Dr. Michael Peppard
Appearances
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
They're not men biologically, but their virtues, their characteristics are presented as male in the course of telling their story as a way of showing that they are fully embodying Christ. They are fully taking on his form. And it's almost a criticism of men who aren't doing that.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
oh right because if a woman is doing it why what excuse do you have and the word the ancient greek word for courage is manliness the actual word andrea is like like andrew is so to to say like perpetua is shows courage before her captor it actually says she's shows her manhood like she's manly interesting
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And then third, I have a kind of parallel different track about Catholicism, which developed a bit because I'm part of a center for Catholic studies at Fordham. And so I started doing some teaching in that area, too. Uh, and write more, uh, less peer reviewed stuff, more like kind of magazine and op-ed type pieces about Catholicism.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
That's interesting. And they have a lot of kind of militaristic imagery too in these martyr stories where, you know, just to take Perpetua for the example. I mean, at the end, she guides the executor's knife to her own throat. He's afraid to do it. And she's like, she brings, I mean, it's pretty goth. Whoa. I've never heard that before. Yeah.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
She also has a whole bunch of dreams before when she's awaiting her martyrdom that may potentially be first-person accounts of her dreams and visions before she goes. This is taking us far afield from your question, but I mean, that's fine. We're here at camp and when you're late night around a campfire sometimes.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So circle all the way back. So there are conflicting accounts about Jesus' siblings. in the canonical New Testament, right? So in the Gospel of Mark, we have a list that potentially includes, if this person's name was Judas Didymus Thomas, it could include, you know, a sibling who goes by the name of Thomas later, which could make sense.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Now, the Protestant tradition has no problem with Jesus having a bunch of siblings because they don't have a virgin birth or perpetual virginity. Whereas the Catholic tradition has a perpetual virginity doctrine. And so they argue that these others are like cousins or family, other kinds of family members, which is also linguistically defensible. I don't think we're ever going to resolve that one.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Yeah. But if Jesus had a twin and twins are especially close, then the argument would go that this twin would have special knowledge, just like biological twins in our lifetime often have special knowledge of one another. Telepathy. They feel very, very, very bonded. I mean, I can't imagine what it would feel like to have an identical twin like that. Right. And so that then...
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
does kind of close the loop of this little conversation where you think if these texts, these mostly second, third century texts that you're talking about, which come to be called Apocrypha, if the genre is mostly like special revelations that particular disciples had, right? The gospel of Mary, the gospel of Thomas, these are things that Jesus said to me that he didn't say to the rest of you.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Uh, prior to that, I was at Yale university for my graduate work, did a PhD there and, uh, and happy New Yorker now.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
then that could connect well with the twin idea that like the way that twins have special, special secret knowledge of one another. And, you know, he told, you know, he told you all those teachings about mustard seeds and whatever, but he told me these special teachings, you know, you, maybe you weren't ready for them, but now I'm going to pass them on.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Right. Um, I, I don't, I don't mean, I don't have an opinion on that because it's a series, it's a collection of sayings. It's not a narrative, you know, it's not something that even calling it a gospel is kind of unusual because it's, it does all the other gospels have narrative, right? They, they have the passion narrative. They have, they have miracle stories.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Um, when I teach the gospel of Thomas, I, I call it Thomas, the sayings source. Right. It's almost like Hadiths. That's what it is. Yeah, exactly. And we know we have these from the ancient world. I mean, even in the canon, the book of Proverbs is a saying source, right? The sorts of wise things that Solomon said. And so I don't... I guess I...
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
unsatisfying to you i don't think it so much matters who wrote it because it's a collect it's a compiled set of sayings so who the compiler is doesn't really put much of us as much of a stamp on it as as as it might be the case if it were a kind of long-running narrative with You know, that were based on the person's life.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
I have no problem thinking that every one of the disciples of Jesus compiled things that he said and wrote them down eventually. I mean, I think that's, I don't think there's anything implausible about that at all.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
I mean, not only is it possible, it's necessary. I mean, of course, there are things that he said that are not included. And the Gospel of John ends that way. The last line of the Gospel of John is, of course, there are many things that he said and did that are not included in this book. And it would take the world's books to include everything, right? And so I think...
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Like one of the things that I love to do when I'm teaching a basic kind of intro, intro New Testament or intro to the Bible class is to get people to think about a funeral of a beloved family member, an elderly beloved family member that they've been to. Because everyone in the class, they're 20 years old, everyone's done this at least once.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
My mom was Protestant. So I have to say, you know, I come from a mix.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And I just try to get them to think about the experience of that and the stories they hear and the stories that are told over and over and over again about this person and the kind of thematic characteristics of that person's life that they learn. And then I'll get them to think about, well, what happens when you hear two conflicting stories about your grandma?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And, you know, one of your uncles is like, well, you didn't hear about once you went to Latin America and what happened then? And then someone else is like, what happened then? Some people find out at funerals that they have sibling they didn't know about.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
from an illicit affair. I mean, all kinds of things happen in addition to kind of the repeated stories that come up over and over and over again. But no one ever at that experience thinks, now we have full access to this life. Now we know everything they did. Now we know everything they thought. We're very comfortable with that, with kind of getting a basic understanding
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
thematic picture of a human life but then when we get to jesus we get crazy like our we get haywire and we think we know we we line up we line up well it says here he did this on this day but it says here he did this on this day and now now i don't believe any of it right none of it's true so i you know we have we have a not not all of us but some believers have a dogmatism and a
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
rigidity about these stories that doesn't, it just doesn't bear out in real life in any way. I mean, look at what's happening now. People still talking about JFK. We have video. Think about how, why are we still adjudicating the JFK files? Why do we still write new biographies of Abraham Lincoln?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
These are all modern people and we're still kind of crafting narratives that emphasize some features of their lives and de-emphasize other features of their lives. So we're going all the way back to a pre-print culture with no video, with no audio, with no... Really, no early organized community either.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
If I may just say another pet peeve I have or a frustration I have as a scholar of this period about people coming into it for the first time. Most people presume a much higher degree of organization than than would have existed. Right. So when when people ask me, how did this book get in the canon and this book didn't get in the canon? I think they have in their mind that there's a meeting.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Right. That there was all the leaders get together and they have a spreadsheet and they're talking about, you know, well, the Gospel of Thomas doesn't have a passion narrative. It doesn't talk about the crucifixion. So that one's out. But the Acts of Thomas is pretty good. Why can't why don't we put that in? Well, it's a little bit different here and they only use it in Syria.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And those in Italy have never heard of it. OK, we'll put it out for these meetings that wrap. They never have. We want to believe they happened. Sometimes we fabricate them that they happened. Sometimes we say, well, at the Council of Nicaea, they must have done this. I don't think that was their main concern.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
They had concerns at the Council of Nicaea about church unity and concerns about doctrine and concerns about organizational structure in the fourth century. But when we look at our fourth century codices, meaning books, kind of the great codices of the fourth and fifth century, which are earliest collected, what comes to eventually be the Bible,
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Well, were you? I mean, did they have any truth to that?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
What you see very clearly is that there is a core, which is strong. Your core of four gospels, Paul's letters, 1 Peter, sometimes 2 Peter, you know, Acts and Hebrews get in there. You have your core, but then you have a lot of fuzziness on the edges, right? And you look at, you know, Codex in the Vatican, Vaticanus or Codex Sinaiticus in the British Library, 4th century codices.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And at the end, they have some other texts, right, that are not ultimately in the modern post-Reformation, post-printing press canon. So what do we do with that? Do we think that they thought that those were of the same weight as the ones that came before? I'm more likely just to say that they had different questions than we have, right? Their questions were primarily about, is this useful?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Is this text good for teaching? Is it good for learning?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Yeah, I mean, my historian's perspective on that would be to say that inerrancy is a modern concept. We don't see much concern about inerrancy in medieval Christianity or in early Christianity in the way that we see it in modern post-printing press, post-Enlightenment, post-Reformation Christianity. The vast majority of Christians in Christian history believe did not think that way.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And we have evidence of that. They knew there were discrepancies. Third and fourth century Christians, they're not dumb. If they have the stories, they can see, well, in this one, it looks like Jesus is crucified on Passover, and in this one, it looks like it's not.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
on a different day you know or in the gospel of john jesus causes the disturbance of the temple at the beginning of the story and in matthew mark and lucas at the end of the story there's some pretty big discrepancies there that they were well aware of but it was it was not a barrier to their faith in the way it has been for some some versions of modern christianity um
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
No, we're happy to see our Lady of Guadalupe here in the tent. Yes, exactly. And your viewers can't maybe always see that, but you should get a shot of her in there.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
so maybe you're one, maybe as a barrier to, for you. And maybe I'm talking about you. I don't know, but no, it's not particularly a barrier to be honest.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Yes. Yeah. So you've done your homework. I mean, I would say you're exactly right on that, that the textual fundamentalism is associated with not even all of Protestant Christianity, but certain versions of Protestant Christianity. The Catholic tradition definitely has fundamentalists, but they're usually not biblical fundamentalists. They're usually fundamentalists about ethics or liturgy. Yeah.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
right about something different um or or church hierarchy um you know in fact on the catholic side um there is something called you're ready for this the pontifical biblical commission hell yeah okay i have not yet been invited to be on it maybe after your show i will you know it's gonna go viral but um francisco let's go get this guy in there
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
I have been an officially vetted Bible translator for the U.S. Catholic bishops in the New Testament, but that's different. That's just here in the States. So the Pontifical Biblical Commission— is a Vatican-appointed committee of Bible nerds, basically, who are vetted, faithful Catholics. And they produce documents. Nobody reads them, except for people like me, but they exist.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And they put out a document in 1993 called The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church. And it's a programmatic document saying, here's how we think Catholics should interpret the Bible. And guess what, Mark? they reserve their harshest words for fundamentalism. And they talk about other isms, right?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
They talk about Marxism and they talk about feminism and they talk about liberation theology and they talk about other things that they kind of say their position is like there's pros and cons to these approaches. But fundamentalism gets just lambasted. And in really harsh terminology, they call it at one point intellectual suicide. Wow.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
To presume that there are no errors anywhere in the Bible and that everything has to be completely... That there can be no contradictions in any single way. Now... These scholars, they also understand the diversity of biblical manuscripts very well.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And so most textual fundamentalists, if they go and get a PhD or they go and pursue further study, they often then are exposed to just the vast diversity of biblical manuscripts. And for most people, that kind of undoes that fundamentalist view, right? Because which one? Yeah. Which version are you doing? Which, which Greek, which Hebrew, which...
