Cultish: Was Christianity a Mushroom Fertility Cult?, pt. 1

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01:17

Talk to you later guys John, marco allegro was a scholar who was also

01:26

He was an agnostic he was agnostic, but he was an ordained minister so he became an ordained minister and they started studying theology and eventually became agnostic, but he was

01:35

A language expert and so he was hired to decipher the dead sea scrolls So they did it for 14 years he deciphered these things they're putting together these they had to use dna because they had to make sure that the the

01:44

Cow the fragments were from the same cow which would indicate that it was the same piece of skin Okay, because it's literally on animal skins

01:51

They found them in these these ceramic vessels in cumrun hidden in the the side of a mountain wild So they take these down.

02:00

They they realize this is the oldest version of the bible by far And it's the I think it's in aramaic

02:06

It's one of the only ones in aramaic and at the end of this translation over 14 years

02:11

John, marco allegro writes a book called the sacred mushroom in the cross And he says the entire religion was a misunderstanding

02:17

And what it was originally about was psychedelic mushrooms and fertility rituals And that that's what created this religion

02:25

These people were taking mushrooms and they were experiencing god and they were having fertility

02:31

Rituals because they were trying to be as bountiful and have as many babies as possible And that's what the bible was originally all about Hi, everyone.

02:38

Welcome to cultish entering the kingdom of the cults. My name is jeremiah roberts one of the co -hosts here Hi andrew, how are you man?

02:46

I i'm doing well, I guess joe rogan now has me questioning everything I ever thought I believed

02:52

About the bible do I have like mushrooms hidden in the back drawers but underneath my books like should

02:58

I what's going on here? I know are we really a podcast about cults host? That's really about a mushroom fertility cult

03:06

Um, wow. Well, that's uh, so we're going to unpack that what you just heard. There is a clip Uh from uh, the great, uh digital areopagus of the world, uh, the joe rogan experience where he is articulating a book

03:18

That we are going to be talking about today The book is called the sacred mushroom and the cross by john marco allegro

03:25

And we have back with us wes huff who's on the podcast with us today. Glad glad you are back my friend

03:32

Always a pleasure. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. So, um, yeah, so john marco allegro

03:38

This is something and I these talking points. It seems to be really kind of getting some attention you see

03:44

People like joe rogan talking about it. Uh, there's people on lex friedman, uh who are also articulating this

03:50

Uh, there's another book the immortality key where the two authors there were on jordan peterson about a year ago really articulating uh, these same talking points talking about ancient religion the connection to psychedelics and man, that's uh

04:06

Really a mouthful so the book sacred mushroom in the cross I Binge through it on audible at 1 .7

04:13

speed just to kind of get a grasp on it and my goodness, um

04:18

I I it's hard to even know where to begin. So first of all let everyone just know just a little bit about who you are in regards to what might make you some of a

04:28

Qualified person to give some commentary on this subject of the sacred mushroom and the cross

04:35

Yeah, so, uh as the listener, uh might know from our previous episodes.

04:40

My name is wesley huff I am a resident of toronto canada. I'm a phd candidate at the university of toronto in new testament to christian origins

04:48

I study early christian scribal culture and I am also the

04:54

Director the director of central canada for a ministry called apologetics canada and so I really my area of expertise has to do with christian manuscripts early christian church history and issues related to that so If we're talking about john marco allegro,

05:12

I mean i'm not a dead sea scroll expert but I have read the sacred mushroom in the cross i've done a fair amount of work on some of the greek manuscripts of the of the dead sea scrolls which exists and so As it pertains to this issue, it's an issue that I might not be like a formal expert on but I deal with a lot in terms of the adjacent issues related to the manuscripts that make up the history of the biblical text and Even just in my own ministry work.

05:46

I do a lot of work on university campuses and the sacred mushroom in the cross and Marco allegro's theory have been brought up numerous times to me on university campuses in ministry settings because Joe rogan is popular

06:02

Yeah, right, uh newsflash. I don't know if you know this but joe rogan is a very popular podcast Out there, maybe maybe it's catching up to uh cultish a little bit.

