Shadid Lewis: Sign of Jonah, Use of Baigent

I'm still traveling on Long Island doing some speaking here, before I get home during the weekend. And I'm noticing that both Shadid Lewis and Sami Zatari have been commenting on the video that I posted.

And Shadid and I, in particular, are going back and forth a little bit. I've had to ask him to please leave any issues of racism or anything like that out of the discussion, because this has nothing to do with any of that.

Michael Baigent, Bad Sources, and the Need for Scholarly Responsibility

But one of the things that's come up is, well, just wait till people watch the video. They'll see. Well, I have the video. Not the video that the professionals produced. But again, that little camera of mine does a good job.

And I have not only Sami Zatari's, most of his, opening statement from the second debate, but I have the rebuttal period from Shadid Lewis. And it includes the comment that he made where he's citing Michael Bajent.

And yet he then goes on to, after citing him, make application of his words. And it seems to me that Shadid is trying to avoid responsibility for the sources he uses. Let me remind folks, Michael Bajent is not a Greek scholar.

Michael Bajent is a fiction writer, historical fiction writer, who wrote Holy Blood, Holy Grail about 20 years ago or more. And in fact, it was Bajent who sued Dan Brown, remember, a couple years ago?

When he said, hey, Dan Brown just stole my ideas, and he's made all this money on the Da Vinci Code, and I want some of that money. He lost, but we're talking about fiction writers here. And Shadid Lewis is quoting fiction writers as if they're Greek experts.

And you will hear that Michael Bajent is wrong when he says what he says about Soma and Potoma. These two terms, their semantic domains overlap so that they can be used at times synonymously. And this is what takes place.

The argument that was presented by Bajent and then presented by Shadid and accepted by Shadid and expanded upon by Shadid, as we'll see in the video I'm about to post, is just bogus argumentation. It does not come from a scholarly source and needs to be rejected.

And Shadid needs to step up and say, all right, sorry, I should have looked more closely at Michael Bajent's background and his qualifications. This is not a good argument, and I withdraw it with apologies.

That doesn't mean, Shadid, that everything else you said was wrong, OK? I would argue that most of what you said was wrong, but I would argue that on other grounds. The reason that I went up to you was to try to help you to see that you need to use meaningful sources.

The Sign of Jonah and the Context of Jesus' Comparison

If it is your purpose to convert thinking Christians who are concerned about their faith, you will also see in this clip his rebuttal presentation, the sign of Jonah. And I tried to ask Shadid after the debate.

Actually, maybe it was between the two debates. I tried to ask him, do you understand the construction that's used? He keeps saying, as Jonah was, and stops there. As Jonah was, and stops there. You can't do that in the comparative form that's used in the original language at that point.

It says, as Jonah was, just as Jonah was, in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, so shall the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights. The comparison provides its own context.

And it is only by ignoring that context, just cutting out entire phrases, that you can make the kind of argumentation that Islamic apologists are making here. And so, I'm not going to go into detail on that quite yet.

I want to be able to put up the graphics, show you the language, demonstrate the parallels, and demonstrate that Mr. Lewis is simply in error. On a scholarly level, and challenge him to respond not by citing secondary scholars, but by engaging the text directly.

That is the only way to really decide these things. But since they're saying all of it, in fact, I think Shadid, in today's comments, said that I'm lying, that I'm being dishonest. All right? I'll let you watch for yourself.

Here is Shadid Lewis's comments in the first part of his rebuttal from the debate, where he mentions the sign of Jonah, and he presents the material from Michael Bajor.

He says, as Jonah was. It's traditional, right? As Jonah was. He will be as Jonah was. We all agree. Everybody agree with me. Jonah was alive the whole time, through the whole ordeal. Okay? Now, take that back to what I made from the Quran, where Allah said that it would appear to them so.

So, you connect that to the sign of Jonah. It would appear that Jonah would have been dead. You know the story? He was thrown into the raging water. People looked. It looked like he was going to die from drowning.

The big whale got him. Sure. Oh, man. Looks like Jonah's dead now. Swallowed him up. He's in the whale's belly. Everybody assumes. You have to assume. You know, first of all, scientifically. He's dead.

Swallowed him. He's not going to be able to breathe inside the belly of a fish or a whale. We look. He's dead. So, it appears that Jonah was dead. But he comes out alive through the whole ordeal. Jesus said again, as Jonah was.

Right? So, therefore, we can see that coming into play. That it appeared that he was dead. You see? Now, let's go further. I'll use the rest of my time to finish my argument. Now, after the alleged, or someone can put him on the tree.

Because, again, they are two accounts. And as I showed you, that note, that was read in Acts chapter 50, verse 30, was not just another way to say it was a prediction. Because it's appealed back to the Old Testament scriptures.

Showing that it's the moment of Jewish crucifixion. Stoning a dead person. And hanging them on a living tree. Not a stake. And, of course, we know that the historians can't agree whether it was a stake, pole, did they have to beam across?

They can't agree on what that was either. Okay? But, nonetheless, you can see that it is appealing to, it is talking about a living tree. And that shows evidence that this is referring back to the Jewish moment of execution.

Mark 15, Soma, and Potoma in the Burial of Jesus

Okay? Now, another point I'm going to bring this up to interest you to, is that when you look at Mark chapter 15, verse 43 through 45, you see that the Greek word is used in our reading from Michael Daniel's Jesus papers.

When Joseph of Armidia comes and acts in Jesus' body. It's a special notice. If you look at the original Greek text, we see an important point being made here. When Joseph acts piety in Jesus' body, the word for body that is used is soma.

In Greek, this denotes a living body. When piety agrees that Joseph can take the body down from the cross, the word that is used is, excuse my pronunciation, potoma. It's a specific spelling. Okay? So, we see that this means, this other word, potoma, or soma, means a fallen body.

A corpse or a corpse. In other words, the Greek text of Mark's gospel is making it clear that while Joseph is asking for the living body of Jesus, piety grants him what he believes to be the corpse. So, it appears that whoever wrote Mark, whoever wrote Mark, they don't have anything to do with it.

But whoever wrote it, it appears that the Jesus survival is revealed right there in the actual gospel itself. Based on the word, those words are clear. If Joseph was asking for a dead body, there's a clear Greek word that denotes a dead body, as I show here.

But the writer, he put that word on purpose. So, it appears that whoever the writer was, he too, was trying to give you the hint or show you that this was understood that Jesus was not dead. And there are many stories that surround that too.

That he was taken down, and he broke the spices in the alley, and according to what I've searched, that those particular things that were brought were healing things. Healing items. Not medical involvement.

Okay.