Yann Martel

What better day to have a God be born but a day when more sun comes to us?

So it's a symbolic choice, a great one, great symbolism.

Just got the day wrong, but it's a great symbol.

And you know, when did he die?

Well, we all know Easter Friday.

Well, Easter Friday is a day, it's not a date.

What figure in history has his date of death vary year by year?

You know, most people when they die, that's when they die and it doesn't change year by year.

So Jesus is remarkably fact-free.

The tales we know of him are told, they're oral tales that floated over time for 30, 40 years.

The oldest documents of Christianity are Paul's letters.

Paul never met Jesus.

The gospels are even later.

They never met Jesus.

There is one source of the gospels called Q, which seems to have been based on witness reports, but they were lost.

Interesting that in the year zero, when there's still a lot of literacy, no one who ever met Jesus, who would have been at the very least extraordinarily charismatic, you know, Brad Pitt with a message, extraordinarily charismatic, no one ever met him and went back home and wrote anything that has survived.

which is very curious.

Nothing has survived.

He survived through oral tales like the Trojan War.

So once again, hardly any facts.