Creating Christ Revisited: Redacted Faith—New Evidence, New Claims: How Rome and Paul Reshaped Jesus

In this deep-dive episode of Pulling the Threads, host Jeramiah sits down with returning guest James Valliant to unpack groundbreaking updates to his controversial book Creating Christ. The conversation traces Valliant’s evolving views on the formation of early Christianity, with a particular focus on the Pauline epistles, the destruction of the Second Temple, and Rome’s role in shaping the New Testament narrative.

Valliant challenges long-held assumptions by proposing that much of Paul’s epistolary material—especially in Corinthians—was likely written after 70 CE, in the aftermath of the Jewish-Roman War. This re-dating undermines traditional mid-first-century timelines and shifts the lens through which we interpret early Christian redemptive mechanisms. If the Temple cult was still operational, a new sacrificial narrative centered on Jesus would have lacked the existential urgency that seems present in the texts. The destruction of the Temple, therefore, becomes a pivotal moment in the emergence of Christianity as distinct from Judaism.

Jeramiah brings a skeptical eye to linguistic dating methods commonly used in biblical scholarship, arguing that language is too fluid—and too easily manipulated—to serve as a reliable metric for textual chronology. Instead, both he and Valliant emphasize the primacy of physical evidence, or the glaring absence thereof, particularly from early communities like the Nazarenes and Ebionites. They argue this void may be explained by the Temple’s destruction and subsequent Roman suppression, resulting in a loss of key materials.

Valliant also reconsiders the authenticity of the Testimonium Flavianum in Josephus’ Antiquities. Once seen as a later Christian interpolation, Valliant now believes, with support from scholars like Samuel Zinner and Ken Goldberg, that much of the passage may be original. This revision is bolstered by a stunning archaeological find: a 3rd-century mosaic referring to Jesus as God, discovered in a Roman military context. This suggests that some Christians, or at least proto-Christians, had a place in the Roman ranks before Constantine’s conversion.

Valliant explores the symbolic language of early Christianity—specifically the fish and anchor motifs. Valliant explains the anchor’s deep roots in Seleucid and Roman iconography, even tying it to Emperor Titus’ Messianic propaganda. He contends that the anchor, more than the cross, was the symbol of choice in early Christian catacombs and mosaics, a claim supported by references in Clement of Alexandria’s writings.

The two also examine the Flavian dynasty’s potential role in redacting and canonizing the New Testament in four distinct layers, each targeted toward different audiences and theological purposes. Valliant contends that the Gospels were crafted to reconcile diverging Jewish sectarian movements, while Paul’s letters laid the ideological groundwork for a break from Torah-based messianism. Jeramiah G argues that Marcion was instrumental in pushing Paul’s letters into the Christian canon, causing a rift between early Jewish followers of Jesus and the emerging Gentile church.

Hellenistic influences—including Enochian literature—also feature heavily in the discussion. Jeramiah notes that Paul’s epistles bear more in common with apocalyptic Enochian thought than with Pharisaic Judaism, indicating a theological lineage that bypassed mainstream Jewish beliefs of the time. The conversation touches on the Sadducees, the Dead Sea Scrolls community, and how each group’s eschatology may have informed early Christian doctrine.

The episode concludes with a critical look at how translation issues, missing original-language manuscripts, and interpretative biases have shaped our modern understanding of Jesus. Both Jeramiah and James agree: the historical Jesus—possibly more aligned with Torah-observant Ebionite teachings than the Greek Gospel portrayal—has been obscured by layers of redaction, theological agenda, and imperial influence.

Episode Transcript

(00:09):
Welcome to the Pulling the Threads podcast where we, you
know, explore the history's mysteries and go into textual
criticism and the historical critical method and we take a
look at ancient sacred text. Today I have with me James
Valiant, author of Creating Christ who.

(00:30):
This is a second interview, so we're doing a bit of a follow up
today. I would just like to go ahead
and start by asking you, since our last interview, what new
projects or things have you beenworking on?
Oh my golly. I've been working on various
things, updating my opinions on things, strengthening them, if

(00:54):
anything, with changes in scholarship when it relates to
creating Christ, but all kinds of other things.
I, let me just put it that way, I'm involved in all kinds of
other activities in my life right now, and we'll just leave
it there because they're not directly related to what we're
talking about. Makes sense?
Yeah, well, that actually goes into my first actual question is

(01:18):
my first question for you. Before getting into some of the
things, I want to talk about thephysical evidence that we have.
Most of my theories go with physical evidence found, not
theories of when it was written.But as far as your thesis in
creating Christ, in what would it, what ways if you were able

(01:39):
to update that now, would you update your thesis or what ideas
have you, you know, based on what you said, the updates and
scholarship, where what, what new directions or what changes
would you make to that? Well, I think, you know, in
Creating Christ we gave the verystandard answer about the dating
of the Pauline epistles and I'm not confident in that anymore.

(02:03):
I'd always thought that elementsof say 1st and 2nd Corinthians
and Galatians, for example, Philippians in particular, just
don't fit with a mid 1st centurydating.
I suspect that much of what we call the canonical Pauline
corpus is actually post war. I think that there are

(02:27):
references, for example, to the temple that are hard to explain
except in a context where the temple has been destroyed.
And Corinthians, Paul, for example, tells us, you know, we
Christians are the church, we are the temple, Jesus is our
cornerstone. And, and it's better.
Why is it better? Because these temples made with

(02:48):
material objects are subject to the flames, subject to
destruction. And that seems to me to be hard
to understand. First of all, why we need a
temple substitute. Let's say you're a Pharisee in
the 1st century who believes in resurrection.
We have a redemptive mechanism. That redemptive mechanism is the
temple. You know, Yom Kippur, when the

(03:12):
high priest enters the Holy of Holies and implores God for the
forgiveness of the sins of the people, animal sacrifices and
the like. Or if you're an Essene, let's
see, before the war, we have ourown redemptive mechanism,
perhaps something like John the Baptist's baptism through for
remission of sins. So why do we need now?

(03:32):
And although baptism is incorporated, and although the
temple is symbolically incorporated into Pauline
thought, a Christian thought in general, why need a new
redemptive mechanism in the death and resurrection of Jesus?
This goes beyond merely his followers, his early followers
having saved visions of the risen Christ.
Paul gives metaphysical significance to the death and

(03:55):
resurrection of Jesus in a way that says we don't need that
darn temple anymore. And so the very need and Paul
describes himself as a Pharisee.If that's the case, Sir, why
then do we need a new? Why would we need a new temple?
We got the temple and it's our redemptive mechanism.
So I'm inclined now to put the Pauline corpus in a post war

(04:19):
environment. That's one thing.
Also in creating Christ we like again, the standard view has
long been that the testimonium in the antiquities of Josephus
has been tampered with. And we took that view that, my
gosh, even whatever Josephus's view, such a fulsome sort of

(04:40):
endorsement of Christianity is unlikely to have come from the
hands of someone writing to a general audience.
As a historian, I'm not so sure anymore.
The work of Samuel Zinner and other scholars have actually
convinced me that the text can be read either neutrally or
negatively. It doesn't have to be read in

(05:00):
the positive, fulsome way that causes many scholars and has
caused many scholars to be skeptical of it.
He's joined recently by Goldberg, a major Josie the
scholar, and they have caused meto rethink that.
I think that most, if not all ofthe Testimonium is actually

(05:22):
correct. I know our manuscripts are late,
but they've all got something inthere.
And besides the James passage, for which also in the
antiquities, see, really wouldn't make sense if there
wasn't some other reference to Jesus.
Now we've made that argument, and we did believe there was
some other statement about Jesusjust to make sense out of the

(05:43):
James passage, but I see absolutely no reason, despite
the claims of some, that the James passage is also an
interpolation. Also interesting is Archaeop
Speaking of physical evidence isthe recent archaeological find
and it is relatively recent about Jesus is God in you know,

(06:05):
in a laid out in a nice lovely Roman mosaic dating from the
early 3rd century and that appears to be our first the the
earliest reference to Jesus as what's the.
Date on that. Around 2:20 is the so early 3rd
century, and you know it is in the Holy Land, but it's also

(06:27):
associated with a Roman militarycamp, which is exceedingly
fascinating in light of our thesis.
There is evidence that there were large numbers of Christians
in the Roman army by the time bythe end of the 2nd century.
There's stories about, of course, their involvement in an
important battle that was done under Marcus Aurelius.

