July 5, 2005

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona. This is the dividing line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us.

Yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence. Our host is dr. James white director of Alpha Omega ministries and an elder at the Phoenix reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation.

If you'd like to talk with dr. White call now. It's 602 nine seven three four six zero two or toll-free across the United States. It's one eight, seven. Seven seven five three three three four one and now with today's topic.

Here is James white.

Introducing John Dominic Crossan and the Debate Over the Historical Jesus

And welcome to the dividing line on this Tuesday morning here in Phoenix, Arizona. Beautiful day gonna be a hot one around 111 out here today. Today is John Dominic Crossan 101. It has come to my attention, of course as we have been preparing for the debate and the conference in Seattle that there are many even of those who are Regular supporters listeners to this this webcast or read the blog who simply are not aware of the issues regarding John Dominic Crossan the Jesus seminar and What the debate is going to be all about and so today?

I thought we would introduce you to John Dominic Crossan and his perspectives and also hopefully Dispel some myths and then also give you some idea of really the tremendous Challenge that I am facing in doing this debate it is going to be very difficult and It's going to be very difficult because the fact that I know even in Arranging this debate that I had certain false ideas of what?

John Dominic Crossan is all about and I assumed wrongly a connection as far as Attitude and even perspective that cannot be assumed amongst the fellows of the Jesus seminar almost anyone can join the Jesus seminar and just because someone like Robert Funk can be very Disagreeable and Can be rather nasty you may have listened to him hang up on us and tell us to go to hell in 1989.

That does not mean that everyone else in the Jesus seminar holds those same views or comes their conclusions in the same way. And I think one of the difficult things for most Conservative evangelicals to do is to understand really how it is that crossing comes the conclusions he does.

Indeed for most of us the problem is we know what the conclusions he comes to are we know the John Dominic Crossan. We've seen him on the ABC special with Peter Jennings the search for the historical Jesus in essence Give his conclusions that he believes that the Jesus's body was taken down from the cross and thrown into a garbage dump and eaten by dogs that this was the probable outcome of What took place and yet he says he believes in resurrection, it's just an allegorical resurrection and How does he come that conclusion that is he like?

Robert Funk who's written the 21 theses the coming Reformation and number six is we need to give Jesus a demotion. And it really it's very difficult to read Funk's material without going this man is an atheist.

Crossin is different. He is a much better speaker than Robert Funk is and he comes from a very different perspective Than Robert Funk does and so it's going to be a real challenge in light of the the very brief amount of time that we have to even clearly express what the issues are let alone engage them to any any major depth and indeed I the more I listen to him and read him and Understand where he's coming from the more.

I'm convinced that in essence. This is a debate over Presuppositions, it's a debate over starting points. It's a debate over assumptions that he is utilizing and to me it's it's going to have to be in essence a discussion of those presuppositions and a demonstration of how those presuppositions result in inconsistencies in the utilization of the data.

That Dominic Crossin uses he by the way requests that you call him Dom. And I'm not sure how that's going to work, but anyway, so to give you a sense You need to listen to him speak. He's an Irishman.

He is a very clear speaker. And you need to try if you can to lay aside the prejudices that naturally would be most of ours who would be listening this webcast and Hear what he's saying for himself in in this what I'm going to do here is I have the first clip is his opening statement in the debate he had with William Lane Craig and That I think lays out some of the.

Positions.

Very very well listen especially now. I'll probably starting stopping it. We might go if we if we possibly could a few minutes past our normal time because I've got a lot of stuff to play. Here then I have two questions.

Audience questions very different audience questions. I've mentioned them on the program before. I said I'd play them for you. I have them queued up from the encounter they had with NT right at In New Orleans back in March that I think would really you put all this together.

I think it'll give you a good idea of What this is all about and hopefully? for some of you especially in the northwest area will get you off of the the the neutral point and get you to Be at the at the debate and at the conference.

We'll be discussing these these very things so so we don't go too long. We need to get started. This is the opening presentation. John Dominic Crossan William Lane Craig the debate. Specifically on the issues of the resurrection, but it he lays out his presuppositions very very well in this opening statement program.

We have heard from dr. Craig, and now we will hear from dr. Crossan in our exchange on the historicity of Jesus. Dr.

Thank you. In my opening statement I'll try to explain to you the presuppositions that I work from at least as clearly as I can see them. I have two major points, and then why I consider those points to be important.

