Dr. Ken Calvert
Appearances
The Charlie Kirk Show
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Well, I think that to a certain extent, they're right about the word Easter because that is only used in the English speaking world. And in the English speaking world, it came into use probably sometime in the Middle Ages. Nobody's quite sure.
The Charlie Kirk Show
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There was an ancient Christian historian, the Venerable Bede out of Northern England, who talked about this goddess Easter that some people worshipped, but had no connection with Christian Passover, Christian celebration of the death and resurrection of Jesus. And really, it shows up first in print in, of all places, William Tyndale's Bible when he's talking about this celebration.
The Charlie Kirk Show
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And from then on, it's connected to the celebration, but in the rest of the world. The the celebration of the death and resurrection of Jesus is referred to in its original Greek and Hebrew, the Pascha, which is related to the Passover and to this this idea of sacrificing Christ. a lamb and the blood of the lamb at Egypt with the passing over of the Hebrews into freedom from slavery in Egypt.
The Charlie Kirk Show
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And the last of the great plagues of the 10 plagues of the firstborn, the use of the blood of the lamb and the establishment by God of the Passover feast, which was celebrated by the Hebrews, never a pagan feast, never a pagan activity. up until the present day.
The Charlie Kirk Show
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And the Christians, of course, celebrate Passover in a similar way as an extension of our Jewish roots because, of course, Jesus was Jewish and the New Testament is the fulfillment of all of the prophecies, all of the looking ahead by the Jews, by the Hebrews, the coming of the Messiah, the fulfillment of the covenants
The Charlie Kirk Show
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And what you have here in Passover and in what Christians do every Easter, and unfortunately we still use that word, is celebrate that feast, the Passover feast, as it's fulfilled in Jesus Christ. So this is not a pagan activity at all.
The Charlie Kirk Show
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One of the misconceptions actually that comes out of this is the Council of Nicaea in 325, where people claim that Constantine took a pagan feast and made it Christian. They also claim this about Christmas. And what's really befuddling as a historian, Charlie, is that this never happened. It never happened. It's attributed to Constantine. and the Council of Nicaea.
The Charlie Kirk Show
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Now, the Council of Nicaea did discuss the proper date for the celebration of the death and resurrection of Jesus, but it had nothing to do with paganism. And so, as you often point out, actually, in your debates with students on university campuses, There are very shallow levels of understanding of history and of ideas that really do not come out of any profound understanding of the actual facts.
The Charlie Kirk Show
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Yeah, I think it's very complicated, because remember that the Christians and the Jews... were not part of the pagan world. And so there was a definite desire to stay separate from paganism. And so when we look at the celebration of Christmas, for instance, and the celebration on the 25th of December, that was done 200 years really before Constantine.
The Charlie Kirk Show
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And the idea that somehow this was taking over the celebration of Sol Invictus, a pagan divinity, that's just not true. That's not what the Christians were doing. And so there's a lot of misunderstanding. And much of that came actually out of the 1700s and 1800s AD, scholars trying to connect Christianity back to ancient paganism.
The Charlie Kirk Show
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Now, when the Christians do adopt some aspects of their culture, such as the use of wedding rings or the use of other aspects of the culture, it's not what you would call a full-blown adoption of pagan activities. Remember that these people were persecuted by the pagans and
The Charlie Kirk Show
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and not particularly wanting to take on the worship in some way, or even the hint of worship of pagan gods, of pagan divinities. So I think that looking at this historically, one has to be very careful about that. Now, along the way, did Christians build churches on top of old pagan sites in order to Christianize them? Yes, they did.
The Charlie Kirk Show
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But it was a Christian message that they were making and not the pagan message. Did they sometimes use the old pagan temples as Christian churches? And you do find this every once in a while, that they will adopt those structures and make them Christian, like the Pantheon in the city of Rome. But when we
The Charlie Kirk Show
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When we talk about the fusing of pagan and Christian activities, you might find some of that at the local level among Christians who are maybe confused about the transition that they have just made from paganism. You might have some confusion there.
The Charlie Kirk Show
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But really on the whole, when you talk about what Christian leaders are teaching, what they're really trying to get across to their people, is this idea that we are, as Christians, very much separate from the pagan world.
The Charlie Kirk Show
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I would argue that a lot of the confusion in the modern world about, for instance, Constantine or the use of pagan ideas or sites or pagan divinities within Christian practice, that that is actually more modern confusion than it is the actual practice of what's going on in the ancient world among ancient Christians.