(06:48):
And the battle itself is, of course, commemorated in the
column of Marcus Aurelius, whichdates from the late 2nd century.
So if that's true, that is also a fascinating thing.
You know, plenty the younger in his famous correspondence with
Trajan about what should we do with these Christians.
When he was governor of Bithynia, he's corresponding

(07:10):
with the Emperor Trajan. And this is around the year 111
of the Common Era. He lays out a procedure that
he's been using. If they're willing to have make
prayers in front of our state gods and the images of our gods,
then that seems to be a test. But between the two great Jewish
wars, of course, Roman, the Roman government is anxious to
separate out the dangerous rebelJewish messianics from those

(07:35):
those who might believe in a Jewish Messiah but are
comparatively safe. And for anyone to belong to the
Roman army, they would surely have had to pass Plinis test and
still be Christian. And So what?
Finding this new archaeological evidence in association with a
Roman military camp around 2 by 220 AD is absolutely fascinating

(07:58):
to me. So we have an A pre Constantine
context and another association if you will, between the Roman
military and Christians being inthat Roman military.
Certainly at least Roman toleration of the idea, which is
absolutely fascinating to me because you know, to join the
Roman army you'd have to take all kinds of oaths under these

(08:22):
standards, these, these Roman eagles, which undoubtedly to a
Torah Orthodox Jew would be a graven image, and anything like
that would be a violation of a Torah Orthodoxy.
OK. So those are, I guess, some
substantial changes there. You know, when you look at the

(08:43):
time period, you mentioned the two Jewish Roman wars, and I
think that those are very important to understanding the
text. Now, I know that our standard
theories go based upon the language that we have within the
text of the dating of the Gospels and epistles.

(09:04):
I fully tacitly reject those ideas because I I focus on when
we find the physical evidence and you know, it, it's
theoretical now standard theories, majority of people
accept them. That's that's great and
fascinating. And, and they and, and it is

(09:26):
true to look at within the language, like does this match
the language of the period they say they're writing from?
But it's also something somebodycould try to fabricate after
fact, you know, based on, you know, understanding language of
the time so far what they're I'd.
Be talking about what thou art be talking about.

(09:48):
I can imitate old English language, or if I use the word
groovy, you kind of know. Well, wait a minute, it couldn't
have, it couldn't have been written before the 1960s
because, you know, if I'm feeling groovy for to quote the
song, they would just would haveno meaning in English before
that. So we can in some ways use the
language. But you're absolutely right, as
I just showed, people can make their language archaic on

(10:12):
purpose to make it sound older. Yes.
So if it's a pre-existing language, then you can go back
to it. But if it's something that pops
up as a new, like kids nowadays like to say things like skippity
and rizz and these words that have no previous, you know, and
I'm down with that. Yeah.
Yeah. So I mean, if somebody says, you

(10:33):
know, skippity or rizz, then you, you that's a definite
marker that kind of that that fall, it moves.
Groovy is a word that it may have been, you know, that pre
existed, but not like it was used then, or at least comes
from groove. Groovy.
It kind of comes from the language.
But Skippity, I mean, what what linguistic basis is that?
And I know I'm going off on a tangent.

(10:54):
Maybe some of the younger listeners appreciate that or
parents. But yeah, so I I don't follow
that. I don't accept it.
I mean, it's a good theory. And so for me, it's the first
physical evidence, first copies we got now before I'm not going
to go that direction yet. You mentioned the two Jewish

(11:16):
Roman wars and for me, you know,I place the early Jesus, James,
Essene, Ebionite group, the earliest Jewish Christians, as
we call them now, Christianity, Christian, would it have been a
term they associated with themselves at the time?
But to define what they became and they influenced later for

(11:37):
our understanding, we say Jewish, Christian, that first
period there 70 We don't have any text from that period.
And I know that we place theoretically some of the
epistles, maybe you know, the formations of the Gospels or the
oral sayings that became the Gospels, but we don't have any

(11:59):
physical evidence from that. And, and I think one of the
biggest reasons, and I'm going to get into your thesis about
the Flavian dynasty in a second here, but we, we don't have
evidence from 70 and before. And one of the big reasons I
feel is because the destruction of the temple, you know, they
burned and destroyed all kind ofthings.

(12:20):
I mean, there was a, you know, they destroyed, they destroyed
the temple. And you know, in that the Romans
were known for destroying libraries and evidence and
stuff. But I placed that movement
within the Essene, the Zealot, the Zekarai.
You know, we have within the theGospels, Simon the Zealot, the

(12:44):
sons of Zebedee, which the sons of Thunder, which that was
something associated with the Zealots.
Judas is Zechariot. It, it, you know, it comes from
the Sakhar, the Sakharai, which were the violent branch of the,
of the Zealots, which the Zealots were an offshoot of the
Essenes. And we, if for those who follow

(13:06):
Eisenman and others, we, we place the early, you know,
Jewish, Christian Jesus and James movement within the
Essenes. And so for me, it's a hard, I am
really convinced of, you know, the statement, you know, to buy
a sword and things like that, that there is elements that this
movement was violent and revolutionary.

(13:28):
And I believe that they participated in the the, you
know, first Jewish Roman War. And the reason that their
movement changes after that is because of that.
And it's why I believe they didn't join the Bar Kokba revolt
because their first attempt failed.
But my point is we have no text from that period.

(13:51):
Jumping to the next one where wehave the Bar Kokba revolt,
there's another, you know, sacking of Jerusalem,
destruction, war that happens and so we don't have good
evidence before that. Now to your thesis that the
Flavians influenced or wrote thetext.

(14:14):
I place 4 layers of redaction inthe New Testament when you're
looking at text, the one I call the first the pro Roman layer,
which for me that may kind of touch on the area that you you
say the Flavian dynasty had influence, you know, pay on to
Caesar, you know, submission to authorities.

(14:35):
I think that's the period those things came in.
And then I see the Marcianite layer, which are physic first
physical like gospel, like protoLuke.
I would call it was Marcines because the earliest Luke was
very close to Marcians. And so did the proto Luke come
forth or the Marcians Luke come first.

(14:55):
I mean, they're very close because they don't have the
virgin birth, the miracles. And like for him, he didn't even
rely on Jewish scripture to say he's the Messiah.
And so I think there was an early view that maybe that
wasn't there yet and that would have been our earliest, you
know, epistle. Then the third layer for me is

(15:17):
now the reaction to Marcion where they start to, you know,
realign it with a little bit of Jewishness because Marcion was
like, not we're cutting it all out.
And then for me, the final layeris that when we get to, you
know, the the Nicene Council andthe Catholization, the unifying
of text in bringing everything together.

(15:38):
And I'm not going to go too far there, but for me for that
period post the first Jewish Roman war, the, you know, the
sacking of Jerusalem, you know, destroying the temple, you know,
I, I place that pro Roman layer in there.
What is your strongest evidence for the Flavian influence upon

(16:02):
that that period of time right there?
What a big question, and it's got a lot of elements to it.
And I agree with many of the things you said there.
By the way, where we may have a disagreement is about the role
of Marcionidism. And I don't want to overstate my
thesis because I don't think that the Gospels, I think they

(16:24):
were written for their own communities by different hands.
Unlike some who believe in Romanor Prolavian influence, I don't
believe that the Gospels were written simultaneously or
anything like that. I think they were written for
their own communities by different hands at a later
period. And the Jesus movement had been

(16:45):
utterly separated from the Flavians at that point because
the Flavians were no longer in power as a dynasty.
Now we are your It is. What you say in the first
instance is correct. We don't have any, even physical
fragments of our New Testament literature until well into the
2nd century. We don't have good attestation

(17:05):
to the contents of that New Testament until well into the
2nd century, and so that should cause us to question things.
The other thing you say that is very profound and important is
documents were destroyed at the First Jewish War.
We are so lucky that in the middle of the 20th century we
discovered things like the Dead Sea Scrolls and they appear to

(17:27):
have been hidden away precisely because in there was this Jewish
war. Now it could have been over a
period of time that they were deposited there.
But clearly they're they want toprotect their literature,
particularly the sectarian literature that we read there,
the famous, what's called the sectarian literature of the
scrolls to protect it. And that's because, of course,

(17:52):
yeah, there the rebel movement was smashed and at that period
and the temple was destroyed in the year 70 AD.
Now putting a few things together, though, about timing
that I think is important also. Oh, and by the way, in the
middle of the 20th century, we found Nah Hamadi.
Why on earth would these Gnostics have tried to hide

(18:15):
their library in a in the desertin Egypt, but for the to protect
them against Orthodox Christianity, which was then
taking over the Roman Empire. And so, yeah, we have to be
aware that literature has been lost and the literature of the
first Jewish Christian, and I think for lack of a better term,

(18:36):
let's go with that. The first Jewish Christian
movement was likely to have beennot preserved.
That I think is true. We have found fragments of Dead
Sea Scroll material, sectarian Dead Sea Scroll material at
Masada which fell in 73, which Ithink is very fascinating and

(18:58):
shows a connection between what Hippolytus called the militant
Essenes if you will. And even Josephus gives us hints
that there was a militant, despite what he says about the
Essenes being peace loving and so forth.
We do even have hints in Josephus that there was a
militant Essenes movement movement, and I think
apocalyptic guys like John the Baptist are a good demonstration