06:10

It's almost there but Yeah, he he's a he's an up -and -coming podcaster. Hopefully maybe one of these days

06:16

Maybe one of these days he can be on our podcast. We'll give him we'll give him a boost But um, that's right.

06:23

Yeah. Yes, but uh, just real quickly and i'll let you jump in here a second, but The very beginning we played that clip obviously in the middle of that one joe rogan episode

06:33

But what um, how would you describe if anyone's living under rock i'd ever heard about this book How would you explain it to them because even if they haven't read this book it's possible.

06:42

It's very possible they might have someone in close proximity who might Believe something similar to this or just is very interested and open to the idea of utilizing psychedelics because that's coming to become normalized as well too

06:55

How would you explain the overall thesis of the sacred mushroom and the cross? Yeah, it is interesting because I think that john marco allegro if it wasn't for individuals like joe rogan he

07:07

His he and his work would really just kind of fade into obscurity Because although as you heard in that clip, uh,

07:16

John, marco allegro was a legitimate scholar He was a biblical archaeologist and he was part of the dead sea scrolls team which did kind of collate and translate the uh, the original discoveries of the dead sea scrolls

07:31

John, marco allegro and his later work the sacred mushroom on the cross really kind of ostracized him academically because What he proposed was that?

07:43

the Christian religion, um as kind of Joe rogan hypothesized there or articulated there um the christian religion was more or less a misunderstanding based from hallucinogenic um cults from fertility cults

08:05

And so what allegro did is in his most infamous work the sacred mushroom on the cross

08:10

Which made somewhat of a resurgence? Due to individuals like rogan promoting it Um, it relates to the development of language through etymological roots

08:20

To the development of myths religions and cultic practices in world cultures and so where this comes into what we're talking about is

08:30

That through those kind of tracing of the origins of words, that's what etymology means uh what allegro did is he looked at particular words in the bible that he kind of uh sectioned out and then he came to the conclusion that Jesus did not exist that the gospels were a hoax and that christianity turned into it

08:55

As we know it today Via nothing more than the misunderstanding of ancient fertility cults in which the object of worship was a psychedelic mushroom so That's a big claim, right?

09:08

Yeah, especially considering, you know us 2 000 years later as as christians people who claim to follow jesus christ

09:15

If what he's really saying is true, then uh, we have more than gone astray in our understanding of who jesus was and is

09:24

Yeah, andrew, what are what questions you have? What are your thoughts so far just with what are you saying? My question is is what is the context of the sacred mushroom in the cross like who was allegro writing to And is it even like a book that the typical person is able to to pick up and really understand some of the arguments that he's making

09:45

Yeah, that's a really good question. I think It's it's not as clear to me who the intended audience is

09:53

Because at times it's very simple and at times he's relying on the audience to understand

10:03

Etymology based on ancient sumerian and uh That's a big ask for a regular book reader

10:15

To know I mean it requires the reader to have a working knowledge of ancient languages like sumerian and other ancient semitic languages alongside some cursory biblical scholarship and I think that's a tall order for anyone an expert or not

10:30

And if you try to read the sacred mushroom in the cross And you end up wading through a lot of the jargon jargon and linguistics that made uh,

10:39

I mean even Uh me as someone who's interested in studies this stuff a little bit confused at times

10:46

Uh, then I would say that it's it's actually pretty hard to peg down the actual audience that allegro is is trying to to To write to hey guys

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12:17

Yeah, and also, uh, let me ask you this too is uh I mean it is interesting that it came out it came out in the 1970s, which was a time where The experimentation with those sorts of drugs were a regular started to become really normalized which is which is interesting

12:34

But um, maybe it's also explained to our audience just because even the word etymology you said that's the that's the nature of language the nature of words, but specifically a lot of times they ain't the

12:45

Nature of language the nature of words is really contingent upon your worldview Would you be able to explain like how should a christian think about etymology?