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
how many chapters of Esther, how many chapters of Daniel.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Well, and Mark is a great example. I don't know if you chose it just because it's your namesake or because it's your favorite gospel or whatever, but... The earliest, that's why. There you go, earliest. Mark is a perfect example. I'm just pulling out my Greek New Testament here to show you.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Perfect example of this issue, because if you go to the end of Mark, you find out that there are multiple endings.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So there are different manuscripts preserved. How's your ancient Greek work?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Christos Anesti on Easter. You know these things? Yeah. Christos Anesti. So our fourth century manuscripts, which are our oldest manuscripts of the Gospel of Mark, have different endings. And what do you do with that as a textual fundamentalist? Do you say that none of them are right, one of them is right, and the other is wrong? They're both extremely ancient. Yeah. I mean...
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
You know, some people look at it and say, oh, we only have fourth century manuscripts of first century stories. But any historian who knows what we're talking about is like, this is amazing that we actually have fourth century manuscripts of first century stories. Or, you know, we read Tacitus, Roman historian. We read Cicero. We read all these sorts of texts.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
We're reading Renaissance era manuscripts for most of that. Oh, really? Yeah. And no one thinks about it. Oh, I've never thought about it.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Exactly. That's where I'm going with that. That's a great point. So it's really our mindset about what you're coming in, what kind of mindset you're coming into this with. When I look at the New Testament as a historian, I think we have an amazing amount of evidence relative to other things from the ancient world.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
especially relative to other non-elite cultural products from the ancient world.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Well, yeah, I mean, if he had not presided at that one trial, we wouldn't know much about him at all. But he makes it in the creed. He makes it in the creed, which is unbelievable.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Well, yeah. I mean, Pilate, I don't know. I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for the guy. I mean, because the other evidence we do have about him that he was a pretty ruthless manager of a province that did not want to be occupied by Rome. I mean, the only reason he's... you know, the sometimes, sometimes people assume that Pontius Pilate's like living in Jerusalem.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
He's not, he doesn't even want to be in Jerusalem. He lives on the, by the coast, man. He's like, I'm going to live in Caesarea. It's nice. Live in a nice place and not, not deal with Jerusalem. The only reason he's in Jerusalem is that, uh, it's a past, it's a pilgrimage festival. Right. Right. So it's like,
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
He's got to go because the previous Roman prefects of Judea struggled to govern a people that didn't want to be occupied and that didn't want to be forced to pay tribute to a foreign government. It's not surprising. You know your history. You know this happens all over the world for all of history. Yeah. So what do they do every spring festival that we call Passover?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
What do they do at every Pesach? They gather and they celebrate freedom from a tyrant. That's what the Exodus is. It's a celebration of freedom from a tyrant. And so you can imagine from the Roman perspective, they're trying to subdue what they perceive to be an unruly province. The province is trying to gain self-governance and respect for itself.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And the population of the city, who knows, triples, quadruples, I don't know for sure, but it's pilgrimage. Everyone's coming and they're celebrating back in our glorious past when God freed us from tyranny and from slavery.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Which is why he's there, which is why he's not sitting on the coast and Caesarea sipping a Negroni. It's why he's like going there. And so then you hear someone talking about the kingdom of God. You hear someone talking about, I mean, I always like to say to students, what gets Jesus on the radar? Yeah. I make them find it. You know, like, you read the gospel.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Tell me, what gets Jesus on Pilate's radar? Because he dies on a Roman cross, so Pilate's got to be involved. How are we going to reconstruct this? And even if Pilate's ruthless, he is not crucifying a wandering healer who talks about seeds, who tells parables about seeds. There's no way. That person's not on his radar, right? And
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And after a while, a student will get there and they notice the temple disturbance.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Yeah. During a pilgrimage festival is key. Like when there's so many people, you think about New Year's Eve in Times Square, how heightened security is, you know, or a stadium. Yeah. You know, any little disturbance gets you noticed, right? But secondly, it's, and this is the more subtle and the smarter students get this, is his entrance to Jerusalem.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
If there's any truth to that story, because if you remember what happens when he enters. Parading in. And what they're saying, they're saying, Hosanna to the son of David.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
This is a tough one, though. Let me just say, not only is it possible, it's necessary. Of course, there are many things that he said and did that are not included in this book. If you go to the end of Mark, you find out that there are multiple endings.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And that, you know, the coming one, the coming son of David.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
He's the king. He's the, I mean, this is like an archetype really because it's so long ago at this point. David's more of an idea, right? Than like a real thing in people's mind. But yeah, this is an archetype of back when we ruled ourselves, back when we were in charge, back when we were glorious, right? And it's, so you can interpret, you can imagine how it looks like a coup. Yeah.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Even if Jesus didn't want it for himself. You know, you can only do so much control of what people say about you.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Right. And he's walking around, or at least want you banished. At least want you out of there, you know? And then he's walking around, at least according to our gospel passion narratives, kind of going up to various status groups and arguing with them on exactly their...
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
their turf right right like like oh the scribes masters of the written torah let's debate the written torah oh pharisees you have questions about like the oral torah should we pay taxes to the romans or not you know we'll argue with you about that so he's he's definitely a controversial figure sure and you know he's not avoiding any of that interesting can i ask you another hot take
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Oh my gosh, I know. Yeah, we started with Thomas and we ended with Pilate. So this is perfect.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So I thought I knew we were going until the very end of what you said. So the first part, I thought you meant that Judas is a, Judas's betrayal is a necessary piece of God's will.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
That's not a New Testament quote, though. Okay. Yeah. Dang it. That's okay. So there is a second century text called the Gospel of Judas, which was written and then rediscovered in the modern era, which put a pretty fascinating story, actually, if you want to hear that at some point, the Gospel of Judas story. So here's what I would say to the first part. I would say that
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
The role of Judas's betrayal in the divine plan of Jesus' death and resurrection is, to me, a total mystery. Here's why. You know, there are so many... the gospels narrate, if you ask the question, why does Jesus die? According to the gospels, like what, what's the, what's the chain of causation that leads to this? There's so many different things that happen, right?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
The Pharisees are out to get him for, for these various reasons. He may have some guilt by association with John the Baptist, who was already beheaded, you know, earlier in the story. Um, he disrupts the temple. He, people think some people think he's the next King David, um, There's all these reasons why it might, you know, if he blasphemes before the Sanhedrin.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
But where do we fit Judas into that chain, that chain of causation? Like, how does it, how do we fit that into either the historical context? chain, or especially how do we fit that into the divine or the kind of purpose of the death, right? Because then you have all these heavenly why questions of like, well, it's because God wills it. It's because the Messiah is supposed to suffer.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So is it a plausibility index? Is it a believability index? Or is it a shock value? Is it all those things?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
It's because Isaiah prophesied that it would go this way, right? But the Judas part just it just mystifies not only me, but a lot of theologians throughout history, because it doesn't feel like something that God should do. It feels like, why would God plant this particular mode in the historical chain?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Yeah, yeah. Good. No, you're right. The hardening of Pharaoh's heart is a great example. Like, why does the divine will act in these ways on earth and through human causation? But I feel more comforted when I'm confused by that mystery because it's been confusing all the way back, right?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So the very existence of this gospel of Judas narrative is an attempt theologically to reckon with the role of Judas. Yeah. Maybe Judas is an insider. Maybe Judas has access to the divine will. Maybe Judas is a key player in a secret way that the other disciples don't get. And so the gospel of Judas in part is a narrative and a reflection on that.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
But as to resolving it, Mark, I'm afraid I don't have a resolution for it.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Definitely spicy. Yeah, we forgot about our rankings. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'll go back to the first one. Jesus having a twin, it's medium.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So spice meter, 10 out of 10. Off the chart. I mean, I'd say it's top. Indian hot.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Ghost pepper or whatever. It's spicy, spicy. So what's amazing about this question is that like many of the spicy takes, there's a little bit of evidence that make you wonder what's going on. So here's what I would say as a historian. I would say I personally do not think that Jesus was married. I don't think that Jesus had a wife, had a woman, and had children.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
But I don't think that's a very radical thing to say. I also don't think John the Baptist did. I don't think getting married and having children is the sort of thing an apocalyptic, itinerant wisdom healer does. I mean, there are people today who live radical lives.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
either radical lives of service or radical lives of travel or radical lives of passion for a project who also choose not to settle down, so to speak, right? Mm-hmm. And if anything, I would say I'm sure Jesus was a pretty radical and unusual figure, right? Like John the Baptist. So I don't think so. So how does this come in? How does the Mary Magdalene idea come in?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Well, for sure, she's the most important female disciple. I just don't see how that's debatable at all.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Uh, disciples. So discipleship, I don't think is in question. Apostleship has been in question, meaning apostleship, meaning did Jesus specifically commission her and like call her to be in the inner circle? Um, but I think, you know, the list of female disciples, especially in the gospel of Luke chapter eight, you know, but other places as well, we, I have no, no problem, uh,
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Probably no problem thinking that. I think it's, I'm sure.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So yeah, so traditionally disciple, it's from Latin for a student. So someone who follows Jesus and listens to his teachings and observes them, I would call all of those disciples, all the followers. The term apostle in Greek means like commissioned or sent, like I send you out to do something. And so that's the term that gets more, is more debated now. Um, but not just for women.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Sure, I've heard this before because Thomas means twin. So Didymus, Thomas, two different names, one Aramaic-based and one Greek-based does mean twin. And so the fact that this is one of Jesus' disciples who is named and who is very prominent in the New Testament, well, maybe not prominent is too strong of a word, but appears in some key moments, right?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