(19:20):
of that because surely apocalypse was the genre of our
rebels. I think we have circumstantial
evidence though that needs to beattended to.
For example, the Jesus prophecy in the first 3 gospels is a very
interesting 1. He predicts the destruction of
the temple, he predicts the destruction of Jerusalem, and he
predicts the fulfillment of Daniel's Son of Man prophecy at

(19:43):
the same time. And he said it'll happen within
the lifetime of my listeners. That would be a big fat mistake
if it was preserved to if that prophecy and prophecy suggests
to me, like most prophecies, they're post event.
So I agree with those scholars who would say, well, that the
Synoptics could not have been written before the destruction

(20:05):
of the temple for that reason. Jesus gives a pretty detailed
description of what would happenthat matches that of Josephus.
But wait a minute, what about this glorious coming of the Son
of Man, which is also predicted to happen within the lifetime of
Jesus? Listeners, if that had been
written too far beyond the event, it would have been

(20:25):
retaining a solid what Christians, certainly later
Christians, would regard to be abig fat mistake.
Where is this glorious coming ofthe Son of Man?
How did that occur? Around 70?
ADI don't take seriously the Israel only folks.
So it is temple obsessed. It is finding Jesus is the new
temple. You know in the Gospels if they

(20:47):
develop this idea even from Paul.
And so the destruction of the temple is this huge
psychological trauma, if you will, religious trauma and
theological crisis that needs tobe attended to.
And so much of Christian literature as we have it is
absorbed with that. We also have consistent
attestation at least to the factthat Jesus was crucified and

(21:10):
crucified under Pilate. Now what he said and what he did
according to the Gospels is a whole separate question.
But why would first let's ask the question, why would the
Romans crucify Jesus? They must have regarded him as a
political threat. And that goes to your point that
the original Jesus movement was a kind of rebel movement, or at
least associated with violent rebel movements.

(21:32):
Jesus is constantly chiding his disciples in the Gospels that
no, his Kingdom is not of this earth you guys are expecting, he
tells Pilate and John. But more than that, he's telling
his disciples, you guys are expecting this earthly Kingdom.
You got it all wrong, which is suggesting that the tradition
understands that Jesus is disciples were in fact expecting

(21:56):
an earthly Kingdom to overthrow,at least gain independence.
For the Jews in Judea that meansan earthly revolution, an
earthly rebellion very much likethe rebellions we see in the 1st
and 2nd century. Absolutely.
That normal conception of Messiah, as you we can read in
the sectarian documents of the scrolls, is just that.

(22:18):
A violent rebellion is to be expected and angelic forces will
will help us in this battle. Reminiscent of the Daniel Son of
Man prophecy. We know that the Romans used
Jewish Messianic religion in their own propaganda and this
begins with the Flavians. The Flavians really don't have

(22:40):
this long, impressive aristocratic lineage like the
Julio Claudians did. And so when they come to power
in 69, at the end of 69, the beginning of 70 AD, they have to
have a whole new basis for theirlegitimacy of their dynastic
rule. And that's been that.
What? Who do they hire?
They hired Josephus, a Jew, as their chief propagandist.

(23:03):
And Josephus tells us, well, youknow, God has gone over to the
side of the Romans and the main cause of this rebellion is the
are the Jewish prophet messianicprophecies That's echoed in non
Jewish historians like Tacitus. Furthermore, Josephus says point

(23:24):
blank that well, you know, the Jewish rebels, they got it wrong
if they were expecting an earthly Messiah king to help
them defeat the Romans. And that was the cause of the
rebellion that was really pointing to my boss, the Roman
emperor Vespasian. And furthermore, Josephus
invokes the Son of Man prophecy in Daniel when he says that in

(23:45):
the Jewish wars, which he wrote in the 70's, the there were
armies seen fighting in the clouds, just as at the sack of
Jerusalem, mind you. And that's Josephus's
description. He was there with Titus when
that happened. So Josephus is not only saying
that the Roman Emperor here is aJewish guy saying that the new

(24:06):
Roman emperor is in effect, the real Messiah of Jewish prophecy,
not like those rebels thought, when that's what really caused
the war. And more than that, he's
invoking the Son of Man, the Sonof Man prophecy, and Daniel as
being fulfilled at that time. You know, creepy echo of exactly
what Jesus is saying in all three of the synoptics in the

(24:28):
famous Jesus Apocalypse. Suetonius and Tacitus who were
writing these are Pagan Romans writing in the early 2nd
century. They completely confirmed that
both Vespasian and Titus were point blank the Jewish Messiahs.
They echo Tacitus particular echoes what Josephus has said,

(24:49):
that in fact the messianic prophecies were the main cause
of the first Jewish rebellion. But of course those Jews got it
wrong. It was Vespasian and Titus, the
first Flavian emperor, who were in fact the Jewish messiahs.
We're even told that Johann and Ben Zakai, the famous rabbi who
started the school at Yavna, wascompelled to recognize Vespasian

(25:12):
as the Jewish Messiah. So there is no question that the
early Flavian emperors had, as apart of their imperial cult and
a part of their prophet of theirimperial propaganda, the notion
that they were the Jewish Messiah is a prophecy, and they
even hired a Jewish writer to betheir main propagandist.

(25:36):
Then we see all kinds of connections between the Flavian
family and Christianity itself. And here I would turn to Paul's
letter to the Philippians. In one relatively short letter,
Paul tells us about Clement and Epaphroditus, Caesar's
household, and the praetorium. That is a remarkable little

(25:59):
letter. What the heck are we talking
about here? He's connected with Caesar's
household and he's talking abouta Clement and an Epaphroditus.
Well, Suetonius tells us again in the Pagan Roman, not a
Christian in the early 2nd century, he tells us that there
was a Titus Flavius Clemens, a member of the imperial Flavian
family who was executed and executed at about the same time

(26:22):
as one of the leading Flavian Friedman who is helping the
Flavians run the empire. Guy named Epaphroditus, who is
also Josephus in this later works, the Antiquities, for
example, he dedicates to Epaphroditus, his patron, those
works that suggests that any andJosephus says, well, I'm going

(26:44):
to tell you the history of our people.
And of course the Antiquities lays out a parallel history of
the Jews that we get from HebrewScripture.
So the fact that we've got a Clement and an Epaphroditus
being executed about the same time under demission,
Interestingly, Diocasius, the later historian, tells us that
Clement, Titus Flavius Clement, was executed by demission for

(27:08):
adopting Jewish ways or Jewish mode of life.
So he's not saying outright thathe's a Jew.
So what does that mean? It could mean that he's
associated with Christianity, that he is a believer in this
and that Jesus was in fact utilized, even though Jesus did
not say that in his actual lifetime.
That that prophecy that Jesus isis attributed to Jesus in the

(27:30):
synoptics is would be. I mean, who else could be the
fulfillment of the Daniel Son ofMan prophecy when the Jews are
facing such utter disaster and ruin?
I mean, their temple is destroyed, their leadership, all
those false messiahs who were rebels had failed.
So who could possibly be fulfilling the glorious aspect

(27:52):
of the Son of Man prophecy within the lifetime of Jesus's
hearers? Well, we're given a big fat
candidate by Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius.
The Flavians claim to be the Jewish messiahs who came to rule
the world and claim and we're promoters of now transnational
peace. And so we have an association of

(28:14):
the Flavians, traditionally, of course, Clement's wife, Flavia
Domatila, her burial site by tradition are the catacombs of
Domatila. And in the catacombs of Domatila
we have the big inscription thattells us it's the Flavian
sepulchre, and it is perhaps theoldest of all the catacombs.

(28:38):
And we have all kinds of Flavianimagery in that catacomb fish
and anchors in particular the terribly interesting in this
connection. I can just go on for just a
little bit more. The Seleucids back in the
Hellenistic period, rulers of say the area of Syria, famously

(29:01):
who fought the Jews in the in the Maccabean, when the Jews
rebelled against the Syrian rulein the Maccabean revolt against
the Seleucids. They claim to be descendants of
Apollo, and they used a very distinct symbol, an anchor
wrapped with a dolphin rapped about it.
And that is the Seleucid anchor,if you will, an anchor with a

(29:23):
dolphin. Homer tells the famous story of
how Apollo transformed himself into a dolphin.
And so to associate and you go to Delos, the legendary
birthplace of Apollo, an island,a Greek island.
You'll see that image there. Perhaps Seleucid patronage is
what got the image there. Well, we have Clement of

(29:43):
Alexandria, another Titus Flavius Clemens writing at the
turn of the 2nd to the 3rd centuries.
He is saying that the anchor is an appropriate Christian symbol.
He not only tells us the anchor is an appropriate Christian
symbol, he says his symbol came from the Seleucids.
If this is correct, then it is, as you can see from the images

(30:06):
from the Seleucids themselves, the anchor with the dolphin
rapped about it. What's interesting is that Titus
was the first Roman emperor to use the Seleucid anchor himself,
and so you can see many copies of the coin, coins with Titus's
face on one side and the dolphinwrapped around an anchor on the

(30:27):
other side, and different issues, different types of coins
Titus to use this for. It's somewhat distinctive to
Titus. He's the first Roman emperor to
use this at all. Augustus had used Trident with a
fish wrapped about it, or fish coming towards it, but that's
not the same image. It's a Trident, not the Celicid

(30:49):
anchor. Now of course, it makes perfect
sense for a Roman emperor to lose to use the Celicid anchor
anchor as a symbol, and that's clearly where Titus himself got
it. Roman emperors used Apollo
related image imagery themselveson coinage.
Many Roman emperors of the 1st century used Apollo related
image imagery. Titus was active in, of course,

(31:13):
the Middle East. The Near East is adopting it
from the Seleucids. I think there's really little
question about it. You can find even earlier Jewish
coins that use just the anchor, which is also fascinating.
They leave out the fish because I think that might be a graven
image. Again, that might offend Torah
Orthodoxy. Nonetheless, we have Titus using

(31:34):
it. That image was discontinued when
his brother after some time though.
After his brother became emperor, his brother would did
not participate in the Jewish war and could not make the same
claims to being the Jewish Messiah, so he discontinued its
use. The only other Roman emperor who
used the Seleucid anchor interestingly was Hadrian who
was fighting off the Buck Bar Coke book crowd.