First one. It sort of has to do with history, and it deals with the difference between the real and the historical Jesus. The title the real Jesus is the Jesus of 2 ,000 years of Christian faith that is very easily answered.

But I find myself. I have never used the phrase the real Jesus in any book. Possibly that may be because I learned English in Ireland rather than America. I don't use real quite so often as it is used here to be on the front page of tomorrow's New York Times book review the real lives of the Brontes.

I Use instead the historical Jesus because that is a technical term in scholarship, but we like it or not. It's a technical term. The SPL the Society of Biblical literature to which dr. Craig and myself belong has a section called the historical Jesus section and that is an attempt to talk about the earthly Jesus as.

That Jesus can be reconstructed through historical means, so that's what I've usually been talking about. The real Jesus is of course much bigger than the historical Jesus.

Now please notice that the real Jesus is much bigger than the historical Jesus so one of the problems that people have is is Really, we don't speak that way. The Jesus of faith the Jesus of Scripture the Jesus of our worship the the Jesus that we understand in the scriptures is The historical Jesus.

They're one the same. You need to understand that coming from Crossan's perspective the Jesus of theology is far removed as the result of an extensive process of Development over time and evolution and hence you can speak of the two as being very very different from one another.

The historical Jesus is One thing. The real Jesus is Something completely different that doesn't necessarily have any connection to the historical Jesus. Notice how the language is already causing some difficulties there, and these presuppositions are important for me and.

By a presupposition I do not mean at all something that cannot be challenged. It simply means something that I started from. If it's wrong then we have to start all over again.

Now it is very very common for dr. Crossan to in a What would appear to be very humble way say you know I could be totally wrong about this. The problem is the way that he phrases that and the way that it's presented is that's what everyone has to say.

Everyone in this dialogue is reduced to saying what I believe about Jesus could be completely wrong. And we might have to go back.

To.

The beginning and start all over again, and what that means is what the church has believed for 2 ,000 years. Just happens to be the perspective that ended up winning out the idea that it's actually true.

Because certainly from his perspective. He's gonna say he thinks it's terrible. When he say said that when Christians say that their religion is true and and and Buddhism is wrong he think that's terrible.

That's horrible. It's a bad bad bad bad thing. Jesus would never want us to do that. See. And. So people hear that you know post-modernists hear someone say hey, I could be wrong about this. They go.

Oh, that's that's very humble. That's very humble of that individual and when they say someone's here someone else. They know this is the way it must be. Oh, he's arrogant. He's mean-spirited, and that's what makes this kind of movement proceed in our culture today.

The presuppositions are supported by a massive consensus of scholarship now. That's not an argument. That's just a statement of fact. I do not find anywhere in the New Testament that it tells you that numbers makes you right.

Are anywhere in the Bible in fact that it tells you that the majority is usually moral. It seems to be a tendency in the Bible to think that the few are more likely to be right than the many. However as a fact.

Here is a presupposition that the gospel of Mark was used by the gospel of Matthew and Luke.

All right, let's start right there. He is right that is the majority view there are minority of people who say no that comes from from German critical theory from two cent well at full two centuries ago, but from the 19th century and In point of fact it is just a theory and yet in most New Testament Studies departments and most New Testament studies today even in the most conservative seminaries with one exception I think of raft top my head.

It would be of course dr. Thomas at the master seminary, but almost every place else the the assumption from the very start is That mark is called the theory of mark and priority mark is first Matthew and Luke use mark and then they have an other sources that they will utilize and Hence what he's going to be saying here, and this is very important to understand.

That's why I'm stopping it so I can expand upon it and so you can hear in his own words. And hopefully I have a background to understand it is that the Gospels Present to us only one stream of tradition not for John's just off John isn't even for a large portion of New Testament scholarship a John is almost irrelevant historically speaking.

Because it's so different than the synoptic Gospels. And it has such a high Christology and since everybody knows that developed over time then that can't really be relevant so Matthew Mark and Luke do not present us with three Testimonies to the gospel they present us with one only one and in point of fact what you then have is a gospel is a retelling of the good news and that Retelling doesn't care about the historicity of the documents.

It's using He's gonna say look Luke. It's gonna take mark, and he's he's more than happy to change the historical Statements this is where the synoptic problems come from because he doesn't care. That's not the point you've missed that you've missed the boat if you think that's what the Gospels are supposed to be doing in the first place.

It's a retelling that Matthew is a retelling and so they are Changing the story and you see what we can do today is since we live in a completely different worldview completely different society. We can change the story to the historical stuffs are relevant doesn't matter whether Jesus rose from the dead or not.