12:54

And are there what are also like wrong ways to there's fallacies in regards to etymology as well, too

13:00

There's incorrect ways Could you maybe help our audience kind of understand that that because that's kind of a big part of this whole discussion about this book

13:09

Yeah, so etymology is an issue that I think we as christians should really be aware of because A lot of individuals with maybe like a first year knowledge of biblical greek often commit etymological fallacies

13:25

Because we start to learn about the origins of words and that say, you know This part of this word comes from this greek or this latin word

13:34

And so therefore it means this and we can really get ourselves into trouble there's a lot of depth and a lot of Things that we can learn from learning the origins of word and learning languages like greek and latin but the etymological fallacy is when we

13:54

Use those and make more of the words than uh, really Is is merited by the meaning of those words alone.

14:03

So even like uh, A typical example you'll hear in a sermon that's an example of an etymological fallacy is if someone says, you know

14:12

Well, the word we translate as church is the word ecclesia and ek means out of And kaleo means to call and that's the that that's those two words

14:23

Ekkaleo ecclesia and so the church means the called out ones And so this is ascribed some further meaning to it.

14:31

And uh, maybe we can even get something very encouraging Edifying from that the problem is that by the first century

14:39

Ecclesia did not mean the called out ones Even if maybe that meant what it what the original intention was

14:47

Ecclesia as the word that's more often translated as congregation. I mean we have ecclesias of greek officials

14:56

Who gathered together? Um, it simply means gathering together. And so we have to be very careful when we talk about etymology because Uh etymology and and tracing the etymological roots of particular words in the bible or anywhere else can can often lead us into Problems and and this is one of the cruxes

15:20

I think of Something like marco allegro's work and actually fellow academics within his field his contemporaries

15:30

They really pointed out to him and said, you know, this this doesn't work. This causes a lot of problems because If you look at the etymological roots of any words

15:43

That's not necessarily how you get Meaning you don't get meaning necessarily from Just the etymological root of a word so even if we

15:55

Assume that he's right about the symbolic connections between various words and ideas and concepts across religious texts

16:02

We're stuck with this very serious elephant in the room And that's the fact that allegro based his entire thesis on tracing the origins of the words and You can't do that because the etymological fallacy

16:16

Which is a genetic fallacy that states that a word or phrase is true proper meaning Is derived directly out of the oldest meaning of said words or the compound components of the words the problem with that Is that the meanings of words change over time?

16:32

So words definition at any point in time Can't be established from its origins its etymology

16:39

The way we find out the true proper meaning of a word or phrase is by looking at how it's used within its context whether culturally or contextually

16:48

So let me use an example that I use actually in my youtube video that where I address the sacred mushroom in the cross

16:56

Uh Jeremiah if I said, uh the word awful, what does the word awful mean?

17:02

Uh, it means you define it something terrible, um, usually if i'm

17:09

If I taste something in relation to food, I think last time I said awful I remember one time I utilized it as I tried this green tea at this hipster coffee shop and it just tasted like old

17:21

Fermented algae and I didn't know how how do you charge four dollars for this? And so I just said this is awful.

17:28

That's how that's how I utilize that word in that moment Yeah, algae coffee coffee sounds awful.

17:34

Yes, you can even see how I was messing up my words there. Yeah Algae coffee sounds awful. Yeah, we got it, right?

17:40

Yeah. Well etymologically if you were to break that word apart You would find that it means in the english language full of awe

17:50

In that you were awestrucken By that coffee It's actually a positive

17:57

And if you go back to something like the 18th century, that's the way it was used it was used positively to express

18:04

You know, you would find uh writings that would talk about the awfulness of god how full of awe

18:11

We are as human beings, uh at the the concept of god. That is not how we use the word today

18:17

And so you would be very misled By an etymological explanation of the word awful because if you were to tell me that you're

18:29

The tea that you were charged four dollars for that was made out of algae. Um Was uh was awful and I I you know

18:37

Was very academic about it and sat down it broke apart the components of the words and thought you know what jeremiah?