(31:56):
So we really have two emperors who initiated its use in Roman,
a Roman context on Roman coins, that's Titus and Hadrian.
And Titus is unique in that he claimed to be a Jewish Messiah.
You can find this in Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius.
And now we have Clement of Alexandria saying it's the
Seleucid anchor. And why the heck would we use

(32:18):
the Seleucid anchor if we're Christians?
The salute. And Clement of Alexandria
specifically says the anchor that the Seleucids used.
So we have a Christian riding atthe turn of the 2nd to the 3rd
century saying use this lucid anchor for the symbol for Jesus,
a Jewish Messiah. And Titus would claim to be a
Jewish Messiah. It was the first Roman emperor

(32:41):
and pretty distinctive to him using this symbol.
Who was also, and interestingly enough, Clement of Rome, who is
sometimes associated with Titus Flavius Clemens of the late 1st
century, who was executed by hiscousin the Emperor Domitian.
His legendary death was being martyred by being tied to an
anchor and thrown into the sea. So we have all kinds of anchor

(33:03):
associations with the Flavians. We have all kinds of anchor
associations in early Christianity.
The Catholic Encycopedia, for example, will tell you that
before the time of Constantine, the anchor was a more common
symbol used for Jesus than the cross in the early catacombs.
So if you're looking around to late 2nd century or 3rd century

(33:23):
imagery, you will find more anchors than you will crosses in
the pre Constantine period to symbolize Jesus.
But you'll even find these dolphins on the doors of the
Hagia Sophia in constant in whatis today Istanbul in
Constantinople. So, and you can just walk into
an Orthodox or Catholic Church today and see all kinds of

(33:44):
anchors, all kinds of fish imagery.
There's one if you can see here,the image we have on the cover
of the book, This comes from a mosaic that was recovered from
Herculaneum that was buried because of that the eruption of
Vesuvius in 79 AD when Pompey and Herculaneum were destroyed

(34:05):
by the eruption of the volcano Vesuvius.
So it's frozen in time in the year 79 AD, which is the shortly
into the reign of Titus, the year that Vespasian dies.
And because of the earthquakes that preceded that eruption, we,
there was a lot of new reconstruction, remodeling,

(34:25):
fixing. And so this image is likely a
Flavian era image. And here we can see, as you can
see on, if you can see that my background here is an anchor and
we've got fish, fish person, person aiming towards the
symbolic safety of an anchor. So there we even have the
overlap of the fish to men imagery with the anchor being

(34:49):
used as a symbol of safety. Now that is as far as I'm
concerned, a perfectly Pagan use, but a Flavian era use of
anchors and fish. And Titus, of course, would at
the same period of time be initiating the use of the anchor
wrapped by a dolphin. The most ancients believed the
dolphins were fish indeed the king of fish and so this

(35:14):
combination of of fish and anchor.
But here, interestingly, in a purely Pagan Flavian era use, we
can see fish and men both aimingtowards the anchors who go make
you fishers of men and the the copious fish imagery that we
hear about in Christian literature.
And thank you for letting me getall that out.

(35:38):
Well, and we know that the Icluse fish was a early
Christian symbol, the letters standing for I isus the you
know, so it was like Jesus Christ.
Son of God, Savior. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The Icluse fish so and it was interesting that you mentioned
Pompeii because one of the earlyphysical attestation to the

(36:01):
existence of Christianity, they found the house church in
Pompeii that they date to the mid 3rd century I think.
What were you going to say? Oh yeah, I mean, that's exactly
it. Though everyone is, I hope,
familiar with the idea of the fish being used as an early
Christian symbol, because it does.
In Greek, it does play out a name game which spells out Jesus

(36:24):
in some of his titles, Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.
So if you take the first word for the 1st letter of each of
those, it happens to spell out the term fish.
And of course that would have Mystic significance.
You know, it's funny, you might have rearranged a couple of
those things or put in a different title.
But putting it that way, the fish is absolutely symbol

(36:44):
because guess what, it's also used in the Gospels as a as
symbolism. No question about that.
I mean, Jesus recruits Peter andAndrew, his brother, by saying
guys and fish the fish. Miracle of the coin, the fish of
the feeding of the multitude with fish, fish, fish, fish,
fish. It's all over early Christian

(37:06):
literature. I'll turn you into fishers of
men, you see, And here we have in the Pagan use men fish, men
fish. And as far as I can tell, that's
a Flavian ear of Pagan use of it.
So for the going back to the 1stcentury, you know, I want to so
there were a few key elements tothe evolving community.

(37:28):
You know, from our best attestation of what existed in
the 1st century. It was majority what we call
Jewish Christian groups. The famous of these is Nazarene
and Ibianites, the Gnostics, they started to rise, you know,
more in the 2nd century. And then the what you call the

(37:51):
Proto Orthodox, what becomes Catholicism, which is by
extension becomes all of Christianity because everything
springs out of that. Even all the Protestant
Reformation movements, they cameout of Catholic.
They didn't come out of something that existed before.
But when we're looking at the 1st century, there are some

(38:11):
interesting cute clues for me there.
There's even some very big cluesthat Marcy and influenced the
the New Testament as we have it.But for what I see in the 1st
century we have a majority Jewish Christian groups and by
and large all of these groups reject Paul as a heretic and his

(38:34):
text is not part of their tradition.
When we look at the EB and I andNazarenes, they were known to
have a Hebrew version of the Gospels, the Old Testament, the
Tanakh, and maybe epistles of Peter and James.
Because I know within the Clementine homilies and

(38:56):
recognitions, we have various, you know, gospels and epistles
attributed to Peter and James, ones that don't necessarily make
it into the the New Testament later.
But all the majority of groups rejected Paul's a heretic and
none of them accepted him. And so when we're moving into

(39:20):
that's 1st century, move into the 2nd century, the first
attestation of what you would call a New Testament with
gospels and epistles is Marcians.
And he is the first to include seven, I think it was of the
Pauline epistles. And it's not till mid 2nd

(39:43):
century that we start seeing references to what has been
referred to as the Proto Orthodox inclusion of Paul.
And so the first attestation that Paul's letters start to
become recognized and used is 1.The polemics against Martian and
his, you know, Evangelion and his Apostolicon I think is what

(40:06):
they called it, but it was his. You know, his version of a
Gospel, his collection of Paul'sletters, because at this point
no one else had a collection of Paul's letters that was in large
circulation. And that Marcion's community
became kind of attached to the Johannian community because the
Marcionites were the first to widely distribute the Gospel of

(40:30):
John, because thematically it has elements that kind of line
up with Marcian's philosophy. And then we have the rise of the
Gnostics. And you, you mentioned that we
have gospels from, you know, essentially for communities.
And as you see them, you have the Jewish Christian groups,
you, you know, you have the Marcianite community, Johannian

(40:51):
community. But you know, and there's,
there's the biggest clue in the New Testament of Marcian's
influence is how Paul's letters placed such a big, there's so
many of them when a majority in the 1st century completely
rejected Paul, the and the Gnostics.
So, so the major groups up untilMarcion and the Proto Orthodox,

(41:16):
the Jewish Christians in the 1stcentury, the Gnostics, they all
rejected Paul's a heretic, you know, And then it wasn't Mark.
Marcion is who revitalized Paul and the Proto Orthodox, you
know, because if you look at Marcion's philosophy, it was
heavily in Platonianism. The God of the Old Testaments

(41:38):
was the Demurge. And those ideas are what start
to kind of feed this for the secular Jews, the Hellenist and
for the intellectual elite in Rome, this conversion of ideas
that starts to take Paul and develop this other religion that

(41:58):
becomes Christianity. And I know you said, said you
take a different view on Marcion, but I really feel that
Marcion really starts to tap into this, you know, Hellenistic
influence that you have with just kind of a, an idea that you
want to secularize Judaism and assimilate into Roman culture

(42:20):
and the intellectual elites who were starting to play with the
ideas of monotheism, monogamy, moving away from the polytheism.
There was, there was an intriguein that.
And I, I feel like it was that little vein it started to spin
off that made Paul popular. Because Paul, the, the problem
of Paul is historical Jesus doesnot rely on Paul.