I mean, the apostle Paul, because Paul didn't know Jesus in the flesh, he has to defend his title of apostle for his whole life because he didn't know him. And he says he had a mystical experience where he was sent commissioned by Jesus. And, you know, Peter and James are like, are you sure? Yeah. So that's what I mean by disciple.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So there's no doubt in my mind that Peter's the closest male disciple and Mary Magdalene's the closest female disciple. The existence of Mary, she's the only person named in all four gospels at the cross and at the tomb. I mean, that's... That's the evidence we have, right? That's very, very strong evidence.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
In the Gospel of John, she has the individual resurrection appearance, which is only in John, but is very powerful and clearly very meaningful to the author of the Gospel of John. Um, but none of that really implies, you know, romance or, or arrows. Um, the, that implication does come from non-canonical texts. So, and non-canonical traditions.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So, you know, the gospel of Philip, which is a text discovered also in Nag Hammadi would, would be one of the main ones here. Um, but then you have other, other legends that, you know, develop later. Um, So I don't know how much more we want to go with that. I'm probably not. I think it's a very, very spicy take, but I think Dan Brown and the Da Vinci Code took it as far as it could go.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And even the Da Vinci Code, it only cites like two early Christian texts in one paragraph. I mean, it's very, very minimal. You know, there's not a ton to go on there.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Yeah. Well, to an unnamed disciple in the Gospel of John.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So, yeah, we're blending stories here. But in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, right? Mary Magdalene is at the cross. And in the Gospel of John, in addition, Jesus' mother...
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
and his beloved disciple or the disciple jesus loved is also at the cross traditionally is is thought to be john the author so that's the woman behold your son son behold your mother scene of entrusting his mother to the care of this that's right younger male disciple but people say if jesus had brothers why wouldn't he give the the care of his mother to his brothers Yeah, that would make sense.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
I think a great question. Unless they were just deadbeats, you know.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Most famously in the doubting Thomas scene in the Gospel of John. Um, where he doesn't believe, uh, he's not there at the first resurrection appearance. And so he doesn't believe his, his fellow disciples and, um, wants to see for, for himself. Uh, but really that's not where the, the, um, kind of the theories develop.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Yes. This is a very complex tale. And so I'm just going to give a short version because I also would have to reread some things to get the full version. Fair. Because it's a modern story. There's a lot going on here. But first, let me give you the New Testament canonical source text or the moment in the Gospel of Mark.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
There is a very unusual scene, you know, one or two verses in which there's a young man who's there when Jesus gets arrested. And the young man is described as running off naked, like he loses his garments and he runs away, right? Mm-hmm. Totally unexplained. Like in the text, it's led to all kinds of theories about what's going on.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
That's the canonical source. So what can you learn from that, Mark? What can I learn from that? Like very little, almost nothing. It feels to me as a scholar of the gospel of Mark, like Mark expects the audience to know something about this story or know a little bit that they're filling in, or maybe they knew who the person was.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Or maybe it's just a detail that is included to show the kind of chaos of the scene, right? The chaos of the arrest scene.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
The word is young man. That's where it comes.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Right. So you've just seen, that's it. That's all we have to go on in the New Testament. But it was always a curiosity for New Testament scholars and New Testament readers, like what's going on in this story? He's only narrated, he's only characterized as a follower, someone who's following Jesus. Right. Okay, so now you fast forward to the 20th century.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
There's a scholar named Morton Smith who got famous for a book called Jesus the Magician, where he talks about Jesus in the context of ancient magic and ancient healing practices. Morton Smith publishes a bombshell revelation that he had discovered an early Christian text that was inserted into a different text, an expansion on this scene.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
The theories really develop outside of what comes to be the canon of the new Testament. So there are two primary sources. One that we've known about since antiquity called the acts of Thomas, um, which I think you've had someone on your show to talk about.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
an expansion that he publishes as the Secret Gospel of Mark, where there is an expanded story about Jesus and this young man that Morton Smith then argues has been cut out of canonical Mark because it was too salacious or too scandalous.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So he, I have to go back and remember all this. And there've been books published about this whole thing, of course. So when my, as I remember it, he, you know, he, he copies it down, but then when he goes later, when he doesn't take it out of the library, cause he doesn't have authorization to do that. He copies it down. And then when he goes back later, it's gone.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So if you think it's a conspiracy, then it's a very convenient story. So there are people who think that, okay, Morton Smith made this story up because he's the sort of guy who likes the idea of Jesus having a young gay lover.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
But then there were other scholars at the time who were like, Morton Smith would never do that. Morton Smith is like, we know him and why we don't think he would do that. So then, I mean, that wasn't a lot. This is in like the seventies. So, I wasn't alive at the time to know, but scholars were very in a lot of conflict about whether he was the sort of person who would just make this up.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So that's where the secret gospel of Mark comes from.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
I don't think it gets beyond kissing and lying down. I can't remember for sure. I see. Yeah.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Talking about, you know, these are the so-called apocryphal acts, kind of the stories of what happened to the disciples after they all scattered and evangelized. So the Acts of Thomas has a... has a focus on that character. The themes and the acts of Thomas in that travel are mostly ascetic, kind of self-denial.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
I feel like... I mean, I haven't thought about this in years because I feel like it was pretty definitively shut down as, you know, sadly for his legacy, something that Morton Smith made up and, you know, it was disproven.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Well, but spiciest with plausibility, though, is more the Jesus Mary Magdalene. Like, what's going on?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Most people don't have more than a couple garments.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
I mean, it would not surprise me at all if someone only had one garment in the ancient world. It wouldn't surprise me at all. Yeah, that's fair. I mean, garments are, we live in the era of fast fashion, unfortunately, and throwaway culture. But even not very long ago, it's not uncommon in our country for someone to just have a few articles of clothing. Yeah, that's fair.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And especially if you're in a hot climate, just having one linen shirt, That could be what you got. And now the cops are trying to grab you and you wriggle out of it and run away.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
I mean, imagine if you're walking out, you take a shower, you're wearing your robe and you come out on the street in Brooklyn, you know, to pick up your mail. And then a cop tries to grab you for some reason or like somebody, anybody tries to grab you. You get accosted by someone trying to mug you and you slip out of your robe and just run down the rigs.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
That one is... Where am I going to put that one? What's in between spicy and minty?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Thomas trying to get people to break up their marriages or not get married in the first place. But there's also a lot of amazing scenes of Christian initiation and what kinds of baptismal prayers they had and what kinds of meals they had, mostly in early Christian Syria and to the east of that. But then there's another main text called the Gospel of Thomas, which was known in antiquity, but was not
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
I think, yeah, I'm closer to minty because there's such mixed evidence within the Gospels.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
By political, also by political, we got to define our terms here. We got to be a good student professor, students and professors here. By revolutionary, does one mean take up arms in violence? If by that, I would say no. I don't think we have evidence that Jesus was designing a kind of insurgency against Roman occupation in Jerusalem, a Roman occupation of the region.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
If we mean by revolutionary something more like Gandhi, then I would say yes. You know what I mean? How do we use the term?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Just going on a hunger strike. Or if we mean something like Oscar Romero in El Salvador.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
the Bishop of El Salvador, who was martyred by the state. If we mean, I think he was a revolutionary in a sense, a political revolutionary in a sense, right? But not with a gun on his shoulder or not with a weapon in his hand.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
I do not think it was his primary role, but I want to believe that great figures in history are capable of multiplicity of things, right? We know this in our own era. We have very impressive figures in history who... whatever, whatever it is. Like you can, uh, Beyonce can win a cow country Grammy. Like you got people who had Dr. Drake and sell sodas.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Like you, the Beatles go from, I want to hold your hand to Sergeant peppers in 10 years. People do all kinds of diverse things in their lifetimes. And so I, I think that my view of a person of Jesus is that he is all these things. So, uh, He's a healer first, right? That's something people miss when they read the New Testament for some reason, because it's so clear.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
People are seeking him out as a healer and no one's questioning that he can do it. This is amazing, right? His opponents don't even question it. They question why he can do it. where do you get the power from? But no one's saying like, you're faking.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
He's a healer. And I don't know how to explain that as a modern person. I can't understand. I have a modern scientific mindset that's the air I breathe. So I think in that way. But I'm very open to mystical power. I'm open to Reiki. I'm open to acupuncture. I'm open to the kinds of ways that even meditation and mindset can have physical effects. you know, in the chemical, in the biochemical world.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So who knows what he's doing, but people seem to believe that it's working. So he's a, he's a healer first. Um, he's a, he's a wisdom teacher, I would say second. So he is crafting stories that are of kind of narrative theology that he's delivering to people as an itinerant
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
you know, quasi homeless person by his own account, homeless as an itinerant person, delivering stories that confront them to reflect on their life, to reflect on their ethics, to reflect on how they treat the poor, to reflect on nature, to reflect on what God asks of them. Those are the top two things that Jesus is doing. He's healing in his teaching. Now, how does this transition into politics?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