18:43

Really liked that tea. He liked that tea so much. He was awestrucken by it It was probably the best he's ever ever tasted in his life

18:49

Yeah, I would literally be led to the opposite conclusion of what you meant And so that's where something like the etymological fallacy goes really astray and so if if allegro or anyone else really is hedging their bets if they're betting their thesis

19:07

On something like the etymology of words They're not just in dangerous territory.

19:13

They're actually They have to be really careful that they're not being led astray

19:19

Like I would be if I sat down and broke apart the components of your Four dollar tea experience.

19:26

That was awful No, that definitely makes sense andrew what's on your mind Yeah, so is one way to spot like an etymological fallacy is by let's say this man makes an argument allegro uh stating that the true meaning of the text is

19:44

Actually different than what all of the text is actually explaining Right like the the text in john 1 states that jesus christ has been god from eternity, right and that he took on flesh uh, but for some reason he comes up with a

19:59

Explanation through the totality of whatever this 14 years that work that he did Through secret knowledge hidden in words and roots

20:07

Uh actually contradicts, uh, the text itself that we have in the new testament testament.

20:13

Is that one way to spot like a genetic? Uh etymological fallacy you see what i'm trying to say. I'm trying to say it.

20:19

Um, but i'm not a scholar like you are Yeah, I I think we can we can take those types of breakdowns we can say.

20:27

Oh, okay. That's interesting but Why do all modern english translations translate it the way that that it it's translated today

20:38

Why do we have not just one english translation but a plethora of english translations all faithful english translations that rely on?

20:48

translation committees that groups of scholars who can weed out any one individual individuals kind of bias or Leaning one way or the other now, why is it that they translate it the way that they do?

21:04

and Then we can say okay. Well based on that How do we have more trust in this one scholar who's gone off in a very different direction or do we have trust in?

21:18

basically every Modern translation and we have to be careful here, right? Because this is the i'm not trying to make the argument of majority

21:26

That because the majority of scholars make a particular argument that it's true. I don't believe things

21:32

I believe jesus is god Yeah, and that's not a majority position in new testament scholarship. So, you know, there's there's a there's an obvious and clear outlier to this type of argumentation, however

21:45

It's not just that You know, it's a majority position it's

21:51

Every position over and against allegro and even if you look at some of the other individuals on the

21:58

The dead sea scroll committee who interacted with allegro If you look at some of their communication now, which you can find online you have to do a little bit of digging but you can find it they all were kind of like Allegro you got to calm down on this like this.

22:13

This doesn't really make sense. You're compromising your academic credibility and I mean rogan on a number of his podcasts and a couple of other people

22:22

I think more or less because of rogan I've promulgated the idea that the catholic church bought up the rights to the sacred mushroom on the cross and kind of um that they uh

22:32

Suppressed it for a little point in time if you actually look into the history of it the publisher dropped the the printing

22:39

Because it was just not making any money So he just dropped the printing

22:44

It wasn't it wasn't bought up by the the vatican and suppressed because the vatican thought that this was a threat

22:49

It was literally that, you know, they weren't selling any copies So they just stopped printing them and then event at a later point in time.

22:57

It was it was brought back. Yeah, but uh, I I think I I think that speaks to the fact that This is something that marco.

23:08

Allegro was off in the corner promulgating And uh the rest of the world of new testament scholarship and early christianity

23:16

Even secular critical scholarship was was not On board with what he was saying.