(42:42):
The historical Jesus, when we look, looks very much like the
Ebionite, early Ebionite in Nazarene Jesus who is Torah
Orthodox. His disciples converted people
to Judaism through circumcision and mikvah and a communal meal,
as can be seen in the Clementinehomilies and and some of the
other, you know, text from the that period outside of the

(43:07):
canonical Gospels. And I know that's a lot, but for
me, I was just going back to thethat's where I see the big
influence of Marcian and propagating Paul.
And then that's the catalyst forme that develops what becomes
Christianity. Well, I think you make again,

(43:28):
let me focus on the areas where we agree.
I think that there the argument,for example, that Paul reveals
in Galatians would make no senseif Jesus and the original Jesus
movement were not Torah Orthodox.
That is to say, we're told in the letter to the Galatians by
Paul that he's arguing with James over circumcision, he's

(43:49):
arguing with Kefus to his face, overeating with Gentiles.
And Paul does not quote Jesus. There would be plenty of
material in our canonical gospels.
You know, Jesus says it's not what goes into your body that
defiles, but what comes out of it.
He is critical of the Sabbath. He is critical of the Jewish

(44:10):
authorities of the time, Pharisees, scribes, and so
forth. He praises the faith of a Roman
centurion. Now in his age of rebellion,
Jewish rebellion, Messianic rebellion.
He praises not just a Roman, buta Roman centurion's faith as
exceeding that of any Jew. Now.
Those are all very curious things.

(44:30):
Paul does not cite any of that gospel material which would have
helped him in his argument with James and Depus.
Paul rather says, I got this stuff that I'm telling you about
in Galatians from no, I didn't get it from men, I got it from
my own direct revelation of Jesus.
So he has to rely on his own revelation of Jesus.
Elsewhere in Paul, the Pauling corpus, he argues against

(44:50):
circumcision, for example, any nowhere sites, any of the Torah
critical material that we get inJewish literature thereafter,
Christian, excuse me, Christian literature thereafter.
So it is perfectly obvious to methat this guy who's got his own
revelation, according to Galatians, is arguing with
earlier leaders of the Jesus movement.

(45:13):
That directly tells me that Jesus and his immediate
followers were Torah Orthodox. And I think that there's no way
to understand Galatians except by understanding that what
Paul's doing is he's taking the Jesus movement in a whole new
non Torah Orthodox direction. When that happened, we can, we
can dispute. I'd go go further.

(45:35):
We look at one of the first references to Jesus that I think
is pretty solid in non Jewish orChristian literature, and that's
Tacitus. In his history, the Annals, he
tells us that in 64 AD when the great fire of Rome happened, he
tried to pin the blame on this group of people called
Christians who were followers ofJesus.

(45:58):
And he locates that as our Jesuswho was crucified.
Now let's hold the phone here for a second.
Within 30 years of the of Jesus's crucifixion, about 30
years or so after Jesus's crucifixion, what we have are
that number of Christians that could be a plausible scapegoat
for the great fire of Roman 64. And more than that, in order to

(46:20):
be a plausible scapegoat, they can't be these pro Roman
pacifists that we read about in the New Testament, can they?
Now Tacitus is telling us that these are abominable.
This is just two years, mind you, 64.
This is just two years before the outbreak of the great Jewish
rebellion in 66 and so but what it seems to me is a con from
Tacitus seems to be confirming that the pre war Jesus movement

(46:44):
was not just Torah Orthodox as Galatians would suggest, but
also militant. And we have echoes of that, as
you pointed out within the New Testament.
But there I think it's bleed that's just bleed through among
the all that pacifist turn the other cheek, love your enemy,
etcetera, talk that Jesus is centurions are great.

(47:04):
You know, pay your taxes on and on and on and on and on.
I mean, even with Paul, we have a direct political statement in
Romans 13 that is absolutely anti rebellion, pro taxes, obey
the government. They're the agents of God.
So Paul in Romans 13 is very much like Josephus saying God's
gone over the Jewish God has gone over to the Roman side.

(47:26):
And so I think we have plenty ofevidence.
Now consider Josephus too in theJames reference in the
antiquities. James is hauled before the
Sanhedrin and he's killed along with certain others.
The Sanhedrin takes advantage ofthe absence of a Roman governor
to have James Stone 62, just twoyears before the Great Fire of
Rome. That again suggests to me that

(47:47):
the Jewish establishment is trying to tamp down the these
radicals. They would be Torah Orthodox,
and why would they then be offensive to the Sanhedrin while
they're militants and the Romansare much more political?
Let's put it this way about trying to accommodate the Jewish
forces at the time. The Sanhedrin identifies James

(48:10):
as being a problem and they stone him in 62 according to
Josephus. This all suggests to me that the
original Jesus movement was militant, Torah Orthodox,
apocalyptic, associated with people like John the Baptist,
who was fire and brimstone. So I do agree with you that the
original Jesus movement, let's call him the Jewish Christian

(48:32):
movement, for lack of a better term, they were not only Torah
Orthodox, they were militants. That's why Jesus was crucified.
Jesus claimed to be the king of the Jews.
That's the charge against him. And what's interesting is that
the Gospels seem to be standing on their head or turning
themselves into pretzels to blame the Jews for what is

(48:53):
distinctively a Roman mode of execution.
I have no doubt, as in the Jamescase, that the Sanhedrin is
working closely with the Roman government.
So there may have been an association there.
But what we're talking about here is a Roman execution done
under a Roman governor, and the Romans must have identified
Jesus as a political threat, oneof those militant messiahs who

(49:17):
helped cause the war, according to Josephus and Tacitus and so
forth. So I think there's no in my
mind, there's little question that the original Jewish
Christians were not only to our Orthodox but militant.
And what we have in our Greek New Testament is a critical
reaction to that. They're turning a Jesus inside
out, upside down, in effect, theexact opposite of what in what

(49:40):
the historical Jesus would have looked like.
And so our New Testament, in fact, in general, I would say if
we pan back and look at our New Testament, whenever it was
written, it is a critical reaction to the Jewish rebels of
the first two centuries because they apocalyptic messianic
utilizing, look at the Dead Sea Scrolls to get a flavor of what

(50:02):
they were probably like, very militant, expecting God to help
them in a war of independence against the Romans.
And as our historical sources all say, it was these messianic
prophecies that most inspired the first Jewish war.
And we can see a messianic leader in the second great
Jewish rebellion, Bar Khokba, son of the star.
And so these messianic Jewish rebellions are not disconnected

(50:27):
from the emergence of our Christianity, our Greek
Testament. In fact, it would seem to be
bizarre coincidence that Christianity emerged at just the
same time as these great Jewish wars.
Now our Greek New Testament is in many ways a critical
reaction. And very much photographic.
Inverse you see of the rebels themselves.

(50:50):
Yeah, no. So here's the thing, I'm in
agreement with your thesis. I build the bones differently.
How I get there, you know, it's I see some different key
elements that that build. So it may be an other side of
the same story. Really For me, the New Testament
is post, you know, Jewish Roman wars, post Barcoqua revolt,

(51:12):
maybe that. Well, the fiscal evidence is all
after that. We allege to scholarly work that
the text comes from earlier, butthat also doesn't prevent the
fact that there may be intentional additions to the
story in the text that we find copies of even though it
predates existing. So I mean, I'm saying the same

(51:37):
thing in different words and I build it in a different way
because there are key things that I see the new test Paul,
which, you know, a lot of peoplefeel like his theology
influenced the Gospels. There's those that think the
epistles came before the Gospelsand that Paul's theology
influences the Gospels that we have, which all goes back to how

(51:59):
I see the diverging movements inthe 1st century, the early
Jewish Christians. And we have some some historical
clues for me that that continue the Jewish revolt movement and
there are key reasons why I alsothink that the Jesus James
movement that participate in thefirst Jewish Roman war

(52:21):
historically refused to get involved with Barcoquba because
their first failed attempt. But for me, what becomes Paul,
the New Testament and how it becomes this very let's and this
is for me the, the, you know, the Roman psyop, the influence

(52:41):
campaign, it really to influencethe text, the tradition there.
There's some key events. We have the Jewish tax to
discourage, you know, people practicing Judaism in the 2nd
century. We have for me, a key event is
the split between the Ibeanites and Nazarenes.
The early Nazarenes rejected Paul, but then there was a group

(53:04):
that accepted Paul's teachings alittle bit.
And in 90 common era we have theinstitution of the burqa
hominem, the the benediction against the the manim, the the
heretics where a group of Nazarenes were rejected from the
synagogue. And the reason in the Talmud,

(53:24):
Christians are referred to as Nazarene is because those who
followed Paul, that branch of Nazarene is the branch that the
Proto Orthodox latched on to andthat started to develop what
became Christian. It's it's a, it's kind of
involved, but I'm not going to get too deep into that.
But that group of Nazarenes thatwere rejected from the synagogue

(53:46):
and held on to Paul's, then you see Marcion holding on to Paul
and then the Proto Orthodox taking Paul and then Paul
becoming part of the Catholic thing within that corpus, you
know, and you play in the Jewishtax.
You have an intentional redirection where they're trying
to move them away from this Jewish messianism.