It doesn't matter whether any of these historical things actually took place. We can look at all these historical parallels. We can dismiss all that stuff and still From John Dominic crosses perspective have the gospel see Now that that's so foreign to the vast majority of evangelicals thinking.

That it's very difficult to wrap your mind around it and go up. There's There's where there's where he's coming from and now what's the best way to respond is because this is the type of literature that is Informing the secular presentation of what the Bible is all about in all of our community colleges and our universities and everything else.

That's why we need to understand it that it was one of their major sources. Now that is where I begin. If that is wrong everything will have to be redone and of course it could be proved wrong could be proved wrong by a peasant digging around in Egypt tomorrow morning in a rubbish dump and.

Finally say a gospel dated to the year 100. But if mark was used by Matthew and Luke then you can if you put them in parallel columns. Which is the way scholars study them. Cover mark and see what Matthew and Luke do with Mark when they are using him as a source.

Okay, here you have the synoptic problem here. You have what you see for example in what we are doing in studying at Phoenix Foreign Baptist Church Sunday mornings I've been going through the synoptics.

And we are using the very type of document that he says scholars use. That's what we're using the the parallel column harmony of the gospel. We use the all inversion and He's he's saying see you can cover a remark and here's what Matthew and Luke are doing.

So we're not all of this is just one stream of tradition and since they're willing to play with the history. Then why are you people so upset about this stuff when we just observe this when we just recognize this that that in essence is what's?

Being said you can see in other words how inspiration operates when somebody is using a source that will become crucial as we continue a Second sort of a presupposition to which there is a massive consensus of scholarship again.

Stating that simply as a fact. It's not easy idiosyncratic to start there in other words. That is that in the data of the New Testament Gospels concerning Jesus's words and deeds there are three Successive layers.

That's called the first one the original layer that goes back to Jesus. The second layer Which is the tradition taking and adapting? Creatively adapting sayings and words of Jesus. And a third layer which comes from the evangelists themselves.

Now that's very important to understand so once again Operational presupposition is that what you have in the Gospels themselves is an edited Changed three-layer presentation of course you've heard the Jesus seminar and the fact that they are you know they examine the words of Jesus and they vote using these little marbles and and to find out whether this saying is actually goes that first layer or whether it represents the second layer or if it's the third layer where the Evangelist which he would not view as Matthew Mark Luke or John he would not view these as individuals who were eyewitnesses these are later individuals or or groups committees almost who have their own particular concerns and Hence, they're they're utilizing this material and forming it into their own into their own Purposes their own shapes so on and so forth, but again.

He's saying. This is the massive consensus well at that point It doesn't have quite the same massive consensus that the mark and priority idea has. But it's certainly very very widespread and when you go to your local Christian Board store, and you buy Your commentaries that have been written.

That's one of the reasons. I've been mentioning this stuff from solid ground. There's a commentary series coming out on Paul from Edie. These are older commentaries and the reason I've been recommending them is frequently They're not polluted with this stuff so much of modern commentary writing you have to spend all your time discussing these things even if you even if you don't have to agree with it since that's the form of Scholarly consensus today if you're going to be considered quote-unquote scholarly you almost have to spend more time Wasting time discussing this stuff than you do actually dealing with the text.

And it can become very tedious to work through that stuff very confusing for the layperson as well.

And that there is a degree of creativity that somewhat bothers us in all of those layers.

That what he means there is creativity means a willingness to alter facts a willingness to change things a willingness to insert things a Willingness to change the tradition to meet the alleged needs of the current time of the writer of that particular gospel Pericope of that particular story now without those presuppositions.

Everything that I say would be as absurd as dr. Greg Craig has made it sound with those presuppositions. We start down a long 200 year voyage and the trick is not to lose your nerve. Gospels are exactly what they say they are good news, which means they must be good, and they must be news.

They're good from somebody's point of view Christian point of view and not the pagan Roman point of view and they are news that means by definition Gospels update.

Now immediately Gospels update They mean that means they have to be news as if the good news cannot be the same. But have an application for every single Generation that obviously is going to be one element of this presupposition that must be challenged right up front and and dealt with.

But because I think that's Probably one of the weakest Elements of this this presentation is the idea that news by definition has to be new it has to be updated in that in that fashion.