23:23

It didn't just have to do with the fact that he was Talking about hallucinogenic compounds, which he was

23:30

It it had to do with the fact that even if we gave marco allegro the benefit of the doubt

23:36

And assumed that his reconstruction of words like christ Are true, which they aren't by the way, even if we grant him all of that and give him the credit

23:48

We simply can use his methodology And say that it's based

23:54

On the idea that the first century koine greek, which is the language that the new testament was written in Had a semitic substratum

24:04

Which is what he claimed and that under the semitic substratum lies the sumerian Which doesn't work linguistically, but Let's say it does

24:13

After that he's making an argument that relies solely on the etymological fallacy

24:19

Which is kind of the cake topper to a failed theory So he's jumping a number of different fields linguistics and philology and etymology, you know all of these ologies and even if we go

24:37

Through all of those he he's really not He's not fulfilling the criteria that would

24:45

Convince any scholar in any one of those individual fields. Yeah that what he's communicating is true

24:51

Okay, give us some examples of what of his actual argumentation. What does that look like tangibly?

24:57

So when I read the book Like I saw the differences where he is arguing for the greek language the sumerian language

25:04

But then he would he would take an example talking about Like the lord's like new testament talking about the lord's supper

25:10

Taking the cup and how paul talks about if you take the lord's supper improperly

25:16

You'll come under a stricter form of judgment and you'll take all these different instances in the new testament um where like I think it might have even been jesus baptism or just all these instances where he's connecting it to a mushroom and Or to a psychedelic experience and then he utilizes some sort of correlation with the ancient language

25:38

And then if you look at old testament, for example, he'll take uh, Sinai and how the israelites and moses they followed that pillar

25:46

Through the wilderness and then he would sort of utilize the same thing and it was just like one example after another like how would you

25:54

How how would you describe like his argumentation? Like how what what is it? Yeah from your perspective?

26:00

What does that look like? Unfortunately, what it misses is it misses putting jesus in his first century socio -religious cultural setting so There's the old idiom if you hear hoof beats

26:16

Don't think zebras think horses and When we look at jesus and we think of the lord's supper and we see that ritual

26:28

Uh, we don't need to jump to hallucinogenic mushrooms We can think the passover

26:34

We can put it within its cultural perspective and say, okay, there there's an actual cultural

26:40

Religious setting to this particular event In fact last sunday,

26:45

I just preached upon. Um, at my my home church because i'm an elder at my church. I preached on uh in luke

26:53

And his accounting of jesus being betrayed by judas And the idea that that was at The passover.

27:02

Yeah that there was this cultural context for this celebration of the old covenant community the nation of israel being rescued from oppression

27:16

And rescued from slavery and that jesus is taking that and really that's the last true

27:23

Passover meal because then jesus in the new covenant Establishes that now that takes on a broader meaning

27:31

That's not just a rescue from slavery, but a rescue from sin and death And and that gives us that gives us a cultural context for that Yeah, and so allegro wants to jump to conclusions

27:44

And he wants to start with okay. Well this There's this background to this that has to do with uh ritualistic cults that are based on um things like uh

28:04

What's the word i'm looking for fertility? Yes, they're based on on fertility and so when we have these

28:11

Compounds and this is related to what you were saying before with the um with the immortality key, um

28:20

Where wine is used within these other religious contexts in in the greco -roman world.

28:25

Yeah. Um But what that ignores is that jesus is a first century jew participating in a first century jewish context of the passover meal and that there's an there's a fulfilling of that In that then he's establishing that in his own sacrifice

28:48

And so I don't think we need to jump to the the the conclusion that You know, let's look at the linguistic compounds of these words and assume that there's a sumerian base to it which by the way, sumerian scholars

29:03

Don't agree with that. There's a a semitic and then a sumerian base to kone greek but um even aside from that Uh, I think we're really jumping chasms that we're assuming rather than we're proving

29:20

When um allegro tries to to make these connections with things like the lord's supper or Terms like christ.