(54:09):
There's a taxation to discourageyou from outwardly expressing
Jewishness because then you get taxed.
Then they have this textual tradition that starts to play
into Plutonianism. Hellenism finds ways in secular,
you know, in Hellenistic Judaism, you know, with
influences from the Greek Septuagint and, you know, moving

(54:31):
more into that intellectual frame that starts to build the
Pauline, you know, epistles, thegospels that are influenced by
that. And I'm not saying that the
Gospels don't reflect the communities they came from, but
they, they show textual influence from the epistles.
And so for me, there's, there's this line like they're, they're

(54:53):
trying to course correct. They don't want to keep having
these violent revolutionaries. And so they're trying to find a
way to appeal to the intellectual elites, the Jewish
Hellenist, the, the, you know, those who want to assimilate
with Roman culture, and they start trying to influence the
text in that direction. That's kind of where I see some

(55:15):
key clues. I I know I build the bones
differently though. Well, it's very interesting the
way you build the bones though. I mean, I it's fascinating.
I think the Pauline epistles do precede the gospels.
Paul is largely ignorant of the stories and content of the
gospels. Like we can start there.
Secondly, the Gospels reflect a Torah critical Jesus, a pro

(55:39):
Roman Jesus, a Jesus who can praise centurions, tell us to
pay our taxes, and more than that.
Let me come back to that in a second.
But there is no physical resurrection in Paul's letters,
for example. And so there's little, little
question in my mind that the Pauline epistles, whatever we

(56:00):
regard as the first and authentic Pauline epistles, come
before the Gospels, as I say, otherwise Paul would have cited
all of the convenient material that you find in the Gospels
that would support the Pauline position, both in a pro Roman
political direction, but also ina Torah critical direction.
And so, and more than that, the Gospels are developing the idea

(56:23):
of resurrection to an empty tombin a physical resurrection where
in John, you know, doubting Thomas is actually touching the,
the wounds and so forth of Jesus.
So I think we have to place the Pauline epistles before the
certainly our canonical Gospels.There's no little, little doubt
in my mind about that. And that the Gospels are

(56:46):
developing Pauline ideas and seeming, in my view, to sort of
reconcile the different strands of Judaism, including the
nascent, as you point out, there's Evianites that are
basically carrying on this tradition.
The poor is he carrying on this tradition from Jesus in a more

(57:08):
authentically Jewish way. And so the Gospels, I think, are
an attempt to reconcile different strands and putting
leaning in different directions.Matthew is leaning more in the
Jewish direction as much as he can.
Luke Acts is obviously leaning more in the Gentile direction.
He wants to tell us the story ofhow the message came to the

(57:28):
Gentiles in the book of Acts andso forth, and from other aspects
of the content. I mean, from Matthew,
everything's a fulfillment of scripture, even if it's not a
fulfillment of scripture and so forth.
So it's as though they're writing for slightly different
audiences, a more Jewish leaningaudience in the case of Matthew,
a more Gentile leading audience in the case of Luke.

(57:49):
Now, on the other hand, I think we can't dismiss a relatively
early composition to the GospelsJesus otherwise, I mean, forget
the Flavian connection even for a second.
To say to put into Jesus's moutha prediction that there'd be a
glorious coming of the Son of Man within the lifetime of his
listeners would be to preserve abig fat mistake if we get too

(58:12):
far away from the the moment of the temple's destruction.
So we, I think we can use textual clues within the some of
the texts to indicate how approximately when they were
written or or how far away they sort of had to have been
written. Now it added to the complexity,

(58:34):
though, as you point out, is theMarcionite edition of Paul's
letters, the Apostolos, the Apostolacon.
I, I tend to think, and yeah, I will defer, you know, to other
experts on this, but I tend to think that that is a reduction.
I mean, it's not always the casethat the, the shorter, simpler

(58:56):
version is the older version. I think there were elements that
Marcia Knights found objectionable and even Paul's
letters. And so I tend to think of the
Apostolos as a reduction and edited down version of Paul's
letters. Now, lots of people were writing

(59:17):
in the name of Paul. I mean, in fact, his letter to
the second letter to the Thessalonians, he says ignore
all those letters that are that seem to be written in by name,
which suggests that there were awhole bunch of letters of Paul
that he's asking us to ignore asnot genuine.
That means that there was a variety of letters that said a

(59:37):
variety of things and could, I mean, as Paul himself says, I'm
all things to all men. To those under the law, I'm
under the law. To those not, I'm not.
So I can win over as many as possible.
Well, it's an overt statement ofsort of hypocrisy right there,
and dishonesty. He's trying to be all things to
all men, even if he has to change.

(59:59):
Change his tune, change it like a chameleon changes colors from
one audience to the other. This suggests to me that Paul
could be utilized by a variety of communities.
This also suggests to me that wehave a variety of what we might
call Christianities. Certainly by the 2nd century

(01:00:21):
we've got different schools of the Jesus movement.
Those that are trying to incorporate Paul's pro Roman
anti Torah views are what's going to be reflected and will
become our canonical gospels. But surely the there is some
kind of Gospel of the Ibianites or Gospel of the Hebrews.
And boy, I would love to see thefull text of that because

(01:00:44):
because that I think might reflect the more authentic Jesus
movement, which as I say by inference, I strongly suspect
was Tor Orthodox and more militant.
And now we are given quotes of that because from Church fathers
and stuff, which give us some idea.

(01:01:06):
But again, even that might have had different versions of it,
just as there might be differentversions of Matthew or Luke.
Professor Airman, for example, believes that the whole first
section, you know, Luke sort of starts twice and the whole first
section, including the nativity,is sort of tacked on to a proto
Luke that we have. And that proto Luke might be the

(01:01:27):
very thing that the Marcionites used.
So they. Very much align.
They're very similar. They they don't have the
nativity and the miracles and some of the other stuff like the
the the proto Luke and Marcion'sare like pretty much identical.
There's not a lot of difference between those two.
Yeah, I think there is a relate that we're told even

(01:01:49):
specifically that they only recognized Luke or a version of
Luke. And that makes sense because
Marciano's de Judaizing. He doesn't like the all this
Jewish stuff. He ignores the Hebrew
Scriptures. And so he's going to strip out
in his own thinking as much this, you know, Jewish stuff

(01:02:11):
from the Jesus movement as possible.
That's why he he it's important for him to preserve a copy of
Paul and his movement had a certain version of Paul because
that's the direction he's going to take Paul in a further
direction. Now there were of course the
Greek philosophy is influencing Judaism all over the place even

(01:02:34):
relatively early on. But by the time you get to the
1st century with Philo and Josephus, we're talking about
politically pro Roman Jews who are using Greek philosophy,
Platonism, Stoicism. And Josephus is telling us
comparing the different Jewish sects, two different 2 schools

(01:02:55):
of Greek philosophy. Philo himself, there's no
question, you know, he's absolutely integrating
Platonism, Stoicism, the Logos idea, working it into Judaism.
But both Philo and Josephus of course are politically pro Roman
Jews as well, unlike the Jewish rebels of the time.

(01:03:16):
And so by the time he gets a Paul, this has really reached
this Hellenization has reached anew point, a new apex.
And Paul has thorough, if he hasto twist Hebrew scripture on its
head to make its point, and he will twist Jewish scripture on
its head to make his point, he'staking that Hellenization, this

(01:03:37):
influence of Greco Roman philosophy and politics to new
heights. Now when that happened, I think
I'm going to be still. Although I have, as I say, moved
away from a mid 1st century viewof Paul's letters, I still think
it's a 1st century context for various reasons.