It was known that it existed in antiquity, but the text of it was not discovered until the mid-1900s at a place called Nag Hammadi in Egypt. Is that something you're familiar with, this discovery of the Coptic texts at Nag Hammadi?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Well, he's a highly ethical person and he believes in God's sovereignty, that God is in charge, right? He is absolutely positive of divine sovereignty.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So that is going to have a clash with political rulers of the day who, in his mind, and most people's minds, were not ethical, were highly exploitative, highly exploitative of the poor, expropriating people's land, having all kinds of oppressive taxation regimes. Tax isn't even the right word because it's so exploitative. It's not like tax. It's systematic taxation.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Oppression of resources, yeah. Rome is an extractive empire. It's... It's an empire that, there's different kinds of empires in world history. Rome really wants to extract resources from the periphery and bring them to the center. And they don't so much care whether you speak Latin or, you know, read Virgil. Like that's not, they don't care about that, right?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Whereas like Alexander the Great did want you to read Homer and build Greek architecture, right? He was a cultural imperialist. He was a different kind of person, but which is why they're even speaking Greek in the New Testament, of course.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So he, when he's teaching then about, when he's teaching in parables, and he starts talking about the kingdom of God all the time, and then that kingdom of God is giving visions of human life that are in conflict with the ethics and the power structures of the world that's on earth. And then he brings that to cities.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Inevitably, you're going to have some conflict because he's using his primary metaphor is political, right? So this is what someone like Pilate hears. He's walking around. Someone's walking around talking about the new, the coming kingdom of God. Well, there's only one king. There's only one monarch in Pilate's mind, and that's the emperor, right? And that's in his day, Tiberius.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And so now someone's coming, talking about a new king, right? They also had a client, what we call a client king in Herod, meaning an appointed kind of local king who's going to collaborate and kind of do what Rome wants and sometimes push back, but mostly do what Rome wants.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So there's like, from the Roman perspective, they're like, we've already got this kind of client king who's helping us out in Judea. And we already have our real monarch, our emperor back in Rome. We don't call him a king though, because Rome doesn't like that. Emperor. Yeah. It was like military term.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And now, but now we've got these other figures from, from kind of the countryside who are talking about God's rule and God's kingdom. And then when that gets associated with David, especially then that like closes the loop for them. Like, okay, this guy thinks that, The God of Israel, their God is going to bring back sovereignty to their land.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
They're going to get their land back and someone is going to claim the mantle of their archetypal King David and then rule their land again. That's why I say... It's a yes and a no for the political revolutionary part.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
He's healer first, teacher second, but some of the ways that he's teaching veer towards political language and the interpretation by others for sure that looks political, I would say.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
I'll go, yeah. I think it's mild. I think it's mild, actually.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
I'm going to say it's definitely, definitely heard the claim. I'm going to say it's minty. I'm going to say it's minty, and here's why. I think there's no way to distinguish... So what is the difference between a young woman and a virgin in the Mediterranean world? Not very much. Most, like... I think it's our modern mindset that makes this more confusing than it needs to be. Okay.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So our bodies give us indicators of when we're adults. Our culture has decided to ignore them. Our culture has decided that you can be 30 and still not know how to do your laundry or still not have a job or whatever.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
that is a completely unusual world historic abomination like that that we would just ignore puberty adolescence coming of age right many many cultures traditional cultures throughout history you have a coming of age right around puberty like a bar mitzvah or you know or like a hunt and you you take a few days maybe a month and then you start to phase into adulthood right
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
For young women, mostly for, I was going to say for better or worse, but it's mostly bad for them in terms of their agency. Women go through puberty a little bit earlier and some of them are betrothed as early as like 10 years old. Betrothed and then when they hit puberty, then they are marriageable at 12 or something like that. I see it. St. Augustine even talks about it. We think of St.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Augustine, or at least I do, as like, St. Augustine, he's one of the greatest theologians and philosophers in all of history. But you also have to reckon with the fact that he was betrothed to a prepubescent person. But that's not our place to, I guess, judge morally, but that's the culture... of the time. Pretty weird though, right? When you think about it that way.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Yeah, and probably other chemical factors too, I would say.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Microplastics and other things in our water supply and our soil.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Yeah, it is. I mean, it's been a long time since I, I don't, I could not tell you, Chad GPT would be able to tell you faster probably. Okay.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
I should have been confident because I thought it was 10. Yeah, you got to trust yourself. But I got thrown off with the puberty thing.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So that's my way of thinking about, like, I think that is this a virgin or a young woman question in the text? I'm like, I don't think there's a difference. I mean, the term, like in Greek, the term parthenos means virgin. It also means young woman. Like it's a woman who's not marriageable yet. Yeah.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
But what I would say, though, about the other piece is that as people, as you and I live post-1968, that is post the pill, we struggle in our culture to really understand what what the bifurcation of sex and procreation has done to the mind and has done to our sense of everything.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Yeah, I mean, every sexual act is a potential procreation, and then there's consequences, right? It's not easy to deal with that. It's still not easy to deal with that, but it's very difficult to deal with that in an ancient culture.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
You don't have that many options, and it disrupts many, many things about one's extended family life, about their economic life, about their social status in their village or town. It's... Quite risky.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Um, later when you do get, um, in, in, in the Roman world, you get some consecrated virgins and then in early Christianity, you get consecrated kind of voluntary ascetic virgins. So you, the word does expand more in meaning people who are entering into that voluntarily. Um, which is also interesting because it's really a form of sexual revolution, but it's by not having sex. Oh, right.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
It's the primary way for women in the Roman Empire, in the Mediterranean world, to have agency over their own lives, is to say, I'm not going to be controlled by the cycle of birth, of sex and birth, which also carries the threat of mortality every single time. So the only way to gain an education is to opt out of that cycle because you have to be –
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Well, for the Roman Empire to have replacement rate just to replace its people, every woman of childbearing age has to be pregnant like, I don't know, five times maybe? Wow. Just to get two births to adulthood. That's just a rough estimate. Right.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
But if you think about every single person living life, and you figure some of them are not able to conceive, and that's just the average that you're trying to get to. Yeah. This is what leads to... you know, women opting out and trying to opt out and seeing a spiritual path to voluntary celibacy, where they can then have freedom over their own lives, a little bit of freedom over their own minds.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So for women, we haven't talked about women much besides Mary Magdalene, but one of the best things to be in this period, especially in the Roman empire, with its laws, inheritance laws, is to marry a wealthy man and then have him die pretty quickly.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Because you don't have to get remarried.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And so when we read about widows, like in the New Testament, a widow can be 18. Oh, right. A widow can be 20. We always have in our mind that a widow is 70 years old. But no, not at all. So you look at when you see like in the New Testament, when you see women who are named but unattached to a man, like in the book of Acts, there's a woman named Lydia, for example. Lydia's in Philippi.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And it says that they are meeting at her house and that she's a dealer in purple cloth. And she seems to be running, basically running a successful business and has a big enough place to host people. an early church, right? Almost certainly, we can't prove it, but almost certainly she's a wealthy widow who inherited a business and is like, sweet. I'm going to study some languages.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
I'm going to run my business. I'm going to listen to these philosophers. You know, I'm going to
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
I mean, I would say it's an 8 out of 10 spicy. Okay. That's up there. Yeah, again, I mean, similar to the political revolutionary concept, I would want to define what we mean by that. I mean, there's no doubt that there's belief in an afterlife. And so what do we mean by afterlife? There's a number of options for... Belief in the afterlife in the Mediterranean world, right?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
You could be a nihilist. You can believe basically there's nothing, right? And we have a lot of evidence that people had that belief. You can study this through epitaphs, for example. There's a famous epitaph that was repeated a lot, mostly in Latin. It's repeated often enough that it gets abbreviated in Latin, like RIP, right, for us. But spelled out, it's, I was not, I was, I am not, I care not.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Like I didn't used to exist. Then I existed. Now I don't exist. I don't care. Wow. They had that even back then.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
It's kind of nihilism about life after death, right? So that's very common. You have epitaphs that say things like, take heart, no one is immortal. That's like a stock epitaph you can get on your tombstone. You can hire the guy to carve that. He's carved it a million times. Yeah, 20 this week. Take heart. No one is immortal. It's a reminder to the grieving that, like, no one lives forever.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Exactly. Or one of them will be like, melupes udesathonatos, which is in Greek, don't grieve. Literally, don't grieve. No one is immortal. So these are some of the common beliefs going around. Now, you also have the belief in Hades or Sheol or a kind of shadowy underworld where people are like, I don't really know what happens there.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
I personally wouldn't use the word hoax myself or fraud. I tend to think more about variant traditions. Variant traditions, because I wasn't there. I wasn't there in the first century following Jesus around to transcribe what he said, nor was I there in the second century or the third century to think about the process of canon formation. So
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