29:30

Yeah, and and not to be overly explicit just because there might be moms listening in with their little ones

29:36

And things like that So i'll try and be as general as I possibly can and you'll probably know where i'm going west because you read the book but really throughout his entire

29:45

Really thesis about this christianity being really this sort of Nor this sort of moving movement that was based off of this fertility cult that was involved with psychedelics

29:56

Is that he'll take a lot of different passages? From throughout the bible all over the place from ephesians from the old testament

30:05

But he'll always sort of make some sort of connection using, you know male female anatomy one way or another that's very sexually explicit and Like i'm listening to this trying like i've listened

30:18

I mean i've been a christian for like 20 somewhat years and I'm trying to make sense of how he is interpreting the tabernacle like in the old testament like the covenant language and things leviticus and And the assumptions that he's coming to that somehow these are all very sexually explicit

30:38

Representations of these fertility cult that got really consummated You know in when the psychoactive substances in the greek world became like readily available like how

30:50

Like how did he how is he coming to these conclusions or justifying them? I mean the best way

30:57

I can put it is very loosely um, because what it does is it hops over all of the contextual understanding

31:05

And the exegetical understanding of what's going on. I mean both the new and the old testament have a very clear

31:13

Historical framework to them. I mean, this is one of the things that we Talked about when we went to egypt and did our recent.

31:20

Can I trust the bible series? Was we talked about the fact that there is a very clear historical connection with something like the gospels to the first century

31:34

Historical and cultural setting of of galilee and judea um, and one of the things that continually stood out to us as we

31:42

You know traveled across egypt Was that the fact that there were?

31:48

historical cultural connections with the pentateuch and with egypt you know

31:57

We did uh at apologetics canada the ministry I work at My co -worker andy and I sat down while we were stuck in a mud brick hut in a sandstorm

32:07

Which is quite an adventure. We did we did a podcast where we talked about kind of the things that stood out to us

32:16

About some of the things that we had seen particularly the temple structures that had different different levels to them which led up to a holy of holies and how

32:27

God didn't you know, it's not the the the The jesus mythicists who want to say that everything was copied

32:35

And that you know, the the these stories in the bible are actually just carbon copies copycats

32:41

Yeah of these ancient cultures, but that god actually used the cultural framework of the day

32:47

To communicate to the israelites in a way that they would have understood And so the temple is very very different from any other temple that exists

32:55

But at the exact same time there's a cultural reference and linguistically, there are a lot of words within the hebrew of Books like exodus that can be directly tied to egyptian society

33:09

Even the word moses Is an egyptian name, you know, we have pharaoh's name Thutmose mose is a an egyptian name so it's tied to these

33:21

Cultural and historical connections the bible doesn't just exist in a vacuum We can place it on a time frame in historical setting and so what someone like allegro has to do is he has to leapfrog over those and say, you know

33:36

Don't don't worry about The the man behind the curtain, you know, don't worry about the obvious I want to lead you into another direction that actually has to do with fertility cults

33:47

And so in that sense his contemporaries said, you know, you're really ignoring vast amounts of historical data

33:56

That existed in his day and that continued to be drawn drawn upon in our own day

34:02

As to the reliability of both the old and the new testament as being documents written within the time frames

34:08

They're claiming to be written and by people That either were there or are communicating with people who were there

34:14

And I think that's a real flaw within someone like marco. Allegro was that he uses these examples but he's really bypassing all of the historical and archaeological and Legitimate linguistic

34:32

Ties to these historical settings in order to make his thesis. Yeah. What's up, everybody? It's the super sleuth here letting you know that you can go to shop cultish .com

34:39

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34:45

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34:59

Talk to you later guys, andrew. You're there. Are you there andrew? Yeah, yeah, can you guys hear me loud and clear?

35:05

Yeah, go ahead. What did I question? I know we're having some wi -fi issues up in your super secret headquarters But uh push through and uh, tell me what's on your mind.