Mark updates to the 70s. Matthew and Luke updates say to the 80s. John updates to the 90s. I say update not upgrade. They update the story. Those are presuppositions not beyond Discussion of course and if they are wrong everything built on them is built on sand.

Secondly the formulation of this question then brings up the question of the historical Jesus. Otherwise anyone would say you've got four versions go read them. Yes, but as soon as you say that Matthew and Luke are based on Mark and as soon as you say Going a little bit further that there's almost a split right down the middle of scholarship on whether John Knows Matthew Mark and Luke all of a sudden we begin to see not four accounts of Jesus.

But a stream of developing tradition. By the way, I see no problem with that. They are Gospels, that's what they say. They are. I think if we had the evangelist here They would say that is called the freedom of the children of God.

That's what it means to have the Holy Spirit.

Okay, you need to hear that because John Dominic Crossan will use terms like inspiration he'll talk about God don't ask him much about God because You know He doesn't like to get specific in essence one thing by the way you will never hear this man get upset.

You he will be just and I can guarantee you something right now about the debate in Seattle. He will be just as calm cool collected and likable in the closing statement as he is in the opening statement.

That's just all there is to it. I've listened to a lot of him speaking now, and I I would be shocked if there is any type of change Over the course of the discussion that night or even on the ship as well with Marcus Borg on the subject of the resurrection, so.

That's that's just simply going to be the case, but here you have this idea Inspiration that's the freedom of the children of God. What what is he talking about there the freedom of the children of God is to edit The historical evidence to fit what you want it to be and that's what inspiration is.

So obviously inspiration does not result in a consistency Between quote-unquote inspired documents. In fact what you're hearing here is inspiration results in.

Inconsistency if.

You're looking at those documents in the wrong way and the wrong way would be to be looking for consistency. You see the rather vicious circle that is created by the presuppositions that have already been brought to the brought to the table.

I'm Matthew. I'm willing to look at Mark telling me what Jesus said and say that's all very nice. But I think for my people right now. This is a better way to say it. I too have the Holy Spirit Mark. In those last 200 years the formulation Unfortunately of this question has usually been the historical Jesus.

Versus against over against the Christ of faith. That is a formulation, which I reject completely. It is not against it is the question of the relationship. The way I formulate the question is this. If you were there in Palestine in the first quarter of the first century and you were let us say a neutral observer What would you have seen?

What would you have seen that explains to you why some people said this man is divine? Let's follow him and other people.

Maybe equally good people said this man is criminal. Let's execute him now catch that because here is an illustration of Where one's theology impacts one's reading of history. Equally good people there certainly is nothing in John dominant Crossan's upbringing and in his current theology that provides a basis for Understanding a biblical doctrine of sin.

Remember he doesn't believe there is a biblical doctrine of sin he does not believe that there is a consistent presentation of Anything in Scripture even even a doctrine of God? There's nothing there to you know to Lay a foundation for coming up with anything consistent, but notice equally good people could come down on both sides of this.

There's give you a whole lot more of this as we especially when we hear one of the audience questions later on now. There's going to be a point here where it's going to sort of stop for a second to sort of repeat itself because there's two Mp3 files, but don't worry you won't miss anything and we know they both were there because they both did it.

How do you explain both of those? Not just from the Christian point of view, but from the pagan point of view. I am totally on the Christian side, but I Have to ask myself what were the pagan seeing that they found criminal the second Major area, which is really much more important for me than the former has to do with language and has to do with the distinction between literal and metaphorical language our actual and symbolic language if you prefer.

Most of us understand it completely on the level of a sentence Jesus lived at Nazareth is actual factual historical. Biographical whatever you would call it Jesus is the Lamb of God. We know immediately is not the same type of language.

It is symbolical and we have to ask what it means. It is figurative. It is metaphorical. Now are there stories like that stories which are literal and stories which are symbolical and of course either can be true or false.

Let me take you out of the Bible. I Guess since dr. Craig went to Peter Pan. I can go into never-never land too. Let's go to Aesop Aesop's fables and imagine a three-way argument one person saying Wow, you know animals could talk in ancient Greece a Second person say no, no, no, no, no, they couldn't but there was a stupid Greek who thought they could.

And of course the third person say wait a minute. You're both wrong. This is a certain type of story a genre called the fable animals are allowed to talk there to make basic moral principles evident. Now imagine that argument, how could you prove animals couldn't speak in ancient Greece?

I Hate to have Johnny Cochran coming after me in court on that one. Were you there with dr. Cross? Oh, no, I wasn't. Have you checked out all the animals? Well, no, I haven't then. How dare you say what could have could not happen in ancient Greece?