(01:03:59):
Paul has to be, in my view, writing before the gospels and
the gospels themselves could nothave been written too much after
the destruction of the temple. Otherwise, Jesus's prophecy
would really look like like I make a fat mistake that really
not been explained by Christiansthat the glorious coming of the
Son of Man is going to happen within the lifetime of Jesus's
listeners around 30 CE. Well, when you passed a century

(01:04:23):
beyond that, it really becomes obvious.
Big glaring mistake. And so the Gospel of John, which
meant most scholars regard as the last of the Gospels,
excludes that all together. That prophecy has become
somewhat irrelevant and somewhatembarrassing, let me suggest.
To early Christians, this would suggest that the Gospels were

(01:04:43):
written sometime between the twoJewish wars.
And as I say, the other evidencesuggests to me that Paul's
authentic letters at least were written before the Gospels.
Although in a post war context, this would place our at least
the beginnings of our canonical literature through textual
evidence and inferences we can draw from what the text is

(01:05:05):
saying between, you know, the two Jewish wars.
So I believe that most of our New Testament, that's why it had
canonical authority later on waswritten.
Although there was all kinds of other literature, letters of
Paul that he's dismissing in Second Thessalonians and so
forth. Much more Hebrew connected to

(01:05:27):
the Jewish Christian movement material.
I think there's all kinds of other literature, but our
canonical, what would become ourcanonical Christian literature
at a later phase was written between the two Jewish wars, or
no later than around the time orshortly after Hadrian I Just
from the textual evidence, I think that's the strongest case

(01:05:50):
to be made. Well, you know, that's how I.
Believe what I believe. Let me put.
It back, OK, I mean, it's reasonable, but I always just go
back to when we first the first physical copies and the first
physical copies. The oldest of Paul's epistles is
papyrus 46. Would say date to around 200.
Common error. So for me, like it's the

(01:06:12):
physical evidence before everything.
The theories are helpful in understanding where this may
have came from. But you know, for me, I push
back on the theories. I'm like, it's a good theory.
I mean it's reasoned, it's well thought out, it's logical, makes
sense. For me, the physical evidence is
what is prima fascist, the most important thing for me.

(01:06:36):
And then, you know, we do work to rebuild where this came from.
It's a. Minimal date though.
You get the physical evidence. We know it exists by the point
we start getting the physical evidence.
It doesn't tell us that the material in the text itself
wasn't written earlier. In fact, there may be good.
If there is good reason to believe that it was written

(01:06:57):
before, we should attend to thatevidence, it seems to me.
And it's hard to deny, you know,when we're told of Justin Martyr
pleading before Antoninus Pious,That's mid 2nd century and he's
already got come. And he doesn't cite Paul, if I
recall myself correctly, which is interesting, isn't it?

(01:07:19):
But he seems to be aware of whatwe would call the New Testament
Jesus, because he's aware even of the Pagan religious parallels
which he himself is citing. And to have an audience before
the emperor himself. Not everyone gets a trial before
the emperor. Normally the pride tours would
run their own, you know, criminal courts and stuff.

(01:07:41):
Maybe if you were a big politician you'd get a trial in
the Senate. But to have the emperor himself
hear your case means it's a significant thing and getting
some high-ranking sympathy. So Justin Martyr in the middle
of the 2nd century, Papius I think is writing shortly before
that. And we certainly have in the

(01:08:03):
second-half of the 2nd century Christian writers of a variety
of kind of Iranius, you know, Tertullian, Plamondo,
Alexandria. And so for them to have and
advanced Christian theology evenwhen they're taught, even when
they're dissing heretics like Marcion, which they do spend a
good deal of their time dissing Marcion.

(01:08:25):
But we have Uranias at least testifying to 4 gospels.
We have Christian writers in themid to late 2nd century who are
really starting to attest to a real Christian movement that we
would recognize. So that suggests that another no
later than date, not an earliestpossible.

(01:08:48):
And when we start getting physical evidence where we get
attestation, then we have to payserious attention to the fact
that for them to have this view of Christianity or for them to
have this view of the literature, the text itself must
be a bit older than that. Does that make sense?
I mean, yeah, I mean, but yes and no.

(01:09:12):
I love you my. Brother, the moration moratorium
Canon has a list of Paul's letters.
So there's an indication, you know, mid second, early 3rd, 2nd
century. I think it was between 170 and
200. Somewhere in there there's a
list of Paul's epistles. So I go with physical evidence

(01:09:36):
first. I do listen to theories, but I
accept them as theory, not fact.We don't know what form or shape
the original epistles existed. So I'm not saying that the
epistles don't exist before physical copies, and I'm not
saying the Gospels don't exist before physical copies.

(01:09:56):
I just don't accept that those early physical copies reflect
the ones found or the ones laterthat became accepted by
Christianity. So first for me is prima fascia
is physical theories inform and educate their reason.
They're well thought out, they have a they're good, they give
good clues. But we don't know for fact that

(01:10:19):
what is in the found copy is what was in the original copy.
And for me, physical evidence comes first.
I mean, you, you worked, you worked in, you know, the legal
field and you know, evidence, you know, you need to have hard
physical evidence. And so for me, that's a big
thing. I did want to find a point of

(01:10:41):
agreement on us. Go ahead.
Well, physical evidence I think is where we have to begin, but
with the understanding that the physical evidence to exist is
our no later than date. And the mid to late 2nd century
is where our fragments do begin with New Testament material.

(01:11:02):
So you're absolutely right aboutthat.
And you're absolutely right thatreal clear attestation of their
contents doesn't begin until about that time as well, about
the mid 2nd century and beyond. So we're sort of stuck making
inferences from the darn texts that we've got.
And all we've got are those darntexts from.

(01:11:22):
And you notice that's what I'm doing.
I'm using ancient texts from historians in the in the text
itself to make these kind of arguments.
And that is I have to concede, since there is no earlier
physical evidence and no earlierclear attestation of their
contents. That's what makes something like

(01:11:43):
Josephus's Testimonium interesting.
To the to the extent that it is genuine, to the extent that it's
wording is genuine, it might contain clues.
So, for example, if the Testimonium in Josephus is
accurate, and if we see echoes in Luke's Emmaus narrative, you
know, the normal view is that Luke was used to interpolate the

(01:12:06):
the testimonial. If the causation may be just
exactly the reverse, it could bethat Luke is using the
testimonial of Josephus as a basis for some of his language.
And certainly in the area of theEmmaus passage, the influence,
the causal influence, may be theother way about South.

(01:12:27):
A lot will hinge upon, for example, what we think about the
authenticity or how much of the Testimonium is authentic,
something like that. But apart from inferences from
ancient texts, I grant you, Sir,our physical evidence doesn't
kick in until later. And even the attestation from

(01:12:49):
writers who we can give dates todoesn't kick in until later.
That's simply a fact. Yeah.
So I want to a point of agreement that I want to build a
lot more to. That's very interesting to me.
You mentioned the Hellenistic influences that come into Paul
and then the development of epistles and gospels.

(01:13:10):
So the sons of Zadok, the Sadducees this term sad, you
see, comes from the Zadok. The the sons of Zadok was also
referenced in Qumran and we havewithin the Dead Sea Scrolls.
We know that the the sons of Zadok, the Sadducees relied
heavily on Enochian the the Books of Enoch and Enochian

(01:13:36):
literature and the so the thing that the the Judaism branch that
was hijacked and turned into Christianity.
You find within Pauline epistlesreferences to the Enochian
Judaism, the battle between goodand evil.

(01:13:57):
You know it very much comes fromthe Sadduceean view.
Now the reason I want to connectthis is because the Sadducees
were the ones running the templeat the time and all of these
movements, the Pharisees, the Essenes, the Zealots, the Zekar,
I saw them as impure because they aligned themselves with

(01:14:17):
Roman elite and Hellenism. They were more Hellenistic.
They were secular intellectuals who looked into, for one
Enochian text and Daniel. They had a apocalyptic, the
apocalyptic apocalypticism of the New Testament, really

(01:14:39):
Revelation and stuff like that really comes from the influence
of the Sadducees in the Temple. Now for all the other groups we
have, you know, all the other Jewish movements is we have
diversity of Judaism in the 1st century, but all of them but the
Sadducees, the Pharisees, the Essenes, the Zealots, Zakhar,
all saw the temple is impure because it aligned with Roman

(01:15:01):
views and values and was aligning with Hellenism.
And to them that made the templeimpure.
And that's why they didn't participate.
It's why the early James movement didn't, they were
vegetarian because they wouldn'tconsume meat because meat was
part of temple sacrifices. Therefore, if it's impure, we're
not going to consume it. But you know, so it's that
intellectual elite, the the sonsof Zadak, the Sadducees.

(01:15:25):
And you can see the Enochian Judaism influence in Paul's
epistles, you know, the battle between light and darkness,
Angel, the Angel, ology and stuff.
And I, and I believe that's alsowhere the attachment to
apocalypticism. And for what you mentioned post
revision after the destruction of the temple, they add in their

(01:15:48):
prophecy of the destruction of the temple.
I feel like the branch of Judaism that was hijacked by
Paul and those after him was sad.
You seeing and This is why. And others don't see Paul as a
Pharisee because he said I'd become all things to all people.
He claims to be a student, but he does not have Gamma Leo.