35:12

What do you what do you think about this topic so far? Yeah, what's interesting to me about john marco allegro, uh

35:19

He sounds like a little mini cult leader right like doing what a lot of cult leaders do Uh, no, all of what has been attested to throughout christian history is wrong

35:29

Uh, here's the secret the secret knowledge is the sacred mushroom in the cross right a fertility cult

35:35

Uh, this is what it was all about. It just sounds so uh Weird right and I can understand that coming, uh in the 70s

35:45

For it to have a pull and a draw to people and how it has the same effect Today, especially with a lot of uh, joe rogan's following, uh, but I but I'll do admit as well

35:54

He does have people on his show that also try to help correct uh what john marco allegro was saying and uh, you know trying to state that you know

36:02

It's not like what he is saying is absolutely true, which is a good thing. He gets multiple people on Uh the equation in order to talk about it, but I think it just shows a larger issue within our culture which is that People are looking for any other explanation other than jesus christ actually being who he says he is and they go so far uh as to believe things that are

36:26

Not historically accurate, uh, not empirically accurate all the while saying that what they believe is

36:34

The height of intellectual science and that's that's what's interesting to me I mean, there's historical historical accounts other than the gospels that talk about jesus being a real person, you know um

36:46

I don't know. It's just it's interesting. I don't understand how john marco allegro will would handle those types of things but Did he ever recant any of his lessons or did he like double down on what he was talking about?

36:57

I mean, he didn't work out as far as I know um, but I think related to to what you're saying andrew is that people like conspiracy

37:08

We'd like there to be more than what's at face value and often reality is kind of boring

37:15

And there are things going behind the scenes. So there's enough fodder to lay credence to Things like conspiracy theories because let's be honest.

37:26

We don't know what's going on 100 % of the time There are things going on behind the scenes and as christians, we believe that there's a spiritual realm that exists behind the scenes

37:36

Right. So in one sense I can understand a desire to want

37:42

There to be something that's bigger That has a greater impact that's going on at the exact same time as a realist and as a trained historian

37:54

I can say that There are times when the reality

38:00

Is what it seems to be that we can use occam's razor and we can say okay

38:05

What is the most likely and as a historian i'm dealing with probabilities? What is the most?

38:11

Probable thing that's going on here. Is it more probable that there was a first century?

38:19

judean rabbi Who walked the dusty streets of of first century roman occupied judea and galilee?

38:29

Who claimed to be god who predicted his own death and resurrection and then

38:34

I believe did it? or That those events were actually despite all of the early christian writings

38:43

Despite individuals who claim to actually know people who knew jesus who wrote despite the

38:50

Earliest christians who went to their deaths proclaiming that they heard the testimony of the apostles that jesus

38:58

Was god and rose from the dead despite all of these things that this was actually a grand misunderstanding

39:04

Of a hallucinogenic ritualistic fertility cult

39:11

Well Let's be honest. I don't think that's what's going on And I don't think that's what's going on because the preponderance of evidence lies on One side rather than the other

39:23

And I know there are some historians who would argue against me and say well I still believe in you know Jesus turning water into wine and walking on water and rising from the dead and that the probability of that Based on a natural materialistic framework is pretty low, but I don't ascribe to a natural materialistic framework.

39:39

So On my worldview that is not all that low. Yeah, and I think the evidence is actually on the side for it but once again, we're hearing hoof beats

39:50

And marco allegro is assuming zebras. In fact, he might even be assuming unicorns And i'm saying

39:57

It's horses. And in fact, I can see the horses I can draw the horses and tell you what they look like and I might even be able to tell you what species they are and despite that But despite that evidence that we can rely on Marco, allegro is drawing different conclusions based on what

40:18

I think is actually very sensationalistic conjecture Um, but people like sensationalism and this is one of the things, you know, i'm you guys run into all the time

40:30

I run into in my own ministry and academic work is that people want there to be a more sensationalistic

40:39

Explanation it's why the you know gospel of thomas gospel of judas gospel of peter gospel of philip uh

40:45

Get the press that they do even though they have no historical connection to jesus. It's because people like sensationalistic stories yeah, and as we kind of wrap up in part one and uh,

