. Yeah, I always appreciate the comments. Um, you know, there's episodes on the origin of the alphabet, you know, from Greek, Phoenician, all the way back.

• 3:45:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:45:18Speaker 02

  Um, so, so, yeah. And I think, um, and I think you said you watched a few episodes. You, we probably don't have any argument about this stuff, right? Origins of English and Greek and Latin.

• 3:45:27Speaker 03

  Every once in a while, some kind of origin, I'll be like, yeah, that's possible, but they don't know for sure. That's, you know what I mean? Just kind of like that.

• 3:45:35Speaker 02

  As I've been saying, there's a lot we don't know for sure. And I think you have, I am comfortable with that.

• 3:45:39Speaker 03

  I'm not.

• 3:45:40Speaker 02

  As a classicist, I'm comfortable with not knowing things for sure because we're just never going to know. For sure. A hundred percent for sure.

• 3:45:45Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:45:46Speaker 02

  We can take the odds in Vegas and we go from there.

• 3:45:48Speaker 03

  You're optimistic. I'm gonna be negative and say no. And we're a good foil. We're a good foil for each other. We're providing both sides. Let's go Christ.

• 3:45:56Danny Jones?

  Amen. Lady Babylon on YouTube.

• 3:45:58Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 3:45:59Danny Jones?

  That's the main place people can find you.

• 3:46:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:46:01Danny Jones?

  We'll link, we'll link both of those YouTube channels below for everyone who wants to learn more. And I'm very much looking forward to part two.

• 3:46:09Speaker 03

  Thank you, Danny, for the opportunity.

• 3:46:11Danny Jones?

  My pleasure. Good night, everybody.

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