(01:16:12):
But he doesn't represent Gamma Leo's ideas.
His ideas are the opposite. They're not.
He doesn't sound like a student of Gamma Leo.
His writings reflect either somebody who opposes it or comes
from a different camp. But Paul's literature more
aligns with Enoki and Judaism. And it was there in that elite
that, you know, they would, you know, they relied on influences

(01:16:36):
from the, you know, with the Greek Septuagint and those
philosophical ideas that they started to see connections with
Plutonianism. And and that's also where some
of the views of like Trinitarianism eventually comes
out. But my point was simply is that
it was that branch of Hellenism that kind of, you know, because

(01:16:57):
you mentioned Hellenism for me is what really was the through
line from the 1st century Judaism.
Well, I think Professor Robert Eisenman makes a really good
point when he asks us to distinguish between the
Sadducees around the temple and those who would call themselves,

(01:17:18):
for example, the Dead Sea Scrolls sectarian community.
They were founded by a righteousteacher, Azadiq.
And so when we're distinguishingbetween those who find the
temple impure and the Dead Sea Scrolls community certainly did
believe that they went out into the wilderness to develop more

(01:17:38):
pure forms of worship. And those who call themselves
Sadducees who ran the Temple, Philo and Josephus make it quite
plain that when he, when they divide up the schools of Jewish
thought at the time, the ones that did not believe in the
resurrection of the soul were the Sadducees.
And those are the Sadducees who are strict Torah Orthodox.

(01:18:00):
There's no, you know, resurrection of souls in the
Torah and they're the ones who who are running the temple.
It seems to me that makes good sense, but it wouldn't make good
sense if you didn't believe in the resurrection of the souls
and you're that kind of sad. You see that you would have this
kind of apocalyptic literature that would you say, Daniel, for

(01:18:22):
example, as we've talked about what, which talks about the
resurrection of the souls. So I would distinguish, like
Professor Eisenman does, betweenthe Sadducees who run the temple
and who don't believe in a resurrection of souls according
to Philo and Josephus and what might be called the followers of
the righteous teacher or the righteous 1, the Zadiq that we

(01:18:46):
would read about in the Dead SeaScrolls community.
So the Essenes would regard themselves as righteous and
super righteous, and yet they are distinguished and set off
as, and if they are connected tothe, you know, the Dead Sea
Scrolls community, and these Essenes are somehow connected.
If in fact, our Dead Sea Scrollssectarians are these militant,

(01:19:08):
militant Essenes that Hippolytusmentions, then what we're
looking at is a different group certainly than the Sadducees who
ran the temple, who are probablycooperating with the Romans.
And we're probably knee deep in Roman politics with the Romans.
And they're not a particularly we're told explicitly, like I

(01:19:29):
say by Josephus and Philo, they don't believe in the
resurrection of the souls. And that seems to me to be at
odds with our Dead Sea Scrolls community.
And what would be the militant Essenes?
Yeah, I I agree with that dichotomy.
I mean, yes, I agree there. There are the ones who were
associated more with the Essenesand then there were the ones

(01:19:51):
that were involved with the temple but collaborated with
Romans and did seek to Hellenize.
So yes I agree that with the dichotomy you just pointed out.
I I didn't give that nuance whenI was stating it.
My my point was there is those within the Sadducee and branch
that Hellenistic Sadducee and that did look to the Enochian

(01:20:14):
literature. And we find influences from the
Greek Septuagint within the writings of Paul in the
epistles, which you know, it follows that line of Hellenistic
Judaism that follow accepts the Enochian texts because we find
in in the epistles a it seems like the the New Testament

(01:20:37):
aligns more with the Enochian Judaism texts that come from
Enoch, especially in the epistles in in Paul's theology,
at least it seems like. I agree with that.
That was more my point, you knowthat and I didn't give the
dichotomy of the two groups. So that was my error.
Paul himself has, well he says he knows of a man and is
generally thought to be a self reference who was caught up into

(01:21:00):
the levels of heaven and so forth.
That is so. I mean, there are, there are
several ways, but that just strikingly stands out that the
Enoch literature and the Ascension type literature is
having an influence insofar as it already exists at the time of
Paul. It's having a direct and
important influence on Paul. So there I I have to agree with

(01:21:22):
you, Sir. Yeah.
Yeah, no, thanks for catching that because I was
oversimplifying and I wasn't thinking about the the because I
know there's a group attached tothe Essenes that was, didn't you
know, they would had a critique of the the Temple Sadducees as
well. But you know, for me, the
problem of Paul and and you, youjust did a episode, I think with

(01:21:47):
another podcast where you talkedabout how the historical Jesus
is without sans Paul, without Paul.
You know, for me, the historicalJesus, when you really look at
him does align with the EB nightNazarene early view a a Jesus
without Paul because you really don't have the Jesus of the you

(01:22:09):
know, New Testament or Christianity without Paul.
And for those who want to look at you know, whether you're
you're looking at the quest for the historical Jesus or these
different ones one through line.I mean they all agree on two
things, the baptism in the resurrection.
Only two two things we're clear on.
The rest is hotly debated. But the other thing is majority

(01:22:34):
of all the historical critical scholarships see Jesus as a
Jewish reformer within Judaism, not seeking to create a new
religion. And all of that for me aligns
with the early Evenite Nazarene views of a non divine human
prophet who was calling for the,you know, purification of an

(01:22:56):
impure temple. You know, he was calling for
purification of the temple like the earliest Evenite.
You know, that's what he was calling for.
And then you have the messianic kingly aspirations to overthrow,
you know, which we have indications of.
But I I find that the historicalJesus you don't need Paul and I

(01:23:21):
didn't get a chance to listen toI saw that you had done that
episode, but you know, Paul is really a problem.
Paul is what creates Christianity.
Right. It was interesting that we did
the discussion last night with aChristian and he was laying out,
you know, non Christian sources.He indicated the Talmud, but he
was we were also talking about the correspondent correspondence

(01:23:44):
between plenty of younger and the Emperor Trajan.
Tacitus is mentioned in the Annals and Josephus, of course,
which we all agreed were independent attestation to
Jesus. But more than that, I think
you're right that the what we call the Evianites, the
Evianites, there is no doubt in my mind that they believed in a

(01:24:04):
more earthly mortal Jesus, a Torah Orthodox Jesus.
And that is where I think we have to look for the original
Jesus movement. Jesus and his immediate
followers are undoubtedly more like those Evianites, no doubt
about it. And that Paul and our Greek New
Testament authors, they're taking the Jesus movement in a

(01:24:27):
whole new direction using Greco Roman philosophy, using and
having a distinctly pro Roman political perspective.
And that's sort of the elbow that Paul represents.
He is using this messianic movement, this Torah Orthodox
messianic movement started by Jesus and turning it on its

(01:24:53):
head, turning it inside out if necessary, just as he does with
Hebrew scriptures in general. Paul is changing the Jesus
movement, and but it's that movement that gives us our Greek
New Testament and what we call Christianity, which is, it seems
to me, in many ways the photographic negative of what

(01:25:14):
the original must have looked like.
You know, and that's another bigsmoking gun red flag for me is
that Jesus spoke Aramaic and when in synagogue read in
Hebrew. And we have, we don't have like
original Aramaic Hebrew Gospels.We have writings in Koine Greek.

(01:25:37):
And so like there is a loss in translation when you study
languages because, you know, I've studied Hebrew, Paleo,
Hebrew, I, you know, I've done studies of Greek and you
understand there's nuances to words in it in translation.
There's always loss of translation.
If you understand Hebrew words, the idioms have multiple

(01:25:57):
meanings based upon context. And if you take one word and you
translate it the exact same way through into English, you're
going to lose the nuance of how it in many times as multiple
meanings. Like the word has said, you
know, you know, various words, they have multiple meanings and

(01:26:23):
the arbitrary nature of translation, you lose some of
the nuance and thus you, you know, take out the original
meaning. And so it's tough that we have
these late copies. And me, I always get stuck on
the physical evidence. And I, I really respect and
appreciate the effort into understanding where it came
from. And I agree that it's there.

(01:26:45):
It's not that it's not there. It is there.
It's just that I need the earliest manuscript to accept
it. Well, we keep finding, like I
say, it was a remarkable thing what we found in the middle of
the 20th century, you know, withthe discovery of Nag Hammadi
texts, with the discovery of theDead Sea Scrolls, that is deeply
enriched our understanding of the religion of the period, both

(01:27:08):
Gnostic Christianity and pre warsectarian Jewish messianic
thought that that has been a huge thing.
We're also continuously discovering new inscriptions,
new physical evidence. So all we can do, my brother, is
hope that that process continuesand that we keep getting more

(01:27:28):
texts and more physical evidencefrom actual inscriptions and
stuff that might help us, give us at least give us clues to
filling out this picture with greater certainty.
All right. So yeah, we've had a good
conversation today, covered somereally good points.
Is there any final words that you would like to give before we
sign off here? No, thank you for this wonderful

(01:27:50):
conversation. It really was fun and
fascinating. So thank you, Sir.
All right, well, I want to thankfor everybody for listening to
the Pulling the Threads podcast.Please like, subscribe and share
this and stay tuned for more episodes coming in the future.