40:57

And hopefully I know we had some wi -fi issues in this episode here but uh as we wrap up in part one, like what about the people who sort of make that conspiratorial argumentation against just sort of the

41:09

The field of scholarship or academia where they sort of talk about how well all of academia

41:14

They're the ones who are the controllers who's controlling information? and so in the same way how you mentioned people are making the argumentation how the catholic church is

41:22

Buying or suppressing? Allegro's work and somehow there's this deep Conspiratorial view or sometimes people even say like, oh, well, this is just the christian approved book section

41:33

That somehow there's this whole cabal that's deciding what you can and can't read or as we talked before What gospels are out there that you can and can't read, you know people articulate as I mentioned before that matthew, mark, luke and john were somehow some sort of A conspiratorial

41:51

Grab for power by constantine like what's the argumentation against that as far as like scholarship and academia in general?

41:58

Because a lot of people who kind of go down a legos route. They kind of appeal to that level of argumentation

42:05

Yeah, I I think it's it's just to lay out the evidence as simply and as clearly as we can

42:11

You know the only stories that get us to the time frame of jesus or someone who knew jesus are matthew mark luke and john

42:19

And they very clearly have a historical and cultural framework in the first century they have internal evidence that communicates that they are being written by people who are there during that time frame and Are communicating truths about what they actually saw?

42:38

And so we can go down the conspiratorial framework or down the conspiratorial a pathway and we can say that Academia is just gatekeeping

42:48

But at the exact same time, I mean Academia is is open at least the in in historiography the field that i've committed my life to We're more than Willing to admit that we're wrong.

43:04

I mean in my own field in terms of manuscript work There was about 150 years that believed that the gospel of john

43:13

The consensus was that it was written in the second century and all of a sudden we started discovering manuscripts that were written at the beginning of the second century and Kind of blew up this idea because the manuscripts that we were finding

43:28

Were copies they weren't originals and um, at least I was taught that copies come after originals and so That meant that the copies had to have an earlier

43:40

Copy that they were copying and so there was a 150 year consensus

43:46

Of the gospel of john being later That was completely blown up And all of the textbooks had to be rewritten and push the gospel of john back into the first century because of the evidence

43:57

That came out based on the dating of the manuscripts and so um,

44:03

I mean we can say that archaeology and Academia and historians are all gatekeeping this type of information but as far as i've

44:15

I've found Most historians are very open to being corrected Archaeologists are more than willing to be corrected

44:23

I mean the vast majority of constraints on archaeologists is funding We can blame archaeologists for not going out and finding the information

44:31

But it's kind of like blaming your construction workers For not filling in the potholes in your road and saying that they should be the ones they're doing the work when really

44:42

They're not responsible for that. There's you know, uh, they're relying on the funding to come and fill in the pothole so Um, I think

44:51

I think it's it's a rather simplistic argument. Uh, but uh, I can understand it from people who don't

44:59

Who maybe mean well But don't really have a broader understanding of how this work is done there's a mountain of evidence that sits on the side of jesus and the historical jesus and the

45:13

The historical reliability of the information that we find in the biblical documents

45:20

That we call the new testament. Yeah No, I appreciate that man. This is a really good. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna wrap up here

45:26

This is kind of a good way to segue We're going to be uh going into part two We're going to be talking more about john marco allegro

45:33

And also we're going to be talking about some of his hermeneutical justifications and we're even going to be talking about mount sinai

45:41

Does moses when he encountered the burning bush was that actually? A psychedelic experience with that psychedelic trip.

45:48

This isn't what you'll see is this will be an example of a lot of the modern day Argumentation you'll see really

45:56

Reiterated or just sort of regurgitated on a lot of different high big podcasts out there So just be aware of that.

46:02

So all that being said we will jump into that with a good friend Wes huff in part two

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Uh where we enter into the world of john marco allegro and all that is crazy with the sacred mustroom and the cross

46:14

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46:21

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