The Charlie Kirk Show
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Yeah, I think that a couple of things. Number one, that Christianity did not appear out of nowhere on its own. That it's rooted in the Old Testament. It's rooted in first century Judaism. that Jesus is a part of that Jewish world. And this is a very, very important point that I think sometimes we miss.
The Charlie Kirk Show
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If you don't read the gospels, for instance, in the thick of the Greek and Roman history, in the thick of the Jewish history, you really miss a lot of what Jesus is saying. And so that I think is very, very important. In fact, the fact that he is attacked by
The Charlie Kirk Show
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Really from day one, Herod goes after him because the Magi have called Jesus the King of the Jews and Herod was named King of the Jews by the Roman Senate. So you have to understand some of that context and why people are doing that. The other thing and related to the celebration of the Passover and to Easter is that every year, of course, the Jews celebrated the Passover.
The Charlie Kirk Show
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And for us, this is like celebrating our Fourth of July. and say we're celebrating 4th of July and we're ruled by a foreign power. That's what Passover is about, that the Romans are ruling, a pagan foreign power is ruling over Jerusalem, over Judea at that time. And when Jesus rides into Jerusalem on that donkey, He's saying, in relation to a prophecy from Malachi, he's saying, I am the Messiah.
The Charlie Kirk Show
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I'm the guy. I have arrived. And this gets the leadership of Rome, excuse me, of Jerusalem very upset because the potential for warfare, the potential for bloodshed, all of this arrives with Jesus in Jerusalem. This is why they want to get rid of him. And the very fact that he is crucified, that's how they get rid of traitors and rebels.
The Charlie Kirk Show
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Well, I could go on for an hour, Charlie. There's so much there. He is unique. And I think that when we talk about Jesus as the Messiah, for instance. In the first century BC, there was a huge expectation within Jewish groups for the coming of a Messiah. And the question then, looking at the old prophecies, what is this Messiah going to look like?
The Charlie Kirk Show
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Isaiah mentions that the virgin will give birth and his name, will be Emmanuel, or God with us. And so the question is, is this Messiah going to be God himself? There are questions about whether or not he'll be an angelic Messiah. There's a book of Tobit that the Jewish community used to use, and it's all about an incarnate angel.
The Charlie Kirk Show
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There are questions also, and I think this is most powerful for the time of Jesus, There's questions of whether he's going to be a military leader and he's going to raise up in rebellion against the Romans. The Essenes who produced the Dead Sea Scrolls were among those who believed that the Messiah would be a military leader and they were going to be basically the shock troops for this Messiah.
The Charlie Kirk Show
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And so Jesus is in the thick of this and he addresses so much of these questions about what the Messiah is. is who the Messiah is going to be. And he gives some really good counsel and directions, of course, to his disciples that he is not going to pick up the sword and he's not going to be this bloody military messiah.
The Charlie Kirk Show
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but rather he is the Messiah that atones for the sins of the people, which was also a part of all of that Old Testament prophecy, that he is indeed God incarnate, atoning for the sins of these people. So he's answering the question of how to deal with sin, with personal sin,
The Charlie Kirk Show
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And then, of course, in the resurrection, that this is the Messiah that is going to conquer death, that he conquers death itself. Now, one moment I love in scripture is in the book of Acts when Jesus, Gamaliel, this Pharisee, this leader of the Pharisees stands up at the Sanhedrin, before the Sanhedrin, this is in the book of Acts.
The Charlie Kirk Show
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And he basically says, if this is the real thing, if he's the real Messiah, we need to be careful. If he's not the real thing, if he's not the real Messiah, and he mentions, you know, we've seen this before, there have been other Messiahs, and it always ends up in a bloody mess, right? And that's what they're afraid of, that this is going to end up in a war.
The Charlie Kirk Show
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He says, if this is one of those kinds of Messiahs, it'll go away and it will all end. But if he is truly the real Messiah, the true Messiah, if this is of God, we need to be careful. And I think that that moment in the book of Acts says so much about who Jesus is and his peculiar, his uniqueness as Messiah.
The Charlie Kirk Show
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Now, when we talk about virgin birth and these other things, you know, there are references to Egypt and the Isis and Osiris mythology and other things. There is nothing like that. the virgin birth and what happens in the gospels.
The Charlie Kirk Show
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And you look in the gospel of Luke and the story about Mary and receiving the announcement from the angel Gabriel, and she gives her free will assent to the idea that God wants to become present in on earth through her. I mean, what a remarkable idea, beautiful idea. There's nothing like that in the ancient world. That is a unique message.