I think there's some post-mortal existence, but I don't really have dogma about it or doctrine about it. Then you have the kind of Greek mythology world of crossing the river Styx and the Elysian Fields and these kind of things.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Then you have a little bit of evidence for astral immortality, people who believe that all these things up in the sky, these are souls and these are stars and, you know, holy souls or righteous souls get to become like the stars. And so you'll sometimes see stars on epitaphs or on commemorative items or stories of comets at people's funeral and like this is their soul, right?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Going up, Julius Caesar, example of that. So this is kind of your set of like, what are the available beliefs? Now, the Jewish people had a different one, which is the resurrection of the body. Resurrection of the body in the Jewish expectation as a communal event at the end of time. So that's the world into which Jesus is born and Paul is born and Mary Magdalene is born and others.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
But what happens in early Christianity is that they come to the faith that this has happened. It only happened to one person so far, but it happened. And so that's where you start. That's where then you get some of the split. From, you know, from Jewish theology, where some people are like, well, no, we don't think that did happen. If that did happen, why isn't everyone else rising from the dead?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Like, what's the next piece? These are the questions asked in 1 Thessalonians of Paul in the New Testament. They're like, some people have died in our community. What's next? You know, where are they? Where do they go? Very valid question. if you're coming from a traditional Greco-Roman belief system about immortality or about mortality. And then, you know, and then it comes to this.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So amid all of that, do we have ideas of reincarnation?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Well, oh, yeah. I mean, the idea would be like if people say that Jesus is Elijah come back from the dead. Or like John the Baptist is Elijah has come back from the dead. Is that kind of what you mean? Perhaps, yeah.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So, I mean, I never thought of that as reincarnation. I guess I just thought of it as like a... you are the second version of this prior person, you know, you're like, right. You carry on his legacy, carry on this legacy. Um, But there's no doubt that Elijah is the most prominent northern Israelite prophet in the tradition. And so they're calling upon that legacy quite frequently.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And I think Jesus himself is characterized in some ways that resemble Elijah. Interesting. And in Jesus' own synagogue sermon in Luke chapter 4, when he's talking about...
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
talking about his own mission, his own ministry, and kind of laying out a charting for his ministry, he refers to Elijah and says that in the days of a famine, Elijah went out to preach the way that I'm going to preach and to heal the way that I'm going to heal and to provide these blessings that I'm going to provide. But I never really thought of that as reincarnation. I thought of it as a
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Because I think when I think of reincarnation, I think of it on the traditional South Asian model of a chain of being.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
As eternally an outsider to the world that I study, I try to be open to the possibilities of what was happening. Now, the Gospel of Thomas, we only have this one, well, mainly one version of it, which is in Coptic, which is the language of early Christian Egypt. For your listeners who don't know what Coptic is, it's a hybrid language.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Right, and that you move among species too, right? That you're not just, it's not like human, just human to human.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Yeah, I mean, I think the close, I don't know, the closest we would get to that in early Christianity is the idea of pre-existing souls, right? I would say. Where is that talked about? A lot of places. I mean, it's, it's a big question of like, besides post-mortal existence, you know, pre-mortal existence, like do, do souls exist before they're embodied? And if so, where are they?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And do they have individuated identities? Uh, you know, like the, actually that the animated movie soul kind of plays on this too, if you ever saw it, but the, um, In the Gospel of John, we have this opening prologue, kind of overture to the Gospel of John. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. We have this, what's called Logos Theology of a
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Logos is the Greek word for word, where you have seemingly a preexistent, some kind of intermediary being that then takes flesh and incarnates. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us in John 1.14. So for that to be legible to anyone... The listener, the first century listener, first century reader must have to have some sense of they've thought about these kind of things before, right?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And you can imagine you're sitting around a campfire in the first century in a desert in Egypt and you're looking at the stars and it's only natural to think about, oh, my mom just gave birth to my sister. And like, where was she before that? You know, was she in a star above and like came down into earth or whatever?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And so there's all kinds of reflection in platonic philosophy and cosmology about these kind of things.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Or that in some parts of the world they come out of the ocean, not the stars, right? Oh. If you live near the water and you're bathing all the time and...
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
you know these souls enter your body that's never heard that yeah i mean it's they're anthropologists who studied various various groups that that was their cosmology that was their belief which interesting and why not why why doesn't that make sense you know yeah okay gabe were there any other verses about jesus talking about reincarnation that seems like a stretch to me but always an interesting an interesting idea yeah let's see um what is it okay let me see uh
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
It's kind of the final form of Egyptian before the Arab Muslim conquest of Egypt. And at that point, it had blended native Egyptian grammar and some characters with also some Greek characters and some Greek vocabulary. I did study that, learned it for a few years when I was a graduate student, and I can read those texts.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
In John 3, familiar with the Greek there? It's highly relevant. The story actually doesn't make sense unless you know the Greek. It's one of the- Finally, I'm going to make it make sense.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
I mean, there's very few times where I would say that, where I would say truly you can't understand what's going on without it. But I think this is one. So John loves wordplay, the Gospel of John. There's a number of double entendres in John. There's dramatic irony. There's a lot of good stuff going on. in terms of the literature. And so this is in John 3, famous section.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Jesus meets with a man named Nicodemus, who's introduced at the time as a Pharisee, but clearly someone who's open-minded like yourself. He's bringing Jesus into a tent like this, and they meet under the cover of night because he wants to learn about what this new rabbi is up to. And in the process of the conversation, they talk about that someone needs to be born. The Greek word is anothen.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
They need to be born anothen. And Nicodemus is confused and says, how can someone be born when they're old? Can they enter their mother's womb again? That's because the verb anothen can mean unborn. Again, like one more time, right? Another time. But the word anothen can also mean from above. And Jesus says, no, no, no, they're born anothen, the other way, like the vertical way.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So not the horizontal temporal way, but the vertical way. They're born from above. And then he goes into their, you know, they're born of water and spirit and kind of leads into the baptismal idea of rebirth.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And the anoth, I mean, we do this in English too, but if you're a native speaker, you don't think about that our prepositions like often have multiple meanings, you know? So for example- Uh, before is one before has a temporal and a spatial meaning. So, you know, I had lunch before I came to camp. Right. But I kneel before the King.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And we just, we're native speakers, so we don't think about that. It's that kind of idea. Interesting. Right, where that's a, yeah. So anothen, the Greek word is doing, has both of those meanings.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And the way Jesus teaches in John, he does this a number of times where he presents an idea that kind of trips up the listener and that it allows Jesus to expand further and like work with their misunderstanding and then give a longer explanation. Yeah. It's just a style in John or the way Jesus is narrated in John.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So when you read the Gospel of Thomas in Coptic, there are times where it seems like you're getting... for example, a parable of Jesus that feels like it might actually be more archaic than what we have in Matthew or Luke, for example.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Yeah. Well, I mean, and he does this in outside of John too, in the parables, but not quite as often. But one of the best ones, I think one of the most clever teachings he has is a parable called, usually called the Pharisee and the tax collector, which only happens once in the gospel of Luke. And I'll just tell it real quick and then tell you why I think it's a very clever teaching move.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So, it's a teaching about what true righteousness is. What does it mean to be holy? And this Pharisee who thinks of himself as very holy is at the temple praying. And there's also a tax collector there praying. And tax collector is a very negative term because... Um, not cause like the IRS today or like we're democratically electing and our Congress people who declare taxes.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So we've only ourselves to blame, you know, in a sense, but they are being imposed from a foreign occupying government. So the person collecting taxes is really like collecting tribute to a military occupation. Right. And they're, the Romans are hiring, uh, in many cases, hiring locals to do the collection. Yeah.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So it's like one of your own townspeople who's taking your grain and your coinage and delivering it to a foreign distant government. Like a capo. Yeah. And then they're probably skimming off the top a percentage for themselves because they're putting themselves in it. So that's a very, very negative person, right?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So that's why the story is placed this way, right? You've got like this person who thinks of himself as very holy and this other person who they think of as very, very negative morally and low social status. So they're both there and the tax collector is humble. The tax collector like knows that they're a sinner. And they're, they're, they're down, down on themselves.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And, you know, I'm, I'm so, I'm so terrible and I need mercy. And the Pharisees looking over and it's like, I'm so glad I'm not like this, this tax collector. Like, I'm so glad basically like I'm, you made me how I am, you know, that I'm, I'm so righteous and I'm just going to continue to be that way. Okay, why do I think this is a brilliant story?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Because when you're listening to it, when you're reading it, what happens to you is that you start thinking to yourself, I'm so glad I'm not like that Pharisee. Right. Like, oh, I'm not like that guy.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
But then there are other times in Thomas where it feels like this is definitely derivative and this must have come later in an attempt to kind of manipulate the message of the parables. So for me, I take a case-by-case approach to these texts because it's a collection of sayings, really. And any collection of sayings, I kind of look at it and I think, well,
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Yeah, I would never be so arrogant. So the story actually becomes a mirror, like draws you in where you become the negative figure in the story. Oh, wow. And then you have to catch yourself and be like, wait a minute. I'm actually sitting here in prayer with this story, thinking about how I'm so glad I'm not like the story's character. Who's so glad.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Who's so glad he's not like the story's character. Yeah.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So, you know, this is why these stories are told and retold forever is that, you know, they have a, they have this longevity because they put each individual into, into like little moments of crisis and revelation about themselves. They're existentialist in a lot of, I would say in a lot of ways.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Sure. So the, um, I want to get into this by thinking about how ancient people dealt with meals more generally and how they dealt with meals related to gods more generally, because I think this is important to, to kind of unfurling the mystery at the heart of the Catholic Eucharist. And also the Greek Orthodox Eastern Orthodox Eucharist is very holy in this way too. Um,