Well, they usually don't. That's a prejudice. Dr. Cross and that's a presupposition. Well, yeah, I guess what we have done now is missed the whole point. There's the point of the story whatever the story we were reading had a moral point and we've missed it.

We're now arguing whether animals could or could not talk in ancient Greece or whether ancient Greeks were stupid enough to think They could we have been totally wrong. Now, let's move from fable to parable.

Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan and notice Jesus likes parables, by the way. Same argument is the Good Samaritan parable. Did it really happen? Of course it did it mentions Jerusalem and mentions Jericho mentions going down that thousand five hundred foot drop.

It mentions the bandits and everyone knows there were bandits in the hills around there. Of course, it's a story. No, it isn't historical. Jesus just made it up. It's a parable dummy. Now watch what's happening.

There's an argument going on which cannot be really proved one way or the other. I can make very good arguments. There was historical you can make very good arguments that Jesus made it up a second ago in the meanwhile, we are both avoiding the issue which is Jesus is challenged to live your life like the Good Samaritan.

To live your life not an ethnic cleansing. But if you happen to find your enemy in distress do everything you possibly can to help him. Are you are are you not willing to live your life like that?

Now you need to hear this because it is part of the strength of His argumentation and that is he is right that very frequently individuals do utilize argumentation about Issues like this to avoid the application that Jesus himself made.

The problem is I don't think anyone really has any any questions about Recognizing that Jesus is telling a story because the texts tell us he's answering the question Who is who is your neighbor? Who is my neighbor?

And he's defining who my neighbor is. So that's not really the issue and then he's the one who makes the application. He's the one who makes the application. Who was the neighbor to this man. Well as a Samaritan there and and voila.

There you have the the application. The question is did Jesus one day? Tell this story. That's the historical issue not whether there was a Specific man who was walking down a specific path and and so on so forth in the subject of a parable.

The question is from dr. Cross's perspective in essence Jesus never had to have said this for it to remain to for it still to be true. For it still to have relevance see. That's where the issue of the nature of the text I think gets missed just a little bit by this this particular illustration is giving he's speaking some element of truth.

You do have to deal with the fact that you know what the Jews hated the Samaritans and that was wrong but you know what the the Old Testament prophets already said that didn't they and. So he is exposing their hypocrisy and there is a challenge to the story.

And if all you ever talk about is whether we're parables or historical or not. Then and you use that to miss the thrust of the story, okay fine, but that's not really What's going on. We talked about whether Jesus did or did not actually teach this.

That's the question.

Whether it's historical or not in a certain sense. I'm almost going to say I don't care. It's an interesting debate. But don't let it fake you out on the real issue. Now let me come in to the Bible. And I'm going to talk about two examples of beginnings because.

Genesis 1, the Virgin Birth, and the Politics of Power

Figurative symbolical. Parabolic language. I won't use mythical language because it sounds like a dirty word. I'm afraid at the moment parabolic language sure.

Notice the language issues here parabolic versus Mythical. Obviously he is going to utilize That those categories of myth because he believes that for example the virgin birth stories are just meant to to make a point in regards to the parallels to the birth narratives of Caesar Augustus, that's what he's going to do.

So he's going to utilize that type of information. We're gonna go ahead and skip our break and And Come back To to cross and just because I'm trying to cram a lot of stuff in here. I'm not exactly sure how long he goes here.

It's a brief period of time to make his opening presentation, but I'll give you an idea then we've got the questions listen to so we're gonna skip the break for today and Continue on with with cross and try to get done within five or ten minutes of our normal time.

The parabolic language is good. It's the chosen form of language of Jesus and he may have picked it up from his father. There's a lot of parabolic language in the Bible. Let's imagine parabolic language is heavy around beginnings and endings because in beginnings beginnings have to carry our hopes and Endings have to bury our fears.

So endings and beginnings are freighted heavily with symbolic language.

I.

Opened my Bible in Genesis 1 and I find that God created the world in six days of labor or six days at least of command and one day of rest and I immediately then asked myself is this information about the beginning of the world certainly reads like it.

Two things come together to push me not to read it like that one comes from reason and one comes from Revelation and Reason and Revelation are for me gifts from God. As an aside, I reject absolutely the naturalist position the dr. Craig attributed to me reason comes from God to all of us.