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
This version of the parable, maybe Thomas did preserve maybe an older version than we have because we have different versions in Matthew and Luke anyway of certain parables right there within the canon. I'm still not getting to your question, though, about the twinning or the twin ideas.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So let's move outside of Judaism and Christianity for a sec and just let's go to like a Greek temple in the ancient world. Okay. So let's say that you have a brother who got sick and then you pooled some money together and you sent your brother to go live at the temple of Asclepius for a month, which is a Greek god of healing.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And your brother's going to live there and be with their priests and have some dream interpretation and eat their food and pray their prayers. And then a month later, your brother gets better. It's amazing, Mark. And your family's like, we're going to go rent out a dining room at the temple of Asclepius.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And we're going to sacrifice a lamb, have some beautiful baby lamb chops, lemon, rosemary, you know. And everyone's going to be there. And we're going to give thanks to Asclepius, the God, that your brother has been healed. Okay? Now, when you go there, that animal is partially sacrificed to the god on an altar, and then the rest of it is cooked and distributed, and you eat it.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So what are you doing in this event? This is totally normal. This is a normal part of culture. Animal, bloody animal sacrifice and grain offerings are happening every village, everywhere, every day, all over the entirety of the Mediterranean region. It is completely normal. And it is the primary way in which gods and humans meet each other. This is the mediation method, right?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Is through this logic and ritual of sacrifice. So when you say the prayer of thanks to Asclepius for your brother's healing, and you take a bite of these beautiful baby lamb chops, part of which was sacrificed on the altar, you are in a way communing with the god. This is the cultural surroundings in which we should think about these stories and meal cultures.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Now, there's a big leap, though, because Jesus is human. So there's a big leap there to say that when Jesus says in the New Testament, "'Take, eat, this is my body. Drink this, this is my blood of the new covenant.'"
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
It's a big leap then to say for the rest of time when Christians are eating this bread and drinking this wine that they are communing with Jesus as a God or Jesus' body in the way that they might have been communing with pre-Christian or other Greco-Roman gods. But I wanted to establish that because the logic of sacrifice and the experience of communion was not invented by Christians.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
They're participating in a very important mode of divine human relationship at the time. So if you go ask... A second century, third century, fourth century Christian, you just take a poll, you go to Syria, you go to Jerusalem, you go to Rome, you go to North Africa, and you ask them, what do you think you're doing at this time?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
When you do this ritual, I, Mark, I think you're going to get a lot of different answers from Christians. So I'm not going to be satisfying to you by saying there's going to be one answer. I think some of them would say we are commemorating Jesus' death. This is a funerary meal.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
It's like a meal that we eat at a graveside for our grandfather and it's to commemorate him or like the death of a martyr. I think some of them would say we are drinking blood of sacrifice that signifies that we have a new covenant with God. It's a covenant meal.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
It's a covenant kind of renewal meal that we have to remind ourselves of our covenant with God and to recommit ourselves to our covenant with God. I think some of them would say the didache, a first century text that's not in the New Testament, a very ancient text. Didache seems to imply that it's a grain sacrifice, not a blood sacrifice.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
That the experience is more like the gathering of a harvest from the field and sacrificing part of the grain and thanksgiving to God. Like the bread part of it. And so then that's a different image. It's like this is more of an eschatological harvest image. This is like the harvest at the end of time that we are celebrating a bit in advance of.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Well, so yeah, so that's what I meant. Again, it's very difficult to prove and it's not original to me, these ideas. But if you imagine how oral tradition works in a pre-print culture, right? The print culture is not coming for 1500 years after this. So all of Jesus' teachings are circulating primarily orally.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
and trying to participate in our hope that we will be raised at the end from this harvest. But what text is that? It's called the didache in Greek, D-I-D-A-C-H-E. And it has a last supper. No, even better. It has a Eucharistic prayer. It's our oldest Eucharistic version of Eucharistic prayer, meaning the prayer over the bread and wine.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
It's a modern, it was a modern discovery. It's an ancient text that was discovered in the late 1800s. And it's considered to be our oldest version of a liturgical prayer in Christianity. And it has some very archaic language. It talks about the vine of David and it has, and it has this kind of, like I said, it seems to have a kind of a grain sacrifice idea focusing on the bread and the harvest and,
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And seeds that are, you know, like things have been gathered from the mountainside into one. That's fascinating. And then you have other... So I'm giving you a diversity approach, which is my mode. You're not learning. But then we have other evidence from 2nd and 3rd century Christianity where, especially in the East, where some of their Eucharistic meals don't have wine.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
They just have the bread or bread and water. And so then you're like, well... Could they have been thinking of it as a bloody sacrificial meal or like that kind of communion if they weren't even using the wine? Because they thought that they weren't using the wine because they wanted to be more ascetic and more self-denying. But what was in their mind when they were having this meal, you know?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Um, so when we really, here's what I would say though, when we really start to get to a strongly sacrificial kind of transubstantiation, um, belief system, I would, I would say I'm confident around 250. I would say I'm confident that in Western Christianity, North Africa, when I say North Africa, I mean, um, like modern day Tunisia, Algeria, that region.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So there, can I tell you just a story here? Because I think a lot of things come together here. So there is Christianity is growing throughout the second century, early third century, to a point where a Roman emperor named Decius, in around the year 250, has what's considered the first empire-wide persecution of Christians. The first big one. Now, was he intending only to target Christians?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Probably not. He's intending to shore up, I guess you could say patriotism, shore up Roman... the Roman ethos, right? He feels like things are fraying a bit. And so he wants everyone in the whole boundaries of the Roman Empire to make a sacrifice to Rome and its gods. And you have to prove it. So you have to get a receipt. In Latin, a libellus. A receipt.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Yeah. So, now, there... The vast majority are still polytheists, and so they have no problem doing this. It's like, no big deal. I'll go to my village sacrifice. I will participate in it. I'll get my labellus, my receipt, move on with my day.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And we even see this in the canonical New Testament when you take something like the parable of the lost sheep. Now, in your mind, I know you went to some church growing up, and so you've heard this parable and you think you kind of know what it is. But when you put Matthew's version and Luke's version actually right next to each other, and you look at the Greek versions, Matthew and Luke don't
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Sorry, sorry, no. I'm non-Christian and non-Jews. Most people are polytheists, so they're fine with this.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
what we would call an open pantheon, right? Like there's more gods than we even know of and more can come in. It's not a big deal. I'm happy to participate in a sacrifice to the Roman emperor and the gods of Rome. It's fine. But, you know, quite famously, Jews and Christians are not into that.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
They're monotheists and they're non-idolatrous and they don't want to participate because they believe it's real. They believe that if they do this, they're actually communing with the God that they are sacrificing to. Yeah. It's not just like cross my fingers behind my back and, you know, eat some meat from this altar. It's like, no, this is actually coming into my body and affecting my soul.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And it is also telling the God that I think the God's real.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And so this is a huge moment because Christianity had now gotten big enough where there's a lot of people left here what to do. So there's a number of options in this scenario. One is, if you're a Christian, let's say, one is you just go do it anyway.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So you just go, maybe you cross your fingers behind your back and say, I hope God you don't judge me for this, but I have a wife and kids and a job and a farm and I don't want to get in trouble and I don't want to get... Who knows what they're going to do to me? Another option is you can bribe someone either to do it for you and get your receipt with your name on it.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Like having someone take the SAT for you in the old days or whatever, or write my paper for me. Um, or like bribing a officer, um, or you could try to bribe an official, um, Just to get the, how much is this going to cost me? It's risky. I'm not going to eat the meat, but probably it's very risky because they're likely going to be very, very patriotic to Rome and they're not going to like that.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
You could flee. Like you could go live with your uncle in the wilderness for a little while and it passes through and maybe then you get out of it. Or you could stand up to them. You could stand up to the Roman official in your village, in your town, and say, I believe in a living God, the Lord of heaven and earth, who cannot be frozen in this statue. Your gods aren't real. I'm not doing it.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And see what happens. And guess what, Mark? Some of them become martyrs. But some of them don't. Some of them are allowed to live. I'm going to blow your mind. Are you ready? So they had confessed their faith, right? So they come to be called confessors. Hmm. Okay. Here's where it's going to blow your mind because you know your Catholic terminology.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
When you go to confession, the person who hears your confession is called a confessor. This is why. It goes all the way back to this. You ready? So a confessor in 250 is someone who stood up and said, I'm not eating meat and drinking wine from this sacrifice to the God of Rome and the emperor of Rome. I'm a Christian. I don't do that. Now let's say you're someone who paid a bribe.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
necessarily think the parable means the same thing they have slight differences in how they think this parable uh was meant and they have different audiences in which they said it so in in one gospel and gospel of luke that parable is taught to a group of outsiders uh a group of says quote tax collectors and sinners and it seems like a parable that's trying to bring people in who are not a part of the movement who are lost and then they get brought in
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
You're a Christian who paid a bribe. Now you want to go back to church a month later. Are they going to let you in? Maybe, maybe not. They'll be like, no, man, you paid a bribe and you communed with.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Yeah. Or you fled. You ran. And now you come back. Now, let's make this even bigger. Let's say you were like the priest or the bishop. And you fled. Yeah, no. But now you come back. You can't come back. And some regular person stood up and confessed. Now they have more authority in your local church than you do. And they can forgive you.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
They can absolve you of your sin that you participated in idolatry and communed with the wrong God and let you back into the church. So hold on. It gets even better. So there's a communal element to this. Yeah. So this is why I set it up with meals generally is because we have – we meaning –
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
post-enlightenment rationalistic protestant culture folks we don't think this stuff is real often like or we we have this notional idea that like our mind and soul are separated from what our body's doing you know and like oh i can just not believe that that's a god and I'll just eat it anyway. But so many people did not have that mindset, right?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
It was a real communion and had to be, you know, you kind of confess and be absolved for this. So, so what, here's another thing that happens at this time is we start to get the leaders of Christian communities called priests. at a much higher rate.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Because a priest in the ancient Mediterranean world, in all the languages, really, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, it primarily meant a presider and a sacrifice. it didn't mean you're a good person. It didn't mean you're give good, good advice. You know, it didn't mean any of these things, um, mostly hereditary associated with temples or shrines, you know, you presiding in the sacrifice.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So Christians until two 50 didn't really call people priests. They called them elders, deacons, Bishop. Oh, it's like over for overseer or, um, the, you know, Disciple, shepherd, there's a lot of terms, but not priest because they weren't doing actual sacrifice, which has a meaning that's very specific on an altar, on a shrine, at a temple, whatever. But now when they have this conflict...
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Sure. So I work at Fordham University here in New York on the Bronx campus, and I've been a professor there in the theology department for 16 years. And my main areas are, there's kind of three main areas. One would be the New Testament and in all of its forms and in its context, but kind of especially its Greco-Roman context and the way it lives in the Roman Empire.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
that was started by the Roman emperor. Now they have this conflict and they start to say, wait a minute. No, we do. We do have, we have a different sacrifice and we have our different priests and it's not the one that you have.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And now we've shown it, but enough of us kind of stood up to you and you actually get a blossoming of what comes to be the sacramental worldview and the sacramental system where you get ideas of what I wouldn't use the word transubstantiation for that period, but you get these ideas of the deep reality of the ritual, that this is not just a notional idea. It is not just symbolic.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Lives are on the line for this ritual. You also get the idea of confession and absolution in a community that comes in more strongly. And then eventually through all of this, you get questions about baptism and rebaptism. It's like, what if someone who baptized you, Mark, is someone who capitulated in this moment? Then people are like, well, is your baptism valid?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
In Matthews, it's situated as a teaching to the disciples about seemingly about not letting people go astray in the first place. It's really a teaching about leadership. That's how I interpret it. Being a good shepherd. Yeah. Okay, so that's more the Matthew emphasis. It's very subtle, but my point is, I guess my point I try to make is that
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And they have to ask that question. And they ultimately decide it is, but it's a real live question that they're, they're arguing about. And so then they decide that baptism is not dependent on the holiness of the baptizer.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So anyone can baptize. Water and form, maybe. That's it. Right. The Trinity and water in the Catholic tradition is what it is. But the reason I wanted to talk about 250 is that so many of what comes to be the Catholic sacramental worldview comes out of this period of conflict about sacrifice. And they're all sort of connected. They all end up being kind of connected, right? Oh, that's interesting.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Is it really a sacrament? They certainly didn't think so. They didn't think so. That was just a civil, civil transaction, you know?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Well, holy orders, ordination, anointing of the sick or last rites.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And then confirmation kind of comes later as well.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Yeah, so there's different traditions that emerge kind of regionally. So I always try to take a regional approach to early Christianity because what's happening on the Euphrates River in Syria is different than what's happening in Rome. They're not communicating all that much at this time period about this kind of stuff.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
But it certainly was more democratic than the Catholic Church is now for these kind of things. Like even in, you know, even in into the third and fourth century, you know, people are kind of raised up from within the community. You know, we lay our hands on the person that we think is the best leader. We lay our hands on the person that we think is the best leader.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
or interpreter of scripture, um, or can kind of keep the community together. And then there are, there are rights that emerge. We have some evidence from the late 300s is probably where we get our first textual evidence.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Um, well, late 200s, sorry, late 200s, you know, our first textual evidence of the sorts of things that might be said when someone is, um, laid hands or ordaining really just at first means like someone's hands are laid on someone else and they're prayed over and they're, They're acknowledged as a leader. But, you know, it does build a bit from there.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Already within the canonical written tradition, we have evidence of slight differences in transmission at the oral level before these things get written down. I see. And so the notion that there might be also one of those in the Gospel of Thomas that was transmitted orally in Egypt or in Syria and then eventually written down... I'm totally open to that.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
At the beginning, the terms are deacons, elders, and bishop or overseer, episkopos. And then, like I said, the priest term doesn't really come in until the third century, until this moment of crisis.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So confirmation is a relatively late, late emerger, but it really becomes necessary when infant baptism becomes the norm. So if you think it's really that's the problem it's solving. So if you think about the first 300 years of Christianity, it's still primarily a conversion religion. It's growing through adult converts.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And so you have adult converts who are learning and then eventually being baptized and being initiated through rites of initiation, which include more than baptism, by the way. My second book, I talk a lot about that, the other rites that are involved. But we do have some evidence of infant baptism from very early on. But you can imagine as Christianity then becomes the
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Even if it's not the majority, a very, very large presence, then you start having large families that have children and infant baptism becomes more of the norm. So when you have that, then what do you do with the kind of coming of age into adulthood when someone grows up and they're like, well, I didn't really choose this and I don't know what I think about it all.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Because I didn't learn it as an adult. And so confirmation is just a word that means strengthening, you know, to strengthen one's commitment, strengthen one's faith. And so it's primarily relating to infant baptism.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So typically you get baptized and confirmed in the same, either in the same rite, like the same day or within a very short period of time.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Yeah. I mean, traditionally, the rite of confirmation is an anointing with oil and the rite of baptism is primarily water. And so there's a different matter that's used. And traditionally, the confirmation is kind of descent of the Holy Spirit is a theological idea, but But yeah, for an adult, the experience is quite similar. Interesting.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Yes. So, for sure, there are degrees of sacrifice in the ancient Mediterranean mindset. You know, the sacrifice of bull or even a cow is a major, major event. Yeah. Right? No one would take that lightly. It's a major economic event. It's, you know... the emperor had a son kind of event, right? Or sacrifice a cow or a bull.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
I mean, and there are some annual rites where in Greco-Roman religion where you have certain animals that are for specific rites, but the vast majority of sacrifices is much more small than that. You know, grain and birds and smaller animals and things like that. But I would say you would not
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So like there's a parable called the parable of the tenants, um, which is in the gospel of Thomas and is in Mark and is in, uh, Matthew and three different, three different versions. And there are some scholars who feel like the Thomas version, um, might represent an older version of that oral tradition.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
um have much access to meat that wasn't sacrificed to some god or other yes there's no you know shop right or supermarket where you get where you get meat so um fish is kind of an unusual category then so this is why jews in the diaspora like jews in rome are eating fish because they don't have to then participate they don't have to worry that they're eating meat sacrificed to athena
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Because they're like, they're not, fish are not sacrificial foods for whatever reason. They're just in a different cultural category where you can. That is so funny. But like if you're a Jew living in Rome in the first century, any meat that comes across your table like potentially is idolatrous.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Well, kosher laws already existed before that, but this is more like when Jews are living outside of their homeland. I see. And they're not the majority, right? They're not interacting with these other peoples. I mean, so in the New Testament, just like to continue with this, because this also gets back to your Eucharist question.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Outside of the Last Supper narrative in the Gospels, the main place we learn about this is in 1 Corinthians. So Paul writes a long letter to a church in Corinth, which is in Greece, and it's a church full of questions and full of problems. It's an amazing document. I highly recommend everyone to read 1 Corinthians with a study Bible with notes because it's confusing. But
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
They have, I don't know, eight or nine or 10 major questions they're asking Paul, these new converts, right? Like, what do we do about sex? Should we free our slaves? Can we marry non-believers? They have lots of questions about the resurrection of the dead. Can we take each other to court?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Because now we're supposed to be like in the same quote unquote family, like, but this guy's bothering me and we have a civil dispute. Can I take my neighbor to court? You get the idea. But one of the questions they have that Paul answers in three chapters, it's the longest argument in all his letters, is about eating meat.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And we like hardly ever read this because we don't think of this as a big deal. Like we go buy burgers at the store, cook them up, whatever. For them, this is an enormous question because eating meat in a Greek city in the first century functionally means communing with a Greek God.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Well, so the animal is like partially sacrificed to the god and the rest is distributed for sale.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Really? Well, it is, excuse me, it is sacrifice for food. It's like part of the animal is burned on the altar because we don't eat the whole animal either typically, right? So like the animal is, and this is normal. I mean, Native American culture is also blessed, gave thanks for, they didn't just like slaughter, we didn't have slaughterhouses, just like slaughter animals for food.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
I mean, I'm not quite cynical as that. I think there's a mysticism to it as well. There's an appreciation of life. I mean, I've never slaughtered an animal. I don't know if you have. We're here in the camp. We could, but...