Revelation comes from God in particulars. Reason tells me from all I know about evolution, and I don't know very much to be honest with you that it sounds reasonable. That that's not the way it happened.

That could all be wrong. But it sounds reasonable that that's not the way it happened. Now I asked a more important question and this is really the crucial question for me. Not you've got this dumb story in there and aren't we so smart since the Enlightenment that we know better.

But was that story kept trying to tell us that from the beginning are we so dumb since the Enlightenment that we've been misreading it. Was that a metaphorical story that we read literally and we blew it.

If it's a metaphorical story, what's it a metaphorical story about? Well read it again. God cannot skip the Sabbath even to create the world. He can't begin on Wednesday as it were and work straight through to Tuesday.

God has to observe the Sabbath. The Sabbath is bigger than creation. It's very close to bigger than God. Now the challenge of the story is then to me. Do I or do I not believe that God is Lord of time?

Lord of history and When I find out about it Lord of evolution. Once again, we can argue and we can approve it one way or the other. We can argue six days means six days morning and evening one day or evening and morning one day in the Jewish reckoning so that's what it means and In the meanwhile, we are avoiding the major issue that the story gives us as its challenge.

Is God Lord of history? And if so, what are you doing about it?

You see how attractive that is, especially in our cultural situation today. You can't you all have been missing the whole points that that provides the newness aspect you can get away from you know. All these arguments that have been going on for all this time.

No one can prove it one way or the other. There's this overarching thing. But in reality, it's up to you to determine what that overarching concept is. Anyways, and you can always make it so vague. That you can you know apply it to all sorts of of issues like, you know General calls for justice and peace and protecting the environment or you know, however you want to apply it.

It makes it very very pliable and you can you can do all sorts of stuff like that that way see. That's why it's very very attractive and also very very difficult to respond to especially in a short period of time.

Let me come then to another beginning the beginning of Jesus's life. Watch again how figurative language weighs heavily on these beginnings and endings. I read Luke and Matthew and Very very clearly as clearly as those six days I read that there was a virginal conception a miraculous conception in which God Overshadowed Mary and God and Mary produced Jesus.

Jesus is divine. Jesus is son of God. Now I admit immediately my reason says wait a minute. Do those things really happen. I Hear the Echoes. How can I tell I wasn't there? Maybe this is the exception, but then I know there's another story as well.

Another ancient story. I'm just focusing on one. Suetonius the Roman historian tells us That the night that Augustus the Emperor at the time of Jesus's birth was conceived His mother Atsya was in the temple of Apollo and Apollo impregnated her so that Atsya bore a divine child Augustus.

Augustus is son of God and divine Says the pagan Roman. Jesus is son of God and divine says the Christian. Now I look at those two stories I'm sure we could give reasons not to disbelieve Suetonius. He's not a liar, etc, etc.

What about those two stories. Here is how I read them. You can say the Jesus story is historical but of course the pagan Roman historian is. That's just mythical and since there are no pagan Romans Around to defend you and it's not politically incorrect and not the pagan Romans.

You probably get away with it but in all honesty the question then presses Did Matthew and Luke intend that literally? Or did the intended metaphorically? Are we misreading them are we misinterpreting them and our debates about the biology of Mary Totally off the point, which is this.

Where do you find your God? Is it in Augustus over there in a palatine palace backed by the legions with power from the top down? Or is it in the peasant stable in a child born? To a family that didn't even have a place to live when it happened.

Where do you find your God? With power with domination with Augustus or with Jesus and empowerment from the bottom up.

Now you hear the the.

The Virgin Birth, Caesar Augustus, and the Meaning of Divine Sonship

Cultural.

Aspect here the cultural perspective. All this stuff about you know power from the bottom up instead of from the top down. And and Roman domination and what you got to realize. Allegedly, that's what all these gospel writers are all about is they seem to think like John Dominic Crossan does in modern context of cultural power struggles and and all the rest of this type of stuff.

And the virgin birth stories despite the massive differences between the concept of a Jewish person in a monotheistic context talking about the incarnation and Apollo and and Axia and Suetonius. The differences there are so huge I would argue that they're minimized minimized in Crossan's discussion in his books.

And realize of course, you know, he's his books. Well this one here how many pages. Five hundred and six pages long? Harper San Francisco the historical genius. The life of Mediterranean Jewish peasant.

Notice the subtitle here, which he may not be. Are, you know accountable for the first Comprehensive determination of who Jesus was what he did and what he said. We had to wait until You know the end of the of the 20th century beginning 21st.