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
I would be, but people... I know people who have, and... I was hunting, by the way.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Yeah, usually we date it around there, somewhere around the fall of the temple, around the destruction of the temple.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
We had to... I don't know if it changed you, but I've known people who felt different after they had actually taken life. I feel a little weird about it. Even though they eat meat all the time, but they just don't think about its source. So...
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
so i do think there is a mysticism and a uh an interactivity a relationality with nature and more of an ecological sense of humanity as one yes the most dominant species but one among many species here and gratitude to this lifeblood like literally lifeblood that that keeps that is keeping us alive so part of it is offered and then part of it is distributed
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
A full offering, like a whole offering of the animal would be a dramatic act of gratitude to a God or a dramatic act of penance for something, right? Because then you're just giving it all and burning the whole thing up. That's what the word Holocaust, where the word Holocaust comes from. Oh, really? It's like a whole offering, which is obviously a terrible use of the term.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Yeah, second temple, exactly, in Jerusalem.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So getting back to 1 Corinthians, and just to kind of close the loop on this. So their real question, and it gets back to your communion question, because their real question is, we Christians in Corinth, we're new Christians. We believe you, Paul. We believe there's only one God. We believe that all this world full of gods in our town, these are not real. There's just statues.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Athena's not real, et cetera. Let's say we've come to believe this. But also we get invited to dinner. down the street. Also, we have the brother who's sick and sometimes we've gone to the temple of Asclepius. We're sorry, but sometimes we've gone, you know, maybe we gave thanks there. Like, what do we do?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And they seem to give some arguments to Paul that we don't have their letter, but he seems to like quote parts of their letter and his response kind of saying, and they seem to be saying, there's no God but one. These idols don't really exist. So kind of like we can eat. To lamb chops. That's good. Right? Impressive. Well, Paul's then saying, well, okay, let's say I even agree with you on that.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
more like closely around the time of christ and what would indicate that it is older so so what i'm arguing though is not that the written form of god not that the written form of the gospel of thomas as it was discovered in nakamari i'm not saying that that is older i'm saying that it might preserve oral traditions and how can we indicate that is that based off of the syntax of the sentences like the actual words that are used
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
But kind of like who's watching you do it? And what are they thinking about why you're doing what you're doing? So if you're, you know, if you Mark are a new Christian in Corinth and you said you only believe in one God now and you're being kind of zealous about it, but then you go to your friend's house for dinner and they give thanks to Athena for this beautiful lamb chop.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And then you're like digging in. Then it looks to them like, well, Christians aren't that different. They're basically just polytheists too. Right. Yeah. So you have a question of what demarcation lines are you drawing for your new community theologically?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And those demarcation lines happen through the meal for a lot of them because they believe that these are real communion meals with some God or other.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So Paul ends up making a pretty radical and I think beautiful argument, which is a community-based ethic about whether you can eat meat that has been sacrificed to what he would call an idol or another god, which is basically if someone presents to you meat and doesn't say anything about where it's from, go ahead. Hmm. And he quotes, like, the earth is the Lord in all its fullness.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
You know, he quotes a psalm, also the same psalm that Rastafarians quote about smoking weed, by the way. Oh, really?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
The earth is the Lord in all... The earth is the Lord's in all its fullness. Ah, I see. I was like, anyway, it's like... Oh, yeah, that's it. Everything on earth is the Lord's, and so we can use it all. A little mushroom. Yeah. Or whatever. Anyway, so Paul uses this, says, yes, this is true, but...
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Then if they kind of, if someone presents this meat to you and says like, this was offered in sacrifice, then you shouldn't. No thanks. Because he says, not because of your conscience, not because it actually harms you, but because of how. Optics. Yep, the optics of the conscience of everyone else who's there. Interesting. And so it's a community-based ethic. And I think about it a lot.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
It's three chapters long. We never really read it much. It's very difficult to understand it without kind of a classroom setting, I think. But... But I think about it a lot as a modern example in terms of like, like drinking, like is drinking alcohol, you know, morally right or wrong. And some people like, yeah, it is. I know it is. But for me, I'm like, it just depends on the context.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Cause like, I don't think it's morally wrong if I'm having a beer with you right now, or if it were later, we'd have a bourbon or whatever. Yeah.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
But if I'm at work and it's happy hour time on a Friday and we go out after work and I know that one of my colleagues is a recovering and struggling alcoholic and we're going to dinner, I'm like, I'm not going to... No, I can't have a beer in front of that person. That's... I think it's immoral even. I would say that's immoral. So it's a community-based, a communal ethic.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Yeah, he articulates his contextual ethic, and then he pivots right from that to narrating the story of the Last Supper and seems to be saying, we have our own communion sacrifice. We have our own. We don't need to participate in these others that you have in Corinth. And then he retells the story of the Last Supper in that same spot.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
So there are actually – well, it's difficult, and you might imagine not everyone agrees in scholarship about this. There are some basic principle ideas. Some people have an intuition that shorter stories are older, and then they get embellished over time. There are some people who have an instinct that – Um, more specific stories are older and then they get universalized over time.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And he says that if you're not discerning the body properly, you're eating and drinking judgment on yourself. So it's pretty intense. Not discerning the body properly. Right. And it's a nice ambiguous phrase, like discerning what the body is. And also I think it means discerning the body of Christ as in the community. Right. The people around. Exactly.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Because he uses the body of Christ in both ways in that letter to mean, to mean this, the Eucharist and to demean the community. Oh, that's very interesting.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
How Catholics Encounter the Bible is the new one right there.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
There are some people have an instinct that Jesus didn't tell allegories and that Jesus told parables, uh, that were more, uh, curt, quick to the point and that, and that were not allegorized into a whole world of doctrine. And so maybe the parables that look like shorter, snappier, have more of an air of like authenticity of what a wandering itinerant, uh, wisdom teacher might've talked like.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And the gospel of Thomas is very short and snappy. It doesn't allegorize. Yeah, exactly. It says a lot. It has a lot of phrases that, that, um, we, we truly don't know for sure what they mean, honestly.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
And so if you, if you have a category or a, if you have a framing in your mind of like, that's the kind of person I imagine Jesus to be, that he's telling, uh, riddles, telling almost like Zen koan type, uh, And he's leaving it up to let the one who has ears to hear hear, right? If you have ears to hear my message and you'll understand it, I'm not going to explain it all to you.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
If you have that image of Jesus in your mind, then some of these Thomas versions might look more authentic to you.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Right, right, right. So it sounds wild, right?
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
This isn't... Yeah, so I... We can get into this a little bit. So one of the ideas here that help maybe helps understand what's going on. This is a tough one though. Let me just say, I don't, I don't come in here with like definitive interpretations of all, of all, you know, a hundred and 140 of these sayings, but.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Secondly, I have a research track and a teaching track in early Christian material culture. So early Christian art, early Christian rituals, the kind of stuff of early Christianity as it developed in that same period, the first few hundred years.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Um, there is a sense in Greco Roman, Greco Roman understanding of gender, let's say that the proper, the full form of a human person is a male form. So that's obviously misogynistic. Um, but that is a, uh, idea that's, that's going around in the air. You can, you can read it. It has to do with, it has to do with, you can read it in, um, Greek and Roman medical treatises and things like this.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
Yes, and it's not quite fully developed, even biologically, not quite fully developed. So there is a way to interpret this that's saying Jesus' female disciples, they are going to become fully developed. They're going to become fully, to be fully his disciple, they need to act, more or less act like male disciples. We also see this later.
Camp Gagnon
Biblical Controversies Explained By Bible Expert
It doesn't have to be quite so misogynistic in its sound when we look later at like early Christian martyr stories, many of which are women, right? Who are women who are going to the death for their faith, such as Perpetua and Felicity in North Africa. And when we read these martyr stories of early Christian women, a lot of them are presented as male.